Kristen Puchek & Kara Gooch | The 2022 MAKERS Conference

Kristen Puchek & Kara Gooch at the 2022 MAKERS Conference.

Video Transcript

- Please welcome Kristen Puchek and Kara Gooch.

[MUSIC PLAYING] They say that you're crazy. They're telling us we got to change. We're the ones insane. Where is the love?

KRISTEN PUCHEK: Hello, MAKERS. Hello. I see we're getting folks back from the break. What an amazing morning, huh? What an amazing morning that we've had talking about making the future, creating a better tomorrow? Well, Kara and I believe that businesses have a critical role to play in this. So we are going to talk today about empowering women to power our future. Because guess what? Businesses today are not unlocking the full potential of women. Am I right?

- Yeah.

- Woo-hoo!

KRISTEN PUCHEK: Thank you. So I'm Kristen. I'm a wife, a mother of two crazy boys, I'm a preacher's daughter from Texas who escaped to Colorado for the mountains and the sunshine. And my personal purpose is to be a force multiplier for good. I'm very fortunate that I get to live that purpose every day in my role at Accenture. I'm one of the leaders of our CEO advisory practice. And I spend the majority of my time consulting our clients in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I'm joined today by Kara.

KARA GOOCH: Hello. Hello. Well, my name is Kara Gooch. And I'm also a wife, and a mother of three girls benefiting from the future that we are in this room here going to make. So as the great musical would say, history has its eyes on you. So no pressure at all. But in many ways, being here in California marks a full circle moment because I left California, South Central Los Angeles, California to be exact, five years ago with a one way ticket in hand for me and my girls because I was maintaining and managing them as their single parent. But today, I return as a leader and a change maker.

- Woo!

KRISTEN PUCHEK: OK, so let's take a step back. Businesses today are facing major challenges. And one of those challenges is there's a talent shortage. There's a skills gap. And it is specifically a gap for high demand digital skills. At the same time, we've seen this great resignation, which I'm sure everyone here has heard that term before. We're seeing a mass exodus of women leaving the workforce both during and post-pandemic.

So let's put that together. We have millions of people, specifically women, who are actually ready and able to start filling this skills gap for digital skills. But businesses aren't maximizing on that potential. We have an amazing opportunity to recognize that there's this huge talent pool that we've just kind of been ignoring. And what we found in our Accenture research is that when organizations hire more women into technical skills, those organizations are 36% less likely to experience a talent and skill shortage.

KARA GOOCH: And many women may feel that tech isn't for them. Too often, we hear that individuals aren't given the space to ask the right questions, the environment to experiment, the environment to learn without fear. Those things sometimes don't exist, which means psychological safety in those areas and environments are lacking. But that's what we're here to create. Because we need it. Because it's necessary.

And who are some of these women that we're talking-- who are some of these people that we're talking about? Too often we hear that they are women. And since there are so many of us in this room, the multi facets of that are coming together. But imagine if we were to unlock the power of women to solve our big talent and skilling challenges, removing these barriers to entry and creating opportunities to acquire skills and make this important moment possible to move not just the needle forward, but move the daughters of tomorrow, move the sons of tomorrow, forward.

And with this, we're noticing a 70% boost of intention to skill when those right conditions are met.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: So let's unpack that. Because that's huge, right?

KARA GOOCH: Yeah.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: 70% boost in intention to skill with the right conditions. We took some time at Accenture to unpack this. And we did some research. Spoiler alert, the main thing we found is that not all women are the same.

KARA GOOCH: What?

KRISTEN PUCHEK: What?

KARA GOOCH: I thought we were twins.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: I know.

KARA GOOCH: OK.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: Come on. Right? We're basically, yeah, the same. So I know. We just burst someone's bubble in here. OK, so the main thing that we started to find was that, first of all, there's a difference when you cut the data looking at the intersection of gender and race, ethnicity. So we found there's a difference in the desire to acquire digital skills when you start to look at the data in that way. So we found that for example, 24% of Latinx Hispanic women, 22% of Black women, 20% of Asian women have a greater desire to acquire digital skills when compared to white women at about 18%.

So that was one thing that was interesting. Then we tried to understand, well, what kind of conditions have to be in place in the workplace so that we can actually realize that potential? And what we found was for example, Latinx and Hispanic women are more likely to skill when barriers are removed in the workplace. Asian women are more likely to skill when they have access to skill in the workplace on the job. Black women are more likely to acquire new skills when microaggressions are removed in the workplace.

