Not Made for You: Leading in Male Dominated Industries-with Kae Kronthaler-Williams-162

Tech CMO and author Kae Kronthaler-Williams joins Anya to discuss what it takes to build equitable, high-performing teams in industries like tech and homebuilding—where women have often had to carve their own paths. Drawing from decades of leadership experience, Kae shares how to challenge assumptions, design strategies that fit your market, and create environments where everyone can thrive.

She and Anya explore how bias shows up in everyday business decisions, why diverse teams outperform uniform ones, and how to balance data-driven insights with human understanding. Kae also talks about the role of AI in empowering marketers to focus on strategy and creativity, rather than repetitive tasks.

Whether you’re leading a team, navigating a career in a male-dominated field, or looking to build a more inclusive culture, this episode delivers practical insights you can apply right away.

📘 Kae’s book: Not Made for You: How Women in Tech Can Challenge Bias, Claim Their Space, and Thrive in a System Built for Men
🌐 Learn more & follow Kae: kaewilliams.com

Transcript

Anya Chrisanthon 0:00

Hello and welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Anewgo of New Home sales. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and joining me today is a tech CMO and an author Kae Kronthaler- Williams. So welcome to the show, Kae. I'm so very excited to have you on today's podcast.

0:21

Hi, Anya. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Anya Chrisanthon 0:27

Kay. First before we jump into things my audience is always curious about who our guests are. Your career journey certainly spans from telemarketer to tech executive. So can you share a p pivotal moment that shaped how you lead and how you think about innovation today?

0:47

Sure. There was a time where I was working in a global company running the us as a general manager. And we had a product that wasn't doing well in sales, but it was doing well in other countries. And so I tried to figure out why that was and work with my team. And what I realized, what we realized was that. I just simply followed the global playbook without thinking through and having some curiosity, asking the right questions to really understand our market and to allow us to think about other strategies that may work better for us and within the United States. And once we did that as a team, we increased sales by a hundred percent in three months. Wow. And so what that taught me about innovation is around, it's about curiosity. Asking the right questions, questioning some assumptions, and not always going with the status quo. And having my, the team that was working with me, all of us discussing it. So that's, and we'll talk a lot about the diversity of thought.

Anya Chrisanthon 2:00

So speaking of a diversity of thought, your book not made for you. What was was there a specific experience or kind of a turning point for you that made you realize this message really needed to be shared?

2:15

So it, I don't think it was one. Moment that transpired, although in the book I talk about, I will, in, in the beginning of the book, I do talk about a situation that happened that made me say, okay, now I'm doing it. But I've wanted to talk about this for many years because I started to see a pattern. I've been doing this for over 30 years, and I started to see these patterns continuing to happen that were biases against women. And I started to recognize that this system wasn't built for us. We are yet, we're still trying to fit in. And I started to experiment with different strategies to to be able to come as my authentic self to work and still flourish in that industry. 'cause I love the tech industry and when I started practicing that and then I, I mentor some women as well, and men, but I mentor a lot of women and seeing them light up in this relief when they came to me with a situation that they were dealing with. Discrimination or bias, or sometimes somebody speaking over them, whatever it is. Them feeling this relief of, oh, there is a way to handle this in a professional manner and I can still stay in the industry that I love. So that's really all of those things compelled me to write this book and get this conversation going with more women and men allies in this, in male dominated industries.

Anya Chrisanthon 3:39

Yes, certainly. I think you or point about this world not being made or biased against women, that applies across the board, right? Anything from medicine to seat belts, like it's, that's right. This world is built around men. Yeah. So in your book, when you talk about bias and systems, not just individuals that can limit innovation. So how does that show up in marketing or tech driven industries like home building, for example?

4:10

Yes, it is. It is in individuals. Some individuals we can have bias. But it is a system really, and it's a system that we all work in, including the men. They have to fit into that system as well. But where the bias shows up is in the hiring practices promotions, what good talent looks and our definition of a leader. That's where you start to see the system having this bias, right? It's not just an individual.

Anya Chrisanthon 4:41

Yeah. So speaking of definition of a good leader it's interesting because I think the more we study or not even study women, but even eq right? The more we realize that women actually have an incredible strength. When it comes to leadership positions maybe it is like a nurture versus na I don't know exactly where that comes from, but as leaders at home like we're leading our families, our children, and so I think that leadership oftentimes translates much better into corporate leadership positions where there is such a double standard when. Against women almost. Like the notion is that I actually got into a huge argument with my girlfriends recently about politics, right? Like the the idea of a female president even, right? And so many women say to me, I would never vote for a woman president. Are you kidding me? And it just baffles me that I've heard it. It like to I, and then I look at our text messages with the same group of women and they complain about their husbands and their inability to do simple things around the house and it's almost like a becomes another child for them. And I'm like. What are you thinking, ladies? Like from your own day-to-day life don't you think you make better leaders? So it's such a interesting bias, even not just from male perspective that it comes, but from many females.

