Goodway Group Provides Innovative Gender Model for Industry
Amidst talk of the gender pay gap raging through America comes another sobering statistic. The high-tech industry is a virtual Boys’ Club, with approximately 70 percent of the workforce made up of men. However, Goodway Group is bucking this trend. Our programmatic advertising firm is blazing a new trail in the tech industry, not just with our innovative technology advances but also in the establishment of a corporate culture of gender advancement. We manage digital ad campaigns and programmatic media buying on behalf of Fortune 500 companies such as GM and McDonald’s. Our third-generation, 87-year-old company was strictly a marketing print shop for 77 of those years. But in 2006, leadership transitioned our company’s previous successes and experience into an all-digital operation. With it came a remarkable exercise in how we would redefine our business. From the outset of the transition, we made a vow to hire only the best of the best that the industry had to offer in order to ensure success moving forward. In implementing this strategy, we made the choice to hire top talent regardless of where these future employees resided. Many of the best and brightest, as it turns out, were female. Fast-forward 10 years, and we now have 290 full-time employees, 284 of whom work from home—a 98 percent remote workforce. Our unique makeup and corporate culture dictate our every move. When it comes to gender, we have brought an extremely progressive approach to the hiring process. While it’s no secret that the high-tech industry is dominated by males, our virtual workforce allows us to make a concerted effort in increasing the numbers of women in the tech workforce. According to CNET, women make up just 29 percent of the tech workforce. But here at Goodway, females make up over 70 percent of our total operation. Furthermore, women comprise 50 percent of the VP-level leadership, with 20 percent holding executive leadership roles. “In the past 10 years, we’ve undertaken major steps to reinvent ourselves into one of the top programmatic advertising firms in the U.S.,” said Jay Friedman, COO of Goodway Group. “The tenets of our corporate culture have not only dictated success but innovation and inclusion levels we hope will become the new norm in the high-tech industry.” We enjoy an unprecedented 86 percent client retention rate, much of which can be attributed to our high employee retention, due in part to the virtual workforce model: clients value account management continuity. Our employees live by our unique and established culture and are the driving force behind its success. In the world of digital ad campaigns, we have never subscribed to the “set it and forget it” philosophy. Rather, each campaign is managed by a real human, consistently monitoring behind the scenes to manage optimal results.