The Female Quotient’s ‘chief troublemaker’ Shelley Zalis on closing the gender gap

This International Women’s Day, women make up the majority of the college-educated workforce and graduate college at higher rates than men. Additionally, 80% of working women express a desire for career advancement. Yet inequality in the workplace endures, and progress toward gender equity has slowed to a crawl.

Gender bias persists, with women underrepresented in nine of the 10 highest-paying occupations. Meanwhile, only 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies are being run by female CEOs and the gender pay gap has remained stagnant over the last 20 years. In 2023, women earned 83.6% of what men earned across most occupations.

The World Economic Forum calculates it will now take 134 years — or five generations — to close the gap worldwide, an increase from 131 years in 2023.

Shelley Zalis isn’t waiting around for change.

As founder and CEO of The Female Quotient, the 62-year-old Los Angeles native leads a global movement dedicated to closing the gender gap and empowering women in business. Her vision is to create a workplace where both men and women can thrive, leveraging AI and other technologies to democratize opportunities and promote diversity.

Now a decade old, The Female Quotient aims to collaborate with the most influential companies in the world — a growing list of leading brands from Spotify to P&G — to build the largest community of women in business across every industry. Today, it has grown to 6 million members across 30 industries and 100 countries, all advocating for women worldwide.

The Female Quotient shows up as The FQ Lounge at tentpole industry conferences such as at SXSW, Cannes Lion and the World Economic Forum as well as hosting its own summits, fireside chats, roundtables and co-branded events like last year’s inaugural Women in AI Summit. FQ Lounge events not only promote gender equality but also amplify the voices and experiences of talented businesswomen, incorporating their insights and stories into FQ’s own content.

Zalis and her team also work directly with Fortune 500 CEOs to implement strategies that close the gender gap, focusing on pay equity, AI bias, care responsibilities, procurement practices and leadership opportunities.

“It’s not about men. It’s not about women, it’s about conscious leaders,” Zalis says. “If you’re in a position of power, use it to bring everyone up so that everyone can thrive in the workplace.”

Zalis is driven by the certainty that CEOs have the power to drive real change and, if they act, closing the gender gap won’t take as long as the World Economic Forum predicts. In fact, it could take as little as five years — Zalis has done the math.

“It’s the only global goal that a Fortune 500 CEO can actually achieve in the lifetime of their leadership,” Zalis says. “When you think about any of the other goals — climate, hunger, education — those are ones that they cannot achieve by themselves, but closing the gender gap is something that a Fortune 500 CEO — with priority, with consciousness, with choice — can actually close, because it’s a mindset gap.”

‘Chief troublemaker’

Zalis’ career has not been without obstacles. Early on, she faced skepticism and pressure to conform to traditional business norms. But her commitment to authenticity and emotional intelligence in leadership allowed her to challenge the status quo and push for change, earning her the nickname “chief troublemaker.” Zalis credits her mother for teaching her that confidence is beautiful and generosity can power a movement.

Quoting Oscar Wilde’s words, “Be yourself because everyone else is taken,” Zalis reflects on her career: “I just always knew that I had to be me. You can fake it once, you can fake it twice, but you can’t consistently be someone else. And that just became the story of my career is I had to write my own rules.”

After graduating from Barnard College, Zalis started her career in marketing at Video Storyboards, a company that tested advertising animatics with mall shoppers. She then pivoted to market research, where she found her true passion for leading teams. After a stint at ASI, Zalis saw a gap in the market for online testing. However, despite client interest in her idea, she found herself excluded from key decision-making meetings, where only men were invited to discuss the future of the business.

Then she saw an opportunity to be her own boss. In 2020, she founded OTX, which grew to be a leading market research company. Nine years later, she was able to sell her company to global market research company Ipsos. As CEO of Ipsos OTX, Zalis began to envision the power of a community of women with the Ipsos Girls’ Lounge. This concept laid the foundation for what would become The Female Quotient.

Power of the pack

The company formed thanks to a simple yet powerful idea: Zalis invited women in tech to walk the floor together at conferences where they were often underrepresented.

In 2015, Zalis invited several friends to walk together at the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES) in Las Vegas. After calling five girlfriends to invite their friends to walk the showroom floor, 50 women showed up. By the third day, 300 women had gathered, all doing business with each other and discussing important topics like work-life balance and imposter syndrome. She recalls men turning their heads, wondering, “Where did all these women come from?”

For Zalis, who up until then was often the only woman in the room, it’s a moment that changed the trajectory of her career.

“When one woman walks the floor, you’re pretty invisible, but when women walk the floor, I call it a power of the pack moment,” she says.

Thinking about it all these years later, Zalis still gets shivers. It was the day The Female Quotient, then dubbed The Girls’ Lounge, was born. It inspired her to use her Forbes column to mentor women in middle management positions and help pioneer the #SeeHer movement with the ANA to increase the portrayal of women and girls in advertising and media.

Today, Zalis has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top 20 Most Influential Voice, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, with accolades including a Matrix Award and a spot on Thinkers50’s Global Leaders 50 List, among others.

Zalis’ dedication to gender equality and her innovative approach to creating inclusive spaces has redefined what’s possible when women unite in support of each other. Yet the work is far from over.

“We can close the door of yesterday and open the new door of tomorrow,” Zalis says. “This is a new opportunity, an opportunity forward. … There’s a solution to every problem; you just have to find it with an open, positive mindset.”