KARA GOOCH: Interesting. Huh.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: And white women are more likely to skill when they have the ability to apply those skills on the job. So this was really, really important for us to understand because the traditional ways that we've been thinking about recruitment, and development, and learning related actions in the workplace actually aren't effective in this new world of work. We're not meeting women where they are. We're not offering the opportunity to acquire new skills in ways in which women can actually attain those skills and accelerate within our businesses.

So how do we create those right conditions? Well, I'd love to invite Kara to share a little more about her own skilling journey at Accenture.

KARA GOOCH: So before I joined Accenture, I was a digital marketer. I was in the hustle and bustle of it all. I managed possibly five organizations at one time, and did social media marketing. And there were several times within that experience that I was asked, well, do you build websites? Well, can you make an app? Mind you, this is 2012 and whatnot. I'm like, no. But I can smile for you. And at that moment, I wanted to find a way to turn that constant yes-- excuse me, constant no to a yes.

Because not only did I deserve it, but the girls, they needed to see what a yes looked like. And so after these years of struggle, I sought out where I can find that yes and where I can move myself forward. Google and Goodwill came together and partnered to make an IT support certification program. And I was a beneficiary of that. I was given a scholarship by Goodwill to go through the courses. And it was everything that I honestly needed at that moment to take that first step.

And I thank God every day that I did. Because there were struggles. [APPLAUSE] Oh thank you. There were struggles and there were moments of decision that, one, no human should have to manage, but a mother that has girls to look up to her. I had to choose sometimes between which bills to pay. And going through that program, I took the choice of paying for our lights in exchange for internet because I knew that we couldn't maintain any type of lease without lights on.

And so in making that choice, there were times where I had to use a hot spot to entertain the children on a laptop that somebody gave me to get through the courses. And I would either be on my phone in the back room and just saying, yeah, baby. That's fine. And in those moments, I would then take it under my wing to make sure that they got everything that they needed, and make sure that I was everything that they needed.

And the day after I graduated, as divine intervention would have it, I got a call from a company that I thought would never look twice at any potential that I could give them. I was called to Accenture's apprenticeship program. Now their apprenticeship program launched in 2016, giving individuals without a four year degree a chance at a life changing opportunity to thrive. And the majority of these apprentices are racially and ethnically diverse. And nearly half of them are women.

So it makes me really, really proud to say the least. I joined Accenture in the program in Nashville in 2020. So the heart of everything is shutting down, right? But at that moment, my world was completely opening up. And I came in within the first cohort of five people in the Nashville office as apprentices. And now I'm very, very happy to report that we now have over 150 coming into our office. So to be a part of that inaugural cohort, amazing.

After graduating from the apprenticeship program one year ago, I was also given the opportunity to be a full time employee, which I earned my butt in. So my career definitely continues to grow. I have seen the technology space, I have seen corporate function space, and I am now in change management, which is honestly the best place for me because I can get in front of people and tell them, OK, let's do this differently. Yeah, because I said so.

The apprenticeship program has definitely changed my life. But a lot of the lives that have been changed are some of the girlfriends that I have behind me. We went through the apprenticeship ambassador program together. And this is probably one of the moments that I cherish the most because these are my friends. And we've grown together. And to say that they might not be in this room physically, but baby, I'm going to bring you with me. And I'll continue to do that as often as anybody gives me a microphone.

I continue to play an active role in the apprenticeship track, especially dealing with our high school students that are also coming in as well. And not only am I an evangelist in the way of standing in front of you precious people today, I've also been able to refer a couple more people, and one of which is my wonderful, wonderful husband William. He has been an apprentice. He has graduated. And he now has his full time offer. And we are making the good money together for the babies.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: Look, we know-- thank you so much, Kara. Your story is so amazing. And we are so lucky to have you at Accenture. All of the amazing women that we're showing on the screen as well. Look, we know that many of you in your organizations are also focused on empowering women and empowering women specifically to power the future. We-- at Accenture, one way we did that was by creating this apprenticeship program. And we still have a ways to go. We're still focused on this. We're still focused on removing barriers in the workplace, on addressing the skill gap, on empowering women.

I am very proud, though, to say that in the last month, we onboarded our 2,000th apprentice. And we exceeded our goal of filling over 20% of our entry level roles through that apprentice network.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. Thank you. We're really excited about it. So we're continuing on this journey. And so can you. Because when organizations are optimizing their learning culture and creating skilling opportunities for women, our research shows that we will see a $4.7 trillion improvement in GDP. OK, I want to be a part of that, don't you?

KARA GOOCH: Yeah.

KRISTEN PUCHEK: Right? So when we leave here today, please in your own organizations ask these questions. How am I thinking about skilling gaps? How am I thinking about empowering women? Because together, we can empower women to power our future. Thank you.

- Woo!