Category: Girls in Tech News

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes at DevelopHer over the past few weeks. We are building a new website, planning our launch party, autumn events, and continuing to build on our partnerships with some awesome UK and European initiatives.

We are committed to elevating women in technology and to pursue our mission of supporting women in professional, personal and political opportunities we’d like to expand our network. As firm fans of collaboration within the community we’ve grown great relationships with a number of organisations including Geek Girl Meetup, Blooming Founders, and Women Who Code and want to continue to seek out and partner with other organisations with similar values.

If you know of any other groups, initiatives or organisations you think we should get to know or events we should share, please put us in touch via developHer.org@gmail.com .

One of our newest partnerships is with SyncDevelopHER, an East Anglian initiative committed to promoting gender equality in technology. The awesome organisation is behind the DevelopHER Awards; showcasing the East Anglian technology industry’s leading female talent. The next Awards are in Ipswich on 30th November 2016 and tickets are available now . We’re excited to be working together with them and hope to partner on bringing their East Anglian based event to London in the near future.

Coming up we invite you to join us on 20th September at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society as we collaborate with WOW Talks bringing our mentoring experience to  WOW Talks:Women In Tech. Please use code developherwow2016 for £10 off.

As ever, to stay in the know for all things DevelopHer including our launch party please keep an eye on twitter and subscribe to our mailing list HERE.

Team DevelopHer

Welcome to DevelopHER

To our wonderful members,

We are extremely excited to announce that we’ll be launching under the new name DevelopHER, and will be partnering closely with StartHER in Paris as well as a number of other organisations supporting women in technology worldwide.

Thank you for bearing with us while we’ve taken the time to get our new community initiative right. We are as committed as we’ve ever been to elevating women in technology and will pursue our mission of giving women the same professional, personal and political opportunities as men.

We will be transparent about our plans for the future, finances, and team.

We are committed to you, and will always do what is best for you and our wider community.

We will welcome everyone – inclusive of all genders, experiences, and backgrounds. We are best when we work together.

DevelopHER events and programmes will start running in September and in the meantime please do reach out to us with any questions you might have.

Here’s to an incredibly bright future, we can’t wait to see you all again soon,

Team DevelopHER

 

Contact us:  Twitter , Facebook , Email

Growing You in 6 Months: Call for Applications for the Girls in Tech Mentoring programme

It was great to see so many people at the Girls in Tech London Mentoring Programme introduction last Wednesday! As usual, we had a strong turnout with a good mix of people, from those quite experienced in their careers to those just beginning in the tech industry.

This breakfast meeting, sponsored by La Fosse (recruiters in Tech) and helped logistically by the wonderful Alice from Runaway East, was to give those interested in the mentoring programme starting this September more of an idea as to what to expect.

As mentioned in my previous blog, this mentoring programme is aimed at women who are seeking guidance to help them maximise their potential and take the lead in their careers.

In case you missed the breakfast session, this is a short overview of what to expect in the programme. We will hold another session in the coming weeks for those who could not make this one – so keep an eye out to our events page!

Girls in Tech London Mentoring Programme

The Girls in Tech London Mentoring Programme is beginning in September 2015 and will run for 6 months until February 2016. The programme will consist of speed-mentoring sessions run every 5 weeks with selected and high profile people in the technology industry. Each session will revolve around a different topic integral to career advancement, ranging from “Tips from lean startups to improve your productivity” to “How to Negotiate Yourself a Raise or Promotion”.

We are fully committed to delivering a strong programme and we know that the women who are involved will show the same level of dedication. With this in mind feedback on each session and a written blog on the mentoring are required to complete the programme (not to mention the compulsory attendance to each session) with the aim of building upon this first experience for future mentoring programmes.

After the programme has finished, we would love for those who have completed their mentoring to become ambassadors for the scheme in order to get more women involved and help Girls in Tech make it even better for next year. This way we can improve and grow the number of female in the boardroom or at senior executive roles – for a better visibility of women in tech.

