<p>Marissa Orr is the author of the bestseller<i> Lean Out: The Truth About Women, Power, & The Workplace</i>. On stage, Orr draws from her book and her successful 15-year career inside Google and Facebook to ask the question few have the nerve to ask: What have we gotten wrong about women at work?</p><p>With career-altering experiences inside two of Silicon Valley’s leading tech giants, Orr shares her views on women at work, structural norms and teamwork. She defies conventional wisdom by offering an entirely new and fresh perspective on corporate diversity, the gender gap and female leadership. </p><p>Orr’s presentation blends in-depth research with poignant and humorous insights from her experiences ‘playing the game’ in the corporate trenches. It is her answer to Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s call for women to take charge, assert themselves in the workplace and “lean in” to their ambitions. Instead, Orr invites audiences to consider a revolutionary alternative path forward that has the power to change the lives of women in the corporate world and beyond. </p><p>At Google, Orr was a founding member of its sales operation and strategy team and won the company’s highest honor: The Founder’s Award. When the company acquired YouTube, Orr became Head of Market Intelligence and Strategy, helping Google sell competitively for the first time. In 2016, she was courted away to join Facebook, where she came to understand our antiquated system of organizing employees, evaluating performance and motivating people—a male-devised system developed during the Industrial Age.</p><p>Marissa Orr is not a billionaire CEO sharing rarefied wisdom from the mountaintop. She is a former mid-level executive using her firsthand experience to unpack today’s flawed conventional approach to closing the gender gap–women becoming more like men. At a time when only 18% of women aspire to occupy C-suite positions, she shows how overhauling traditional hierarchy will result in greater diversity in corporate leadership, close the gender pay gap and foster healthier work environments for both genders. </p>
Former Google and Facebook Executive; Best-Selling Author, "Lean Out: The Truth About Women, Power, & The Workplace"
<ul><li><strong>The Truth About Diversity & The Workplace</strong></li><li>Former Google and Facebook executive, Marissa Orr, offers a compelling answer to the question few dare to ask: What have we’ve gotten wrong about women at work? Based on in-depth research and personal experiences, Orr shares her journey as a single mom of three trying to find success in her 15-year career at the world’s top tech giants. She gives an insider’s look at the systemic dysfunction inside today’s most progressive organizations, providing a revolutionary new perspective on why there are so few female leaders in corporate America. She doesn’t simply present a counterargument to modern feminist rhetoric but offers a revolutionary path forward to change the trajectory of the lives of women and men in the corporate world and beyond.</li><li><strong>Innovation, Creativity & Culture</strong></li><li>Why is successful innovation so difficult? Former Google and Facebook executive and bestselling author, Marissa Orr, offers a behind-the-scenes look at what’s really driving the innovative successes and failures across today’s top tech giants. Combining in-depth research with 15 years of experience at Google and Facebook, Orr offers a totally fresh, groundbreaking perspective on why most organizations fail to innovate. By focusing on the <i>process</i> of innovation, the most critical element is overlooked: <i>mindset</i>. Weaving the latest research with humorous and engaging stories from her time in Silicon Valley, Orr overturns conventional wisdom and explains why empty platitudes like ‘fail harder’ actually fail to help companies be more innovative. She explores what most people get wrong about the best way to inspire collaboration, creativity, and higher performance.</li><li><strong>The Future of Work: Employee Brainpower</strong></li><li>The future’s most profound changes will not be in technology but in power. The Industrial Age featured an economy driven by manufacturing and producing tangible things like cars. Former Google and Facebook executive and bestselling author, Marissa Orr, points out that in today’s knowledge economy, the most successful companies no longer make widgets, with physical parts stored in a warehouse and owned by the company. Supply today consists of employee brainpower; companies no longer own the majority of their supply, employees do. To succeed in the next technological revolution, companies must rethink how they structure, engage, reward, and retain their most valuable asset: people. With incisive wit and relatable stories, Orr offers a simple framework to help companies prepare, adapt, and succeed in tomorrow’s economy.</li></ul>