Lyft
- After 11 years at Lyft, Kristen Sverchek stepped into the president's role earlier this year.
- In the latest Equity Talk, she frequently asks herself: "If I were a man, how would I handle this?"
- She has Slacked senior women leaders "The Man" by Taylor Swift as a reminder of "you got this."
Lyft's Kristen Sverchek has been with the ride-hailing company for 11 years this month, and she's seen the company built from the ground up. She was its first general counsel, helped take the company public, and was named president this July.
"It's been so fulfilling for me getting to flex different muscles,'" Sverchek told Business Insider. "David [Risher, the new CEO], has taken a more customer-obsessed lens to the business, and that's been really fun to be able to be on that journey with him," she said.
Of course, working in male-dominated fields of tech and law isn't easy, and particularly in her early days as a lawyer.
"I was often the only woman in the room and it could be hard to find my voice as a young woman," she said.
"It took a lot of grit and resilience and and it took me challenging myself to speak up even when I didn't feel comfortable. There's a there's a sort of thing that my husband and I say to each other, which is 'If I were a man, how would I handle this?' And so sometimes it helps me to apply that rubric to a situation," Sverchek said.
But she's gotten more comfortable using her voice over the years, despite certain leadership muscles being "hard to develop."
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As you learn who the Lyft customer is, what do you want to change and make better for them?
I think one of the things — which sounds really simple, but that we needed to do more of — was just listen to what our customers were asking for. And so you know, one of the one of the results of that listening was the Women+ Connect matching platform that we launched just about two months ago. We were hearing both from riders and drivers who are women that gee, "I'd really love to be matched with another woman" and from our non-binary users that they'd like to be matched with another non binary person. That was one of the first initiatives that David really pushed us on when he started as CEO. It was something that we were proud to be able to fully create from scratch and launch within like a four to five month period.
In a male-dominated industry and sector, and maybe even company, how have you ensured your own career growth?
It hasn't been easy. And you know, that's true of tech, obviously, writ large, I think. Thankfully, at Lyft, we are in, I would say a good position of having nearly half of our director and above employees be women.
But certainly, particularly in the early days of my career as a corporate attorney, I was often the only woman in the room and it could be hard to find my voice as a young woman especially.
I would say it took a lot of grit and resilience and and it took me challenging myself to speak up even when I didn't feel comfortable.
Sometimes my best friend and I joke around about "acting like a white man."
I really say, "Have the courage of a mediocre white male."
Let's talk leadership lessons. Is there moment when you felt passed over, not listened to, and how did you overcome it?
It's really hard to define one moment but I will say sort of an overarching thing and part of what's kept me at Lyft is that knowledge and understanding that the grass isn't necessarily greener elsewhere.
Especially in the early days as general counsel, you know, this is a new and disruptive industry — we created the category of ride-sharing and so a lot of the legal advice that I was giving at the time was really me using my best common sense judgment. But there wasn't a lot of historical precedent for what I was advising on.
So there were times where I'd have to take really a leap of faith: Is this the right judgment call with being questioned from all angles about whether we were doing the right thing? And really just having the courage and grit to stick by my guns when I knew that something was right. And now that we've seen many, many years pass in the industry, validating that many decisions over the years were, in fact, the right ones. So it was for me less of a moment and more of slow and steady over the years learning to trust my instinct.
What is the biggest challenge that you're seeing as a female leader?
Lyft had a very tough few years. With COVID, folks stopped riding and we've had a leadership transition. And so right now, really, a lot of what I think about is getting us back to our bearings, getting us back to our roots. We've had to make a lot of tough decisions over the last few years and now we're in a moment of stability, and we've got to preserve that moment of stability. That's a lot of what I think about, certainly with respect to being a woman in leadership, particularly it's making sure that the bench of women leaders goes deep down into the organization. So that if other women leave, we are not all of a sudden upside-down in terms of having a great slate of diversity at the company to lead it.
Do you have a mantra you tell yourself before going into a difficult meeting or situation?
It's less of a mantra and more of a song. It is "The Man" by Taylor Swift. If you have listened to it, you will know it will pump you right up and about once a year, I'll Slack it to some of our senior leaders, women leaders at Lyft, as '"hey you guys got this." For me, if I really need to be psyched up, I'm going to listen to that song.
How are you setting examples for young leaders and workers?
There are probably two things I would say. One is that I try to help people wherever I can. So if somebody reaches out to me and they want an introduction or somebody reaches out to me and they want a piece of advice, I always try to make time and space for that person, even if I don't know how I'm going to be able to help them. I make time and I do what I can. I think of all of the people through the years who made time for me for a coffee, for a phone call, etc. And that's something that I feel is really important to pay forward.
As an example, just last week, hosted probably about 20 women, law students from Berkeley Law, which is where I went to undergrad who did a Q&A with me, as well as our General Counsel Lindsay Llewellyn, who is also a woman. And so really just helping them to see representation of women and leadership at a tech company.
The other thing I was going to mention, which is kind of going back several years now, is when I started at Lyft we were such a small company and such a young company that we hadn't had any women take maternity leave. So I was the first one to create the policy and to go out on leave. This was way back in January of 2015. And the biggest thing that I did in that moment, which was with a helpful push from one of our board members, was take the entire maternity leave and thereby set the example that it was not just acceptable — but encouraged — for other women, and men by the way to do this. Because our policy is equal for moms and dads and adoptive parents. That was something that was important to me when I had that first child and 2015 but then as I had my second third kids through the years as well.
It was really hard for me honestly at that time to imagine not being at work. Our policy is about four-and-a-half months long. And I'm just one of these people who's worked since I was 16. And so I actually couldn't really imagine not working for that long of a period of time. But I absolutely needed the time. Being a parent to a newborn is no small task.
What is the most common topic of conversation you find yourself pulled into in the hallways at Lyft?
(Sverchek goes into the office three days a week.)
I actually don't know how to answer what the most common topic is because I've been there so long. There are folks that I run into who I worked with on a project years ago, but maybe haven't seen since. So sometimes it's catching up work-wise, sometimes it's catching up socially. Sometimes it's about a new product idea. Sometimes it's about somebody wanting to pull me into a meeting. Recently, we had about 20 drivers at the office to do a driver roundtable with executives. I had first learned about that roundtable a week or two before by running into somebody who said, "Hey, we're having drivers the office, like can you block this time on your calendar?" They're just all these little fortuitous moments.
What is the number 1 request from customers? From drivers?
The Women+ Connect was a major one that we had gotten so many times through the years.
One of the things that bubbled up last week as a fairly consistent theme was customer service, that it's difficult to get through and it's difficult to get problems answered. And this was tough to hear, but in some ways heartening, because like I said, with our new customer obsessed orientation, it's actually something that we've already been really, really actively working on. And so that feedback was validating that we are on the right track to fixing some of the things that users need the most.