CCWomen Lunch Panel
See how allies can advocate for women, amplify their voices, and help foster equity and inclusion in leadership roles, from boardrooms to contact centers. This panel empowers attendees to recognize the role of allyship in creating environments where everyone, regardless of gender, has the opportunity to lead and thrive. Expect to walk away with actionable insights on how to build inclusive teams, champion women leaders, and drive meaningful change in your organization.
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My name is Judy Fox and I'm the Chief Customer Officer at Support Logic.
And I'm honored to be joined today by three amazing individuals in our space.
First, Joe Andrews, Chief Marketing Officer for Support Logic.
Next, Dr. Wae Curtis, CEO of Support U.
And last but definitely not least,
Sandy Co. Fonseca, Founder and Principal of CC Women.
Thank you for joining me here today, Sandy Wae and Joe.
Today we're going to have a conversation about not only women in the industry,
but more important about allyship in our industry
and how we as supporters of each other can be better allies.
What does it take to be a good ally yourself?
And I am truly, truly touched by this panel
because I have one of the biggest allies I know in Mr. Andrews
and he has some amazing stories.
We've had the opportunity to have conversations on this before.
And with Dr. Curtis and Sandy, we have been together for a few years now.
And we have had conversations all around what it means to be a great mentor,
what it means to be a woman in our industry, what are the challenges that we
see,
and again, what do we see emerging in the industry around allies and women
and diversity and inclusion.
So we're going to talk a bit about that. We're going to start in on some
questions, if that's okay.
Ready? They think they know the questions, but they don't.
I changed them all up, but the last minute, I'm great. I didn't.
So Joe, I'm going to start with you. How do you define being an ally?
Yeah, great question. For me, allyship is so important.
It's a word and obviously on the surface.
I think of the word support, really being there to support one another.
I think inherently human beings are tribal by nature.
We like to be in our groups, our packs, our social groups, whatever you call
them.
And whether that's cut by the industry in, the functional role you're in,
throughout the phase of your career, I think being in that position to be
supportive of one another
and to really help, and I'll get back to it a little bit later,
but just in terms of actions that you can take versus just saying words of
support.
Actions are important. Thank you. That's very important. Dr. Curtis, how about
you?
Yeah, I mean, I would resonate a lot of what Joe said, but I think I would go
one more step.
I think it's beyond support and it goes towards providing something that's
tangible.
There has to be some kind of outcome, right? You can sit there and support
people,
but as I just sit there and taking people and guiding them,
there has to be some kind of outcome to really kind of help them,
either catapult their career or inch them through, really kind of helping them
maneuver around, whatever it is within their life that they want to do, that's going to tangibly
move them forward.
Sandy, I'm going to switch the question up for you.
You've started an organization called CC Women.
You saw a need in our industry and you stepped out and took it upon yourself.
Tell me what you saw and how did you take that first step to build this amazing
grant.
And by the way, can I just show a hand?
Has anybody in the room heard of CC Women or are you a member of CC Women?
Okay, if you're not, see this woman before she gets on the plane and leaves us.
It is an amazing organization.
I really hope to have a few of you here to share a little bit more about CC
Women
and talk about allies and how we can work together.
CC Women started because I was lost in life, to be honest with you, it was
because of a selfish reason.
I was 28 years old, living at home with my parents, still living in my hometown
where all my friends are doing amazing things, they're working in New York City
, California,
they're traveling the world, really creating their own brand,
because I am still stuck at home with my parents in my hometown.
So for me, I majored in music education and I didn't know what to do with my
life.
I didn't know my strengths, I didn't know what value I brought to an
organization.
Basically, I didn't know how to bring ROI money to an organization and I
struggled a lot
with who I am, what my values are.
I started at this company called Customer Management Practice.
They produce Customer Contact Week.
I'm not sure if you guys heard of CCW, but we are the producers of Customer
Contact Week.
My first event was in June at Las Vegas, where there's thousands of people,
feels like a cruise ship, and I had the opportunity to meet the advisory board
for CCW.
I saw women like Dr. Huyu Curtis here, I saw women like Colleen Beers from
former Lorka,
I saw women like Becky Plager from Hilton, South Cheryl China,
SVP of Citizens Bank.