6:13

Yeah I think you're right. And it is a bias. It's a bias about, as we said, the definition of a leader.

Anya Chrisanthon 6:20

Yeah,

6:20

so what's and definition of and what soft skills they look at as a negative, where soft skills are actually quite positive in business to help build, high performance teams. I think women are great at that, right? Because we do have empathy and not that men don't, of course men do. And but we are great at empathy and allowing for space. For people to collaborate. And when you start to do that and build teams, that's where the innovation comes in. And I think we're great at taking data and looking at the, it's not just the looking at the data, but the why of the data. And we can think through, what that looks like. What are the insights and why are, why is that data stating that and what can we do to help, with innovation, using that data so it's not just a strict data that we look at. I think women are great at taking that apart and really evaluating the why behind that and applying it and matching it to the customer's needs.

Anya Chrisanthon 7:27

Yes. So you talked a little bit about when you're hiring people or looking at what's the definition of a good talent? Can you give us some. Specific examples for leaders maybe who want more of that creativity and soft skills and, better problem solving on their teams. Where do they start? What changes can we make when we start hiring or where we're looking, maybe even definitions of those roles.

7:53

The first thing is the awareness that talent can come from many different profiles. It's not the standard profile. And what we see a lot in tech is there's more male leaders. And we tend, as human beings, men and women, we hire people who are like us. We have friends who are like us, right? And it's recognizing that we have that bias and looking for talent. In other places than your college buddies or your friends, sun and really and not this linear career path, right? Some people don't have a linear career path, and they're punished for that really, when it comes to getting into a job. But you have to be more open to how somebody's experience, whether it's not exactly the fit that you have, but understanding that, they have great skills that you could bring into the organization and allows for greater innovation and that diversity of thinking, right? And if people adopt the idea that you come to a better conclusion when you have a diverse team, and it doesn't just mean by skin color, it means. Culture and economic status and education levels and training, like the diversity of all of that. If you have a very diverse team, they're thinking through these decisions in a very different path than each other, and that's what matters. 'cause what we find is that if everybody thinks the same way, they don't challenge that, they don't challenge the statement or the problem in front of us. They go, okay, we all have that same answer where if people are from diverse backgrounds, they may challenge that problem that you're trying to solve or the answer to the problem that you're trying to solve.

Anya Chrisanthon 9:42

Yeah, a hundred percent. I forget what essay I recently read. I wish I would remember the details, but I thought it was so interesting this lady was talking, she was a recruiter for. Technology companies. And she said that they kept hiring these developers, programmers from this specific university. Like one of the Ivy League schools where she had a connection to some of the international students specifically coming from some of the African countries actually, what they brought to the table was when they learned to program, they had to worry about power outages. While they were doing that. That's a great example. Now now they went off and started their own companies, right? Because nobody would hire them, but the products that they ended up building were so much more superior. And the thinking of those people was so different because of the types of obstacles they had to overcome in order to get to that same yes, same endpoint. So yeah, that it's often overlooked or I guess we don't. We don't even think about what that other perspective could look like. It's very difficult to think about it because unless you walked a mile in somebody else's shoes, like it's Yes. Hard to even to think about something like that.

11:01

Yeah. I think that's a, that's actually a great example of taking people's different experiences and how they approach a problem. And if everybody comes from the same school, same background, they're gonna approach their problem the same way. But if you have another company right next to that company who has a diverse group of people, there's more innovation that's happening, right? And that's how companies do well. And how they win is through greater innovation.

Anya Chrisanthon 11:28

Yes. So in home building world, we tend to lag a little bit, but like all the other industries, I feel like we're finally in this increasingly data-driven automation. And of course, ai, you can, you can't go anywhere without talking ai. So what's your advice for leaders who want to keep technology empowering but not dehumanizing for their teams? I think especially in a process like. Home building. When a lot of the technology becomes client facing.

