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Tag: girls-tech

Winning at the Starting Line

Winning at the Starting Line

Published March 18, 2015

Countless articles and books have been written about the gender balance problems that continue to plague the tech industry. I’ve been passionate about outreach at the K-12 level for years, but what of those of us already in the workplace? A recent article that got me thinking about the topic once again in great detail was circulated a few weeks ago – Josh Bersin’s “The Important Topic of Women in Business: What Men Can Do”. But even this article focuses on mind shifts at home and in life, without a great deal of actionable advice. So you’re a leader in…

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Design for DigiGirlz

Published August 17, 2012

On Wednesday, I had the unique experience of teaching 110 high school girls an intro to interaction design workshop. Officially entitled “Making the World Easier With Interaction Design”, this was a course I built from scratch after offering to teach the subject at Microsoft’s annual Digigirlz Tech Camp. It’s a free weeklong program open to high school girls. They spend the week at Microsoft, hearing speakers, seeing demos, taking tours, and doing hands-on workshops like mine. Back when I debuted my Computer Engineer Barbie talk at Interaction ’11, I mentioned that my eventual goal was to craft a curriculum for…

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Take Your Kids to Work The Carnival Day

Published July 10, 2012

Last Friday was Take Your Kids to Work Day, formerly Take Your Daughters to Work Day. I participated as a mentor, talking to kids and answering questions about how to combine art and technology in jobs at places like Microsoft. Now, it’s no secret that I’m pretty passionate about this kind of work, seeing as I’ve spent multiple years on the Board of IGNITE (Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution). It’s important to give kids enough information about what’s out there for them, in the hopes of empowering them to get passionate and make the right choices. But at the…

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The Magic of Community

Published June 23, 2011

(To my visitors from the Carnegie Mellon homepage, many welcomes! Would love to hear from you if you have questions or comments.) Over the past few years, I’ve had the honor of participating in a unique program at Microsoft in the Server & Tools Division – the STB Women’s Leadership Council. Our chairwoman Betsy Speare recently spoke to the Microsoft JobsBlog about the WLC’s birth and importance at Microsoft. We also spoke a bit about the WLC at the panel Betsy and I participated in at TechEd 2011. I first heard about the WLC program when the woman who leads…

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A Few Steps towards a Brighter Future

Published June 6, 2011

The IGNITE Brighter Future Walk was a great success today – we raised nearly $5,000 (and will probably surpass that with matching corporate funds) and saw both familiar faces in addition to some new faces – like a large contingent of lovely ladies from GeekGirlCon, where coincidentally I’ll be speaking in October! (Date and time TBD.) We also presented one of the participating students with a $1500 scholarship courtesy of Microsoft! As for me, I walked three miles less than 2 weeks post-knee surgery, with a little jogging thrown in for good measure, and I’m holding up well! It was…

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