Hosting Apartment List's Inaugural Women's Day Summit

At Apartment List, we prioritize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). At the employee level, we host commemorative events, recognize monumental holidays, and strive to unlearn biases in our DEI Book Club. Each of these initiatives happens in tandem with our five Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) centered around Asian Pacific Islanders, Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and Women.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I helped plan a Women’s Day Summit with Apartment List’s Women’s ERG. I was interested in getting more involved in the ERG, so planning an event for the whole company seemed like a great opportunity!

Evening the Playing Field

Women make up 47% of the workforce, yet only 25% of the tech industry. Out of the 25% of women working in tech, Asian women make up just 5% of that number, while Black and Hispanic women make up 3% and 1%. We want to even the playing field, so we planned the event in hopes to empower our colleagues and help them realize that they’re not alone. We are in this together.

Why Did We Plan This Event?

When I first started planning the event alongside my co-workers, Alicia Falcon (Operations Manager) and Sammi Mach (Sr. Product Designer), we decided to prioritize creating an event customized to Apartment List women's experiences. We sifted through the results of a poll we had sent out prior and learned that our colleagues wanted an event that would be empowering, feature their peers, and teach them valuable life skills. We also wanted to ensure that allies could attend parts of the event if they were interested. While this event was meant to cater to those who identify as women at Apartment List, some of the day’s activities were open to all employees.

With all of this in mind and our company’s focus for the year, we centered the day around the concept of OwnHERship. We chose this theme because we wanted our colleagues to leave the conference inspired to take ownership of their careers, professional development, and journeys at Apartment List!

Ladies Who Lunch

We kicked off the event with a conversation led by two of our Project/Product Managers, Bre Foley and Raye Reynolds. They shared their experiences being Black women in a space that’s predominantly male. After a few personal stories, they gave some advice that we’ve held dearly since:

• Don’t sell yourself short
• Be well-rounded
• Make sure others feel seen
• Support one another

Building Mental Resilience with Olympian Lina Taylor

Lina Taylor is a two-time Olympian in beach volleyball. She’s also an entrepreneur, real estate investor, executive coach, mentor to elite athletes, and a mother of three. She believes her life is “full of transformations, which didn’t happen by accident.”

In her workshop, she walked us through the five steps to building mental resilience:

1. Acceptance
2. Responsibility
3. Reframe
4. Reimagine
5. Recommit

We were emboldened by her story of how she didn’t make the Olympic beach volleyball team at first, but worked hard, showed up for herself and her team daily, and finally was able to make the team. Together, we created a team manifesto for ourselves and for the Women’s ERG.

With Lina’s guidance, we decided that our ERG should be a space to have conversations, gather advice, and give feedback. Together, we aim to build a community of future female executives. We ultimately want to build a welcoming and powerful platform to share ideas, support one another’s growth and success, and elevate our voices at Apartment List.

Lina challenged us by asking why this was so important for us. We simply stated we deserve it and we’re truly striving to support more women, as women are stronger together.

Breakout Rooms

In virtual breakout rooms, we discussed what it’s like being a working mom, how we can become better allies, and what feminism looks like today.

Working parents

In the working parent breakout room, led by Alicia, participants discussed the challenges of being a working mom. Researchers at UC Irvine found that parents spend nearly twice as much time with their kids as they did 50 years ago. So, it wasn’t surprising to hear that most Apartment List moms agreed that being a working parent is HARD and makes work-life balance incredibly difficult.

Together, they discussed what their typical work days look like and brainstormed ways to better balance work and home responsibilities.

Allyship in the workplace

In this breakout session, Sammi and Lilla (Research Analyst) led a discussion on what it means to be an ally and the harm of unconscious bias. They candidly talked about the unconscious bias they’ve had and what unconscious bias looks like in the workplace. For example, research shows that men apply to jobs where they meet 60% of the qualifications while women only apply to jobs where they meet 100% of the qualifications. Meaning if your job description has a lot of unnecessary or strict requirements, you may be unintentionally weeding out women from applying to your open roles.

Then, the group discussed how they can better highlight underrepresented voices in the workplace and be better allies at Apartment List.

What is feminism

I led this breakout session and kicked things off by asking my colleagues what it meant to be a feminist. We came to the agreement that being a feminist means you care about all genders having equal rights and opportunities.

We then read an article and discussed the relationship between intersectionality and feminism. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia School of Law. Here, she specializes in race and gender issues. Acknowledging intersectionality, especially when it comes to feminism, means that you’re acknowledging the relationship between other forms of identity (race, age, class, ability, religion, etc.) with gender.

After reading the article, we talked about how each of us experiences intersectional feminism and left with a better understanding of others’ experiences.

Fireside Chat with Sarah Jones Simmer

We closed out the day with our new board member, Sarah Jones Simmer. She truly breaks the mold as the former COO of Bumble and the current CEO of Found and is a trailblazer for many of us. It was important for us to include a woman in leadership at the event to showcase the emphasis Apartment List places on diversifying our leadership. Unfortunately, women make up just 28% of the leadership positions in tech. We want to change this.

In a conversation with Apartment List’s CEO Matthew Woods, Sarah shared what inspired her to be a business leader. She stated that she’s actually still figuring out what she wants to be when she “grows up”, but what’s been crucial to her success is surrounding herself with people she loves to solve important problems with. She believes one of the best ways to support women in the workplace is to make sure their voices are heard. This can be done in seemingly the simplest of ways. For example, inviting others into conversations who haven’t been participating as much as others by stating, “we haven't heard from you and I always value your perspective."

Sarah concluded the fireside chat by sharing the importance of “kicking open” the door for others. She’s a firm believer that it’s not enough to just have one seat at the table and is a strong advocate for getting more women into leadership positions.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed helping plan this event for Apartment List! I personally left the event feeling more empowered and my colleagues did as well. The strong DEI presence at Apartment List was one of the reasons why I chose to work here, so I’m happy I was able to be a part of building this DEI culture.