Anne Cocquyt, is a serial entrepreneur, diversity advocate and author of the advocacy studies “The State of Women in Product 2019” and “2019 Diversity Benchmark Report for Tech Startups” (Publishing Date October). Anne experienced male-dominated workplaces and all-women teams in her own career in Europe and the US as a strategy consultant, manager, founder, and CEO. She implemented career ladders and retrained managers for a telecommunication giant in the UK and in her former role as Executive Director of Women In Product, she pioneered a study to evaluate the state of women in product management roles which she presented at the WEF events in January 2019. In this capacity, she supported the biggest tech companies including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Intuit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Uber, Autodesk, Adobe and many more with initiatives to hire female talent.

Anne is now the founder of the GUILD (letsguild.com), the first AI-driven professional match-making platform for communities and employers. She most recently kicked off a benchmark study (letsguild.com/benchmark-study) with tech startups in the Bay Area < 500 employees to identify best practices, policies, and processes to successfully attract, retain and promote female talent at tech startups with limited D&I budget.

Anne holds an MBA from Eberhard-Karls University in Statistics, Computer Science and Human Resources.

She mentors startups at the German American Accelerator, Singularity University, and design thinking students at the University of San Francisco. Anne advises a health benefits startup, a corporate innovation think tank and a STEM media company that changes the image of women in STEM in the media.