Leaders in tech say opportunities for women are abundant

Listen to this article

As managing director and chief investment officer of Rochester-based Luminate, Sujatha Ramanujan, Ph.D., has seen how working with diverse teams can have a positive impact.

“Diversity fuels innovation,” she said, adding that diverse teams challenge conventional thinking, bring fresh perspectives and enhance creative problem-solving. “Varied perspectives and experiences often lead to truly innovative solutions.”

Part of that diversity includes having female tech leaders on the team, she said, although there continues to be far fewer women leaders than men in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics industries.

According to Ramanujan, gender is not a consideration when accepting applicants into Luminate, a program of NextCorps and the world’s largest business accelerator for startups working on technologies enabled by optics, photonics or imaging.

She said some 40 percent of the companies Luminate works with have been led by woman and minorities.

And women have different advantages and challenges than men when it comes to leading a tech-based firm, Ramanujan said.

Female tech leaders appear to have an edge when it comes to technologies focused on women’s health issues, for example.

Women also have a collective resilience because they have traditionally had to work harder to secure resources and raise money to get their companies off the ground. That experience can also make female leaders more empathetic, Ramanujan noted.

She believes the opportunities for women in science and technology are abundant and encourages young woman to consider pursuing a career in such disciplines.

“There is so much new science and technology exploding in every direction,” she said.

In conjunction with Women’s History Month and the “Accelerate Action” theme of International Women’s Day on March 8 – which emphasized the importance of strategic efforts to promote gender equality – two leaders of technology companies who have participated in Luminate cohorts talk about leading their own technology companies.

Cara Wells is the founder and CEO of Emgenisys, a Texas-based agricultural tech company.

The business — a past Grow-NY winner — has developed technology to evaluate embryo health to improve pregnancy outcomes of In vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer in livestock. Its flagship product is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that non-invasively analyzes embryo activity.

Wells had a strong female role model growing up — her mother who worked as a mechanical engineer — which boosted her confidence and showed her what was possible professionally.

Throughout her career, Wells, who has a Ph.D. in animal science, has seen benefits and challenges to being a woman leader in her chose field.

She noted that female founders do not get as much funding as their male counterparts, or it can take longer to raise the capital.

Conversely, Wells believes as a woman she leads her team compassionately and, in turn, has solid relationships with her employees.

She also wants to be a role model for the next generation of female leaders.

“I try to always lead by example,” she said.

Cristina Canavesi is co-founder and president of LightTopTech, a women-owned business based in Rochester that provides non-invasive, high imaging hardware and software to industrial and medical fields.

Founded in 2013, the company’s vision is to build innovative optical instruments to bring to market disruptive technologies for non-destructive imaging in industrial fields, and noninvasive imaging and guided surgery in medical fields.

Canavesi, who has a Ph.D. in optics, finds leading a tech company as a woman both challenging and rewarding.

She finds inspiration from other women and enjoys hearing their stories.

Canavesi has surrounded herself with female leaders, beginning in college as part of a women’s engineering group and later as a member of WiSTEE, which promotes women leadership in science, technology, engineering and entrepreneurship.

“I’ve learned from other women and that support has continued throughout my career journey,” Canavesi said.

[email protected] / (585) 653-4021