Why I think Satya Nadella’s apology was genuine

Social media on Thursday exploded with posts and memes criticizing Satya’s gaffe. Yes, I believe it is a gaffe, an unintentional one he made without properly thinking through his answer.

When I first heard him say that not asking for a raise will bring “good karma” to women and that it is a super-power we women somehow have, I was appalled, just like rest of my fellow 8000 GHC 2014 attendees and rest of the world.

I had to stop myself and take a step back. My impression of Satya up until that point was totally different. Just a day before, I had joined about 30 women at a luncheon hosted by Microsoft. It was excellent, so was he and his 20 highly accomplished and happy executives (mostly female) who joined him. He talked about how excited he was to be at GHC with thousands of technical women from all over the world, including 100 from Microsoft. It was clear how passionate he is about technology and about building technology to empower people. He stressed on how productivity and innovation are the most important things and that it can only be achieved when work places are diverse with both men and women contributing. He talked about how Microsoft and other technology companies can build tools to make things like working-from-home more seamless and effective to create a work-life-harmony for all of us.

If you look at the complete interview with Maria Klawe (our hero!!), he was great until he got that one question wrong during the last few minutes. The audience was appreciating and applauding him until then.

I want to give him credit for showing up! He is the first male Tech CEO who attended this conference to support women in technology from all over the world. If he were an unfair person, he would not have had courage to get up on stage in front of thousands of women for an extempore with Maria! He made a mistake (we are humans, we all do) and he very quickly and honestly apologized for it. Not just that, he committed to come to the future Grace Hopper conferences as well. I want to believe that he is an ally; a powerful one who wants to do his bit in bringing gender equilibrium.

My fellow male and female feminists, we have fought hard and have come a long way, we have far to go, let’s support our allies and take them with us.

-Tanuja Korlepra