Lavin Exclusive Speaker
If you want to lead in a way that transforms people, you need to welcome fresh perspectives. That’s how Minette Norman—a liberal arts major with no STEM background—became a high-powered executive in the male-dominated tech industry. She used her unique skills to rebuild Autodesk’s company culture from the inside out, leading a team of 3,500 software pros with empathy and compassion. Now as a leadership consultant, she encourages us to harness our diversity by creating a culture where people feel they are safe to be different.
Diverse companies are more innovative. But diversity isn’t enough if people don’t feel psychologically safe to be themselves at work. Over her 20 years at Autodesk, Minette Norman transformed the company’s culture, so that it was empathetic and welcoming as well as diverse. Employees were able to speak out, make mistakes and take risks. Minette isn’t a traditional tech industry executive: she came to Autodesk with a liberal arts background. Solving problems from a completely new angle, Minette went from publications manager to vice president of engineering and proved that difference is the key to success. She left Autodesk to start her own consulting agency, helping leaders build healthy, inclusive companies where everyone feels like they belong.
Minette’s long career has given her a deep, fine-tuned understanding of what it takes to create real change in the workplace. It’s all about enabling employees to interact, collaborate, and listen to each other with kindness, openness, and curiosity. In her dynamic presentations and interactive workshops, Minette offers the tools to turn this philosophy into an action plan. She helps executives and employees at every level rethink how we communicate, which accomplishments we reward, and who belongs in leadership roles. This is the first step to inspiring a creative work culture that leads to break-out innovation.
At her consulting practice, Minette uses her decades of experience in the tech industry to help companies develop diverse teams. When teams are diverse, companies will get a wider range of problem-solving skills and unique business insights. In 2017, she was named one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times, and as “Business Role Model of the Year” in the 2018 Women in IT Awards. She serves on the Board of Directors for Equalize Health, a non-profit devoted to developing medical technologies for impoverished and vulnerable communities worldwide.