Liz Pearce: Opening Doors for Women in Tech

Female mentors helped alumna Liz Pearce find success in the male-dominated tech startup space. Now, she's giving back.

August 14, 2018

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Credit: GeekWire


 

 

This article originally appeared on the GW Alumni News blog.

 

By Dan Simmons

As a kid growing up in Indiana, Liz Pearce, CCAS B.A. ’99, M.A. ’01, knew her future resided elsewhere

"I thought I was an East Coaster at heart,” she says with a laugh. She applied to four colleges, three of them in Washington, D.C., and settled on GW partly because of a generous aid package and partly because of the vibe.

“I really liked the campus, the urban environment. It was full of life and close to the action,” she says. Six years and two degrees later, she made another big move, this time all the way West to San Francisco. The former Hoosier-with-East-Coast-tendencies has stayed left ever since, settling in Seattle, raising a family, and rising fast in the traditionally male-dominated world of start-up tech firms.

Since April, she’s been chief revenue officer for Streem, a startup mobile platform company based in Portland that allows home service providers — plumbers, electricians and the like — to meet clients onscreen, utilizing augmented reality features to take measurements, point out problems and offer quotes for service. It’s estimated to improve efficiency and cut costs by 30 percent versus meeting in person.

“I was first and foremost looking for a great learning opportunity at a company developing an emerging technology,” she says in explaining why she took the job. “Augmented reality is one of those handful of tech opportunities that’s still not fully tapped. I really want to see that come to fruition.”

Previously, she worked at LiquidPlanner, a maker of predictive project management technology, for 11 years. She was elevated to chief operating officer in 2011 and ultimately named CEO in 2012, a job she held for five years. That job marked a decided shift from earlier jobs at big-name tech brands: starting with Sony PlayStation, then to Google, then to Amazon.

Pearce earned her B.A. from GW in political communication and her M.A. in telecommunications. She calls her work-study jobs in the communications department formative and inspiring.

Starting as a graphic designer her sophomore year, she worked for the department in various roles for five of her six years on campus. In graduate school, she was awarded a presidential administrative fellowship, which gave her an office on campus and a charge to redesign the content management system used by university communicators. The experiences provided her useful know-how in project management and technology troubleshooting, but also connected her with a diverse group of female mentors.

“I worked for some amazing women,” she says, “and I felt so connected to the work. I could not wait to go to work every day.”

Pearce, 41, has taken an active role in mentoring other women and opening doors in the tech sector. She is a founding steering committee member of the ADA Developers Academy, a year-long program for women transitioning into software development. She sits on the board of the Technology Alliance, a Washington State institution focused on technology education, research and entrepreneurship, as well as the University of Washington’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. Pearce has served as a Code Fellows and 9 Mile Labs mentor and a member of the City of Seattle’s Digital Equity Action Committee.

Less formal mentees are her children, ages 9 and 11. Despite living across the country, her daughter sees her future elsewhere, just as her mom did at her age.

“She wants to attend GW,” her mom says. “She already thinks it’s a foregone conclusion she’ll go there.”

Note: Since this post was written, Liz has become the co-founder and CEO of Fresh Chalk.