Note: This article is an excerpt from our report on Female Leaders in Fitness and Wellness Tech. You can download the full report for free here.
Fitness and wellness tech is a growing and increasingly competitive category. My executive search firm, Stronger Talent, recently completed a large study in order to provide insights into the current state of gender diversity for the sector. Our research led to our publication of Female Leaders in Fitness and Wellness Tech. This article features an overview of the current state of gender diversity in fitness and wellness tech
Methodology
We identified and analyzed a sample of 736 executives from more than 100 of the top fitness and wellness tech companies in the U.S. The companies in our study include start-ups of various sizes and stages, companies that are more mature and/or publicly-traded, and fitness and wellness tech business units inside of larger organizations. The leaders in our study represent a variety of functions, including sales, marketing, strategy, business development, product management, technology, finance, operations, and human resources.
The Fitness and Wellness Tech Framework TM (Figure 1) is a framework that we created to provide an overview of the sub-categories inside of fitness and wellness tech. These sub-categories are connected fitness, streaming fitness, fitness apps, wearables, personalized nutrition, healthy meal delivery, mental wellness tech, sleep and recovery tech, corporate wellness tech, and wellness e-commerce. For our report on Female Leaders in Fitness and Wellness Tech, we analyzed companies in each sub-category.
The Current State of Gender Diversity in Fitness and Wellness Tech
Our research indicates that men greatly outnumber women in fitness and wellness tech, especially as you advance to higher levels of leadership in many companies. Roughly 65% of the executives in our study (across all levels) were men.
Women only made up about 41% of the Directors, Senior Directors, and Vice Presidents. Only 25% of SVP, EVP, and C-Suite roles were occupied by women, and only 22% of President and CEO positions were occupied by women (Figure 2).
The gender diversity percentages in fitness and wellness tech are actually better than the percentages in the technology industry as a whole and in all industries combined. According to McKinsey’s 2020 Women in the Workplace report, women only occupy 19-21% of SVP and C-Suite roles across the technology industry as a whole, and women only occupy 17-34% of VP and Director roles for the technology industry as a whole. Across all industries combined, McKinsey found that women only occupy 21-28% of SVP and C-Suite roles and 29-33% of VP and Director roles. 1
Our research also indicates that certain functions are much more male-dominant in fitness and wellness tech: technology/science and finance/operations. Almost 88% of the technology/science executives in our study were men (Figure 3), and 73% of the finance/operations executives in our study were men (Figure 4).
Our research indicates that leadership roles in sales, marketing, strategy, and business development also skew toward men but are certainly more balanced than technology/science and finance/operations. Roughly 58% of the sales/marketing/strategy/business development executives in our study were men (Figure 5).
In addition, roughly 58% of product management leadership roles in fitness and wellness tech were also filled by men (Figure 6). However, our sample size was very small for product management (only 40 executives), so we cannot draw a firm conclusion there.
In contrast, women greatly outnumber men in the HR function in fitness and wellness tech. Roughly 67% of the HR executives in our study were women (Figure 7). While our sample size here is small (only 65 executives), research by Namely (an HR software company), has found that roughly 70% of HR leaders (across all industries) are female. 2
Why Greater Gender Diversity Is A Competitive Advantage
Gender diversity is not only a social cause. Research has shown that a more diverse workforce is also correlated with more innovation (due to the differences in perspective), higher employee engagement scores (since employees perceive the company to be fairer), and greater financial performance. For example, one study by McKinsey found that companies in the top 25% for gender diversity on executive teams were 21% more likely to have greater profitability. 3
Greater gender diversity provides a strategic advantage for fitness and wellness tech companies. One company that agrees is Strava, the leading social platform for athletes and the largest sports community in the world.
Strava’s leadership team is currently split 50-50 for men and women, and the company considers this balance to be a strategic advantage. “At Strava, we are trying to support a diverse worldwide community of members which is about 60% men and 40% women,” says Mark Gainey, Co-Founder and Chairman at Strava. “If we just had a bunch of men sitting around the table trying to make decisions, there is no way that we would understand the needs of our customers,” he told us.