12:00

Yeah. I think there's so much conversation about how AI is gonna replace roles. I think the conversations that I've had with my, with the marketing organizations that I've worked in is how it can help us with some of the. More audit automated tasks that we don't wanna focus on. So for, for marketing, I want the teams to really understand the customer being out, talking to the customer, understanding the channels and how to market in those channels and the right messaging. But as far as writing an email. Or automating, campaigns going out. Yes. If we can have technology help us do that so that we can focus on strategy, I'm all for that. And that's the conversations that I have with the team. So they're not afraid to use the technology thinking that it's gonna replace 'em. No, you're augmenting what you're doing and it's allowing you to focus on the areas that really drive business outcomes versus some of the more. Menial or lower level tasks that we can have automation handle for us in ai.

Anya Chrisanthon 13:12

Yeah. So with all that, how do you really balance that analytical side of marketing, which I'm so happy about, because again, in the past I feel like marketing was almost like, like throwing spaghetti at the wall in a sense, right? It, it was very like, feel as opposed to analytics. And now we finally have. Technology that can actually show us what's happening. And we're getting very close to like attribution marketing, right? Yeah. That we can actually say this caused this. So how do we kind of balance that analytical side of marketing now with the human side of leadership? Especially as you talked about, maybe some of the women are better position for that role.

13:56

In data-driven companies, what we have to recognize is that the data tells you what's has happened. But the humans are gonna tell you why it's happened. And from a marketing perspective, it's important for us to speak to customers all the time. Because data isn't gonna give you that nuance of their concern or their problem or their behavior what's driving them to buy your product. And because we all have very individual agendas, and when you start to talk to customers, if you're talking to, project manager in a company, their reason for wanting your product is very different than the CFO's reason for wanting the product. And you get that through having communication and speaking with those customers. The data isn't really gonna tell you that. It will tell you certain things, but it's not gonna give you the nuances that will help you as a marketer. To truly create the right messaging and value, and for product teams to build the right products based on a customer's pain or their agenda, right? What they're trying to accomplish in their role, what their fears are, what their goals are, you know what's stressing them out. A human has to help you figure that part out, right?

Anya Chrisanthon 15:16

Yeah, and I think sometimes even when we look at data, we can very easily jump to bad conclusions on data, right? Like when you talk about that, why sometimes it's not so obvious. It, it may be it's like the, that, the Tylenol with autism thing, right? Like it's, yes. Just because there's correlation doesn't necessarily that's causation, right? So right. Yeah, and you, we can make data. We know this,

15:42

right? You can make data an answer your question, right? Data has bias, right? And we can manipulate data to get the answer that we want. It may not be the real answer, but we can manipulate data, right? And that's why you need, I really think for me and for the marketing teams that I work with, it's getting in front of those customers and you're gonna hear some nugget of information that gives you the aha moment of that's why that's their true pain or that's the goal they're trying to accomplish and here's how our solution can help them. Data's not gonna tell you that.

Anya Chrisanthon 16:19

So do you think, I imagine so for some of the blind spots that you can have within those organizations that really say, oh, we're datadriven, we're data driven, but they're not talking to their customers. That could be one of the solutions is really, you gotta it, it is great to have data, but you do need to listen to what your customers are saying.

16:39

Yes. I absolutely, I think that is a blind spot. And the other blind spot, as I said, is you can manipulate data yes. To be what you want it to be and now you're in this. We eat our own dog food, as we say, right? And so you have to be careful about living in that bubble of what you think, without really going and speaking to the people that you're trying to market to. And data sometimes can cause you to do that. Like I only need the data. I don't need to go and talk to customers. Yes.

Anya Chrisanthon 17:10

And hopefully we do have a lot more opportunities to do that at a bigger scale now with AI that you can talk to more customers, right? You can take the time and actually see what are they saying and be before it all gets down to the numbers, essentially. Yes. Coming from the horse's mouth. So home building's obviously very male dominated industry, and you talked about. And you, you've been in a male dominated field for pretty much your whole career. How do you what do you think women can in, in roles like marketing for example, or sales or especially in home building for us, how can they claim their space without feeling like they have to like fit in? Because again, like you said it's build maybe for the nails, right? But here we are, right? How do we make our mark and how do we make it work?

