I am now listening to Dr. Carol Muller of MentorNet speak. Carol and
I were on a panel on mentoring here at the Hopper Conference yesterday
morning. Last night, Carol won the Anita Borg Award for Social Impact.
The Hopper conference day started with a talk by Dr. Sally Ride.
Dr. Ride talked about applying to be an astronaut
when she was a doctoral student at Stanford, following up on an advertisement
she saw in the campus newspaper. Not only did she show amazing pictures
from space but she had strong words on the need for more American women in
Engineering and the hard sciences. Dr. Ride has taken leave from her
professorship in Physics to speak on this and work for improvement. Sally
Ride was introduced today by Sun’s own Radia Perlman.
My daughter has a
biography called Sally Ride, Astronaut, An American First from
1984. I brought this to the conference and Sally Ride was gracious
enough to autograph it for Jessi.
Following Dr. Ride’s keynote, I went to the panel “Non-Traditional Ways to
Advance Your Career”. It was interesting to hear Robin Jeffries (Google),
Catherine Courage (Salesforce.com), Susan Landau (Sun Microsystems),
and Jill Stawbridge (Shopzilla) talk about their academic and
professional careers. The common theme was that each followed her heart.
Out of many choices, many not clearly leading anywhere and some unpaid,
each picked work in which she had a passionate interest. Particularly
memorable was Susan Landau’s story of choosing to live below her means,
that is, picking a home and mortgage that cost less than she could
afford. This meant Susan did not have to pick jobs solely by pay: it
gave her more options.
Carol Muller is giving us a demo of the MentorNet system. The web-based
profile collects information on both the mentee and their preferences
for a mentor in areas of background, career, gender, geography, etc.
One of the MentorNet participants spoke about her experience with the
program. She said the most important aspect of her mentoring relationship
was that even though her mentor was in the UK and she was in the USA,
he was very responsive and answered her questions quickly in email.
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