How leaders can create an inclusive workspace, break gender barriers and create opportunities

This is a conversation with Heather Miller, the founder of GrasshoppHer, about her inspirational journey. We have learned from her more about formulating a mission, embracing the unknown, and taking responsibility.

No matter how much we encourage and support diversity, we are well aware of the injustices and challenges that are still very much present around the world. There is room for improvement in any situation. Learning more and starting conversations about the many women in tech, science, business, and leadership can downsize the level of unconscious biases and stereotypes. We need to move forward in such a way that we create equal opportunities for everyone.

Heather Miller, the GrasshoppHer founder, and leader, inspired us to envision and pay more attention to inclusivity in workplaces and celebrate the women we work with. As partners, we are delighted that GrasshoppHer is constantly growing its community of women mentors and mentees.

Heather shared with us her story and perspective on what we call 'the journey of a fearless and unapologetic grasshopper in 7 acts (or questions)'.

Women’s History Month

Cătălin Briciu: How do you celebrate Women’s History Month? Why is it important to celebrate it?

Heather Miller: We at GrasshoppHer are celebrating in a very thematic way. We dedicated the whole month to Women’s History Month. You will see through our social media, our blogging, webinars, everything is dedicated to celebrating women and of course to the International Women’s Day, which happened on the 8th of March.

The most exciting way we are celebrating is through a webinar which will happen in April, focusing on women in very different areas. Our audience is very US and Canada-based, so a lot of our information is centered around these areas, but we wanted our celebration of Women’s History Month to be more international. We want to understand and help our community understand as well, what are the issues that are pervasive for women across the world.

Kendra Thurgood, who manages Kiva’s investment portfolio in Eastern Europe and Central/Southeast Asia joined one of our International Webinars to tell us about issues that impact women in her region. Almeera Khalid, Advocacy and Engagement Coordinator at Girls20, was also a guest to tell us about the organization’s work and how she advocates for women of color from marginalized backgrounds.

Having young women’s representation globally and impacting global leaders is one of our main missions. 

As for the reason why it’s important to celebrate this month it is simply to honor half of the population and honor their accomplishments and increase social awareness in terms of the movements across the world and increase the number of women in the workforce. Especially during the COVID pandemic, there's been a huge dropout of women out of the workforce because women bear the burden of maintaining the household and raising children.

So it’s important to have awareness of women being part of the economy. GrasshoppHer’s entire mission is to get more women into leadership. We try to help women, women of color, transgender women, non-binary folks, underrepresented individuals, to discover and celebrate themselves.

CB: The name GrasshoppHer alludes to maybe something along the lines of a 'leap of faith' and eventually to 'jumping high'. Has there been such a disruptive leap of faith throughout your life? Where do you hope you can help the GrasshoppHer community jump to?

HM: Yes, the name absolutely alludes to this leap of faith, but it does have a double meaning.

The name GrasshoppHer is alluding to that mentor-mentee relationship, but also to that progressive movement, that leap of faith.

For me, the biggest leap of faith has to be starting GrasshoppHer. I have done a lot of jumping from discipline to discipline: from dancing to law to design to consulting and now to entrepreneurship, but all of them happen to make sense in terms of skills and capabilities and in terms of using them in that trajectory, my trajectory.

The idea of mentorship and the idea of empowering women were both ideas I was very interested in, but in order to push this and start a company and leave my job, it meant a lot of risk-taking.

CB: You have described your experience with ballet dancing as a positive one, but it seems like you did get out of your bubble very soon. You managed to notice firsthand the struggles this sport causes to both men and women. Has this dark side of ballet made you any less passionate about it? Have you ever had feelings of guilt or resentment towards it? How do you think we can manage such situations?

HM: I have never been resentful, I was always grateful for my experience because of who it pushed me to become as a person.

For some reference, most ballerinas start very early, I started at two, it became serious at five and very serious at around eight years of age. I was in a very intense school environment where I started to become aware of different behaviors or let’s say injustices in the industry, but these things force you to become tough and disciplined, but also to become someone who uses their creative expression.

There are so many ways that ballet shaped me into the young woman, employee, leader that I am now, that I was never and nor will I ever be resentful. I think that towards the end of my dance career, when I felt that ballet was no longer for me, I wanted to be challenged by something else, I switched to hip hop: that is a very different world, with a lot of the same challenges, but with a lot of different ones.

At the end of the day, I was in my late 20's and I had reached a point where I thought 'I’ve had enough of this experience', so for me, it was more of a positive than a negative experience because I was able to see out the professional career and I made the decision myself to leave the industry.

