SOUTHFIELD – Diva Tech Talk was happy to interview Jenny Coupe, Senior Director, Americas Marketing at Akamai Technologies. She began life as an “Army brat,” which meant that she moved 22 times in 18 years, forcing her to quickly adapt to new people, new circumstances and new venues. Constantly “exposed to different cultures, where gender was not a big deal,” Jenny’s father, an Army judge, encouraged her to “be who I wanted to be, irrespective of gender.” In 5th grade, as an example, after Jenny had qualified to be part of her school’s baseball team, but denied team membership because she was female, her father said “Well, that’s not acceptable!” He intervened to ensure that Jenny joyfully played on that team as the singular girl, which made Jenny the first girl in the state of Virginia to play on a grade school baseball team. To Jenny, “this sort of shaped me, in terms of how I approached the rest of my life.”
To listen, click on http://www.divatechtalk.com/blog/ep47
