Virginia McDowell: The Gaming Industry Veteran

foreign gaming America speaking with Virginia McDowell the gaming industry veteran who sits on the board of both entain and Global gaming women thank you for speaking with us today Virginia good morning how are you Cameron I'm doing very well thank you so what are we talking about today right so my first question is actually um sort of about your own career just to start off with if you could just sort of run through you know what you've done in the gaming industry and how how you've arrived at these sorts of important positions uh after a year spent in gaming so I'm actually a reporter by trade my degree is in journalism I started working in the me at in the USA um in let's say the late 1970s it was about the time that gaming had been legalized in a state for the first time outside of Nevada legalized in New Jersey and so a lot of the news stories that I was working on actually had something to do with um uh gaming and I was just absolutely fascinated by it and when I had the opportunity to get into an entry level position in the gaming industry early in the gaming industry in Atlantic City I went to work for Bally's Park Place which was only the third casino to open after the referendum that legalized casinos and I loved it it was a great industry it was fast there was an opportunity to learn many things and if you worked hard and and you know you showed initiative there was also the the opportunity to get promoted and as a result I had the opportunity to run many departments in Atlantic City I was recruited as part of a team in 1997 to go to the Midwest this is when Riverboat gaming Regional gaming was you know starting to expand I went to the Midwest to work for Argosy gaming company which was a which was headquartered in Alton Illinois near St Louis and I worked at Argosy until it was acquired by Penn National game gaming in 2005 then went to work for Trump entertainment Resorts that was the only publicly traded piece of Trump's Empire I worked there until 2007 when I was recruited to become the president and Chief Operating Officer of Isle of Capri Casinos so I went to Isle of Capri in 2007 as the president and CEO and in 2011 I was promoted to Chief Executive Officer while I was at Isle I founded Global gaming women twice once as an initiative of the American gaming Association where I sat on the board and the second when I retired in 2016 I went to the AGA and said I think ggw would be better as a non-profit they agreed and so I spun it off a second time as a co-founder as a non-profit after I retired I was recruited to go on the board of GBC but which was headquartered in London which we now know as and team and that's where I am today cool that's quite a career um so I guess I have two lines of questions for you questioning for you one is about any role in Your Capacity as uh on the board of entain I understand you sort of head up there ESG environmental social governance correct program and then after that we talk about ggw um so first uh uh adamantine what can a company like entain in entain's position do to be more ESG compliant well I don't know if you're aware but we have for the last two years uh put on a pretty much a half day program called entain sustain our entire Focus as a company is on sustainability our CEO yet a Nygard Anderson um at the point that she was appointed to the position of CEO she put her stake in the ground and and said sustainability is going to literally um you know impact every single thing that we do as a company going forward so we put a sustainability Charter in in place and the sustainability Charter is very is is is is only four things but when you think about the impact that they have they're huge number one is that that we have an exclusive focus on regulated markets uh the second is that we are going to continue to take the lead on responsible gaming you know we already were doing that and and now what we're doing through our changing for the better program and through our Arc Advanced responsibility and Care Program we're leading the the industry across the world on this to pursue the highest standards of corporate governance and then to invest in our people and communities cool um how about sort of the gaming industry uh as a whole do you think it's lacking in ESG considerations do you think it could be more responsible in this area oh it's an interesting question Cameron because in the in the time period that I've been on the end team board and in uh 2023 it'll be five years um I I we went from corporate social responsibility which is what it used to be called um and and we evolved into ESG and I think it's interesting just if you look at that Evolution because CSR was just um in many cases just to check the box do the right thing um you know we're making sure for investors and for Regulators um that that we have pieces in place you know that make sure that that as a company we are we are doing the right thing ESG is entirely different ESG as we did it in team can be a complete change as it relates to sustainability and and I think one of the pieces of that obviously is environmental environmental was really never a part of CSR um back in the day one of the focuses is in our environmental and then diversity equity and inclusion is a huge piece of what we are doing and in team going forward that used to be kind of a part of CSR um but then the governance piece which is also huge and again if you go back to our sustainability chart our number one item on the on the charter is you know pursuing licenses in regulated markets so I think that we have the right focus on it um our ESG remit is huge um we have a tremendous group of professionals that are dedicated to this we have completely changed our organization in order to make sure that that we can adhere to and abide by the very strict ESG principles that we've set um does every company in the world