Women make up the majority of the customer base at many fitness and wellness tech companies. This fact was noted by a number of leaders interviewed for this report, including Jen Zygmunt, Chief Revenue Officer at Wellbeats, a leading provider of on-demand fitness classes. “If your leadership team has a lot more men than women, you will lack perspective for a large segment of your target audience,” she says.
A lack of gender diversity also makes it more difficult to recruit and retain a high-performing workforce. If potential or current employees don’t feel represented by your leadership team, they are much less likely to join your company or stay for the long-term. “The biggest risk of not having a diverse leadership team is the inability to attract and retain diverse talent,” says Aneka Abrahams, Head of Human Resources, Team Growth & Development at Precision Nutrition, the world’s largest online nutrition and healthy lifestyle coaching and certification company.
Many of the female leaders interviewed for our report told us how their prior employers were dominated by men and how that made them question their futures with those companies. One example is Ellis Singer McCue, Chief Executive Officer at Territory Foods, the leading chef-crafted, nutritionist-designed healthy meal delivery service. “Before Territory Foods, the companies that I worked for were very male-dominated, and that gave me pause,” she told us. “I asked myself, ‘what is my future going to look like at this organization?”
How to Improve Gender Diversity in Fitness and Wellness Tech
To complement our analysis and provide insights on how to improve gender diversity, we conducted video interviews with leaders from a variety of companies in the sector:
- Aneka Abrahams, Head of Human Resources, Team Growth & Development at Precision Nutrition
- Michele Bousquet, Chief People Officer at Strava
- Julie Cartwright, President at P.volve
- Mark Gainey, Co-Founder and Chairman at Strava
- Elizabeth Gazda, Chief Executive Officer at Embr Labs
- Julie Marchant-Houle, U.S. Chief Executive Officer at Marley Spoon
- Ellis Singer McCue, Chief Executive Officer at Territory Foods
- Subarna Mitra, Head of Product and Design at Beddr
- Nikki Salenetri, Vice President, Human Resources at Gympass
- Nancy Dussault Smith, Chief Marketing Officer at Hydrow
- Claudette Stevenson, Vice President of Product Development at TrainingPeaks
- Elomida Visviki, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Weav Music
- Regina Wallace-Jones, Senior Vice President, Product & Engineering at Mindbody
- Wendy Werve, Chief Marketing Officer at Virgin Pulse
- Jen Zygmunt, Chief Revenue Officer at Wellbeats
Our full report features insights from the leaders that we interviewed, along with step-by-step recommendations on how fitness and wellness tech companies can improve gender diversity and help their female employees feel more supported. You can download our full report on Female Leaders in Fitness and Wellness Tech here.
References for this article
- Rachel Thomas, Marianne Cooper, Gina Cardazone, Kate Urban, Ali Bohrer, Madison Long, Lareina Yee, Alexis Krivkovich, Jess Huang, Sara Prince, Ankur Kumar, Sarah Coury, “Women in the Workplace,” McKinsey & Company, 2020.
- “HR is overwhelmingly white and female, data indicates,” HR Dive, February 20, 2019, https://www.hrdive.com/.
- Vivian Hunt, Sara Prince, Sundiatu Dixon-Fyle Lareina Yee, “Delivering through Diversity,” McKinsey & Company, January 2019
About the author: As the Founder of Stronger Talent, Pete Leibman recruits exceptional leaders for innovative sports, fitness, and wellness companies. Throughout his career, Pete has helped clients recruit exceptional leaders at the Board, C-Suite, Senior Vice President, Vice President, General Manager, Managing Director, and Director levels. Pete’s work has been featured on Fox News, CBS Radio, and Fortune.com, and he is the author of two books and over 250 articles on career management, peak performance, and executive recruiting.