Here is a portion of an interview by Kate Everson of software developer SAP’s chief learning officer, Jenny Dearborn that appeared in Talent Management magazine. Dearborn discusses what women need to reach the chief executive spot and what they can do to help others. To read the complete interview, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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SAP SE’s chief learning officer, Jenny Dearborn, has a Wonder Woman poster hanging in her office.

The star-spangled amazon reflects the superhero endurance she brings to her work as the learning leader for 76,000 employees at the international software development company. But as a woman in a C-suite position, she also acts as a motivator for fellow women aiming for a top spot in a world where women are still an oddity in the corner office.

Facebook Chief Operations Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer have become household names as women who have gotten to C-suite positions at top companies, but there’s still a gap in the number of women taking on chief executive positions. This year, the Fortune 100 includes only 16 companies with a female CEO.

Dearborn talked with Diversity Executive about how women can blast through the glass ceiling to get to the corner office, as well as what she and her fellow female C-suite members can do to help propel female employees to higher positions. Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

Where do you see glass ceilings existing, and how should women break through them?

I think that the glass ceiling is often at the top of executive management and before that C-level. You’ll see executive VPs, like Sandberg is COO, and you will often see women in support functions, and it is rare that a support function head then becomes a chief executive.

My recommendation to women who want to be that CEO is gravitate toward functions that typically transition into the CEO. If you’re in a very technical company, it’s engineering or product development, occasionally it’s marketing, but more often it’s someone in sales or finance who transitions from a functional lead to being the overall executive.

How does that reflect in your experiences?

I’m a C-level executive, the highest of my function. In a way you could say I’m only 45, but I’m kind of tapped out because I don’t want to be the chief human resources officer. I really like what I do, so in a way I’ve created a glass ceiling for myself because of the path I chose.

But being a CEO is something I’m very interested in, so sometime ago I started my own company, and my long-term goal is then to transition into being the chief executive. I think that’s something you see a lot for women who are quite ambitious if they can’t make it up the ladder at a large, traditional company. You’ll see a lot of women as the chief executive of midsize or small-size companies. It’s because women in order to get that CEO experience sometimes have to go lateral from being an executive vice president at a large company into being a president at a midsize or small-size company.

How should women who have made it that far help other women make the same progress?

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is a huge inspiration to me, and she said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” So I think as a female C-level executive, it’s really my job to tap women on the shoulder and look for young talent that’s amazing and develop them. Most women who are executives at my company do the same thing. An easy thing to do is to introduce women to each other and lend your credibility to them in that introduction. When you introduce a woman to a new group, don’t just say, “This is Karen.” Sing her praises and say, “This is Karen. She’s a program manager with a deep expertise in technical integrations, I’ve never worked with anyone more competent. She’ll be a great asset to your new project team.”

But also, I think most women know they need to create their own path. We have been told over and over that no one’s going to come and tap you on the shoulder, no one’s going to notice you unless you blow your own horn and you let them know. You have to really let people know what you want. I think we’ve been told that so often that women know they need to forge their own path. If women don’t know that by now, then they really have not been reading any books or listening to any TED talks.

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Here is a direct link to the complete interview.

Jenny Dearborn is a Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Officer for SAP, and she has held senior positions at SuccessFactors, HP and Sun Microsystems, Inc. She has received many leadership and excellence awards and was recently given the Silicon Valley Women of Influence Award for 2014. Realizing that mentoring does not end with your company or your country, she mentors business women in developing countries through a joint collaboration with the US State Department and Forbes Most Powerful Women Network. Jenny is a regular contributor to Forbes Magazine. She lives in Palo Alto, California with her husband and four active children. You can follow her on Twitter (@dearbornjenny).

Kate Everson is a Talent Management associate editor. Email: editor@talentmgt.com. Follow Kate on Twitter at @EversonKate. You can also follow her on Google Plus.