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"  Dae Mellencamp&amp;#039;s daughter most likely won&amp;#039;t grow up thinking she has to do just one thing. A doctor who also writes and directs movies? A mechanical engineer who dances in New York City Ballet and styles hair on the side? An architect who leads SoulCycle classes on the weekends? These are all career options she might look into, because when your mother wears so many hats, it&amp;#039;s easy to realize that the world is your oyster. Mellencamp is president of Vimeo, the highly addictive video sharing and viewing website that everyone from Britney Spears to the White House uses to publish their videos. Today, the site boasts 170 million viewers worldwide, with 70 percent of their audience residing internationally. We sat down with Mellencamp to talk about Vimeo&amp;#039;s commitment to hiring female engineers, the most challenging part of her job, and of course, what her favorite online videos to watch are. Tell me about your background. I am originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was a Midwestern girl who had dreams of the big city from reading a fashion magazine. I was probably 10, and I read about a successful woman who was CEO of a company on Avenue of the Americas. I remember saying, &amp;#039;I want to do that one day. I want to do business.&amp;#039; My mother was a film professor and she worked my entire life. Not only did it create my love of film, media, and ultimately technology\u2014because they&amp;#039;re all so interrelated\u2014but it was also about being able to support yourself and a family on your own. She was a film feminist and theorist\u2014that&amp;#039;s what she studied. She taught me that work and education are critical and helped develop my internal drive, work and career-wise. When I graduated college, I sought out a job in New York City and it was on Avenue of the Americas, and slowly, over time, I worked my way up. Related: Meet ELLE&amp;#039;s Women in Tech What does your mother think about what you do now? It&amp;#039;s sort of the next generation of what she was doing, in some ways. It&amp;#039;s true! She&amp;#039;s incredibly proud. I think for her, I am a reflection of all that she wanted for me on the career front: that ability to have that independence and financial freedom. It sounds like the idea of being a powerful woman is something that you strived for as early as 10 years old. Do you consider yourself a powerful woman today? That&amp;#039;s a tough question. I was seeking the independence. I wanted more of an option. I think women are very collaborative in nature. I think that&amp;#039;s a little bit of how we&amp;#039;re brought up. I&amp;#039;ve heard very, very, very successful women talk about this too\u2014how they&amp;#039;re the great collaborators in the company. And I think there&amp;#039;s a part of me that serves that as well, bringing people together and getting them on the same page. Related: Meet the Woman Who Spends Her Entire Day on Instagram Do you think that&amp;#039;s something women inherently do better than men? I feel that every individual is different. There are many super-collaborative men. I do think that there are men that could be very directive and less collaborative by nature. And I think that women will tend to be more collaborative and bring people together. I need to encourage [female employees] more to &amp;#039;make that decision. You can lead that.&amp;#039; Whereas with the men, it&amp;#039;s, &amp;#039;you need to get that person on board.&amp;#039; Sometimes it&amp;#039;s a bit of opposite coaching. What&amp;#039;s the gender divide at Vimeo? I&amp;#039;m very big on diversity. That&amp;#039;s women, but that&amp;#039;s diversity across the board. That matters for business. That&amp;#039;s been proven to increase success. We have 38 percent women, but in the company, we only have 5 percent women in engineering. We&amp;#039;ll be at 11 percent in three months. We&amp;#039;ve made a targeted effort to find and recruit female engineers and bring them here. I think it&amp;#039;s critical. That&amp;#039;s why IAC&amp;#039;s [IAC owns Vimeo] support of the Girls Who Code program is so critical. Our future success depends on having a really amazing, diverse work force, because that will drive success. We&amp;#039;re all doing it because we all want more women in tech. We all want more women engineers and to close this gender gap that I think is such a huge problem. Do you think the staff of Vimeo feels this push for more diversity? Oh yeah! I think all of our engineers would like to have more diversity and more women. They&amp;#039;re so supportive of it. When Girls Who Code came in last summer, Vimeo was so excited across the board. We had our CTO go, our engineers go, and we did a whole session with these girls. Does your daughter code? My daughter does not code. [Her school] hasn&amp;#039;t offered it yet. She is incredibly tech savvy. We are at the point where she&amp;#039;s teaching me functions on the iPhone or the iPad that I&amp;#039;m not aware of, which is a little bit disconcerting. But she&amp;#039;s not coding yet. Although she comes in and is pretty passionate about Vimeo. What are your favorite types of videos to watch? We curate at Vimeo. So I have friends I follow, and staff videos are always really fun. The staff picks are really, quite frankly, some of the best work that there is online. It&amp;#039;s some of the next generation of great filmmakers and directors. I&amp;#039;m particularly a big fan of the animations.      Omelette from Madeline Sharafian on Vimeo. What would you say is your favorite part of your job? It&amp;#039;s always the people that make it special. For me, with Vimeo, it&amp;#039;s what we believe in. We&amp;#039;re a company that&amp;#039;s really trying to do something different\u2014encourage this level of creativity and experience that I don&amp;#039;t really think exists. A sustainable, branded, long-term business. And that is not as common as it seems. That is one of the things I love most about the company and what we&amp;#039;re trying to do. The most challenging part? That this is online video! It&amp;#039;s one of the most competitive markets that exists! And it&amp;#039;s the diversity of what I do everyday: It&amp;#039;s numbers, it&amp;#039;s presentations, it&amp;#039;s creative, it&amp;#039;s coaching, it&amp;#039;s reading, it&amp;#039;s writing. It&amp;#039;s this mix. I&amp;#039;m never bored. And I always wish there was a little more time to focus on a special project. That must be so inspiring for your daughter to see you be so involved in so many different things. I really hope so. 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