Let me tell you, these women, they spoke their minds, they're authentic selves,
they did not have to filter what they had to say in a room full of men.
For me, that immediately light bulbs.
I wanted to know the secrets to their success.
So, with that in mind, I decided to have a 7 a.m. mimosa breakfast at the last
day of a conference.
I don't know why I thought that was smart, but I think the mimosa's really
attracted the women
to come to my CCW event.
So, we sat there, we had very frank conversations about being a woman in
Customer Contact,
being a woman in Tech and Business, but also talking about the things that
affect us on a personal level too.
So, with that we had a great conversation, Colleen and I both led this 40-
person group
with some guided questions and conversations, and from there, we became a whole
thing,
a formal thing where we have a website, we have CCW, Summit, we have wonderful
ways to support
and celebrate other women.
And this all began because I wanted to selfishly understand their secrets to
success.
So, while I had this mentorship, I was able to also give back to our Customer
Contact community
to ensure that other women like me have the same opportunity, the same ability
to find mentors
and build their network too.
So, long story short, CCW started because I was lost in life
and it was from my own selfish reasons, and the 7 a.m. of most of breakfast
really, really helped.
So, now we're here talking about supporting and celebrating other women
and then talking also about how our allies are helping us progress forward in
our industry.
Thank you, Sandy.
I think it's the first time I'll say thank you for being selfish to anyone.
But thank you for sure.
It works sometimes in everybody's favor.
Indeed.
And I appreciate the mimosa breakfast in Las Vegas.
Yeah.
Just saying it.
Do we have mimosas here?
We do not have mimosas here.
As a matter of fact, I'm not even giving you lunch.
You're just here?
You're going to sit here.
No.
So, Joe, question to you.
As a male ally.
Okay.
I want you to look out into the audience and you see quite a few men out there.
And I think that, as you said, it's about action.
But I would say, as a female executive in the industry, there's been many times
when I have either chosen to be quiet or to be more quiet to dim myself, if you
will, to fit into, you know, a room that didn't have a lot of people, if you
will, that look like me.
What would you say an action item is that men can do to help women, you know,
be heard in their companies and in the industry?
Yeah.
I think of two things.
The first one being mentorship.
And this is something that we talk about.
How do you define actions and outcomes where you can basically choose to help
them. To help someone, whether it's a specific situation, like having a voice,
bringing her perspective into a conversation and be there sort of as that ally,
you know, arm and arm.
You know, hey, Dr. Weyewoo Curtis.
Here's an opportunity to do something that you maybe faced a challenge with
before.
I mean, I think that men can play that role very actively.
And a large part is your point here.
You know, 75% of the tech industry is met.
And so we require men to really stand up and be advocates and be a voice.
But I think it goes back to starting with that mentorship, which is building a
deep one-on-one relationship to help cut through the chat.
Through the challenges and face situations and define outcomes that you can
work towards, whether that's a promotion, whether it's a voice, a seat at the
table, active participation in a project.
There are many ways to do that.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
And by the way, if you're not a mentor, because you don't think you have what
it takes to be a mentor, or you're too young, or you're not in the right
position,
I would challenge you to think that through a little bit more.
You know, you can think about a freshman in college who can help and be a
mentor to somebody who's still in high school.
Right?
We need different mentors at different stages.
And I think there's a lot of areas where we can all help each other, right?
Because we all are just walking each other home at the end of the day.
Dr. Curtis, you're a CEO in this amazing industry that we love and cherish.
Tell me, you know, some things that you've done to build diverse workforces and
a culture that we don't even have to really think about it because it's just
ingrained in your company that you have a diverse workforce supportive of
diversity.
Tell me, you know, one or two things that you've done to build that.
Yeah, I would say along the way, you know, moving up a career ladder, I often,
I think part of it as being hyperly aware that as I kind of continue to climb a
corporate ladder, I often time was one very few female minority representation,
right?
And so as I had the opportunity to really kind of build my own company, it was
being very purposeful in terms of making sure that my leadership team was very
representative of the diversity that we saw within the community.
So we really kind of target underrepresented groups and marginalized groups.
And a lot of times too, like, I mean times within corporations and stuff, I saw
a lot of really talented minority groups, not given the opportunities because
they didn't look apart.
They didn't have the right, you know, credentials.
