INterview with Katica Roy, CEO and founder of Pipeline
Monday July 2, 2018
Katica Roy is CEO and founder of Denver-based Pipeline, an SaaS company that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity.
Pipeline is the first company from the state of Colorado to be accepted to Salesforce Accelerate. Roy is driven by a passion to eradicate economic inequality and champions the rights of refugees, women, and children. An award-winning business leader with more than two decades of experience in technology, healthcare and financial services, Roy is credited as a rare combination of expertise in and passion for gender equity, people analytics, and sales operations. She pours her knowledge and unique lens into several community and global initiatives, including as a former board member of Edge of Seven and current board member of the University of San Francisco’s Women in Leadership and Philanthropy, Book Trust and Isabella Bird Community School, a member of the CU Leeds Women’s Council and the Women’s Foundation of Colorado as well as a 2018 Colorado Governors’ Fellow. Roy is also an industry entrepreneur, thought leader, and frequent editorial contributor and speaker, and in 2017 was named a Luminary by the Colorado Technology Association.
Q: What is the main focus of Pipeline and why was it founded?
A: Pipeline is an award-winning Denver-based technology company founded in 2017 with the goal of increasing the financial performance of companies through closing the gender equity gap. Pipeline's proprietary SaaS platform uses artificial intelligence to assess, address and action against the gender biases costing the U.S. alone $2 trillion. This issue is not just about good sense, this is about dollars. Big dollars that turn heads to create social change.
Q: Tell us about the Pipeline Score and how it can operationalize workplace gender equity.
A: Since its inception, Pipeline has been continuously improving its platform to achieve better results. The Score is one function of the Pipeline platform - The Pipeline Score™ extends organizational equity pledge by illuminating commitment to eradicating bias.
The Score shows a company where they are in their journey toward gender parity.
Launched this spring, the v.3 platform provides businesses with a clear path to gender equity and enables them to leverage the full economic power of committing to gender parity. Achieving gender equity is now possible in our lifetime as Pipeline gives organizations the power through data to consciously choose to close their gender gap. The platform hinges on integration of the Pipeline Dashboard™, which provides key data to users in a way that is clear and actionable:
- Pipeline Score™ -- One number that clearly shows the current state of an organization’s gender equity.
- Pipeline Economic Gain™ -- The financial upside to the organization of realizing gender equity.
- Pipeline Forecast™ -- A forward-looking projection of the economic gain based on an organization’s estimated growth.
- Time to Parity™ -- An industry-first measure of an organization’s time to achieving gender parity using the Pipeline platform, providing measurable accountability.
- Key Metrics -- In addition to showing decisions across hiring, pay, performance, potential and promotion, additional key metrics include a real-time view of an organization’s pay gap, span of control, line vs. staff gender dynamics, and glass ceiling gender data.
Additionally, the fully upgraded, data-driven v.3 Pipeline solution offers real-time Pipeline Recommendations™ to stop workplace biases before they start.
Q: How will partnering with SendGrid help advance your mission?
A: Partnering with SendGrid is especially impactful within the tech sector, an industry known for low gender equity rates, large gender pay gaps and slow internal promotions. With the right application of data and resources, and commitments by companies like SendGrid, we can change the current trajectory of fair and equitable workplaces.
Q: What are the biggest obstacles to achieving gender equity in the workplace?
A: Over 3,800 companies have signed public pledges commiting gender equity. While 78 percent of CEOs place gender equality in their top 10 business priorities; only 22 percent of employees see gender diversity is regularly measured and shared within their workplace (McKinsey, 2016). The truth is, operationalizing gender equity is complicated. Many companies don’t know where to start.
While few debate whether gender equity is an issue, most agree it’s an opportunity. Employees need to better understand their worth and continue to find ways to fulfill their roles, and organizations need to get smarter about the benefits of investing in their people in new, meaningful, and consistent ways. Pipeline drives this goal.
Q; What do you see as the most significant economic advantages of workplace gender equity?
A: Closing the equity gap in Colorado will add $40 billion to our state’s GDP. Closing the gender pay gap accounts for almost one quarter of that additional GDP, if Colorado women earned the same as comparable men, the poverty rate for all working women would be cut in half.
