The Software Report publishes an annual list of the top 50 women leaders in SaaS.
This year, Businessolver’s Chief Strategy Officer, Rae Shanahan, earned a spot on the roster.
We’re thrilled for Rae. Having your leadership recognized publicly is an honor, and she deserves it. Rae helps guide Businessolver’s vision, our culture and the development and delivery of our state-of-the-market SaaS solutions for benefits administration. She’s an integral and approachable member of our executive team and an industry thought leader. Businessolver just wouldn’t be Businessolver without Rae.
And that’s the thing. More technology companies don’t have someone like Rae in a leadership position than do. Not only are individual companies missing out, the entire economy could perform even better if more women were involved in technology, and if more tech firms had female leaders.
Technology is advancing rapidly, and we need capable people—regardless of their gender (or, for that matter, their race or sexual orientation or disability status)—to help retain and expand our competitive advantage.
Overall, women participate in the US workforce at a lower rate than men. In 2018, 69.1% of men were working versus just 57.1% of women. When it comes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), less than a quarter of the workforce is female.
Programs designed to encourage girls to participate in STEM have been around for some years, but an associated large increase in the number of women pursuing science or technology degrees and, by extension, working in these fields has yet to materialize.
This is bad news for tech companies. Gender diversity is an important ingredient for organizational success and when organizations fail to take advantage of the wealth of talent that women can bring to bear opportunity is lost—for companies, for the economy and for individual women.
There’s no way to tell what groundbreaking ideas have not been hatched or cultivated because women weren’t encouraged or allowed to participate.
Which is why Rae being honored along with her peers at other SaaS companies is vitally important to us.
At Businessolver, Rae serves not only as a leader but also as a mentor and a role model. She demonstrates the reality that women not only have a voice at Businessolver, they are integral to our success. We have women in tech and product management roles, as developers and coders, as analysts and help desk staff. Gender diversity strengthens our ability to deliver what we call “technology with heart.”
It’s also part of our empathetic approach, which informs everything we do. Empathy is an important workplace value, and it’s something that employees look for. Our most recent State of Workplace Empathy study found that most employees believe that diversity in leadership engenders empathy, and we agree.
Businessolver has experienced tremendous success and growth, and we are constantly improving and innovating with Rae helping lead us forward. We continue to define the market with leading-edge initiatives like SofiaSM, our industry-first online personal benefits assistant that leverages AI and machine learning to deliver personalized guidance to users.
AI isn’t the only cutting-edge technology we use. We are constantly seeking new ways to enhance our offering and our service to delight our clients and their employees.
If we didn’t include women on our technology teams, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We need all kinds of creative thinkers and doers. We couldn’t innovate and deliver the way we do without all our talented Solvers.
As a result, we have lots of opportunities for women with technology expertise to join our growing organization. If you have tech expertise or the desire to learn, we invite you to check out our current openings.