They didn't have the right education.
They didn't have what people call the right executive presence.
And so they just, they needed that mentoring.
And they needed another right coaching, the right advocacy and stuff.
And so just within my own organization, if they have the right attitude, they
have the right wills, then we'll give you the right skill sets and we'll give
you the right development.
The other piece of it is creating an open door, comfortable culture where
people can safely fail and they know that, right?
But it's 50/50, like you're not going to get it easily, you have to work for it
, but we'll give you a safe place to fail and to try and where we really kind of
embrace the variety of different thought processes and different backgrounds to
be able to come to the table and to give your ideas and stuff.
So we don't want everyone to agree with us. Actually, we encourage the
differences in opinions and thoughts. And so I think that's kind of how we've created kind of our own internal
culture to really embrace that diversity inclusion.
Thank you.
Sandy, I'm going to rotate to you.
Yeah.
Tell.
And by the way, you always tease me about you never know what I'm going to say
on stage.
That's very true.
I do ban boozle you once in a while.
You and Dr. Hae, I asked them out of pocket questions.
Yeah.
True.
But let me ask you a question.
Yeah.
You have so many stories of all the women that you have helped since you
founded CCB.
Can you give an example of someplace where allyship really truly helped someone
in their career or, you know, in a life of life?
Event that they were going through and how you saw being an ally made a
difference.
Yeah.
Actually, I can talk about myself as well as other women too, just because our
community is very close.
So if I'm benefiting from an ally, I know somebody else will as well too.
But a really good example of me just having allies in my corner.
They're able to advocate for me in rooms, board rooms, places where my name
would never be brought up.
They would never give me the time of day or they have their own things going on
So for me, when people like Lance Brunner, he's the EVP of global customer care
at MasterCard,
when he is asking me, "Sandy, what do you need from me?
How can I help you?
How can I support you?"
Listen.
He's the EVP of global customer care at MasterCard.
He does not have to talk to me.
He does not have to give me any time of the day, but he's here talking to me,
taking the time out of his busy day to ask me what I need, how he can help me
grow not only in my career, but also advocate for CC women.
So he talks about me.
He brings my name up during advisory board meetings.
He talks to his company about sponsoring CC women because he wants to associate
his MasterCard brand
to make sure that they are progressing.
Their values, mission purpose, aligns with our CC women's mission purpose.
So the fact that somebody like him is spreading awareness about CC women,
but also taking the time to talk to me and help me with my career, it's been
amazing.
It's been life-changing to have somebody as powerful as him to talk about me
and bring my name up in rooms.
And similarly, we have other wonderful allies too, like Joe here, being a part
of this panel,
and just having an open conversation.
That means a lot.
You might not think it is, but the fact that you're willing to be up here
and have this open communication where you are able to support us,
so just ways that you can support other female colleagues too, that's huge.
So men, allies, they have been able to help bring my name up in situations
where my name normally would have been brought up.
We also have allies helping other women in our network here as well too,
whether it's looking for a new job, asking for career advice,
or just spreading brand awareness about me or you.
It's been really, really helpful for our community to have these allies
advocating
not only for me, but for women in customer contact overall.
Thank you.
Joe, you have stories.
Tell me about either something in your career where you were mentoring someone
or you were an ally to someone and the impact that it had.
Please.
I'll talk about a mentorship opportunity.
This is a few years ago with a prior company that I was at.
And a woman approached me and asked me to be a mentor to her.
She was in an entirely different function.
I was still in marketing.
She was in professional services.
And she really was inspired by how I presented in meetings
and how I got different functional groups together and sort of worked through
issues.
And she was facing some challenges and she wanted my advice.
And it really got me thinking because before that, I think I was narrow-minded.
I thought, "Oh, I can only mentor people in marketing or people who, you know,
where I've directly done the job that they're in or want to be in."
And this really brought my mind.
So we set a plan and we set concrete goals for what -- and she was trying to be
more recognized,
be more front and center and be involved in conversations at a senior level.
And we had very specific near-term goals.
But out of this also came a promotion for her, which was not something that we
explicitly, you know, gold.
But it was something that we celebrated at the end because there were a lot of
steps to get there.
