Video: Asheen Phansey of Dassault Systèmes Talks Diversity at Net Impact

The tech sector has come under fire recently for a lack of diversity in its workforce, particularly with respect to gender. Asheen Phansey, who heads up the Sustainable Innovation Lab at French software firm Dassault Systèmes, noted this issue at the 2014 Net Impact conference -- saying gender diversity is "critical" for technology companies.

"As with most companies, we have a pretty unbalanced workforce that is predominantly male," Phansey said. "Something that [Dassault] strives for from a business setting is first getting more women involved in our company, in everything from technology to management, and also looking to the percentage of women total to the percentage of women that are managers."

"That's important because there are a lot of qualities of how a female executive approaches a problem that tend to be, on average, different from how a male executive will approach a function."

As part of our Talking Diversity video series, Phansey goes on to explain how gender diversity, as well as diversity of workplace function, come into play at Dassault -- and why businesses both inside and outside the tech sector should care -- in this three-minute clip.

Asheen serves as the global head of the Sustainable Innovation Lab at Dassault Systèmes, the $3B scientific company that provides business and people with 3DEXPERIENCE universes to imagine sustainable innovations capable of harmonizing product, nature and life. He also teaches sustainable entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at Babson College, leveraging his expertise in areas like biomimicry, life cycle assessment (LCA) and green marketing. You can find him tweeting about these things at @asheen. In his ample remaining spare time, Asheen enjoys learning languages (he's on his fourth), running, networking with and mentoring fellow sustainability professionals, and chasing after his young kids.