do this no um do I believe that they should yes and and one of the reasons why is that we are continuing say an increase in SG investors and so when you look at you know who our shareholders are there are many of them that are making decisions investment decisions there are funds that are making investment decisions based on companies that actually understand the importance of ESG sure um is there an area under the ESG umbrella that you'd like to sort of grow or increase focus on in the coming year well um I was one of the speakers I was a keynote speaker at entain sustain and um saw our our agenda in advance obviously I did it remotely um but the we had a several panel discussions and and I will tell you that those panel discussions were um fantastic uh you know I obviously know what we're doing as far as ESG is concerned but you have professionals from all different um areas of the gaming industry you know kind of talk about what they are doing is fantastic and and one of the things that I was really impressed with uh is that our continuing focus on Dei uh you know we are I believe one of the only companies gaming companies of our size in the world that have a female CEO and so there is a focus within the organization to to you know to to make sure that Dei is at the core of what we do but when you look at the at the I will call it um creativity of the things that we're doing one of the things that we announced at in team sustained last week was a new partnership with McLaren racing and so we have we have been working for several years um to make sure that we are training women to enter the tech industry and we've had a partnership with girls who code for quite some time and that addresses you know the the women younger women uh that are in high school or in college who are who are looking to enter the tech industry and and need a path forward and that's great that's recruiting at that level but what we're seeing after the pandemic is that we have lost an entire generation of women in the workforce and I'm not it's not getting better I mean the problem is is that we're still dealing with the effects of a global pandemic right now and there are women who have had to lead the workforce to stay home and take care of their children or who have lost jobs as a result of the pandemic that that they can't return to and there is now a need to bring those women back into the workforce and how do you do that well one of the ways that you do it is to reskill them and so the partnership that we're doing with McLaren is specifically to reskill and I think that that's huge because now you're sitting there and saying you know we're going to recruit essentially from the younger generation by working with girls who code but the pro the type of programs the creativity of the programs that we're putting in place with with a company like huge company like McLaren to help reskill I think is you know something that's kind of groundbreaking in our industry sure I didn't I didn't realize that the pandemic had so adversely affected the female Workforce it's news to me yeah um and we have two parents uh you know who now you know for the most part had to work from home and you had to homeschool your kids one parent you know usually is the one that had to sit there and make sure the lessons got done and and so on and so forth we were doing research at in team uh you know relatively early into the pandemic probably in late 1920 or 2020 and what we were finding is that many of our female workers uh globally and so intain operates on five continents and I think 30 countries now um is the women were working during the day and so during the school day when they had to they would be with their children they would put the eight hour school day in and then they would do their job for eight hours at night and so and so these women were putting in 16-hour days and that doesn't include anything else that you have after doing your life and that's not sustainable so so yes I mean we lost a generation of women and we've gotta we've got to figure out how to get them back yeah and good luck sounds like um very worthy measure uh moving on slightly to uh Global gaming women this uh sort of entity you've founded or helped found uh I was wondering could you just describe what it is and what its goals are sure Global gaming women is an organization whose mission is to build the next generation of female leaders in the gaming industry um we found that it as Global gaming women because that was our original name although we truly weren't Global uh until the last few years one of the things that we realized when we first started ggw in 2011 uh and then when we relaunched it again is women lacked confidence and women lacked education and in many cases confidence is something that is very very hard to get there's a great book called The Confidence Code that talks about that um but sometimes confidence comes from education and from mentoring and from being able to have conversations with other women about your professional and personal life and so we put in place number one a comprehensive education program it's an educational pyramid that has classes that we do um at the at the entry level for for you know women that are looking to take their first step into management and it goes all the way up to our W program which is for women who are in you know director programs vice president programs uh and we teach you know much more complicated sessions that deal with things like conflict you know resolution or public speaking and so we tailor that to the level of the woman you know all the way from entry level up to the highest level of the industry in addition we have a mentoring committee um that is responsible for our lean in circles are you familiar with lean in yes okay so we're doing and for those who aren't lean in circles were founded by Cheryl Sandberg from Facebook that women need to lean into