In terms of advice on how to deal with resentment or guilt that are very natural feelings for anything that you are doing that does not work out or where there is some injustice, I would say make some self-analysis: does this serve me?, do I want to stay in this environment, or is it turning me into a negative person, or is it debilitating me? I did this analysis and the benefits of the other side looked better.

For any man or woman that is in a tough situation, a relationship, or a profession, make a list of pros and cons, and hopefully if you can get out of the situation, do it.

My final advice is: pour yourself in wherever you see fit. I express my feelings through GrasshoppHer, trying to give women more support, things I saw missing in the other industry I operated in.

Gender differences

CB: Do you believe that gender differences stem from socialization? How is this relevant for creating inclusivity at the workplace?

HM: I don’t think there is a fundamental difference between men and women to justify one’s superiority over the other. I don’t think there is a genetic inferiority of women to men. I think it totally comes from the history of the way that women have played the roles that they played, but we don’t need this to be a lesson in history. I think everyone is aware of what women had to overcome, especially in the latest half of the century. It is cultural and social, so the way we interact with each other should not be subject to unconscious biases. 

CB: Oftentimes women are encouraged to engage in hobbies rather than transform them into a lucrative endeavor. When did you finally turn your side hustle into your main hustle? What can you say about the experience?

HM: I think this is a very personal decision. For me it was about analyzing the pros and cons, taking the leap of faith, making that transition.

I very much value being passionate about my work and really trying to make and create something meaningful and powerful out of that. I guess that was missing from my past job. That overshadowed the risk of not having a salary and the unknown of entrepreneurship. My way is just one of the ways.

Understanding your values and for me, you touched the resentment thing before, I did not want to feel resentment. That being said you do have to make your calculations, so at least you sort of set up for success and don’t put yourself in a bad situation. Part of the calculations can be making sure you can hold down your rent, put food on the table, things that are very logistical, tactical things, and then you have that dream part, your side hustle, and wanting to engage in that.

It is very smart to try and monetize your side hustle and see if it ticks the balance. For me, I didn’t know if I could make it happen, so my risk happened before the monetization piece.

The overall advice is to make a list of the pros and cons of your values and understand if you can balance those.

CB: I heard many times the statement: 'A man leader is demanding, but a woman leader is bossy.' Have you ever dealt with this preconceived idea/ behavior, especially since having studied law? 

HM: Sure, you can find something that confirms any stereotype. I am sure I came across assertive men that came off as confident and assertive women that came off as bossy, but I really think it is important for any employee to put aside those stereotypes and really understand - put on your empathy hat- and understand how and why those leaders are expressing the way that they are. That just comes down to being a good colleague. It’s important to be aware of people’s working styles, understand what’s behind someone’s behavior and what we are all looking to accomplish at the end of the day as a team.

I was very lucky at my past job in a consulting firm to see so many leadership styles. For the past nine years, I was lucky to be blessed with open-minded colleagues, the values of the company were to set aside your unconscious biases and really own your leadership styles. You think of typical leaders as extroverts and sort of aggressive individuals, but you would see many introverted leaders that were excellent in leadership roles, and everything was based on merit.

It’s important to see people with different leadership roles and expressions of team values. It’s important to be aware of people’s working styles. 

CB: What’s your message for our women colleagues at Linnify and for our social media audience?

HM: There is so much to say, but for women, in tech in particular since it’s such a hot area and a hot topic. There is a high demand for women to work in the technical field. I was actually talking with someone in the US the other day and they were saying how difficult it was to hire women since they are in great demand, snatched up, or priced up.

Last month we did women in STEM, so we had women in all scientific areas and it seemed such an exciting place to be in today.

My advice is to take advantage of the exciting environment, explore this area and do it early on. In your educational experience, you might hear a lot of 'I was the only one', but try not to be intimidated by the lower representation because it is a fantastic opportunity right now. 

We need more women representation in this area because tech is ruling the world so we need 50% of the population to be represented in this industry. Take advantage of this time where women are being in demand, recognized, and celebrated.

CB: This is the bottom line: make the most out of it. Thank you, Heather, for this informative interview. It’s always a great pleasure.

Read more about GrasshoppHer and join their community now.

In March we celebrated women and their footprint across the world. At Linnify we support and appreciate the bold, the bright, the authentic, the strong and hard-working [wo]men in tech. For that, we shared their stories. Follow us to read them all.

To properly end this amazing interview, here's a fun podcast recommendation from our team: 'The Guilty Feminist'