Upcoming IPO, without women on the Board, disturbs Wadhwa.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Social media website Twitter has come under fire from Indian American entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa for not having any women on its board of directors or in any of its senior management positions.
“This is the elite arrogance of the Silicon Valley mafia, the Twitter mafia,” he said. “It’s the same male chauvinistic thinking. The fact that they went to the I.P.O. without a single woman on the board, how dare they?”
Wadhwa’s comments in the New York Times are part of a larger indictment he was making of his belief that Silicon Valley operates under an unspoken rule that positions of power can only belong to “nerdy white males.” His comment also comes at a most ill-opportune time for the company, which is preparing to go public and make its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the coming weeks. In Twitter’s preliminary filing last week for the IPO, its board of directors lists seven names, all of which belong to Caucasian males.
The lone exception? Vijaya Gadde, an Indian-American woman who is Twitter’s head counsel, and has held that position for all of five weeks.
In response to Wadhwa’s accusation, Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, called Wadhwa the “Carrot Top of academic sources,” likening him to the red-headed comedian known for his over-the-top behavior and boorish antics, which Wadhwa did not take kindly to. Writing in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, he called Costolo’s comment “inappropriate” and said “[Costolo] owes me a formal apology.”
Regardless of the feud between Wadhwa and Costolo — which has even spilled over into Twitter, of which Wadhwa (@wadhwa) is an avid user — Twitter will have some awkward questions to answer in terms of its almost complete lack of women in positions of high standing. Analysts believe that having women in key positions at a company can improve its chances of longevity, innovation, and ultimately financial gain.
“Having women executives matters not just for purposes of equality, business analysts say, but for product development and the bottom line,” says The New York Times. “Yet women rarely fill the technical and engineering positions at Silicon Valley companies, which carry the most prestige and are most likely to lead to corner offices. Tellingly, Ms. Gadde, the only woman of high enough rank to appear on the public offering filing, is a lawyer, not an engineer.”
Wadhwa has been campaigning for more diversity in Silicon Valley for some time now. Although he admits in his blog that he doesn’t believe Twitter’s executives are sexist or racist, he does believe they are simply acquiescing to a way of doing things that has become ingrained into the subconscious of all those in Silicon Valley, and that needs to be changed.
Wadhwa is a Director of Research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering in the Center for Research Commercialization, as well as a fellow at Stanford University’s Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance. Earlier this year, he was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 40 “Most Influential Minds in Tech.”