each other and it is a group of you know 10 women who are brought together at the same place in their career to have conversations about things and we'd like to say it's your own personal board of directors so if you you know if you have a problem and you need to something happen in the workforce something you whatever it might be you bring it to your own personal board of directors and we have found that that dramatically increases confidence in women because they know that their struggles are not are not only their struggles and and they know that they have people to talk to and so we have now taken our lean in circles globally and met much of what we have been able to do from a digital perspective is as a result of the pandemic so just like everybody else we were forced to Pivot so we took a lot of our educational program and then added a lot of other great digital content and made it available you know on the web so we're now able to reach women all throughout the world cool um I was wondering you've been in the gaming industry since the late 70s early 80s how has the the sort of status of women evolved in over those decades um well it's interesting because I am in some speeches that I started in Atlantic City at a time and a place where there was unlimited opportunity and because the Atlantic City gaming industry was growing so quickly and there was such a need for talent um they were you know pretty much gender blind and and so a lot of the women who are in senior positions across the gaming company in the U.S and I know a few you know across who started in the U.S across the world um we started in a time and place where they they really didn't look at your gender and and so it was a great launch for our career um I think that when you look across the gaming industry it has traditionally been a mail industry it was coming out of Las Vegas there was a great deal of of misogyny in in Las Vegas just because they believed that you know there was no place for for a woman in these roles and I think that as you as you kind of look through the evolution of the gaming industry and as as you know women like me um started taking senior positions um you know it made it more obvious to other women that it was possible and and then it kind of falls to the companies you know how how do they approach this um and that is pretty much a c-suite thing you know who's sitting in the corner office and making a determination um about who they're going to hire and what their hiring practices are going to be so it has gotten better in the in the 40 years that I have been in the industry um and and there are many companies that we work with global gaming women who want to do the right thing who actually want to bring more women into the workforce our industry is 50 women to begin with but we're primarily you know an entertainment service industry and so a lot of those jobs those those customer facing jobs um are Frontline jobs we've got to get the women into the supervisory positions that they can move up the ranks and and that's one of the things that that you know we see at Global gaming women that the problem is is that there's that women get stuck in companies um because there are not programs that help them to advance into Senior Management ranks and and it you know it's better than it was um but we know that we can do much better so it's not so much I mean maybe a bit of misogynistic resistance but it's more about training the the women to move out you know I kind of lost my track my my train of thought there for a minute what I was saying is there's companies that want to do the right thing but don't know now okay and and so and so you know they'll come to us and they'll basically say you know like there's a very big gaming company that that um that I was asked when I when I was uh president of global gaming women about five years ago a very big gaming company that you would know came to make um and said we have a problem we have we have a problem that we have no you know senior women that that run our property senior women that are general managers senior women in our corporate Workforce um and we and we don't know what to do and I said well what what are you thinking and they said well we're going to start a program well that's great but you know if your programs don't actually have components that that are actionable that you can sit there and say we're going to we're going to say we want to have 30 women you know in our Senior Management ranks or you know 30 women on our board and that which gets measured gets managed and so just sitting there and saying we're going to introduce a program and so they asked me to come speak to their first program and it was in Las Vegas and there was about I don't know 40 or 50 women that were in the room they actually put a nice program together I was a keynote speaker and I opened it up for questions and answers afterwards and these women were fantastic I mean they were absolutely fantastic and they had such a thirst for knowledge and they wanted to know what they could do to advance their careers and I went back to the to the CEO of the company and I said you have these women in your organization they're there I just met them take them nurture them train them give them an opportunity to to help you and to make you a better company and they did you know they actually went out and hired Consultants to build programs that brought that group of women up through the organization so I think in some cases that's the problem it's not that companies don't care it's just that they just don't know how to do it and you know as we have looked at this you know it it goes back as far as as unconscious bias in in job descriptions in the hiring process you know you really have to look at your entire organization top to bottom and say you know are we doing the right things to get the right candidates in the pool if you don't get the