And I felt very proud, you know, for myself in just my own learning,
but also the fact that I was able to help and be an advocate and a mentor in a
much bigger scope than I had originally imagined.
Thank you.
Dr. Curtis, you are one of the people that always amaze me.
If you don't follow Dr. Curtis, I'm LinkedIn, you have to.
She is everywhere all at once, all the time.
I think that's a title of a movie.
But you are always at mentoring events.
You are always surrounding yourself, whether it's a lunch, a dinner, a weekend
affair
with people that look to you as a mentor.
Can you also share a story where you were either impacted or you were able to
impact someone by being a mentor?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Probably a couple of employers ago, I worked for the largest utility company in
Arizona.
So they came after me and, you know, one of the supervisors, Maria,
she had been with the organization for a little over 20 years and she came to
me and she's like,
the class that I started with 20 years ago, you know, many of my colleagues,
they're now, you know,
managers, directors, VPs, and I just became a supervisor.
And I wanted mentor because I want to really focus on my career and I want to
move.
I want to move faster now.
And so it was her time and so I said, that's fine.
We can work together, but I'm not here to compliment you.
I'm not here to tell you all the great things, but we're going to really work
hard at what you want to do,
which is to get you to the next level.
And so we work together every single day and the more we work together, the
more I kind of realize culturally,
what really kind of hindered her, one was she happened to be Latin American,
she was very passionate about things.
And so she was super animated, so part of it was kind of her mannerisms, right?
We had it really worked on her.
It wasn't her knowledge, she worked everywhere within the organization, she was
extremely knowledgeable,
very, very good at what she did and was very, very process-minded.
But I also saw that she was also grossly overweight and so there was a bit of
huge biases based up of her size.
And so part of it was getting over that piece of it.
So my role as a mentor to her was having to have people see past that and be
able to see in terms of her capabilities,
in terms of her knowledge and what she can contribute and her contributions to
these projects and to these conversations when she was at the table.
And so we worked a solid year and eventually she was able to move into a
manager level position and when she was,
and was given the ability to be at the table and work on these projects, she
soon was working circles around some director levels.
And today she continues to succeed and really capture the attention of a lot of
the executive level people and doing very well.
And here's a person that never would have been looked at.
And so I'm still, today we're still friends and I'm quite proud of her, but it
just took some of the soft skills and some of the unbiased perceptions of her
to be kind of broken down.
And then I had to kind of be her cheerleader in the background and play some of
the political games behind the scenes to kind of help get her where she needed
to be.
And that's a very brave place to go because as you said, you're touching on a
lot of different aspects of her that are a bit wounded and you have to tread
carefully.
You do.
But you also have to tread boldly to go along on that journey.
Thank you.
So Joe, you've been around the industry for a few years now.
What are some of the challenges when you look around and you look at a woman in
a leadership position?
What are some of the challenges you see women facing in leadership positions in
our industry?
Well, I think there are a lot and you've all alluded to some of them.
Maybe feeling not able to have a voice and state your opinion.
You know, we've all heard the bias or stereotype of women are more emotional
and maybe they're not bringing data to the conversation.
But if you flip that around, another way to look at that is that you have
different perspectives.
And so sometimes, and, you know, again, I'm careful not to bring in too much
bias, but when there's a situation when someone may be afraid to state their
opinion and have that voice,
that's something that we can do as men, the 75% of the people in the tech
industry,
that say, encourage them.
Your voice actually really matters here.
So it's bringing, you asked about challenges, bringing the voice out to the
table, definitely feeling heard, definitely, you know, having enough of a
support mechanism just because of the law of numbers.
And you know, feeling that maybe there's a small group when really there should
be a big group.
Yeah.
Sandy, Sandy, what about you?
Like, you're, we're in different generations, if you will, right?
I'm a tab older than you are.
But you're bringing along a whole new set of leaders behind you as well, right?
You're helping leaders like me, but there's leaders coming up behind.
What advice would you give to somebody who's coming up and they want to be a
leader in this industry?
And what's one piece of advice you'd give to them?
Find a mentor.
I know that seems very cliché.
Or, you know, it's just the buzzword that we keep talking about.
But finding a mentor did knee-bunders when I was 28 years old, still living at
home with my parents, not knowing what to do.
But when I stumbled, luckily, across Dr. Hwang and you as well, too, Judy.
