Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dora Palfi of imagiLabs On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
“Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.” These words are taken from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead, but I learned this lesson first hand. Sometimes, you don’t go through the effort of setting clear expectations and of holding people accountable according to them. Sometimes it’s actually out of niceness (you think you are being kind and understanding at the moment), but sometimes it’s more from laziness, because it is hard. But the only way to set teams up for success and give the opportunity for fulfilling goals is by actually setting and measuring against goals.
As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dora Palfi.
Dora Palfi is the co-founder & CEO of imagiLabs where she works to empower girls with the skills, confidence, and community to create with technology. Dora has a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience with a minor in Computer Science from New York University Abu Dhabi and studied Human Computer Interaction at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, as part of the European Union’s EIT Digital Master School. In addition to her work to bring technology closer to girls, Dora is also a yoga instructor, bringing mindfulness closer to engineers.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I was an aspiring neuroscientist studying at New York University in Abu Dhabi when I first got exposed to programming. I was amazed by the possibilities and mostly with the process of creating something that worked, and could make other people’s lives better! I remember attending my first hackathon where together, with a team of other students we created a prototype of a health monitoring device just over a short weekend. I decided then that I wanted to know more about technology and take more programming classes.
After graduating I worked shortly as a developer, but throughout the years of studying and working something really stood out for me: I was often the only, or one of the very few women in the room.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
A highlight in the early days was being selected for the Apple Entrepreneur Camp and spending two weeks at the Cupertino HQ redesigning our app with advice from engineers at Apple! And of course, seeing Tim Cook tweet about us. It has also been interesting to have the chance to speak at various events including at the European Parliament about the importance of gender diversity in tech and to pitch my company on both the Hungarian and Swedish version of Shark Tank!
But the stories that make me personally the happiest are the ones related to our community and users: some of the girls who were part of giving feedback and designing the initial versions of the imagi App with our team have now grown older and had internships at imagiLabs as well as went on to study Computer Science at university.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We have a hardware product which means that in the beginning we needed to prototype, 3D print, truly get our hands dirty with work!
In the earliest days we got our first customer who asked us to create 30 prototypes of our product for an event. At the time it was a stressful mistake (but looking back it’s somewhat funny,) we thought some of our hardware components were faulty and we had to order new one’s last minute, forcing my co-founder to even pull an all-nighter to finish the prototypes before the big day of delivering to our customer. Afterwards it turned out the original components weren’t faulty, we just didn’t test it correctly. We definitely learned not to panic and make sure to think twice before jumping to conclusions.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
We are an unconventional founding team to say the least. The three of us founders are originally from Central Europe (Romania and Hungary), met while studying at NYU Abu Dhabi — living together in both Abu Dhabi and New York and ended up starting a company in Sweden. When we met in college, the three of us bonded over the fact that we were one of the few women in our STEM programs.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are constantly working to improve our offerings to make learning to code truly fun for kids, especially for girls. We are in fact working on version 2.0 of our concept, which we will be launching in 2022, but I cannot say much more about that for now!
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
Let’s start with a simple exercise in logic!
If: technology = future
And: women = technology
Then: women = future
I believe technology is our most powerful tool to shape the future, but today women make up less than 20% of the tech workforce in the EU. Hence, today we do not have an equal chance to contribute to shaping our future.
Up until the age of 11, girls today have a similar interest in technology as boys do, but during our teenage years the majority of girls drop this interest. In Sweden for example while at age 1, 86% of girls are interested in technology, at age 16 this drops down to only 36%. I started imagiLabs to break this trend and to create a solution that would equip and empower teenage girls to shape the future with technology.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?
We could probably fill an entire interview or even a book addressing this question, but let me give you 3 examples that I think are a large part of the problem.
At an early age girls are often discouraged or if not discouraged they are most of the time not actively encouraged to aspire to study / work in the STEM fields. As it is a very prevalent stereotype, for example boys are better at math than girls. Parents and teachers go out of their way to put in extra support, tutoring and encouragement when boys don’t perform well in the subject, while girls are often told it’s OK to not excel at it. We need to make sure to provide equal opportunities and encouragement for girls!
Second, the girls who do end up studying STEM at university end up in an environment where they are severely underrepresented. Hopefully with all the efforts of encouraging young girls to aspire to become STEMinists, the numbers will steadily increase in the coming years. And while the numbers might take years to really start showing a significant increase in the gender ratio in the industry, there are already incredibly successful women and women leaders in the industry. Highlighting their examples as role models has the potential to accelerate change.
