TechWomen Mentors’ Party

The TechWomen mentors from the Silicon Valley are keeping in good communication with their mentees in the Middle East and North Africa. We have seen about a dozen new projects, including non-profits and business start-ups, initiated so far by our 37 talented and energetic colleagues since they returned to MENA from working with us here in California. Many of the mentors continue to serve as individual and group advisors, despite being half a world away.

One of the last official phases of the 2011 U.S. State Department’s mentoring program will happen next month when a few of us go to visit the technical women in Morocco for a week. We had hoped to go to Lebanon as well but regrettably that trip had to be cancelled.  Six of the mentees have recently won scholarships to return to the USA for a week to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, to be held 9-12 November 2011 in Portland, Oregon.  We look forward to seeing them there!

Yesterday in the hot autumn afternoon, 17 of the technical and cultural mentors met at my house in Willow Glen (San Jose, CA) for a potluck dinner, to catch up and enjoy each others’ company. Mentors from Huawei, Intel, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Likelist, NetApp, Northgate Environmental Management, SF Public Press, and Symantec and other companies and organizations brought lovely dishes to share. My son Paul took a picture of us on the steps of my backyard caboose (WP668).

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Images Copyright 2011 by Katy Dickinson and Paul D. Goodman