If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

given fair reconsideration. She was given the promotion within days but without a single word of acknowledgement spoken. Fast forward to today and she reports that most of the students in the Penn psychiatry program are women and they are making gains in faculty representation, albeit slowly. She asked me if I ever experienced overt misogynist behavior in my profession and when I said yes, she said, “I hope you scream about it and rail against it when it happens. It is the only way to bring about change.” I assured her that, if she knew me better, she would know I wasn’t prone to keeping my thoughts to myself on this topic.

I do see some signs of hope that women are making progress, however slow or small some of those steps forward may seem.  The plane I flew on a recent trip to New Orleans was piloted by a woman, something that never used to occur. Back in 1970 there were no female commercial pilots but today there are about 5000. Efforts to raise up and support female CEOs are beginning to flourish and there are 18 female CEOs in the Fortune 500? We have 8 females in the Cabinet of the US President (out of 22 cabinet-level positions), and even the Augusta National Golf Clubrecently offered membership to two women for the first time in their history (herstory?). I hope that Condoleeza Rice and Darla Moore accept those memberships, drag all their female friends to the club on a regular basis and leave the toilet seat down, not just to be disruptive (although that could be fun), but also to show the world that problems are not caused by there being one woman in a roomful of men. Rather problems are caused by foolish thinking and closed minds and insecure people who don’t know how to function normally in mixed company.

It’s like that old saying goes, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Except in this case it should be “Women don’t cause problems, morons cause problems.” And to those men who believe that having women in your professional midst is uncomfortable, here is what I have to say to you: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, because we are coming in and it sure as hell isn’t to make you a sandwich.

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Author: Lisa Suennen

Lisa Suennen is a managing director with GE Ventures and former managing member of the Psilos Group, as well as the co-author of Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare With Technology? and author of the blog Venture Valkyrie. Prior to 2014, Lisa was a Senior Advisor to Psilos Group, a healthcare-focused venture capital and growth equity firm that focuses on the healthcare information technology, healthcare services and medical device sectors. Lisa was a co-founder of Psilos Group and a Partner at the firm from 1998-2014. Prior to Psilos, Lisa was at Merit Behavioral Care (formerly American Biodyne, Inc), an $800mm behavioral healthcare company where she held various senior executive roles from its early start-up days through exit. Previously, Lisa held various positions in marketing and product management in companies in the high technology field. Lisa was a Board Member of the Dignity Health Foundation, and Board Member of health IT company Beyond Lucid Technologies and is still a Board Member of medical device company AngioScore, a member of the Qualcomm Life Advisory Board, and an Advisor to the California Health Care Foundation Innovation Fund. Lisa also previously served as an Advisor to innovation consulting firm Accelevate, Inc. as a member of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator Investing in Innovations program. Lisa holds an M.A. in political science, a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in mass communications, all from the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now Vice Chair of the National Advisory Council of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University. Lisa is also a visiting lecturer at the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business where she teaches the annual course on healthcare venture capital. Lisa also writes a widely read blog on healthcare and healthcare investing at www.venturevalkyrie.com. She has recently published her first book, entitled: Tech Tonics, Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare with Technology, coauthored with Dr. David Shaywitz.