At Yahoo, we believe in taking care of our Mother Earth not just on Earth Day, but every day! That’s why we’re constantly striving to educate Yahoos on sustainability and how to make greener choices for themselves and their families.
On April 19, we brought ‘Hoos together to celebrate Earth Day across our offices. At our Sunnyvale campus, employees built herb terrariums and participated in a recycled art contest turning their trash into treasure. Continuing the spirit of giving back, we provided an opportunity for ‘Hoos to champion their favorite environmentally-focused nonprofit to our Yahoo Employee Foundation for a donation match.
Beyond Earth Day, we’ve been hard at work to make our Sunnyvale HQ and our properties around the world more sustainable. Here’s what we’ve been up to:
Our campus is now primed to produce more than 50% of the electricity consumed from our on-site, green energy systems.
We added 20 dual port electric car charging stations to our parking lots to encourage additional greenhouse gas savings through electric vehicle use.
The fuel cell project we activated in July 2014 has avoided five million pounds of CO2 since installation – equivalent to removing 500 cars from our roads for a year!
In the past 12 months, our Bloom Energy Servers that convert natural gas into electricity systems have generated the equivalent of powering approximately 1,145 California homes.
This year we expect our carbon footprint to be around 200,000 metric tonnes CO2e. This is roughly half of what it was in 2011 when our carbon footprint was just over 400,000 metric tonnes CO2e and notable given that our data center load capacity has grown over that time.
We’re proud of the strides we’ve made, but making greener choices is about progress, not perfection. We encourage all ‘Hoos to start with small changes that are easy to stick with, like reusing a water bottle or walking / biking when possible. Whatever the action, we hope everyone thinks about our planet a little more this month!
Christina Farahani, Jenna Schulte, and Bre Phelan were honored to accept the 2017 “Best Place to Work for the Advancement of Women” award at the Omaha ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference.
The acceptance speech highlighted why Yahoo Omaha was honored with this award, including its “extremely active chapter of Women in Tech,” said Farahani. “This employee resource group is an affinity-based community that offers opportunities to shape our company culture, influence products, develop leadership skills, and form connections throughout Yahoo and our community.”
Phelan added that “since opening our doors in 2009, we’ve been extremely passionate about fostering women’s growth and advancement in the workplace, especially during a time when inclusion and diversity are paramount to success. Each day, we strive to push the envelope further by providing mentorship programs that enable female employees to learn from other women leaders at Yahoo.”
In her closing statement, Schulte thanked all Yahoo Omaha WIT members and the leadership team for making this award possible. She echoed that “it is because of your hard work, dedication, and passion for women’s advancement in the workplace that we received this honor.”
According to their website, ICAN’s (Institute for Career Advancement Needs) annual Women’s Leadership Conference – held for over 20 years in Omaha, Nebraska – is known to be powerful, insightful and authentic, representative of the leadership trends and transformations present in today’s workplace. The 2017 conference theme was “The Work-Life Challenge” and explored how women can balance their career with their family/life goals.
Yahoo also had a booth at the event and gave away free swag including Yahoo-branded bags and lip balm. A beautiful purple flower bouquet was raffled to one lucky winner at the end of the event.
In attendance were over 2,600 local men and women leaders, including a few high school students chosen as part of the ‘ICAN Teen’ program.
YEF would like to recognize Gary Moulton, who championed a grant of $40,000 for Parents Helping Parents, an organization that seeks to provide individuals with learning disabilities the knowledge and skills necessary to advocate for themselves, navigate college systems, access assistive technology (AT) and secure services needed to enhance success.
Gary expressed excitement about the grant saying, “As a former clinician, I know that parents are the best advocates for an individual with a disability – especially for a young child. After working in the accessibility field for more than 30 years, I came to learn that the earlier an individual with a disability gets the assistive technology that he or she needs as an accommodation, the more likely he or she will be an independent and productive member of society. Parents Helping Parents helps people become better advocates and experts in assistive technology who can instantly appreciate the work of Yahoo’s Accessibility Team and our product groups who make Yahoo web properties and apps accessible.”
To find out more about Parents Helping Parents, visit their website. Thank you to Gary for contributing to such a great organization!
Take action! That’s one message we can get behind, and it’s a motto that Kathy Kayse, Vice President of Sales Strategy and Solutions at Yahoo, lives by. To help you achieve your #CareerGoals this year, we’re sharing advice from leaders in different parts of our business. This month, Kathy shares the top lessons she’s learned throughout her impressive career.
On problem solving: I treat problem solving with great respect and urgency. It’s important for us to address every challenge and put the right resources against it. I always ask, “What are you trying to solve for?” This context really helps drive toward a better solution.