right candidates in the consideration pool then then women and and and minorities they just don't Advance they're not in your organization to begin with then you can't you haven't hired them then you can't Advance them right um from my last question I wanted to ask uh if Global gaming women sort of achieves what it is set out to achieve what would what will the gaming industry look like in five ten years time right now I see a lot of we need to have X number of percentage X number so we see a lot of quotas and I I am I have mixed feelings about quotas because quotas again that which gets measured gets managed and and quotas are good because they force you to pay attention to things the problem with quotas is that if if the only thing that you're doing it's just kind of like standardized testing if the only thing that you're doing is working to the quota and you're putting women or minorities into positions where they can't be successful just to sit there and check the box and fill a quota you're not helping anyone and and so the objective should be that you build companies again that look at hiring from the ground up and that have programs in place where you sit there and you don't even have to have these conversations anymore Cameron and yeah I I watch interviews that that women do who are put into you know senior positions you know presidents of big Las Vegas casinos or into you know CEO roles and they're asked the question you know what what you know this is great you're wonderful you know what what what are you going to and and the women say it'll be great when we don't have to answer the question about why we're the only women in our position anymore you know that's what I love to say I'd love to say where we get to get to the point where you know it's it's not anything unusual that that women are you know essentially equal in the industry I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it best um when she was talking about the Supreme Court and uh they were talking about adding women to the Supreme Court and she said well she was asked a question when will uh when will there be enough women on the Supreme Court and she said when there are nine yeah that's why at g2e I interviewed Cassie Stratford who's sort of the what what your role was five years ago I believe is what she does now is now the president of ggw she's doing a phenomenal job yeah and she basically said our goal is uh to not have to exist anymore we're Global gaming women yeah you know she said it better than I did we don't have to exist anyway thank you so much for uh speaking with gaming America it's been a great great time talking with you yeah this has been Virginia McDowell thank you

foreign gaming America speaking with Virginia McDowell the gaming industry veteran who sits on the board of both entain and Global gaming women thank you for speaking with us today Virginia good morning how are you Cameron I&#39;m doing very well thank you so what are we talking about today right so my first question is actually um sort of about your own career just to start off with if you could just sort of run through you know what you&#39;ve done in the gaming industry and how how you&#39;ve arrived at these sorts of important positions uh after a year spent in gaming so I&#39;m actually a reporter by trade my degree is in journalism I started working in the me at in the USA um in let&#39;s say the late 1970s it was about the time that gaming had been legalized in a state for the first time outside of Nevada legalized in New Jersey and so a lot of the news stories that I was working on actually had something to do with um uh gaming and I was just absolutely fascinated by it and when I had the opportunity to get into an entry level position in the gaming industry early in the gaming industry in Atlantic City I went to work for Bally&#39;s Park Place which was only the third casino to open after the referendum that legalized casinos and I loved it it was a great industry it was fast there was an opportunity to learn many things and if you worked hard and and you know you showed initiative there was also the the opportunity to get promoted and as a result I had the opportunity to run many departments in Atlantic City I was recruited as part of a team in 1997 to go to the Midwest this is when Riverboat gaming Regional gaming was you know starting to expand I went to the Midwest to work for Argosy gaming company which was a which was headquartered in Alton Illinois near St Louis and I worked at Argosy until it was acquired by Penn National game gaming in 2005 then went to work for Trump entertainment Resorts that was the only publicly traded piece of Trump&#39;s Empire I worked there until 2007 when I was recruited to become the president and Chief Operating Officer of Isle of Capri Casinos so I went to Isle of Capri in 2007 as the president and CEO and in 2011 I was promoted to Chief Executive Officer while I was at Isle I founded Global gaming women twice once as an initiative of the American gaming Association where I sat on the board and the second when I retired in 2016 I went to the AGA and said I think ggw would be better as a non-profit they agreed and so I spun it off a second time as a co-founder as a non-profit after I retired I was recruited to go on the board of GBC but which was headquartered in London which we now know as and team and that&#39;s where I am today cool that&#39;s quite a career um so I guess I have two lines of questions for you questioning for you one is about any role in Your Capacity as uh on the board of entain I understand you sort of head up there ESG environmental social governance correct program and then after that we talk about ggw um so first uh uh adamantine what can a company like entain in entain&#39;s position do to be more ESG compliant well I don&#39;t know if you&#39;re aware but we have for the last two years uh put on a pretty much a half