During a speech at the EmTech08 emerging technologies conference at MIT, Atefeh Riazi, the CIO at New York-based ad agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Inc., talked about how women in IT are stereotyped in the workplace. She offered some practical advice based on 25 years in the business.

Riazi said women IT managers battle workplace forces on two fronts--as women and as the IT geek who inspires fear and loathing in business colleagues. To become leaders, she said women in IT must understand and manage how they're perceived. Riazi said she has learned that intellect and expertise "gets you in the door," but emotional intelligence helps you succeed.

She said it is key not to communicate when upset and added she rejects female prescriptions foisted on her--such as learning "to be modest and not ask for more money or staff." Riazi said it is important to be assertive, noting it is not impolite to cut people off. "If I did not do that at times, I would not have been heard. These are preconceived notions that do not work for us," she said.

Riazi also told her audience of mostly women that no matter what leadership style they adopt, they would be wise to "not violate the gender rule" of female as nurturer. Women must be aggressive for their team but remember that "hope and fear move people...and in tough times it is fear of survival that really moves people."
 
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