Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Shanee Ben-Zur. I am the head of marketing, media, & growth, at Crunchbase.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I lead the teams that shape the Crunchbase brand, market our products, generate demand and create ongoing relationships with our users.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
The best decision I made was to start speaking up. I gave myself guidelines.
If I understand the goals of a project, if I am approaching it with a curious mind, if I have suggestions for what we can do, and more importantly, if I have the ability to help bring those suggestions to life, I’m going to speak up.
That has helped me enormously. It’s gotten me on projects and teams that I wasn’t necessarily connected to because I spoke up and volunteered my support. In my current role, I work with my team to help foster that spirit of speaking up, questioning the status quo and always seeking improvement. As a leader, those diverse perspectives are crucial to finding great solutions and uncovering gaps before it’s too late.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Leaders and managers who don’t know how to help outspoken women be successful. It’s an endemic issue. If you are a strong, outspoken woman, you will be told that you have to change. Conversely, if you are a strong, outspoken male (especially in a leadership position), the people around you will be told they need to flex to the leader’s style.
Do have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
I have had many mentors over the years. Some bosses, some friends, some co-workers and some direct reports. Mentorship is essentially the act of helping one person identify the best path to get to their goals. I typically identify a strength area that a mentor has that I’m interested in growing in. I will then work with them to learn more about how they developed their skills, or get advice from them on how I can make that strength more integral to the way I work.
I am typically drawn to mentors who able to maintain a sense of calm, positivity and warmth through all their work, especially the hard times. It’s a very unique skill to be able to always put the whole over the individual, especially in times of stress. I also look for mentors who can help me identify strengths that I didn’t know I had and foster them. Additionally, I like to find ways to avoid being overly self critical of areas I’m still working on.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
I think the common trap is to immediately ask, “how do I climb the corporate ladder?”. The problem with that is that it blinds you from asking the more important question, “which ladder do you want to climb?”. It’s important to spend your early days as a professional learning about what different jobs in your space entail and trying your hand at them to see where you find the most passion and excitement.
You’ll need to find something you’re passionate about for the days when your job is hard. And there will be days, many days. That passion will also fuel you to ask for what you deserve as you gain expertise in your field, so you can also have support to move up the corporate ladder. It’s important to come in with an open mind and an eagerness to help solve problems so that you have the chance to learn.
What woman inspires you the most? Why?
Three way tie. My grandmother who survived Auschwitz and emerged as fiery and no-bullshit as you can be. The strength and fortitude to go through the worst of humanity and emerge someone who has humor, love and more than her fair share of sass was an inspiration.
The second is my mother. She always, always told me to demand what I deserve. From being a little kid and forcing me to talk to the server at a restaurant to ask for what I want, to being an adult in the work place and always asking, “are they recognizing my contributions?”.
Last, but certainly not least, my older sister. My sister has worked in heavily male dominated fields her whole career, working her way up from staff engineer, to leading business units and now as a corporate VP at Microsoft. She is strong, doesn’t make apologies for who she is and isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers in pursuit of the greater good. And she does it all while looking for opportunities to bring others up with her.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment? Please share your most recent favorite book or podcast!
I get a lot of value from The Daily podcast – they always find a way to identify the human interest angle of any topic. The second podcast I enjoy is Without Fail, which talks to people who started something and typically had a big fail before getting to their ultimate destination. This really resonates for me because I think we all need to do more to open up and share our failures and how they were actually launchpads to success.
What’s something coming up that excites you?
Crunchbase’s mission is to democratize access to opportunity. One of the ways we do that is by shining a light on inequities in the private company landscape, through research we conduct and editorial stories we share.
We’ll be releasing a report detailing the last decade of investments in female founders in anticipation of International Women’s Day. I’m excited to see how the findings resonate with people in our industry, with media and with female founders who are trying to bring their ideas to market. I believe that the first step to addressing issues is acknowledging their existence. This is one way we’re trying to bring the differences in opportunities to the front of people’s minds.
Originally posted: March 4, 2020
