On the 27th October, we were delighted to hold our official DevelopHer launch party.
The event was held at the stunning Moo.com offices in Farringdon, London, and our doors welcomed a full house of over 200 attendees.
The night was filled with inspiration – ranging from thoughtful speakers, networking and a wonderful live performance by the talented Hope. We would like to thank everyone who attended the party, and helped create such a fantastic atmosphere. We were truly thrilled to see so many women and men from different backgrounds to join us on this journey.
In case you weren’t able to attend, here is a recap of some of the highlights and best bits from our launch party:
The evening started off with a drinks reception and with a big thanks to our sponsors, the first 150 attendees who arrived received our first ever printed DevelopHer goody bags provided by Shout Promotional Merchandise. On the night, our guests were treated by the fabulous Le Salon who provided manicure treatments to get us in the party mood, whilst MOO appetized our community with drinks and snacks for an evening of networking and celebration. The social buzz of the event was captured by the wonderful AwesomeWall and we were so pleased to see #DevelopHer was trending on Twitter during the night!
Our Managing Director, Emily Atkinson opened with a few words about DevelopHer’s mission and values.
“Our aim is to work with all the other female-focused communities in London and the UK to build the biggest, strongest and most diverse community we can for technology and entrepreneurship in the UK. Our aim going forward is to support women and men and everybody in the tech community. We are aiming to go for diversity and inclusion. Absolutely everyone is welcome to our events.”
– Emily Atkinson, Managing Director of DevelopHer.
Meri Williams, CTO of MOO kindly spoke at our event, reinforcing the importance of diversity in a workplace and the need for a support community to progress. This was followed closely with insights from our mentor and mentees of last year’s mentorship programme, to find out how their experience was.
“Mentoring is very much a two-way street – you get out what you put in. For me it was incredibly rewarding, being able to see the businesses and the careers of the mentees growing over the six month period. It was just incredible. A lot of people at the beginning were unsure of whether they were doing the right thing. Some of them got new jobs through the mentoring scheme, some of them had been running their own businesses and they got new inspiration and new business leads through the scheme and now their businesses are absolutely flying. For me as a mentor, being able to see the mentees grow was incredibly rewarding.”
– Lucy Blair, Director of International Sales & Marketing at The Orchard and DevelopHer mentor.
“I started the DevelopHer mentoring scheme in September 2015. At the time I was thinking about maybe starting my own business and I was full of insecurities. During the six month period, I learnt a huge amount. We were a group of 15 young women from totally different backgrounds but all of us wanted to be a success. We met these amazing mentors and it just gives you a kick up the a** and makes you think that if you want to do something, just go for it. My dream has turned into a reality and Layer Home has been live since the start of this year. We now have over four thousand products on the website, we work with hundreds of sellers and we add 300 new products to the site every week. It’s really gone from strength to strength.”
– Hannah Russell, DevelopHer Mentee and Co-Founder & CEO of Layer Home.
“From a personal development point of view, the programme really helped me with my confidence. I’m pretty shy and it’s really helped my public speaking. Last month I spoke at the Ministry of Justice and next month I’m speaking at a big health conference. The DevelopHer community has also just connected me with the best people. A year later I’m still chatting with the other mentees, mentors and DevelopHer team – it’s like a family and really the best bunch of people I’ve met in a long time.”
– Iona Inglesby, DevelopHer Mentee and Founder of Dot One.
A big thank you goes to our community for your kindness, support and encouragement. We’re so pleased to capture the night on film, thanks to Mai Vo from the DevelopHer Team and share the great memories from the night!
Watch the video recap by Mai Vo here
Don’t miss out on our next events!
As we mentioned we’re committed more than ever to work with other diversity and tech groups with similar values to provide you the events and opportunities you need. We have a great line-up of events before the end of the year, including a panel on the Adventures in Tech Careers, screening the documentary of “Dream, Girl”, attending Unbound Festival Unbound Festival and also returning to 10 Downing Street!
A special thanks to our sponsors and partners for your support on the night:
Sponsors
- Moo.com – Our key sponsor and partner who provided the event space, food, drink and flyers printing for our launch party.
- Shout PM – Promotional merchandise sponsor who printed the goody bags, banners and t-shirts.
- Le Salon – Provided professional manicures for our guests.
Partners
- Unbound – Provided our community 150 free tickets to their festival as a launch special.
- Awesome wall – Provided us the interactive social wall for the night.
Goody Bag Sponsors
- Propercorn | Hippeas | Popchips | Graze | Good Full Stop | Knomo | Birckbeck
For providing treats, discounts and support for our launch party.
How to get involved:
To keep up to date with our events and news, sign up to our mailing list here.
If your keen to speak at our events or becoming a mentor sign up to our speaker list.
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