The deadline for applications is the 31st of July. There is no pre-arranged format for the applications – you are given complete creative rein on this. Your application could be an email, it could be a song or even a video application – anything goes!

At Girls in Tech we are really excited about this initiative to give the next generation of female tech leaders the guidance and support they need to take the lead in their careers. We want those on the programme to grow over those 6 months in terms of confidence at work and in business and to take risks and pursue the career they really want.

If you are interested in applying to the Girls in Tech London Mentoring Programme or perhaps know a friend who would benefit from the programme, please get in touch!

Send your application to: mpapplications@girlsintech.org

Or tweet us with your questions: @Girlsintech_UK

Good luck!

Announcing the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, Arizona

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#GITReady to be inspired! The annual Catalyst Conference, hosted by Girls in Tech, is coming to downtown Phoenix from Sun., April 26 through Tues., April 28 at the Hotel Palomar! We hope you’ll join us to mix, mingle, and hear from a premier selection of outstanding women leaders and entrepreneurs.

“We’re more than excited to host this premiere tech conference in Downtown,” said Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. “Women at the forefront of the technology and start-up industry will have an opportunity to experience first-hand Phoenix’s rapidly growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and innovative community.”

GIT Founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne is stoked, too: “There’s excitement and energy buzzing in downtown Phoenix, and Catalyst attendees are going to feel that” said Gascoigne.  “Amazing things can happen when one woman helps another – and together we’re going pave the path for future industry leaders.”

Prepare for more than 40 notable female speakers including presidents, CEOs, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and leaders in the tech industry and STEM fields. All who attend will get to choose from workshops, panels and hands-on resources to help advance women in technology careers.

This conference is just around the corner! Register today at http://catalyst.girlsintech.org/attend/ (members get 15% off with code ‘gitccmem2015’).

Apply now for Lady Pitch Night, hosted by Girls in Tech Paris

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Are you a female founder of a European-based startup? Consider applying for Lady Pitch Night.

On September 23rd, the 4th annual European Lady Pitch Night will be hosted by Girls in Tech Paris and Orange.

The criteria to apply for Lady Pitch Night is pretty simple: You must be a female founder or co-founder of a startup headquartered in Europe and have been operational for 6-36 months.

5 finalists will be selected to travel to Paris (for free) on September 23rd to pitch for an international jury made of entrepreneurs, experts and investors.

The following influential people were part of past judging panels:  Gilles Babinet (business angel), Marie-Christine Levet (investor at Jaina Capital), Annina Svensson (Industry Head Entertainment at Google and ex Country Manager at Spotify), Claudia Helming (CEO Dawanda),  Alena Osipova (Investor at Fast Lane Ventures), Catherine Barba (founder of Digital Commerce Factory).

The winners of the competition will not only get access to a lot of media visibility, but will also walk away with a number of exclusive prizes, including tickets for European conferences like LeWeb, mentoring from famous European incubators, and more.

To apply, just fill out this questionnaire. The deadline has been extended to July 31st — good luck!

Enter the 2013 Power Part Time list

The Timewise Foundation, a social business that helps people to find the flexibility they need in their careers, has launched its 2013 search to find 50 of the UK’s most senior level part time workers, with the support of EY.

Founder Karen Mattison, MBE says “Thousands of people in the UK want work with flexible or part time hours, to fit with their lives.  They need to know that there are brilliant businesses out there, where flexibility is no inhibitor to success.  As such, we are calling upon those pioneering companies that have already enabled key talent to progress their careers on a flexible basis, to open up and tell us about it, by nominating their most senior part time workers for the 2013 Power Part Time list.”

Karen will sit on a judging panel that includes Steve Varley, UK managing partner of EY, Katie Bickerstaffe, the CEO of Dixons Retail plc, Andy Saunders, the Deputy Manager of Management Today magazine and Lynn Rattigan, the UK Deputy Chief Operating Officer of EY.

