Women in Tech Employee Resource Groups: Challenges and Success Stories
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
These are my initial notes they are in progress.
Contents |
Blog Entries
Speakers
BJ Wishinsky Communities program manager for ABI. Job is to help technical women connect. Ambassadors network which is turning into a network of womens network.
Karin Meyer Program director at intuit lead the women in technology group 1.5yrs ago prior to that womens group 4.5 yrs ago
Karolina Buchner Founded yahoo women in tech group 2006 grassroots organization inspiration to current employees and new women.
Zahra Steering member google women engineers network and grow within google
Resources
Notes
They have questions prepared to share information and half for sharing and qa
What is the space that your womens networks operate in? Example of an activity
Z/ focused on employees withing in google. through career development more experienced women help out less experienced women. A lot of networking and social groups
karo / speed mentoring program 1 hr session to talk to experiences role models kind of speed dating. recently had a global career week an internal conference. lego serious play taping into your future. activism is in the area of k-12 outreach helps the women interested in conecting with other women who do k-12 outreach
kari / same outreach and networking. fairly new so the discourse is just starting. the commonalities are not yet defined but exposing them to senior leaders. bifercated leading the community and then activisim on executive education to educate the execs about the discrepancy. ABI gives her a lot of data for those discussions.
karo / started at the grassroot for just technical women then grew to all women
kari / reverse path womens path then started technical group
What would you want to share about that path?
kari / through out her career shes always been a minority and over time it became a nagging thing. the womens network she was trying to use to change and women as a totality in the company are not a minority and so they didnt have enought in common. just being a woman did not create enough of an environment. there was not enough of a common experience and did not address the issues
karo/ they have struggled and came up with the name women in tech and then they realized that a lot of the activities were beneficial to other women. they kept the name so as not to dilute to keep the focus. some times the nontechnical women can merge into the tech from that
zah / she is in mountain view: started an emailing list. and when you join they would add you to the list. because people dont know about the group membership is suffering. because they are spread all over the place so.
contact info BJ Wishinsky ABI Ambassadors bjw@anitaborg.org Karolina Buchner Yahoo! Women in Tech karolina@yahoo-inc.com Zahra Ghofraniha Google Women Engineers zahrag@google.com Karin Meyer Intuit Women in Technology karin_meyer@intuit.com
sponsorship kari / at intuit theyve change ctos 3 times and each had a certain degree of support varying levels of support. Now with the climbing the ladder he has 3 daughters that are engineers immediately upped the anti on the abi partnership.
The new award is forcing companies to look at the data is eye opening.
karo / at irst there was no diversity program. the vp once connected very much supported. the requested is data driven. formalization is needed. post event surveys. measuring success is difficult but very important.
zah/ there is a diversity recruiting team so there is a seperate problem. corporate level there is not bad so now that you are in google what now?
It helps to have a continuing relationship with HR. the transition is very hard. now their hr is in charge of all ergs the average age is 25 at google.
kari / hr can be a double edge sword. on one hand incredible partners on changing talent review process and make connections they also tend to downplay situations of inequity because it doesnt look good.
bj / the thing to remember about hr is that they dont work for you but they represent the company. when committed they are awesome. do what fits in your company.
what works for keeping your membership and your leadership intact
bj / karo group is the most structured that she has ever encountered.
karo/ few people plan a lot of work. early on the fortune of meeting a woman who ran a non profit lay out the organizational structure and the idea of different tier of membership. members who try out have a space tier 1. tier 2 volunteers committed to working for a couple hours a week. tier 3 leadership and your sponsorship to help educate. the rest of the team executes. always double up on every role. every year you can renew your role or pass it on. they have to recruit the next person for their position.
now to Q and A
what piece of advise would you give for struggling?
it is useful to have the university to create the women list who are diversity champions.
DOD contractor small company 63 employees there are 8 women. but they have to spread resouces and they work with other companies. interested in the cross company collaboration. how to do it? they arent really supporting each other.
Start a mentorship program for richmond chamber of commerce is great group mentoring and to network.
the hardest thing is scope creep you are going to lack a purpose.
in the beginning there was generic events but not everyone showed up the more focused the more people showed up.
one of the best events was about taking care of yoru care and how to do things with out men fixing your car. think outside the box.
at silicon graphics they realized the discussions were all women and the group was rebranded.
issues that are unique why is it hard to move up the path.
q. issue that she sees in class projects constantly found she had to prove herself.
a. when you first worked together intro gripi goals roles processes and interpersonals. state what you want to accomplish and hold people accountable.
yahoo had lets do lunch where people had to answer questions.
q for karin besides doing something that creates what else have you been able to do that causes change.
its not just reporting the numbers each leader is supposed to propose a gender strategy and a plan to get there. and then bringing leaders to things like GHC. point it out that shes is the only one in the room
zar ment prog. one of the most successful things is career development. annual performance reviews evaluate yourself and your peers. self assessment and resume etc. because it is intimidating set up one on one mentoring within the company.
how do you get the older mentors? she sends out an email and 20 senior women gives like 4 or 5 hours of their time. 50 or 60 slots become available. within google 18% of women self nominate 27% of men self nominate. promotion eledgible only 70% of women nominate themselves vs 90% of men. this is an example of a company who is really making an effort has their problems.
When you use the program manager title it is hard to get the respect etc. womens groups can raise awarness of these things.
pitch for ambassadors program welcome to join. contact bj. We want to look at the corporat academic partnership. always to give introductions to ambassadors of companies.
for the student groups if you want to get involved with a womans group interested into k12 work reach out to groups who do tech.
leverage linked in.