And having that kind of like ours is always like a little bit of an informal
mentorship.
But whatever way it is, it helped me so much that, you know, talking about
skills that I didn't even know I had.
Or just the ability to build my own brand and brand awareness and brand image
and how to talk to leaders, how to talk to the executive team, how to talk to
somebody in tough situations.
Having that mentorship of helping me reach my career goals has been so, so
satisfying and really exciting as, you know, somebody who did not know a single
thing.
It's been very exciting and the ability to have these wonderful mentors, men,
female, you know, all women, allies.
It's just been an incredible journey for me.
And realizing that I benefited so greatly from both of you guys, like I want to
make sure that the people behind me, the lead upcoming leaders, they have a
wonderful network of women, of men of allies, but also to finding mentors
that are able to guide them through their careers because no one teaches you
that, right?
No one taught me that in school, but here I'm able to find the mentors who are
able to guide me and just support me in all these different aspects of a career
journey.
So finding a mentor, I would say, is very, very important.
And as allies too, I benefit greatly from allies and that's why CC Women is a
community that's inclusive.
It's for women, absolutely, but it's for men as well as allies too because I've
progressed because of my allies, because of the men in my career.
They've been able to help me further build my skills and all of those wonderful
things.
So have a mentor, find a mentor, find allies who can also help you to continue
to progress in your career journey.
Thank you. I think for all of us, all of us, finding the allies that we need,
but finding the people that we identify that can be good allies.
I think that is super critical.
Finding them, identifying them, and helping them understand that it's even the
small acts, that they can be an ally.
It's not some big step you have to take. It's not a certification you need to
have, right?
You can be an ally by doing small little things and that's meaningful and makes
a difference.
So we're starting to get that countdown thing going here. We have three minutes
and 34 seconds.
So you're going to get about a minute apiece on this next question.
So we have a lot of, and Joe, thank you for being here. I'm being on this panel
It was important to you. Thank you for having me.
So other men are in the room. They're listening. They're starting to finish
their meal.
How can men in this room be better allies?
Yeah, so I think a few things, and by the way, on the challenges, I forgot to
mention the big one.
Access to opportunities. That's really the big one.
And having a seat at the table and having your voice, those are all steps in
that direction.
But what can we do as male allies?
Know the data. There's in Harvard Business Review study. You can Google it out
there.
That has a clear correlation between companies that have diversity in their
leadership ranks
and financial outcomes and metrics. I think it's the tune of, if a company
hires a slim margin
more female leaders in its ranks, it will increase revenue by like two and a
half percent, which is huge.
So check it out. So know the data on the flip side of that.
40% of the people in the study weren't taking any action.
They weren't being full allies to the true sense.
So if you look at data, become a mentor, apply the ability to be an ally
wherever it's possible
in the recruiting ranks, when people are not in the room, to give them access
to some of these opportunities.
And open doors.
Awesome. Thank you. It almost sounds like you're also saying don't get in the
way of a woman trying to get ahead.
It's important because people will stop them. There's a certain sense, right?
If you see a woman doing good or a woman doing, you know, moving, sometimes
people deliberately put roadblocks in their room.
Yeah. Dr. Curtis, same question.
Same question.
Same question. What advice do you give to men to become better allies?
Yeah, I would say don't hesitate to approach men for help.
Because a lot of times they want to be helpful, but they just don't know how.
And so I would say don't be afraid to approach somebody and just at least start
the conversation.
And then work together on what those solutions may be.
And then that's how you get that conversation started.
Okay. Sandy, take us home.
Yeah. I would say just jump on top of that.
Have open communications.
If you see a fellow colleague who happens to be a woman struggling or, you know
, there's something going on and you notice it, please do approach them.
We do appreciate the help. We appreciate your concern and communication.
And just as an ally, you can be a male ally or a woman ally, but specifically
talking about male allies.
If you see something that's morally wrong, like flag that.
Have a conversation and, you know, talk about it because if you don't talk
about it, no one else will.
And that's a huge missed opportunity there.
So as a male ally, if you see something, like they say, say something, I
encourage you to use your voice to help support your colleagues who might need
a little bit more support, a little bit more advocacy and a voice as well too.
Awesome.
Thank you all so much for being part of our conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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