By Note: This was written a few months ago while I was a DFWSEM board member after a discussion we had about replacing a keynote speaker that dropped. I am no longer on the board or affiliated with the group. In this article I use State of Search as it’s a local / regional conference I am intimately familiar with and for no other purpose. The following is a suggestion not just for State of Search but for any local or regional conference anywhere in the country. I would encourage my friends in groups like KCSEM, SearchHOU, Austin SEM, SLCSEM, and any other digital marketing focused group to look internally for qualified female keynote speakers.
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A few hundred people have descended on Deep Ellum for DFW’s homegrown digital marketing conference, State of Search, for it’s first 2 day event. This is the conferences 4th year and as it’s grown in attendance size so has it’s impact on the DFWSEM group that puts on the event and the local marketing community.
There’s a growing issue not just in our industry, but in all tech related industries, STEM fields, Education, and Health, about the lack of female keynote speakers at conferences. Just look at some of these tweets and you’ll get the picture.
The issue has even captured Apple’s attention:
and Microsoft Employee and Investor Matt Wallaert:
It’s easy to ask National conferences why they don’t have female keynotes, and when I’ve seen the discussion pop up it usually involves them not finding women who are the right mix of a crowd draw for the audience and within their budget. I think it’s hard to blame them for this especially when we examine how keynote positions are assigned at a more local and regional level. One such conference is the non-profit, State of Search conference happening right now.
#StateofSearch has never had a female keynote speaker in it’s 4 year history (2012 was the first year for the conference with Chris Brogan as the keynote). In fact, the percentage of speakers that are women at the conference has eroded slightly since 2013 (though not nearly as much as local speakers). The following 3 graphs are based on data provided by the State of Search website.
DFWSEM, the group that organizes State of Search, had a few founding principles. The group’s original mission, from what one founding member told me, was to bring together search marketers in the Dallas – Fort Worth area and to help promote each one of their skills and experience locally and even nationally. Over the past ~13 years this founding mission has resulted in the numerous amount of Dallas based digital marketing speakers at events across the country and inspired numerous other groups to form in various markets. It’s time we in Dallas take the lead again.
In the spirit of the founding mission I believe that if we want women to be keynotes on the national stage in our respective industry(s) it’s time we gave them a chance to start speaking as keynotes locally and use that experience to encourage larger national conferences to consider those women for keynote positions.
What follows is a list of women who, if you’re hosting a marketing conference in Dallas or the DFW area, I would encourage you approach about being a keynote speaker. I have no clue if any of them would be willing to or what experience being keynotes they have, but at least reaching out and asking is a start in the right direction.
1. Christine Churchill – Christine was a web pioneer in the SEO and PPC industries as part owner of tools used by webmasters and other SEO’s called NetMechanic, NetMechanic was acquired largely thanks to Christine’s own SEO and other digital marketing work. Christine is a founding member of DFWSEM and SEMPO and the name sake for DFWSEM’s annual Christine Churchill award. Today she is the president of the search engine focused agency, Key Relevance, that works with large publicly traded companies and small local clients.
2. Gabriella Draney – Gabriella is the co-founder of Tech Wildcatters, a startup accelerator fund in Dallas which has moved the city from irrelevance in the tech startup industry to a top 10 city for startups in the USA. A graduate of SMU with an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Gabriella’s work at Tech Wildcatters and HP Growth Partners has helped dozens of local startups get through early funding stages.
3. Amber Olson Rourke – Amber has worked with top companies at elite advertising agencies and in 2011 co-founded a direct marketing company with her mother and father where she now serves as CMO. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions and spends her days straddling the traditional and digital marketing worlds guiding the company’s online efforts in SEO, PPC, and Social Media as well as traditional efforts like branding, charity work, pr, and packaging. She’s also an incredibly experienced speaker having given talks to massive crowds of 15,000 to 20,000 people in sold out arenas.
4. Bernadette Coleman – Bernadette is the CEO of the full service digital agency Advice Interactive. She’s spent over 9 years in the digital marketing industry and for the past 4 years she has served as President of the local SEO tool Local Site Submit which is owned by Advice. Recently she led a merger with leading local data aggregator UBL positioning her tool as a must use for Local SEO’s. Bernadette’s company also recently bought 50% ownership of the “Dallas Rocks Social Media Day” event held annually in Addison, TX founded by local digital marketer Lissa Duty, and renamed it Rocks Digital. The Rocks Digital event series has since been expanding working to educate local marketers through blogs, email newsletters, and blabs.
5. Anousheh Ansari – Probably the least of a fit for a marketing conference, but a necessary inclusion on this list. Anousheh is an Engineer, Business Woman, and Commercial Astronaut. If you’ve ever dreamt of staying at a space hotel, well when you finally do you can thank Anousheh who was an early sponsor of commercial space flight technology. Anousheh and her husband made their fortune during the telecom boom of the late 90’s / early 2000’s and parlayed that fortune into underwriting the X-Prize foundation which renamed their prize to the Ansari X-Prize as a thank you. She was the first Muslim woman in space and served as part of the International Space Station crew for 8 days. She is now the founder and CEO of Prodea Systems, a local company working to develop a ubiquitous language for machines.
6. Molly Cain – Current Executive Director at Tech Wildcatters and a Forbes contributing author, Molly has led Tech Wildcatters from being a top 10 accelerator to being a top 5 (according to Inc.) in the country and recently landed a unique partnership with the Department of Homeland Security. She’s also the co-founder of ViewMarket, the new parent company of CultureMap, a local blog network covering cities across Texas and the nation. ViewMarket itself is a video content network that works with over 1,800 content creators to help monetize and spread their videos.
All of the above women have serious business acumen, marketing intellect, inspirational stories, and experiences that anyone could learn from. I’d love to see any one of them as a local marketing keynote speaker and who knows maybe some day as a keynote speaker at national conferences.
Do you know of any other women in DFW that should be included on this list? let me know in the comments.