Third, women leave the Tech industry at a higher rate than men do. (More than 40% of women leave tech companies after ten years compared to 17% of men, according to — a topic discussed in detail in Caroline Criado Perez’s book, Invisible Women). Companies that decisively support female employees to reach leadership positions, and who put in place systems for identifying and promoting high-potential individuals, regardless of their gender are able to reverse this trend.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?
Specifically speaking of Technology in this case, I believe it’s still a common misconception that coding and tech is mostly for introverts and it just requires one to sit in front of their computer all day.
Being aware of the way computers are overtaking our everyday’s I like to think of it differently. We value communication skills in colleagues — the better you can communicate with other humans the more likely you are to succeed at your job. Let’s use this analogy of why we need technological fluency and coding. In almost any field of work in the future you will be working with computers — hence if you want to be a good communicator you need to be fluent at computers.
What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
– Your measure of productivity isn’t how much you personally are able to do, but how much your entire team can achieve.
– “Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.” These words are taken from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead, but I learned this lesson first hand. Sometimes, you don’t go through the effort of setting clear expectations and of holding people accountable according to them. Sometimes it’s actually out of niceness (you think you are being kind and understanding at the moment), but sometimes it’s more from laziness, because it is hard. But the only way to set teams up for success and give the opportunity for fulfilling goals is by actually setting and measuring against goals.
– Stay true to you — so often the advice I hear is about how women could be more like men if they wanted to be successful. I think that is a dangerous narrative, and we need to be able to instead highlight leadership styles on a wide range of the diversity spectrum. Of course, feedback is a gift and you have to listen carefully but you also do not have to implement and take action on all feedback concerning your leadership style. You can choose it for yourself.
– Show up (most of the time). As a leader you have to walk the talk and you have to be present, even (or especially) when things get tough. However, I don’t believe that leaders have to be 100% bulletproof. It’s also OK to sometimes have a day when you just cannot show up. There, you are actually also leading by example and setting the tone that no one is expected to be perfect at their job.
– And this links to the final one — self-awareness and self-love. You really only can remain consistent at delivering your A game for a long time if you also take time for reflection, evaluation, feedback. Managing your mental hygiene is in fact one of your most important jobs.
What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?
One of the most important concepts I have learned from mentors / coaches leading large teams was the idea of situational leadership. While it is extremely important for one to have their own, authentic leadership style, being able to adapt this natural leadership style to specific situations is just as important. Let me give you an example — it might be that your style is letting people have maximum freedom and ownership, however if someone on your team specifically asks for help and feels daunted by the freedom of choice, you must adapt and use a closer management style, at least temporarily.
Just like I said in the previous answer — your measurement of success isn’t what you personally can achieve, but what the team as a whole can. Don’t just think in individual contributions, but also in terms of team dynamics and allowing team mates to utilize each others’ strengths.
What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?
Our team isn’t that large yet, however whenever I think of managing teams I actively remind myself how every team mate has different needs! I think it’s very important to have a good structure, a clear vision for the whole team, but also to recognize the differences among the members. In practical sense this relates closely to the previous answer, this means that you have to show up as a different kind of manager depending on the context — an action might be considered as micro management from one person and truly valuable for someone else.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
In my journey with imagiLabs it has all been about the team. Without my co-founders and the rest of our team it wouldn’t have been possible to get to where we are.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
In a recent panel discussion, the moderator asked me “You are in the business of doing good — was it clear from the beginning that you wanted to build companies with a focus on impact? Isn’t it better to do as some of the most successful entrepreneurs do (e.g., Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates) — build a company, get filthy rich and then be able to make a BIG difference?“ The truth is I started my company from the aspiration to do good at scale and not for financial returns. Hence, when we succeed, we are on track to be able to do even more good in the world.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I actually am working every single day for the movement I believe I could bring the most good to the world with. By equipping and empowering girls to create with tech, I aim to contribute to a diverse generation of innovators and entrepreneurs who will solve the most pressing problems of our tomorrow.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“The biggest risk of all is not taking one” — Mellody Hobson
Some might think that starting your own company at 24 instead of getting a corporate job was risky. To me it would have been way bigger risk for regret later in my life if I had not gone after my dreams.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I couldn’t pick just one — my top three would be Melinda Gates, Brene Brown and Jacqueline Novogratz. They happen to be the authors of some of my favorite reads from the past years. Melinda Gates’ Moment of Lift has given me so much motivation on why empowering girls is the most impactful work I could be doing, Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead has given me the courage to keep walking on the entrepreneurial path and remain open and vulnerable despite challenges and failures. And finally, Jacquelin Novogratz’s Manifesto for a moral revolution has boosted my perseverance and given me immense inspiration through the stories of change makers who are truly walking the talk of impact entrepreneurship.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dora Palfi of imagiLabs On The 5 Leadership Lessons She… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.