Archive: TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color

On September 10 – 11, 2008, 41 women gathered at Google in Mountain View for the Anita Borg Institute’s first ever TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color.  TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color was a two-day workshop specifically designed for entry to mid-level technical women of color in academia and industry.  This successful addition to the TechLeaders curriculum was born out of ABI’s commitment to addressing the need for networking, mentoring, and leadership development opportunities for women of color which studies have shown help them to achieve the highest levels of success in their technical fields. 

The goals of the workshop were to provide skills to help increase participants’ scope and influence while defining and building their technical vision, as well as the opportunity to network and deepen their relationships with other women of color in the technical community.   Several participants used our 5 Tips to Convince Your Boss to send you to TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color when they approached their managers for funding to attend the program.  Participants came from the following organizations: Auburn University, Columbia University, Cornell University, EL Alliance, Genentech, Google, IBM, HP Labs, Intel, Los Alamos National Labs, Microsoft, MIT, Sun, Tellme, UCSF, UC Berkeley, Texas A&M University, University of Illinois and the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science.

The workshop was facilitated by Loretta Love Huff, President of Emerald Harvest Consulting and keynoted by: 

• Freada Kapor Klein, Founder and Board Chair, Level Playing Field Institute 
• Valerie E. Taylor, Department Head and Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship in Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Texas A & M University 

Dr. Klein’s talk focused on Corporate Leavers and how organizations can institute best practices to retain their talent. Dr. Taylor gave participants an overview of the statistics on the number of women of color in STEM disciplines and gave them her perspective on how to break through barriers.

The workshop also featured senior level technical women who served as panelists for the “Passionate Leadership” and “Moving Your Vision into Reality” panels:

• Irene Au, Director of User Experience, Google
• Cecilia Aragon, Staff Scientist, Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Sandra Begay-Campbell, Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
• Monica Martinez-Canales, Principal Engineer, Intel Corporation
• Gilda Garreton, Senior Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
• Christine Grant, Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Special Initiatives, College of Engineering, North Carolina State University
• Neerja Raman, Senior Research Fellow & Stanford Media-X Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Stanford University

For more information about the workshop please view the following blog posts:

TechLeaders, Women of Color, What an Experience
TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color – Day 1
TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision for Women of Color – Day 2