day program called entain sustain our entire Focus as a company is on sustainability our CEO yet a Nygard Anderson um at the point that she was appointed to the position of CEO she put her stake in the ground and and said sustainability is going to literally um you know impact every single thing that we do as a company going forward so we put a sustainability Charter in in place and the sustainability Charter is very is is is is only four things but when you think about the impact that they have they&#39;re huge number one is that that we have an exclusive focus on regulated markets uh the second is that we are going to continue to take the lead on responsible gaming you know we already were doing that and and now what we&#39;re doing through our changing for the better program and through our Arc Advanced responsibility and Care Program we&#39;re leading the the industry across the world on this to pursue the highest standards of corporate governance and then to invest in our people and communities cool um how about sort of the gaming industry uh as a whole do you think it&#39;s lacking in ESG considerations do you think it could be more responsible in this area oh it&#39;s an interesting question Cameron because in the in the time period that I&#39;ve been on the end team board and in uh 2023 it&#39;ll be five years um I I we went from corporate social responsibility which is what it used to be called um and and we evolved into ESG and I think it&#39;s interesting just if you look at that Evolution because CSR was just um in many cases just to check the box do the right thing um you know we&#39;re making sure for investors and for Regulators um that that we have pieces in place you know that make sure that that as a company we are we are doing the right thing ESG is entirely different ESG as we did it in team can be a complete change as it relates to sustainability and and I think one of the pieces of that obviously is environmental environmental was really never a part of CSR um back in the day one of the focuses is in our environmental and then diversity equity and inclusion is a huge piece of what we are doing and in team going forward that used to be kind of a part of CSR um but then the governance piece which is also huge and again if you go back to our sustainability chart our number one item on the on the charter is you know pursuing licenses in regulated markets so I think that we have the right focus on it um our ESG remit is huge um we have a tremendous group of professionals that are dedicated to this we have completely changed our organization in order to make sure that that we can adhere to and abide by the very strict ESG principles that we&#39;ve set um does every company in the world do this no um do I believe that they should yes and and one of the reasons why is that we are continuing say an increase in SG investors and so when you look at you know who our shareholders are there are many of them that are making decisions investment decisions there are funds that are making investment decisions based on companies that actually understand the importance of ESG sure um is there an area under the ESG umbrella that you&#39;d like to sort of grow or increase focus on in the coming year well um I was one of the speakers I was a keynote speaker at entain sustain and um saw our our agenda in advance obviously I did it remotely um but the we had a several panel discussions and and I will tell you that those panel discussions were um fantastic uh you know I obviously know what we&#39;re doing as far as ESG is concerned but you have professionals from all different um areas of the gaming industry you know kind of talk about what they are doing is fantastic and and one of the things that I was really impressed with uh is that our continuing focus on Dei uh you know we are I believe one of the only companies gaming companies of our size in the world that have a female CEO and so there is a focus within the organization to to you know to to make sure that Dei is at the core of what we do but when you look at the at the I will call it um creativity of the things that we&#39;re doing one of the things that we announced at in team sustained last week was a new partnership with McLaren racing and so we have we have been working for several years um to make sure that we are training women to enter the tech industry and we&#39;ve had a partnership with girls who code for quite some time and that addresses you know the the women younger women uh that are in high school or in college who are who are looking to enter the tech industry and and need a path forward and that&#39;s great that&#39;s recruiting at that level but what we&#39;re seeing after the pandemic is that we have lost an entire generation of women in the workforce and I&#39;m not it&#39;s not getting better I mean the problem is is that we&#39;re still dealing with the effects of a global pandemic right now and there are women who have had to lead the workforce to stay home and take care of their children or who have lost jobs as a result of the pandemic that that they can&#39;t return to and there is now a need to bring those women back into the workforce and how do you do that well one of the ways that you do it is to reskill them and so the partnership that we&#39;re doing with McLaren is specifically to reskill and I think that that&#39;s huge because now you&#39;re sitting there and saying you know we&#39;re going to recruit essentially from the younger generation by working with girls who code but the pro the type of programs the creativity of the programs that we&#39;re putting in place with with a company like huge company like McLaren to help reskill I think is you know something that&#39;s kind of groundbreaking in our industry sure I didn&#39;t I didn&#39;t realize that the pandemic had so adversely affected the female Workforce it&#39;s news to me yeah um and we have two