Proving you can pull in female talent from anywhere, Silicon Valley tech company SurveyMonkey has appointed tennis star Serena Williams to its board of advisors. Williams, who is engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, has pledged to tackle the industry's lack of diversity, noting that she is disappointed in the number of white and Asian men that fill high-paid tech jobs.The BBC points out that only 27% of tech jobs at SurveyMonkey are filled by women and just 14% of its workforce is African American. (See Ellen Pao Returns to VC to Tackle Tech Diversity.)

Silicon Valley escapee Kate Buckholz has, as Wired reports, a rather surprising message for the Valley's tech companies: stop trying to recruit women. That is, stop trying to recruit them if you're not actually going to make an effort to retain them. The pipeline leak, as she sees it, happens a few years down the line when women leave the workforce because the environment isn't a good fit or, worse, is overtly sexist. If the company culture doesn't support women, then making a huge push to recruit them is just wasted time, money and resources, she argues. These resources instead should be directed towards retention and promotion. We agree, but have to question, is focusing on all of the above really too much to ask? (See Calling All Women in Comms: Share Your Story!)

Hillary Clinton is joining forces with fellow former first lady Laura Bush to push for a women's history museum on the National Mall. Speaking at the Women Making History Awards gala last week, Bush, as the Washington Post reports, bemoaned the fact that half the population is left out of American history and that more needs to be done to encourage women to run for office and president as Clinton has done. Clinton backed up her sentiments in a video message that also played at the event, which was sponsored by the National Women's History Museum. The Museum is currently housed online but has been looking to break ground in DC since it was founded in 1996.

Here at Women in Comms, we get sick of hearing the excuse from event planners that no women were available to speak at conferences -- and we're not the only ones. To hopefully put this excuse to rest indefinitely, we are creating a list of talented, qualified female comms execs who are willing to travel and speak at events on a range of technology topics. The list will be made public on WiC Online to serve as a resource for the entire industry. Coming off of an inspiring WiC conference and Big Communications Event with many interesting female speakers, Light Reading is committed to doing a better job at recruiting women too. We're calling on the rest of the industry to join us, so please get in touch if you'd like to be added to the list! (For coverage of the WiC conference, see WiC Panel: Diversity Must Flow Top Down, AT&T's Donovan: Women Adapt Faster Than Men, Cisco's Centoni Shares Guiding Career Themes , Intel GM: 5G Opens Up New Era for Women and Congratulations to WiC's Newest Leading Lights.)

— Sarah Thomas, , Director, Women in Comms