Janelle Wang (she/her)

10 Questions with Janelle Wang (she/her), Co-Founder & CEO at ACTON

Edited by Clarissa Bukhan.

Janelle Wang is an Industrial Designer turned entrepreneur with over 10 years of Strategic Product Development, New Category Creation & Design Thinking for Fortune 500s to Start Ups, bringing breakthrough innovation and sustainability.

Janelle was selected as one of “19 Influential Women In Mobility” in 2019, she was awarded Female CEO of the Year in 2016, and has been featured in WSJ, FastCompany, CNN, VOGUE, BBC, and more. She holds over 30 utility patents in innovation and design.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I decided I wanted to be in the tech industry when I was a kid. My father is a physicist, so I got motors, battery packs, and soldering tool kits as gifts/toys from my father at a young age. I hand made a portable personal electric fan at age 6 and have enjoyed making and creating things with some type of tech in them ever since.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

I looked up to Marie Curie. She changed the world not once but twice. She founded the new science of radioactivity — even the word was invented by her — and her discoveries launched effective cures for cancer.

3. Where is your hometown?

I was born in Northern China and spent the other half my life in Los Angeles. Now, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

Years ago, when I had just come back to work from maternity leave, I had to travel to Germany for 2 weeks. As a young, first-time mom, leaving my couple-months-old baby behind for the sake of trying to achieve a goal for work left me feeling very confused and frustrated. It made me wonder whether work / life balance really existed or not. After that experience, I reached the conclusion that there isn’t such a sharp line between these two; you will always have to have a dashed line in between. I learned how to find my own personal balance and to enjoy the process.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

I traveled to Africa by myself when I was in my early twenties. This is something I’m proud of because it gave me a chance to experience new cultures, meet totally new people, and explore a brand new continent. That trip changed how I look at and feel about the world. As a result, I have no fear. I’m optimistic and I believe everything is the best arrangement.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

I’ve been thinking seriously about how to solve traffic congestion issues and how make our cities better places to live.

7. Favorite food?

My mom’s dumplings.

8. Favorite book?

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

I’m still designer at heart, so I would like to draw/design/research as a designer for a day.

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Enjoy the process.

Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno (she/her)

Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno (she/her) is a passionate women’s rights and pay equity advocate, diversity champion and community builder. She is the co-founder of Future for Us, a grassroots initiative dedicated to accelerating the advancement of women of color through community, culture & career development. She has provided close to 4,000+ women with the tools and resources they need to advocate for themselves at work and has spoken on panels for the Women’s March, Starbucks, Hired, Microsoft and more.

Her drive and enthusiasm to fight for pay equity, especially for women of color, has launched her to the forefront of the the women’s rights movement and she continues to advocate for the advancement for women in the workplace.

1/ When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

For most millennials, we were raised by the Internet. Technology continued to be a constant in my life from the day I had my first typing class in first grade, to building my first webpage on Xanga in fourth grade, to even today as I use my iPhone to do nearly everything. It was a mode and means of mass communication and a primary vehicle for storytelling. Technology was everything to me.

2/ Who is a role model that you look up to?

I looked up to my great grandmother because she was my primary caretaker when I was a child. She taught me the value of hard work, dedication, and perseverance but also kindness, empathy and compassion. The number one skill she taught me was the art of negotiation and how I could use that skill for the rest of my life. She raised me to be the woman that I am today.

3/ Where is your hometown?

Honolulu (Kalihi), Hawai’i

4/ What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

There was a time that I realized that I was being deeply underpaid at a company. I was raised to believe that if you worked hard, received the right education, and went to the right schools you were going to be successful and make a lot of money.

However, I learned throughout my career that for women, especially for women of color, that is not the case because of the inequities in our society and in business in general. When faced with this situation, I needed to decide whether to negotiate and/or leave the company. In the end, I successfully negotiated my salary at the time but still decided to leave the company.

5/ What is something that you are immensely proud of?

I come from a strong working class family, full of incredible hard working, gritty women. My great grandma was the eldest daughter of a large Chinese immigrant family and she worked at the Dole Cannery in Hawai’i canning pineapples for 10 cents an hour. She knew that with her current wage, she wouldn’t be able to continue supporting her parents and eleven brothers and sisters. However, she knew that since she spoke Cantonese, she could use this skill to convince more Chinese immigrant workers to work with her at the cannery. She pitched this idea to the supervisor and leveraged it for a higher wage and a newly promoted position. Needless to say she helped feed, clothe and house herself and her family. She realized right then and there her own worth and value.

As her great granddaughter, she has told me this story a million times over and it did instill in me the values that I hold true today. This is what drives me. This is what motivates me to travel across the country to teach salary negotiation classes to women from all backgrounds, industries and levels. I’m proud to say that within one year I’ve been advocating for pay equity, coached about 2,500+ women across the U.S., helped negotiate $500K in salary increases, and positioned 150 women for successful promotions. Yes, I am damn proud and I hope I’ve made my great grandmother proud.

6/ What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

What’s been on my mind is the current state of women of color in this country. According to a new case study by McKinsey and Lean In, women of color in corporations only make up only 4% in the C-suite, upper management, and middle management levels. We also make up only 12% of entry-level jobs, and the rest are in service/low wage jobs. These numbers really rock me to the core.

7/ Favorite food?

Hawaiian-Chinese food.

8/ Favorite book?

Game of Thrones.

9/ If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Senator.