parents uh you know who now you know for the most part had to work from home and you had to homeschool your kids one parent you know usually is the one that had to sit there and make sure the lessons got done and and so on and so forth we were doing research at in team uh you know relatively early into the pandemic probably in late 1920 or 2020 and what we were finding is that many of our female workers uh globally and so intain operates on five continents and I think 30 countries now um is the women were working during the day and so during the school day when they had to they would be with their children they would put the eight hour school day in and then they would do their job for eight hours at night and so and so these women were putting in 16-hour days and that doesn&#39;t include anything else that you have after doing your life and that&#39;s not sustainable so so yes I mean we lost a generation of women and we&#39;ve gotta we&#39;ve got to figure out how to get them back yeah and good luck sounds like um very worthy measure uh moving on slightly to uh Global gaming women this uh sort of entity you&#39;ve founded or helped found uh I was wondering could you just describe what it is and what its goals are sure Global gaming women is an organization whose mission is to build the next generation of female leaders in the gaming industry um we found that it as Global gaming women because that was our original name although we truly weren&#39;t Global uh until the last few years one of the things that we realized when we first started ggw in 2011 uh and then when we relaunched it again is women lacked confidence and women lacked education and in many cases confidence is something that is very very hard to get there&#39;s a great book called The Confidence Code that talks about that um but sometimes confidence comes from education and from mentoring and from being able to have conversations with other women about your professional and personal life and so we put in place number one a comprehensive education program it&#39;s an educational pyramid that has classes that we do um at the at the entry level for for you know women that are looking to take their first step into management and it goes all the way up to our W program which is for women who are in you know director programs vice president programs uh and we teach you know much more complicated sessions that deal with things like conflict you know resolution or public speaking and so we tailor that to the level of the woman you know all the way from entry level up to the highest level of the industry in addition we have a mentoring committee um that is responsible for our lean in circles are you familiar with lean in yes okay so we&#39;re doing and for those who aren&#39;t lean in circles were founded by Cheryl Sandberg from Facebook that women need to lean into each other and it is a group of you know 10 women who are brought together at the same place in their career to have conversations about things and we&#39;d like to say it&#39;s your own personal board of directors so if you you know if you have a problem and you need to something happen in the workforce something you whatever it might be you bring it to your own personal board of directors and we have found that that dramatically increases confidence in women because they know that their struggles are not are not only their struggles and and they know that they have people to talk to and so we have now taken our lean in circles globally and met much of what we have been able to do from a digital perspective is as a result of the pandemic so just like everybody else we were forced to Pivot so we took a lot of our educational program and then added a lot of other great digital content and made it available you know on the web so we&#39;re now able to reach women all throughout the world cool um I was wondering you&#39;ve been in the gaming industry since the late 70s early 80s how has the the sort of status of women evolved in over those decades um well it&#39;s interesting because I am in some speeches that I started in Atlantic City at a time and a place where there was unlimited opportunity and because the Atlantic City gaming industry was growing so quickly and there was such a need for talent um they were you know pretty much gender blind and and so a lot of the women who are in senior positions across the gaming company in the U.S and I know a few you know across who started in the U.S across the world um we started in a time and place where they they really didn&#39;t look at your gender and and so it was a great launch for our career um I think that when you look across the gaming industry it has traditionally been a mail industry it was coming out of Las Vegas there was a great deal of of misogyny in in Las Vegas just because they believed that you know there was no place for for a woman in these roles and I think that as you as you kind of look through the evolution of the gaming industry and as as you know women like me um started taking senior positions um you know it made it more obvious to other women that it was possible and and then it kind of falls to the companies you know how how do they approach this um and that is pretty much a c-suite thing you know who&#39;s sitting in the corner office and making a determination um about who they&#39;re going to hire and what their hiring practices are going to be so it has gotten better in the in the 40 years that I have been in the industry um and and there are many companies that we work with global gaming women who want to do the right thing who actually want to bring more women into the workforce our industry is 50 women to begin with but we&#39;re primarily you know an entertainment service industry and so a lot of those jobs those those customer facing jobs um are Frontline jobs we&#39;ve got to get the women into the supervisory positions that they can move up the