Martha Parry Clark This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. LookSmart About Us

   aboutus.looksmart.com/about.jh - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/16/2001   Last Visited: 8/16/2001

   Martha Parry Clark Interim Chief Financial Officer Since joining LookSmart in May of 1999 , Martha built up LookSmart's human resources and internal communications infrastructure to support the company's growth. Her role was recently expanded to include oversight of the Finance Department's day-to-day operations. Martha joined LookSmart with broad experience as a strategy consultant , investment banker , strategic planner and human resources leader with companies such as Wells Fargo Bank , Fritz Logistics , Sumitomo Bank of California , Morgan Stanley and Strategic Planning Associates ( now Mercer Consulting ). Martha holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in Economics from Wellesley College.
   
   About LookSmart About Us , Jobs , Privacy Policy , Submit a Site , Terms of Service , Help.

2. 2. Race Matters in Silicon Valley: Busting the Myth of the Meritocracy

   www.modelminority.com/coolies/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/24/2001   Last Visited: 8/9/2002

   Martha Clark, VP of human resources at LookSmart (LOOK) , was among the few who returned a phone call. Clark readily confesses that LookSmart should be dedicating more of its energies to finding qualified minority applicants but so far a "massive Internet advertising campaign" has been the extent of the company's recruitment efforts. "When your priority is finding people immediately to make your company more viable, you're not in a position to initiate outreach and affirmative-action programs to the extent that you'd like," she says. Fifteen months ago, LookSmart employed less than 100 people. The company now has roughly 450 people working in its San Francisco main office and 650 employees worldwide. "We've had explosive growth in the past year," she adds. "We've been fighting for survival."
   
   Clark says all the right things, including that the company is now starting to research ways of widening its pool of job applicants. "We are absolutely committed to bringing in more women and minority applications," she vows. She is particularly proud of the company's record in hiring and promoting women: Asked if she'd share a racial breakdown of the LookSmart workforce, she instead boasted that women account for 48 percent of the staff, including an impressive 47 percent of top management and executive positions. It turns out that 26 percent of the company's 650 workers are minorities: 15 percent Asian, 9 percent Latino, 2 percent black. That one in nine of the employees at LookSmart is either Latino or black might be a clue to why Clark was one of the few who bothered to call back.
   
   "The key to change at a company is to have someone inside championing the cause," ShopNow's Walker says. "You need to have people already inside to raise awareness, and that will drive people's attention. If there's no champion inside a company, it's so easy to say, 'Oh, there must not be the talent,' and then move on to the next issue. ... To me, the business case is simple: There's this tremendous labor force available in African American and Latino communities that can drive tremendous value for shareholders of those companies."
   
   Yet even Walker's company proved reluctant to share a profile of ShopNow's staff broken down by race.