The CEO and co-founder of Trend Micro Eva Chen was named one of Forbes Asia’s 50 Power Businesswomen in 2013 and one of CRN’s Top 100 Executives in 2020. For 16 years, she has led Trend Micro to pursue continuous innovation and drive profitability.

“Our one and only mentality is: Be yourself and be the best part of yourself. Show yourself, and at the same time cherish those who dare to be themselves. This is the key to a successful teamwork,” speaking of her leadership style and mentality, Chen lets out a laugh.

Trend Micro consists of employees from 65 countries around the world with diverse cultural backgrounds and races. The group encompasses 38 business units, and its senior management team uses 8 different languages at workplace. “Our lingua franca is broken English,” with another laugh, she explains. 

Eva Chen insists the company should establish an administration system that demonstrates equity. Decisions and mentalities in the company should be inclusive and adapt to different cultures and individuals. “To make the company successful, all of us have to understand and respect our employees. We must cherish the diversity of our employees.”

Diversity Since the Early Stage of Entrepreneurship

When Trend Micro was founded 33 years ago, its three co-founders decided to step into the global arena and pursue continuous innovation. The corporate theme for the young company was the 3C’s – Creativity, communications, and change. The core values encouraged Trend Micro to embrace diversity and practice justice and inclusion at an early age.

To increase the diversity of talents in the IT industry, Trend Micro has been dedicated to recruit, retain, and empower women in the field of cybersecurity in recent years. It has launched the program Close the Gap to bridge the gender gap and attract more women to the tech sector.

In addition to recruiting more female employees, Trend Micro has organized training programs on cybersecurity in Brazil, Arabia, and countries in the Middle East and managed to attract a certain number of female students to the training. Furthermore, the company also holds the global cybersecurity competition Capture the Flag (CTF) to provide more opportunities to female students.

Trend Micro is dedicated to supporting diverse talent in tech. The company prides itself in understanding, appreciating, and respecting each employee. As a partner of AWS, Eva Chen was invited to deliver a talk at AWS in 2017. She also participated in AWS re:Invent 2020 along with other female leaders as panelists to share their thoughts during the session “When Boldness Matters in Critical Moments.”In celebration of International Women’s Day 2021, Trend Micro CEO and cofounder Eva Chen encouraged women to shoot for the moon, stating that more women are needed in tech.

AWS Join Hands with Partners to Launch We Power Tech

Zhang Wenyi, Amazon Global Vice President and AWS Executive Director for the Greater China Region, indicated that: “Just like Trend Micro, AWS has been focusing on and promoting the empowerment of women as well as building a diverse and inclusive corporate culture. We support women in a variety of approaches, such as talent cultivation, investment in startups, and assistance in the career development of our employees. We are honored to have the opportunity to inspire and be inspired by our customers and partners in different industries at different scales. We advocate diversity in Taiwan and other regions around the world, hoping that all organizations and companies can create diversity, inclusion, and justice in workplace.”

In 2020 alone, for instance, AWS provided cloud computing resources worth more than 1 billion USD to assist early-stage startups in establishing business and accelerating growth. Many female entrepreneurs have succeeded in their careers with the support of Activate, a program launched by AWS to empower startups through technical and resource support. 

In addition, AWS launched We Power Tech in 2017 to bring the global community together and empower aspired tech talents through education, partnerships across different sectors, and training programs. Ultimately, the program aims to create an environment where people of all genders, races, and religious beliefs can benefit from and realize their potential.

Zhang Wenyi, Amazon Global Vice President and AWS Executive Director for the Greater China Region

“The tech industry has been enlightened over the past few years. Leaders at AWS are willing to value diversity and make contributions. As a sponsor of We Power Tech, we are glad to support events organized by AWS,” Eva Chen indicates.

Women Are Giving AI a Global Perspective

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2021, Amazon’s tagline - “Challenge. Champion. Change.” - celebrates women who dare to innovate, lead, and uplift others towards a more equal and inclusive workplace. 
Eva Chen pointed out that concepts such as “Businesswomen won’t get married” or “Successful businesswomen are definitely not successful mothers” are instilled in the mind of many women since a young age. As a result, women often worry if they are too ambitious with their careers, and as they approach the height of their careers, they begin to question themselves: “Should I take a step further?”

Chen encouraged women to shoot for the moon and not to be afraid of joining the tech industry even if they do not have a strong mathematics background. She urges women to embrace both successes and challenges.
As one of the few female leaders of international enterprises, Eva Chen emphasized that “What women need in the workplace is not privileges, but fair competition. We do not have to compete in the way men do because our ways of success may be different.” Women are usually more willing to listen, protective, alerted to dangers, and risk-averted.

As the tech industry has become the foundation of many other industries, rather than being a single industry that operates on its own, companies now need various talents with distinctive strengths. “Knowing how to utilize technology is even more important than creating technology,” Chen stated.

“In this new era of information transformation, it is urgent that women take the responsibility to give AI diverse perspectives,” she added. Artificial intelligence identifies humans through image recognition and their emotions through cameras. Nevertheless, it requires humans to teach it the ways to interpret the world. The notion that men and women see things differently is both a figurative metaphor and scientific fact, as women see more colors than men.

As we enter the era of artificial intelligence, women are expected to have more job opportunities, and tech companies will be recruiting more female employees. With talents of various fields joining, the tech industry become more people-oriented and usher in a bright future.

A group picture of female employees at AI Contest, an internal event held by Trend Micro to cultivate elite engineers.

Trend Micro consists of employees of different cultural backgrounds and races from 65 countries globally. It has always been one of the company’s policies to encourage and support women in tech.