A special feature today is a Q&A with Marie de Ducla, MENA Sector Lead for Travel Tourism Retail and Consumer Goods at Google.
Since 2022, Google has been a fantastic sponsor, supporting our mission in the UK, and now, for the first time, hosting the IWTTF Gulf 2024 at their Dubai headquarters.
Their innovative and inspiring space is a truly unique place to gather, and we’re eagerly looking forward to welcoming each of you there next week. This partnership with Google means so much to us, and we’re incredibly grateful for their continued support and dedication to our community.
Tell us about your role at Google and how you got there
I lead advertising sales for Google in the MENA region across several industries (Travel, Tourism, Retail, Telco, Automotive, FMCG, and Technology).
My story is a story of curiosity, singularity and resilience.
Curiosity is what led me to constantly learn and push myself in areas that were unknown to me: for example, joining the eCommerce department to run Air France Online sales back in 2008 when it was a new field and despite other people advising me to follow the usual path of Revenue/ Yield Management.
Singularity by making my own decisions and sticking to them despite some consequences to manage: for example when I decided to move from France to the UAE back in 2011 while I was in my comfort zone in my home country with a good job, my parents and family to help with my two young kids. Looking back, while it was tough in the beginning to manage a new career in a new country without my social network and support, it was the best decision of my life, as I have flourished by being in touch with such a diverse region.
Resilience, when I joined a leadership team of men and was the only woman in this leadership team for several years. They used to have their men’s club habits like getting together outside of work without me. I understood it was just habits and not anchored in wrong intentions, and found other ways to connect with them differently but efficiently, one became my mentor, another one a friend with whom we had a common interest in art, with others we collaborated successfully on large projects at work etc.
What specific actions have you taken in your role to support the advancement of women in travel tech, and how do you measure their impact?
In general, I try to link every action I do in this field to value and values. What are the values I need to treat everyone equally, what example do I want to give to others? What value do I bring to the women@ group or the women around me at work or in my network?
I joined the women@Google group as an ally many years ago, I also joined the first Google DEI council led by our Managing Director and HR Director a while ago.
One of the roles I played was to coach managers on taking tangible goals when it came to diversity, I would review their objectives in terms of DEI and point out any of them that were vague, not actionable, not measurable, and not time-bound. I would also review progress and inspire them to take concrete actions: for example, when hiring, have them commit to not start interviewing until they have a properly diverse gender diversified pipeline of candidates.
In terms of developing people and women in general, I am a big advocate of coaching and sponsoring.
I am a coach in the process of becoming certified and I dedicate 2 hours a week to coaching, a lot of women come to me with a lack of clarity on the next steps in their careers, and I support them in connecting back to what gives them joy at work, to their strengths and proud moments and I guide them towards a clarity that helps them make an empowered choice for the next steps in their work life, whether it is to develop new skills or candidate for a new job. I believe in the power of people in general and women in particular to make their own choices from a place of alignment with themselves. I find it super important for everyone to have adult-adult relationships, too often I have seen women being patronised and told what to do, for me the ultimate respect is to remind them they are resourceful, creative and whole and can make their own empowered choices.
Sponsoring is the capacity for leaders to advocate for someone and say good things about them when they are not in the room, but also to introduce them to their network and put their credibility on the table for them. This is something that should be developed further in the world because it works! I am very proud of my colleagues in the Dubai office who put together a great sponsoring program putting in touch with women in the workplace with leaders 2 levels above them to ensure they would have strong allies advocating for them at times that matter. I have seen this program give birth to new career trajectories or just enable access to an influential network. It is very important and efficient.
How do you ensure that diverse perspectives, particularly those of women, are included in decision-making processes within your organization?
It starts with having diverse teams, which means the hiring process is very important, it is not only about the skills needed, of course this is #1 but also about adding diversity to a team in place, at Google we value “Culture add” rather than “culture fit” when it comes to hiring. I strongly believe in this and I like to ask myself what will this new hire bring to the team. How will this new hire add a different point of view? So in the end, if a team is not diverse enough, when I am hiring between two equally skilled candidates I will make the conscious decision to choose someone who adds diversity to the team.
A second way to ensure diversity is to listen and make sure everyone in the team has a say, In teams where you have people who tend to speak way more than others, it is important to put it on the table as a problem and establish team norms to make sure everyone can be listened to.
Finally acknowledging that we all have biases, getting training on this, and continuously trying to detect if we are biased is critical. A good way to check is to look at the numbers (for example gender diversity in promotions, gender diversity in hiring, gender diversity in senior positions, etc). Google was the first company to issue a gender diversity report and has continued to do so broadening it to other types of diversity like ethnicity. It helps to keep us in check and acknowledge honestly when more progress needs to be made.
What advice would you give to male leaders in the industry who want to become better allies?
It all starts with your values and being true to them in actions. For example, if your value is Respect, respecting the work that a woman colleague does as much as the work of a male colleague should be normal for you. If your value is Fairness, it would be valuable to question your actions and ask yourself if it is fair to give a medium rating to women while giving an outstanding rating to another one if the work done and the impact were the same. Often there is subjectivity that comes into play and it can be linked to equality versus equity. I have heard a lot of men telling me that women should not be treated differently just because they are women, that everyone should be treated the same, and that this is equality, but I believe more in equity than equality.
Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. We do that for students at school why not for people in the workplace? At school when a student is struggling with a topic, the teacher will suggest tutoring outside of the class to support the struggling student until they understand and can stop tutoring. This is what equity is about, giving a fair chance to people taking into account the resources they need to get to the starting line.
Women in Travel CIC