18:04

I think you show up as your authentic self and it took me a long time to realize that I was trying to fit in. I was trying to. Manage people, like men, manage people. I was trying to communicate like I think men communicate. But that wasn't really who I am. And I started, when I started to come in and feel confident in my ability to lead the way I lead and be my authentic self. I think I did much better. And then the other part of that, I think to create that space for you is to address the bias. It, you can always do it professionally, but part of the book is exploring through other, through my stories and experiences and other women so they can see how readers can see how the bias shows up. 'cause it can be quite subtle. So how that shows up and then how to address it and I in, in a professional and calm manner. So I think we have, in order to create the space for us, we have to address, we have to name it and address it. In order to create this successful space for us, right? Not just a safe space, but a, as a place for us to thrive. And so that's a big piece of it is pausing, naming it, and then acting, which is addressing it.

Anya Chrisanthon 19:24

It's so interesting that you spent your career thinking about something like this, because most people. At least from my experience, right? Like most women is just it is what it is. That's just, it's the man's world, right? Like we, we always hear the same. Like it's just, it is what it is. And now as as we're building AI and all those biases are being built into that it's, it is definitely something that we need to stop and pause and think what are we building here? And. How's that gonna affect the technology and the outcomes from the from the technology based on the biases that we're putting in. So yeah, calling it out, like when you see it is I think step one and I'd be curious if there's like a exercise almost or any examples in your book that you'd recommend that I would imagine most men. Have never thought about it. Because they've just they, again, unless you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, you can't even imagine that this is happening. It's right. Yeah. I think,

20:28

I think the first step is awareness. As we say, in most problems, it's the awareness of the problem and I think men need to recognize that. Our experience as women going to work is very different than theirs. And taking an audit of that, looking in a room and recognizing when, who's being spoken over who's being acknowledged and getting credit for ideas, whether it's theirs or not who's getting promoted. So really doing an audit of the rooms and the culture. Is the first phase of that really to have that understanding of what's happening. And then I think men also, it's being allies in those rooms even when women are not in the room, right? Because bias happens when we're not around as well. And there's a part of my book where I spoke with a couple of men and the things they said about things they stated about what's being said in these rooms. We're horrifying. So we need more men to not only when we're in the room stick up for us. Because if you think about it, when men, there's more men in leadership, they do have more power, they have instant credibility. So if a man speaks up and says That's not okay. It pulls, it's, it carries more weight, really. And that helps to shape now the culture of what's acceptable and what isn't acceptable.

Anya Chrisanthon 21:55

Yeah, you're so right. It's so important. It's almost you Yeah. If you can't have that male who's on your side and who is hope maybe like higher ranking officer or somebody like that who can bring it in. But yeah it's sad that we still. Need that in order to make this issue an important issue. It almost, it has to come from a man's perspective.

22:21

Yeah. And I think that shouldn't stop us from open addressing it. 'cause it definitely doesn't stop me from it addressing it in a room. I will, if I'm spoken over or if somebody else is in the room, male or female, but certainly female, I will address it in the room very politely. But I do address it because people need to understand that it's not okay. And if we remain silent, then this is never gonna change. And as you said, we, I think we've done that for many years where we're like, oh, that's just how it is. It's never gonna change if we keep saying that.

Anya Chrisanthon 22:53

So what's one thing that you think is important or that every kind of executive needs to understand about building equitable, high performing teams, especially now that we're at this crazy age of, DEI cancellation? I, it's an, it is an interesting intersection that we're at. What? What do you think is one thing that you wish every executive could understand?

23:23

I think that, as I had said earlier, that talent doesn't just come in one profile. It doesn't look one way and start to expand your thinking around talent and leadership. What does a good leader look like? It isn't just one type of person.

Anya Chrisanthon 23:41

And then any encouraging words to any women maybe starting their career, whether it's in construction or any other male dominated fields. One thing with technology becoming so accessible now to people that you don't need to be programmer, right? To build an app or to build certain technologies. And so my hope is that more and more women. We'll start to embrace that. What's one, one piece of advice you would give to women maybe just starting out her career and coming up against those? The

24:13

first thing is probably the awareness that it is not, you're not stepping into a level playing field. It just isn't. And that was a shock for me, I think and the frequency of the bias. But I think the advice is that. There are strategies for you to maneuver and be successful in these environments. There's proven strategies that I've used that are also in the book that will allow you to be happy in your career and thrive in your career. And that having a strong support system internally and externally will benefit you throughout your whole career.

