Twitter generously hosted a TechWomen community event last night at their San Francisco headquarters. Hundreds of mentees, mentors, and guests enjoyed food and speakers, plus lively networking and discussion. Imen, Larissa and I kept losing each other in the crowd! We enjoyed sending tweets from Twitter HQ. Twitter even provided a little wooden birdhouse that took silly photos then posted the images in tweets.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
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Yesterday, two of us TechWomen mentors went with mentee Josette Tejan-Cole (from Sierra Leone) to visit a retired Chevron executive to discuss Josette’s career in petroleum engineering. Although I worked in the oil business before starting to work for computer companies in the Silicon Valley, I learned a great deal. It was a fascinating afternoon.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
Larissa Shapiro (Mozilla) and I are mentoring Imen Rahal from Algeria during this month as part of the TechWomen program of the US State Department. Last weekend, we cooked dinner together at my house on Friday night, then on Saturday and Sunday went on two cultural tours (with Imen and other TechWomen friends), to see unique California sites such as:
We are enjoying our time together!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Today was the big orientation day for the 78 TechWomen mentees from 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and the 106 mentors from 160 Silicon Valley companies. TechWomen is an Initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs – for professional women working in STEM from Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
Juniper Networks hosted the event in their “Aspiration Dome” building in Sunnyvale, California. Larissa Shapiro (Mozilla) and I are mentoring Imen Rahal from Algeria during this month. Larissa and I are among about a dozen mentors enjoying our third year with TechWomen. Barbara Fittipaldi (CEO at the Center for New Futures) lead the group in discussions on how to develop and fulfill our visions. It was an inspiring day!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
I came home yesterday after an inspiring day at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. I joined 4,600 other technical women at the sold-out GHC13 in Minneapolis, MN. My GHC13 day started at 6:30 am switching my bag to a downtown hotel (all hotels near the convention center were sold out for the day I arrived), then to breakfast hosted by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, followed by a keynote panel with Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College), Sheryl Sandberg, and Telle Whitney (President, Anita Borg Institute). Then, Trish Tierney (of the Institute of International Education) and I presented on “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” and later I presented a poster on the “Lifetime Value of Mentoring“. My daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman also presented her poster on “The Arduino Dress“. The poster next to mine was “Girl Scouts: An Analysis of STEM Activities and a Call to Action” by Maria Ebling of IBM Research. Jessica and I got back to our hotel room by 10 pm with bags of loot and tshirts from GHC’s wonderful sponsor companies, universities, and organizations.
I flew back to the Bay Area yesterday in time to have dinner with my new TechWomen mentee from Algeria. She and I are going to another event together tonight and plan to tour San Francisco this weekend, as well as seeing the musical 1776 at the American Conservatory Theater.
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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
For the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (“GHC-13″) this week, I look forward to presenting a poster (“Lifetime Value of Mentoring to Technical Women”) and also a Student Opportunity Lab (SOL) topic: “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” (with Trish Tierney of the Institute of International Education). Since I was at the People to People (P2P) conference last weekend in Washington DC and am traveling to GHC in Minneapolis tomorrow, my husband John Plocher generously managed the printing of the big poster and the SOL panel handouts. While I was in Washington DC, our daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman tweaked the poster graphics for better effect. John posted the final versions on our website:
The “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” material was developed in collaboration with four TechWomen co-presenters from the Middle East who regretfully are unable to attend GHC13 in person. Thanks to Sukaina Al-Nasrawi of Lebanon and Maysoun Ibrahim of Palestine (TechWomen Inaugural Class 2011), Adla Chatila of Lebanon and Heba Hosny of Egypt (TechWomen Class 2012) for their welcome support and valuable advice. Thanks also to Trish, John, and Jessica! I am blessed to have so many talented people supporting this work!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
I am delighted that Triangular Partnership: the Power of the Diaspora, the pre-publication review edition of the 160 page book I edited has been published and distributed today, including my chapter on professional mentoring. Here I am with Dr. Enawgaw Mehari, Founder and President of the People to People (P2P) organization and Dr. Kinfe Gebeyehu, Vice President of P2P, at the 5th Annual Global Ethiopian Diaspora Conference on Health Care and Medical Education, in Washington D.C. About a dozen of the chapter authors attended the conference so I asked them to sign my copy.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
19 October 2019: Links Updated.
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