Françoise Brougher spent years climbing to the highest ranks of the tech industry as a low-profile executive at Square and Google. Since August, though, she has become a Silicon Valley celebrity after suing her former employer, Pinterest, for gender discrimination, describing unequal treatment by other leaders at the company in an online essay. 

Since then, Brougher—who was chief operating officer at Pinterest—has been flooded with messages from women in a variety of professions from around the world describing similar experiences, she said in a recorded interview for The Information’s Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference. “The reaction has been overwhelming,” she said in the recording, which aired Wednesday. “I never expected this.”