ranks and and that&#39;s one of the things that that you know we see at Global gaming women that the problem is is that there&#39;s that women get stuck in companies um because there are not programs that help them to advance into Senior Management ranks and and it you know it&#39;s better than it was um but we know that we can do much better so it&#39;s not so much I mean maybe a bit of misogynistic resistance but it&#39;s more about training the the women to move out you know I kind of lost my track my my train of thought there for a minute what I was saying is there&#39;s companies that want to do the right thing but don&#39;t know now okay and and so and so you know they&#39;ll come to us and they&#39;ll basically say you know like there&#39;s a very big gaming company that that um that I was asked when I when I was uh president of global gaming women about five years ago a very big gaming company that you would know came to make um and said we have a problem we have we have a problem that we have no you know senior women that that run our property senior women that are general managers senior women in our corporate Workforce um and we and we don&#39;t know what to do and I said well what what are you thinking and they said well we&#39;re going to start a program well that&#39;s great but you know if your programs don&#39;t actually have components that that are actionable that you can sit there and say we&#39;re going to we&#39;re going to say we want to have 30 women you know in our Senior Management ranks or you know 30 women on our board and that which gets measured gets managed and so just sitting there and saying we&#39;re going to introduce a program and so they asked me to come speak to their first program and it was in Las Vegas and there was about I don&#39;t know 40 or 50 women that were in the room they actually put a nice program together I was a keynote speaker and I opened it up for questions and answers afterwards and these women were fantastic I mean they were absolutely fantastic and they had such a thirst for knowledge and they wanted to know what they could do to advance their careers and I went back to the to the CEO of the company and I said you have these women in your organization they&#39;re there I just met them take them nurture them train them give them an opportunity to to help you and to make you a better company and they did you know they actually went out and hired Consultants to build programs that brought that group of women up through the organization so I think in some cases that&#39;s the problem it&#39;s not that companies don&#39;t care it&#39;s just that they just don&#39;t know how to do it and you know as we have looked at this you know it it goes back as far as as unconscious bias in in job descriptions in the hiring process you know you really have to look at your entire organization top to bottom and say you know are we doing the right things to get the right candidates in the pool if you don&#39;t get the right candidates in the consideration pool then then women and and and minorities they just don&#39;t Advance they&#39;re not in your organization to begin with then you can&#39;t you haven&#39;t hired them then you can&#39;t Advance them right um from my last question I wanted to ask uh if Global gaming women sort of achieves what it is set out to achieve what would what will the gaming industry look like in five ten years time right now I see a lot of we need to have X number of percentage X number so we see a lot of quotas and I I am I have mixed feelings about quotas because quotas again that which gets measured gets managed and and quotas are good because they force you to pay attention to things the problem with quotas is that if if the only thing that you&#39;re doing it&#39;s just kind of like standardized testing if the only thing that you&#39;re doing is working to the quota and you&#39;re putting women or minorities into positions where they can&#39;t be successful just to sit there and check the box and fill a quota you&#39;re not helping anyone and and so the objective should be that you build companies again that look at hiring from the ground up and that have programs in place where you sit there and you don&#39;t even have to have these conversations anymore Cameron and yeah I I watch interviews that that women do who are put into you know senior positions you know presidents of big Las Vegas casinos or into you know CEO roles and they&#39;re asked the question you know what what you know this is great you&#39;re wonderful you know what what what are you going to and and the women say it&#39;ll be great when we don&#39;t have to answer the question about why we&#39;re the only women in our position anymore you know that&#39;s what I love to say I&#39;d love to say where we get to get to the point where you know it&#39;s it&#39;s not anything unusual that that women are you know essentially equal in the industry I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it best um when she was talking about the Supreme Court and uh they were talking about adding women to the Supreme Court and she said well she was asked a question when will uh when will there be enough women on the Supreme Court and she said when there are nine yeah that&#39;s why at g2e I interviewed Cassie Stratford who&#39;s sort of the what what your role was five years ago I believe is what she does now is now the president of ggw she&#39;s doing a phenomenal job yeah and she basically said our goal is uh to not have to exist anymore we&#39;re Global gaming women yeah you know she said it better than I did we don&#39;t have to exist anyway thank you so much for uh speaking with gaming America it&#39;s been a great great time talking with you yeah this has been Virginia McDowell thank you

Transcript for:Virginia McDowell: The Gaming Industry Veteran

Transcript for:
Virginia McDowell: The Gaming Industry Veteran