Anya Chrisanthon 24:51

For sure and definitely getting to that space. You said being authentically yourself. Like I remember early in my career, I worked in finance, and again, finance is of course also a very male dominated field, and I felt the need for the longest time to hide my femininity. If you guys listening to this, you know that I'm super girly when it comes to like fashion. I love fashion. Yeah. And I felt like that was one of the things that I hid about myself in a way that I was like, I thought I wouldn't be taken seriously if I also look fashionable and good. That they wouldn't be taking me seriously. And I think it, it's taken me some years. Maybe it just comes with experience to realize that Yeah. Obviously you have to know what you're talking about. You can be a dummy. And they will use every excuse to, to knock you down. And maybe that is one of those things. But if you do a good work and if you're, you know what you're talking about, at the end of the day you are who you are. So now I would've done things so much different. Yes, I moving over.

25:54

I'm glad you brought that up. I I was taught to how to dress when I first came into this profession and it was. More manly. And how to speak and how to behave. But what I recognized was if you are intelligent and you're staying up with your profession, so you're well informed on your profession, and you do a great job that matters more than anything else like that, you have to have. Men get that instantly, that instant credibility. We do not, but we have to be masters at our profession first, and then the rest really does not matter. It does 'cause there's bias, but it shouldn't matter how you show up in those rooms. Eventually you'll get that credibility. 'cause I have it. I know. I demand and command credibility in a room. No matter what I'm wearing. What my hair looks like. Whether I have makeup or not, or jewelry on or not, it's what I'm saying that eventually with the right people will matter. 'cause they care about, ultimately care about business outcomes and the impact that we're driving, to help grow the business. And that's what we need to become good at.

Anya Chrisanthon 27:11

And that's where that question of confidence, like obviously I have to be very confident to say I don't, I'm leading with this. But that maybe takes some life experience as well, some career experience, right? It's very difficult to come in feeling confident, knowing that oh, maybe I don't know it all. But as you start to feel like, okay, I know my stuff, I. I know what I'm talking about then yes, you do have that confidence to, to go out. You're right. Yeah.

27:38

And I think for you and I, that probably took us a while in our careers to feel that way, right? To have that confidence. What I'm hoping is that younger women don't have to wait till they're, whatever, 40, 50, whatever that age is. I want them to feel that confidence immediately. And some of that is. Through some of the strategies that I talk about. And if we can help coach women and they start to see progress because they did speak up. They did share an idea in a room and people value that idea. They'll gain confidence earlier in their careers and not have to go through what you and I went through throughout our careers. A

Anya Chrisanthon 28:17

hundred percent. And yeah, so I'll urge our male listeners to pick up a copy of this book. Obviously it's important that everybody reads this, but I feel like it's nice to have somebody on the other side who can validate you know what your, what women go through. Yeah. And. Be the advocate in a workforce. Kay. What's next for you? Any upcoming projects, speaking events, or anything that you can tell us? Where can our listeners connect with you? Anything else coming up for you?

28:50

Sure. So I will start to do I don't have anything finalized yet, but I will do some book signings in various cities. And so that will start to be on my website. You can go to my website. It's KAE williams.com. And in there it'll, we'll talk about when I have speaking opportunities, we'll talk about the book. And then there's also links to my social media, which I think was really important for especially for women to follow or we'll have tips in on how to thrive in these environments. So it'll have my LinkedIn Insta Instagram, and Substack links to social.

Anya Chrisanthon 29:29

Absolutely. I will link all that information in the show notes so you guys can find that very easily. And where can people pick up a copy of your book,

29:37

On Amazon? And again, if you go to my website, there'll be a link there as well.

Anya Chrisanthon 29:43

Amazing. Thank you so much for the work that you do. It is incredibly important to, to bring awareness to this. I wish more people did something like this that, that you have to step outside of your own comfort zone, realize that Hey, this is happening. I'm not crazy one, right? That's right. This is actually going on with other people are affected by this and let's talk about this. So yeah, I think. You're right. It often starts with conversation and if you can be that advocate in your company to drive the change and look at your hiring, look at the candidates you're talking to, because I know in my company we're very fortunate that we do have. A few very strong female leaders and we definitely challenge our CEO constantly. Every, every Monday we have our sales and marketing meeting with our CEO and we give him pushback and he's I guess I did hire strong female leaders. And yeah, the way we think about certain things is just completely different from any other point of view that you're going to get. Yes. I think it's just such an important topic, but it is something that in order for you to be long term, I think a thriving and strong company, you benefit from having various perspectives, you wouldn't think about certain situations or risks or how to develop your next product unless you have those various points of view. So thank you so much for being on today's show. I'm just excited that you're out there doing this work on our behalf. So thank you for that.

31:16

Thank you on, appreciate it was nice having this conversation with you.

Anya Chrisanthon 31:20

Likewise. I'll talk to you very soon then. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.