10/ If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

1. Trust your instincts.

2. Follow energy.

3. Stand up for something.

Lea Coligado (she/her)

Founder, Women of Silicon Valley & Software Engineer, Google Maps

“My Lolo passed away this year, and I realized we’d never get to go to the place he’s from, Cebu, and share it together. I realized how integral sacrifice is to the Filipino experience. My Lolo and Lola sacrificed life in the Philippines, a future sharing the same childhood places as their children and grandchildren, for job opportunities in the United States. Then my dad sacrificed years of long, often 12-hour, work days to put me and my brother through college. So my success — my Stanford Computer Science degree and my Google software engineering job — are just the sum of all the sacrifices made before me, aggregated from generation to generation. And yet, I think so often about how no matter how much success I aggregate, nothing can “buy me out” of being treated like a Filipina in this world. When I visited Hong Kong, a Chinese family mistook me for their house servant and ordered me to wipe down their dirty shoes at the mall. When I moved to Italy for work, I was always assumed to be a housemaid, or sometimes a prostitute, and was propositioned for sex multiple times while walking home at night (in a pantsuit mind you). The sad truth is I’m lucky; millions of Filipinos sacrifice life with their own families at home to take care of other, wealthier families abroad, often in places where they are treated subhuman or trafficked. This informs a lot of the “sacrifice” I want to make when I’m older — that is, building a rigorous software platform to help overseas Filipinxs find secure, vetted work.”

Jessica Valenzuela (she/her)

Jessica is an entrepreneur and the founder of the angel-backed startup GoGoGuest. She was born and raised in the Philippines and is a first generation naturalized American citizen. She has lived in Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. Prior to pursuing a career in entrepreneurship, Jessica held leadership roles in product marketing and digital marketing at Kaplan Inc., Young & Rubicam, Tribal DDB and Ogilvy. She also led and delivered projects at Square and Logitech. Jessica is a natural adventurer who loves discovering and exploring cities and nature. She brings Mister Beckham, her jack russell along with her whenever possible.

“Let’s be honest, women entrepreneurs focused on building and growing a technology product is a land mine of challenges regardless of your heritage. Fundraising at any stage is more difficult for women but the real difficulty comes when it is time to raise your first institutional round — from venture capital. Venture capital and their LPs are mostly from of the 1% richest households in America that own 40% of the country’s wealth. There is a natural tendency among these circles to invest in people who are like them, specifically from their university alma mater or company alumni. In venture capital world, it is called the “flywheel effect.” There is clearly a smaller pool of opportunity for Filipino-American women in the technology space. This means, a smaller flywheel effect, if any. I hope to be an active participant in changing this ratio.”

Kamilah Taylor (she/her)

Kamilah Taylor is Co-founder & Senior Engineer at Swaay, Inc., writer, and public speaker. She has worked in iOS and robotics at LinkedIn, Wolfram Research, and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kamilah is currently working on an app that aims to foster thoughtful conversation online while reducing polarization and toxicity. She is also currently consulting for an AR app and is an advocate for encouraging more underrepresented minorities to choose STEM as a career field. In her free time, she tries to eat at all the restaurants in San Francisco, buys too many books, indulges her wanderlust, and watches too much TV.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I first started to consider a career in tech during high school, when I took a robotics class. I remember loving that I could see the physical result of my program. My robotics teacher was one of those teachers that encouraged me to be confident and chose me, alongside two other students, to represent our school at a competition that was being held at Georgia Tech.

The next year, I took AP Computer Science and while I loved the content, I had a hard time with some of the guys in the class. I actually almost decided against computer science as a major in college based on that experience.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

I had a huge fascination with Ada Lovelace when I was younger, not only because she was the first computer programmer and a badass in her own right, but because she was one of the few women we learned about in a math or science class.

3. Where is your hometown?

I was born in Kingston, Jamaica, but I kind of have multiple hometowns. I moved to the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia when I was 10 years old and went to middle school and high school there. Then, to the surprise of a lot of my friends and family, I moved back to Jamaica and went to college there. After that, I moved to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois for graduate school. Moving has been a constant theme in my life.

4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

I had some challenges getting the schools that I attended in Georgia to let me into the more advanced classes, but those were for the most part, external struggles. I didn’t really have massive struggles with school until I started pursuing my PhD. I ended up dropping out of the PhD program in my third year. That experience is one that I’m still processing — learning how to move past failure and learn from the experience is probably the most important lesson that I could have learned in my twenties.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

It’s actually related to my PhD as well. I’m proud that I figured out how to move on and grow from my failure. That moment when I realized that this was the path I needed to go down for myself, I felt like I’d hit rock bottom. I was crashing on my friend’s sofa, and then I lost two friends in the following months to suicide and cancer.

Now, I look at my life in 2018 and there’s no way that I would have accomplished the things I have, made the friends that I have, and been able to help my family along the way if I’d stayed in the PhD program. It’s a good reminder that it’s okay if I fail — I’ve failed before, survived, and thrived.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

I think a lot about how we treat junior developers in this industry — both in terms of letting them in, and how we treat them once they’re here.

7. Favorite food?

Oxtail with rice (Jamaican style), or anything Italian, or anything chocolate (as long as there’s no coconut). Yes I may really like food.

8. Favorite book?

This is like Sophie’s Choice. How about my top three? Harry Potter (yes the whole series, so I’m kind of cheating), Pride & Prejudice, and Year of Yes.

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Something that has some hardcore physics, like working at CERN or NASA. Physics feels to me like that love that got away. Perhaps that’ll be my next career!

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Don’t worry about being labeled bossy. Stand up for yourself in all aspects of your life.