Nominations are entirely free to make, require just a few hundred words and can be made anonymously.  Timewise also welcomes individuals who want to nominate themselves. Please call Jo on 0207 633 4553 for more information or enter below:

You can make your nomination here.

Nominations close on the 23 September

Read more about the Power Part Time list initiative

Join the Girls in Tech UK team !

It’s been over a year since we launched Girls in Tech in the UK and a lot has happened in the last year.

We kicked off our launch with a full-day event at Google Campus, with over 100 attendees – and went on to reveal our GIT EURO 100 list that same day. The list was featured on tons of blogs, including both The Next Web and TechCrunch, helping to further recognise what exceptional female talent we have in the European tech ecosystem.

After our launch, we went on to team up with some of the UK’s top startup events and organisations, to help make these events more gender-balanced. We held our first Women’s Startup Weekend, held breakfasts with General Assembly and have helped integrate top women into other events and conferences throughout the UK.

Now, we want to take things to the next level. We have more incoming requests for events and collaboration than we can handle. We also want to develop our content and make sure we’re leveraging the digital space as well. Therefore, we’re currently seeking talented and passionate people to join our team and our cause – men included.

If you’re interested in joining Girls in Tech UK in any capacity, please fill-out this form by Friday, September 6, 2013.

Girls in Tech & General Assembly Breakfast – Round 2

General Assembly LogoAs many of you know, last month we held a breakfast event with General Assembly London featuring some fabulous speakers. We knew the event would be good but to our surprise, the event was an even bigger success than we had imagined!

With a completely full house that left many standing and a waiting list of attendees, we decided that maybe we should give it another go 🙂 So here is your official invitation to the Girls in Tech London and General Assembly Breakfast – Round 2! We encourage you to sign-up ASAP because if this event is anything like the last one, we’ll sell out pretty quickly.

Please join us on March 28th from 9:30-11am at General Assembly London for a breakfast event focused entirely on COMMUNITY! We’ll be featuring some impressive speakers to discuss how they built and leveraged their communities – both in the UK and abroad, online and offline – for their respective businesses. Speakers for this edition include:

  • Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
  • Courtney Boyd Meyers, General Assembly London
  • Megan Zoback, Uber

Please be sure to sign-up here and we look forward to seeing you there! Oh yes, not a single man showed up to our last event. Let’s hope we change that this time, BOYS (VERY) ALLOWED 🙂

Girls in Tech London…this is just the beginning!

First of all, on behalf of the Girls in Tech London team, I’d like to thank everyone who turned up and helped to make our launch event on Friday such a success.

Photo: TechCrunch

We had some fabulous speakers and moderators, who shared their thoughts on everything from startup funding to security to how to network effectively at conferences. And of course, none of this would have been possible without our incredible sponsors and partners, including Google, Criteo, Eventbrite, London First and The Next Women.

Oh. And we’ll be posting more pictures shortly. 🙂

The 100 top women in tech in Europe.

For anyone who missed it, we also released our GIT EURO 100 list featuring some of the top women in tech in Europe. We received over 500 nominations from across Europe and would have loved to include everyone on the list. Clearly 100 just isn’t enough and we look forward to including more incredible women next year.

 

You can see this year’s selection, which was featured in TechCrunch, The Next Web and The Next Women – as well as publications from Israel (here and here), Italy, Greece, Russia and Turkey (here, here and here). If you’ve been selected and no publication from your country has published anything yet, be sure to let us know.

Some people have questioned why such a list is necessary. If you’re one of those people wondering why we even bother, be sure to check out Natasha Saxberg’s thoughts on why this list matters!

So…what’s next?

Now that our big launch event is over, you may be wondering what’s next! Well, we’ll be hosting regular events – evening panels/speakers and cocktails! – with more incredible women speakers.

If you’re interested in receiving information on our upcoming events, be sure to get on our mailing list. And if you want to get involved in organising, speaking or sponsoring future events with us, be sure to get in touch!