It was my first day on the job at a small software company. A smiling woman came hurrying down the hall, introduced herself, and said, “Thank god you’re here!” She was the first female programmer they’d hired. I was the second. The year was 1986. We soon became good friends and allies.
Fast forward to 2009. Many a young technical women still embarks on her career as the first woman on the team. As her career advances, she may see fewer and fewer technical women role models ahead of her on the path. When I first thought about potential subjects for an Ada Lovelace Day blog post, my mind turned to award winners and technical women in senior positions. But being a role model with impact does not require seniority. That’s why I’ve decided to focus instead on four students who provide role models for their classmates – female and male – of strong self-confident successful technical women leaders.
Alicia Chong is an undergraduate Electronic & Computer Engineering student at Monterrey Tech (ITESM) in Mexico. She’s been the primary driving force behind the campus group Mujeres en Technología (Women in Technology), nicknamed MenTe (Spanish for mind). When I blogged about MenTe’s visit to ABI last year, the group was newly formed. Since then they’ve held regular events for ITESM students and high school girls. Under Alicia’s leadership they’ve gained support from their school and from initially dubious male classmates. Against challenging odds, they found funding to send their first MenTe contingents to several conferences including the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC).
Sunayana Sitaram is an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering at the National Institute of Technology in Surat, India. In fall of 2007 she helped to create a women’s offshoot of their campus ACM Student chapter. Forum for Women Engineers (FEW) is open to all women engineering students at the institute. FEW holds monthly meetings on topics relevant to women students, particularly for freshmen and sophomore girls. They also conduct technical workshops and work with middle school girls in the area.
Kate Tsoukalas is an undergraduate researcher at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. She is a leader in her campus Women In Computing Science (WICS) group. WICS’ goals are to promote women in CS, support them through their studies, build “a strong network of friendly faces” for them, and challenge the biases facing them. WICS event topics have included Technical Interview Preparation, brown bag sessions with faculty and staff, and participation in GHC and in Society of Canadian Women in Science and Technology networking events.
Aakriti Agrawal is a Computer Engineering student at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She helped found a student group named Aspiring for Computing Excellence (ACE). They have frequent meetings to discuss recent developments in technology and hold training sessions where they study approaches to solving programming problems from famous international competitions. These sessions have increased the women students’ programming abilities and their self-confidence.
Sunayana, Kate, Aakriti and Alicia are studying and excelling in technical areas dominated by men and often lacking in support for women. In addition, they are actively building and maintaining support structures for themselves and other women students. And although young, they are savvy networkers on behalf of their organizations and themselves.Last year the four of them connected through our Grace Hopper 2008 group on Facebook. Out of that connection came a session they presented at last year’s Grace Hopper Celebration. Their topic? Student Groups Networking + Integrating Ideas = Together We Can Make a Better World. With technical women like these in the pipeline, I have great hope for that future.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Hi BJ,
I was touched that you chose us. Thank you. :)
Kate
March 24th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
To browse Ada Lovelace Day blog posts from around the world, go to http://ada.pint.org.uk/