AWS Marketplace
OpenText’s Kristina Lengyel: Celebrating International Women’s Day and embracing equity
As we celebrate International Women’s Day in 2023, AWS Marketplace is honored to share perspectives from women technical leaders from our AWS and seller community.
This blog series profiles five trailblazing women as they share personal stories of how they overcame challenges in their careers and are leading the charge to #EmbraceEquity in their organizations. They also offer advice to women seeking to grow as leaders in the tech industry.
“Bring consciousness to the forefront, create a workplace where employees feel safe being passionate and emotional. Create a work environment that embraces compassion and respect, welcomes love in the workplace, and promotes kindness.”
–Kristina Lengyel
Kristina Lengyel is the Executive Vice President, Corporate Sales for OpenText and drives growth across business units and via strategic partnerships. She has more than 25 years of experience delivering superior products and solutions and building long-term strategic relationships with customers and partners. She is a member of the Board of Directors for Local Measure, an omnichannel agent desktop for contact centers. Kristina is a first-generation immigrant and considers herself a “successful runaway.” Kristina holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Northeastern University and a Bachelor’s Degree in computer engineering from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Q&A with Kristina Lengyel
AWS: Equity is about both the individual and about systemically ensuring that policies, practices, and systems provide all individuals access to the opportunities, resources, and recognition to be successful. As an individual woman in tech, what have you seen done to embrace equity on a company-wide level?
Kristina: Equity in the workplace refers to fair treatment for all. I love Dawn Bennett-Alexander’s practical diversity theory. Organizations that adopt practical diversity become successful, are envied, and are followed. Some of her teaching focuses on recognizing and dealing with our subconscious biases, how to stop being judgmental, and how to apply the golden rule of treating people the way we want to be treated.
Our surroundings shape us and create the unconscious biases we must openly talk about. We need to confront them, talk about them, and deal with them. For example, as a woman, attending engineering courses at the universities 30+ years ago was a rarity. The “geeks” dressed in black hoodies hiding in the dark behind green screens were the model or stereotype we all tried to emulate. It was not the “pretty girls in pink” dream for sure. But the world has evolved. We now have Girls Who Code, we have become more aware of women CEOs, and we are learning about black women scientists that history had obscured. Celebrate them, provide the platform where they can talk about their experience and their successes.
Bring consciousness to the forefront, create a workplace where employees feel safe being passionate and emotional. Create a work environment that embraces compassion and respect, welcomes love in the workplace, and promotes kindness. Hold people accountable for their actions of injustice, discrimination, intimidation, and bullying.
AWS: What practices do you use to embrace equity within your organization?
Kristina: Last year, OpenText set a bold agenda for 2030 with a framework we call The OpenText Zero-In initiative. It has three pillars. Zero Footprint promoting sustainability and environmental protections, Zero Barriers protecting equity and inclusion, and Zero Compromise holding ourselves accountable and being transparent. These became part of our fiduciary responsibilities the same as any financial commitments we make to our shareholders. This is a commitment to us. Zero Barriers aims to remove any unintentional, discriminatory design from our organization and adopts a new strategy for recruitment, retention, and inclusion.
Our commitments: (1) A majority ethnically diverse workforce by 2030, (2) 50/50 gender parity within key roles and 40% women in leadership positions at all management levels by 2030, and (3) focus on education and training opportunities in our communities. Under this program, we launched an intern program for indigenous and black students and engineering internships for women in India. We are also offering new benefits such as parental and adoption coverage, gender confirmation, and coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And we are very transparent about our progress to ensure we will meet our goals via our annual Corporate Citizen Report.
AWS: What does inclusion mean to you when it comes to your career?
Kristina: Early in my career, I naïvely mistook equity as acting the same as my coworkers. My first job was in a steel mill in Canada working on the shop floor, and I was anything but the same. I was a woman; I was young; I was management; and I was a foreigner with a very heavy accent. I was there to turn their world upside-down, bringing innovation via automation to everything they had been doing for decades.
I wanted to desperately to be accepted and to be treated the same, like one of the boys. I shaved my head. I started to dress like them. I started to speak like them, using offensive words and phrases. I started to smoke and drink like them, hoping to be like them, live like them, and be treated like them.
Until one day, these gentle, kind-but-rough men showed me the way. They were the ones who embraced inclusion right front of my eyes. They started to treat me as a member of their team, just doing my job within our work ecosystem. I had my purpose, and they had theirs, and together, we created the whole.
I didn’t have to be like them to be included or to be valued. They wanted me to be who I am–a woman, a foreigner, a youngster who has lot to learn. My unique self who delivers value for the greater good, who gets appropriate opportunities without being the same.
AWS: What advice would you offer to women who strive to grow as technical leaders? What advice do you have for other women who want to keep up their technical skills?
Kristina: I consider myself a perpetual student and fueled by the utmost curiosity every day. Surround yourself with professionals who feed your curiosity, who intellectually stimulate you, who will engage you in thought-provoking discussions. It is hard to balance work and family life, and women in particular try to excel in both.
We often experience inner guilt over wanting to serve our employer to the best of our abilities and to provide and care for our families to fulfil our purpose in the world. So here is my advice: be a little selfish. Spend the time on yourself. There are amazing groups, associations, networking opportunities, and continued education programs. Join them, or even form them.
I also seek stimulation by mentoring and motivating others. Use your curiosity and get involved with organizations such as Technovation, a global tech education group inspiring girls to be problem solvers leveraging technology. There are hundreds of programs you can get engaged with; stimulate yourself. Technology is changing at a pace few can keep up with, therefore unless you are willing to commit to a life of learning, this might not be for you.
AWS: What steps can others take to be better allies to women, what can we do to inspire these advocates?
Kristina: Celebrate their successes! Promote their accomplishments! Encourage them and share their stories! We all have our stories, and we all have our challenges in life. But we are also very resilient. Early in their careers, women are sometimes forced to make a life-altering decision: leave the workforce to have children and raise a family, or bypass that completely, to focus solely on a career.
In the past, women have had to try to fit into workplace cultures created primarily by men. Now we, woman leaders, must bring love and care into the workplace. We must support each other and our teams, help people around us mange workloads, check in on their well-being, and create a nurturing environment so we can retain a highly educated and intelligent talent pool.
AWS: Is there anything else you wish I had asked you about?
Kristina: Be different! Be a woman! Be unique and bring your unique perspective to the workforce to solve complex problems and shape our future. Hug yourself, tell yourself “I am good enough.” Actively embrace others within your sphere of influence and tell them “You are good enough.”
More from Kristina Lengyel
Women in Business Q&A: Kristina Lengyel, VP Global Professional Services, Kronos
International Women’s Day and #EmbraceEquity
International Women’s Day (March 8) celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for celebrating women’s achievements, raising awareness against gender bias, and accelerating gender equity.
The International Women’s Day theme for 2023 is #EmbraceEquity. This theme imagines a world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive, a world where difference is valued and celebrated. Collectively we can all #EmbraceEquity.
Amazon is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the company’s diverse perspectives come from many sources including gender, age, race, national origin, sexual orientation, culture, and education, as well as professional and life experiences.
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