On growing your career: There’s nothing more important than networking and learning from those around you. It’s important to take the time in those moments to truly engage, learn and ask the right questions. I’ve worked hard to foster a select group of individuals that I turn to in times of need. I also enjoy industry conferences to find and meet new people. Each time I network, I ask them to introduce me to other people to continue building my network.
On leading from the heart: I was recently at an event where Mark Crowley spoke about his book “Lead From the Heart” and it was such a moment of affirmation for me. What’s driven my success is my ability to lead from the heart. What I mean is that throughout my career, I understood what motivates and inspires the people I lead. We all want to feel purpose and meaning, and we want to feel significant. I’ve always treated my team with respect, enabled their career development and inspired achievement.
On taking action: Often people can be paralyzed or become absorbed by fear of making a decision. But, each time I’ve made a decision it turned out great because I took action. It’s much more fun, you learn from it and it’s incredibly rewarding.
For more of Kathy’s career advice, check out this profile on her in Her Agenda.
We are incredibly lucky here at Yahoo to have amazing employees who work closely with the Yahoo Employee Foundation (YEF) to champion grants. Alex Cribbs, is one of those standout employees. Alex championed a grant of $50,000 for America SCORES Bay Area, an organization seeks to empower students in urban communities using soccer, writing, creative expression and service-learning. With teamwork as the unifying value, the goal of SCORES is to inspire youth to lead healthy lifestyles, be engaged students and have the confidence and character to make a difference in the world.
This YEF Grant will help the organization continue to grow and provide programs to more children in the Bay Area. Alex expressed excitement about the grant saying “I have been involved with America SCORES for more than six years and have worked closely with the SCORES staff on organizing Field Day events, specifically at Sanchez School in The Mission. I have also attended the organization’s legacy Awards, an annual event that honors outstanding individuals who have made game-changing contributions to create a better future for children in the Bay Area. Throughout the night, I was both impressed and inspired by each of the honorees’ stories. What stood out more than the honoree’s confidence and their flawlessly written poems, was the subject matter in which they spoke about shocked me. They spoke about guns, gang violence, drugs and feeling unsafe while playing in their neighborhood yet despite themes of violence, their poems were full of hope for a safer future. America SCORES not only teaches students how to write a poem or kick a soccer ball, it gives them a safe community.”
The CEO of America SCORES acknowledged YEF’s contribution in an email stating that the grant is one of the most significant donations they received and it would help the organization push onward and provide more services to more kids. Alex shared that she has never felt prouder in her three years at Yahoo than she did that day.
Congratulations to Alex on making such a large impact in the community! To find out more about America SCORES Bay Area, visit their website.
We call them our boomerangs and we are incredibly proud of these former employees who have come back to work at the ‘Hoo. More than 10% of our workforce have “boomeranged” back to the company! We recently sat down with a few of them to find out why, and we were incredibly inspired by their responses.
Yahoo’s transparency, scale, inclusive environment, sense of play and transformative thinking were just a few of the key themes that came up from our Boomerangs. To hear more about why they returned to Yahoo in their own words, check out this video.
Interested in a career at Yahoo? We’re hiring! Apply at careers.yahoo.com.
We’re honored to announce that several Yahoo products have been recognized by the 21st Annual Webby Awards as “the best of the web.”
First up, Tumblr is in the running to win Best Community Website, and we need your help! Cast your vote for Tumblr before Thursday, April 20 to help us win the People’s Voice award – keep in mind that you can only vote once! To be eligible to vote, sign up for a Webby account with your Facebook login or your email address.
We are also proud to have multiple products named as 2017 Webby Award honorees:
The Yahoo Finance app is an honoree in the News category
We’re proud to share that two of our amazing leaders at Yahoo have been recognized in their fields for their outstanding work over the past year.
Kathy Kayse, Yahoo’s Vice President of Sales Strategy and Solutions, was named one of Cynopsis Media’s Top Women in Digital, an award that honors excellence in digital content, marketing, advertising, social media and online content. Kathy’s leadership has inspired teams at Yahoo to build innovative campaigns for top brands including General Mills, JetBlue, Lexus and Toyota, and her recognition is well-deserved!
Suzanne Philion, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Yahoo, was named one of PRWeek’s Champions of PR, an award that honors female leaders who go the extra mile for clients and colleagues, exceed business goals, and achieve creative excellence. Anyone who knows Suzanne can attest that she does all this and more!
Congratulations Kathy and Suzanne, and thank you for being the driven, fearless, and incredibly inspiring women you are.
