In Convo with Amber Mac

Amber Mac is a tech and innovation expert, author and Co-Host of The Feed on SiriusXM. She’s a business host for Fast Company, CNN, Bloomberg, CBS, BNN, CBC, Global News and CTV. Amber joins us at IBAOcon this year to share her passion for digital innovation in all forms and offer insight on how to stay ahead of the curve. 

Q: How would you describe your career?  

A: After a few years as a journalist, I recognized I had entrepreneurial spirit, and sometimes that doesn’t fit in a newsroom. I decided to start a company with a small team we still have in place today. We take what I learned as a journalist—telling stories and demystifying difficult things—and share them so everyone understands. For the most part this centers around emerging tech.  

Q: What’s your experience as a female in the tech space?  

A: When I started, there weren’t many women leading tech companies. It was a very male dominated field. I’d like to tell you it’s changed substantially… I’d say it’s changed incrementally.

I’d go a step further to say that having more women leading tech companies would likely produce better tech companies. In fact, we may avoid some of the problems we’re seeing today, where women don’t necessarily have the best experience, for example on social media. The progress we’ve seen with women in tech assuming leadership roles is one thing, but there’s a huge gap in the technology we use on a daily basis that’s not necessarily as good for everybody as it could be.  

Q: How can we achieve more female influence?  

A: The good news is, we’re actively inspiring a new generation of girls to pursue roles in the tech space. In schools, we’re seeing more and more girls interested in technology. But it requires redefining what tech is. It doesn’t have to be just coding or robotics, it can be much broader. It’s really important to inspire that next generation of girls to pursue what lives in the tech space but maybe isn’t traditionally what people think about as technology. 

Let’s say a young girl is interested in tech but the only option at her school is the robotics team. That may not be a place she feels comfortable. Instead of a robotics team, maybe her school has a maker space. It’s an opportunity to hone her skills doing things she loves to do—everything from designing and software to creating in a different way.   

Q: Do you have career advice for a younger Amber, when you were just starting out?  

A: I shouldn’t have believed the people who wanted to put me in a box. It’s true of many people, but I think especially for women, oftentimes we’re told that we’re something very narrow. I saw it early on in my career—people told me I was the gadget girl. You’re the girl who tells us about gadgets. God forbid you talk about business or politics, we don’t want to hear your voice on those topics. And yet we live in a time where technology branches into everything we do. I’m very comfortable sharing my voice on a number of topics now. When I was younger, I was hesitant to break out of that box. But for a lot of young women, there are so many bigger opportunities when you break out. It’s not necessarily breaking the glass ceiling, it’s breaking down the walls of that tiny box people put you in. 

Q: Do you think that’s shifted in the last decade—limiting young professionals, specifically young females? 

A: Before the pandemic, there was fantastic momentum encouraging women early on in their careers to pursue opportunities in every industry, in all roles. Unfortunately the pandemic put a dent in that. What happened for a lot of women, all of a sudden their kids were at home, they had to take on the invisible work in their homes, and then try to balance their career. It was daunting. Now that things are back to a new normal, we can pick up some of that momentum again. 

Q: What’s the hardest professional lesson you’ve had to learn? 

A: There are rewards for people who have patience. You really have to learn throughout your career, especially early on when you want everything at once, that it takes time to gain that respect to do the things you want and achieve the goals you’ve set out. Patience and consistency are very valuable in terms of understanding what you want to achieve. Everything takes time. One of the reasons some people don’t reach their goals is because they don’t have the patience. They tend to leave the game before the game is over. 

Q: I’m still learning this professional lesson. 

A: I get it. 

Q: You probably hate this question. But with everything you have going on, how do you balance work and life, and what advice do you have for people who might be struggling? 

A: I have no problem being asked about work-life balance. Even though the question’s most often asked of women, that’s because we’re amazing and get so much done. It’s a compliment, like how the heck do you manage everything. And it’s an opportunity to talk about the fact many people achieve some kind of balance because they have help. When I say I have help, I don’t mean I have an army of people in my home. But I did recognize early on that I needed to find people who were good at things I lacked. Where I think work-life balance falls apart is when you try to do everything yourself. You feel isolated and overwhelmed. I haven’t felt like that in years because I’ve surrounded myself with a phenomenal team of people—family members and people who work in my company—who support me and help me achieve my goals, and I support them.  

Q: That’s good advice. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? 

A: I’m originally from PEI and grew up reading Anne of Green Gables like many young Canadian girls. There’s a quote, Tomorrow’s a new day, with no mistakes. I love that quote, especially in today’s fast world where we feel behind all the time. Within that quote I feel hope. We can pick up the pieces at any point and always start fresh the next day. It’s a good lesson in understanding not every day is perfect, and your next day is kind of a blank slate. It’s never too late to switch paths or do things differently.  

Q: Any tips for females and underrepresented demographics to better negotiate? 

A: Eighty percent of disappointment in life is a lack of asking, and lack of clarity. Set expectations for the things you want. If you’re leaving a meeting or conversation and it’s unclear, follow up and get what you need to move forward. We let things become more complicated when we wait. We need to do a better job asking for the clarity we deserve, from salary negotiations to company milestones, whatever it might be. Clarity can ease a lot of the stress and anxiety we’re feeling in negotiations and beyond. 

Q: How can we motivate more women to pursue leadership positions?  

A: We need women to find their voice. I know that sounds like an abstract thing. But something we find with a lot of women considering leadership positions is that it can feel front and center, with too much pressure and focus on them. We’re told as young girls to be nice and make a point of fitting in. Whatever the environment, don’t be the one who stands out. When you’re told your whole life you should try not to stand out, you don’t learn to find your voice, and it becomes more challenging to take on leadership roles. One of the best things we can do to help women is work on communication. Not because women aren’t good communicators—we’re great communicators. But we’re not often public, right? We’re good with each other on a smaller scale, but need to practice having bigger voices in larger scale. I like to remind women that nobody gets to define your future but you.