3 Kelly Schmitt

I spent my early career in corporate finance and the oil and gas industry. Coming up, I was typically the only woman in the room at almost every meeting and encounter. Then, in 2007, I joined Smart Technologies, a learning-tools company, as treasurer. It had a 10-person executive team and five were women, including the CEO and the CFO, which is one of the reasons I felt compelled to make the move from the energy sector to tech.

After helping take Smart public in 2010, I became the CFO at Solium Capital, now Shareworks by Morgan Stanley. Eight years later, I was approached by Benevity’s founder and CEO, Bryan de Lottinville, when the company was looking to uplevel its CFO.

Soon after, Bryan told me he was looking for his successor. My first reaction was, “Don’t look here, man. That is not me.” I never wanted to be the person in front of clients doing sales. I loved being the number two.

I was holding myself back. I think men typically look at job qualifications, and if they meet two of the 10, they’ll be like, “I’m good to go.” And I think women tend to find a lot of reasons why they’re not qualified. Meanwhile, Smart Technologies and Solium Capital had both hit unicorn status while I was there.

Neither of the CEOs we hired externally for Benevity lasted long. Meanwhile, I had learned a lot more about the role—that the CEO job is about people and culture. And I cared so much about Benevity’s mission and the people who work there. So that’s what ultimately made me decide to take the plunge—I thought, “I could do this, and do it better.”

I actually think my career claim to fame, though, is that I birthed both of my kids as a CFO and took eight months of maternity leave with each of them. The world didn’t end, and the companies didn’t go out of business.

I think the biggest thing that’s holding women back from leadership roles is that it’s still the woman who bears the majority of the responsibility for raising children. I look at companies that have mandated that people come back to the office five days a week, and it hurts the careers of people who are the primary caregivers, which is still most often women. At Benevity, we’re flexible in the way we work and provide a progressive parentalleave program for both parents. Recently, I’ve also been reading about the impact menopause has on women in the workplace. It’s a huge thing; you can’t sleep and you’re having all these issues, and it’s something we never talk about at work.

We also need more sponsorship—not just mentorship—for women. That means kicking down doors and actively advocating for women’s careers throughout the company. We have to do the hard work to develop people, promote them and support them so they succeed.

In my time as CEO, I’ve promoted three women to the C-suite from within the company. The average representation of women at a tech company is 28 per cent, but at Benevity it’s 55 per cent, and two-thirds of our executive team are women.

We need to have these types of conversations— and I’ve been using my platform to try to make sure we have them.