She Advocated For Women, Then Microsoft Pushed Her Off Its Board — With Maria Klawe

“Are you trying to fucking destroy the company?” That’s what Bill Gates told Microsoft board member Maria Klawe when she asked why Microsoft wouldn’t consider a single women out of 50 candidates it was evaluating to replace then-CEO Steve Ballmer. When Microsoft settled on Satya Nadella, he later joined Klawe at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing and told her that instead of asking for a raise, women should just have faith in the system to get it right. The incident caused an uproar, and Nadella apologized and promised to do better. One year later, Microsoft’s board pushed Klawe out, telling her it was looking for more “conventional” women in business. Klawe joins Big Technology Podcast to tell the full, shocking, uncut story. 

The BI story: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-director-maria-klawe-satya-nadella-raises-gaffe-karma-2021-5

Always Day One: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V65YKZT