Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

January 11, 2017 · 4:17 pm

Being the Only Woman in the Room

This week I met the Rev. Liz Milner, new CIC Chaplain for Elmwood Jail where I hold a weekly Education for Ministry (EfM) seminar in a men’s medium-security dorm. During this introductory conversation, I mentioned to Liz that I was comfortable working as the EfM Mentor in a men’s facility. After so long working as an executive in Silicon Valley technical companies, I would have to be comfortable being the only woman in the room! NCWIT reports that only 25% of US professional computing jobs are held by women, with numbers much lower at senior levels.

For decades I designed and managed programs for Sun Microsystems such as the TAB – Technology Advisory Board, pictured above. It was an honor to work with world-class innovators and leaders like Ivan Sutherland, Greg Papadopoulos, and Danny Hillis, but with very few exceptions, they were all male.

Women in technology meet each other at conferences, like the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (over 15,000 attended in 2016 – about 90% of whom were women), or in professional programs like TechWomen or Technovation. We keep aware of our accomplishments as a group by means of projects like the Notable Technical Women cards and posters, and by awards such as Women of Vision. Women geeks are often the only female in the room – but there are many rooms!

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Episcopal church, Geeks, Silicon Valley, Sun Microsystems, teaching, technical women

November 29, 2016 · 1:23 pm

Honoring Jail Ministry

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves honored dozens of jail and prison ministry volunteers last month, among them, myself. Since 2007 Bishop Mary has served as the third bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real (ECR) in California. Since 2015, she has also been the Vice President of the House of Bishops. Some years ago, Bishop Mary created the Simple Servant Award to honor those working as faithful ministers in the community.

I was out of town – in Sewanee, Tennessee, renewing my Education for Ministry Mentor Accreditation, and being trained as the Diocesan Coordinator for EfM – so I missed the Simple Servant presentation at the ECR annual convention on 4 November 2016. However, my husband John Plocher helped Bishop Mary prepare her presentation slides, so I was able to contribute photos and information in advance. The Reverend Peggy Bryan worked with two of my student inmates on the artwork for the certificate.

Jack Fanning and I received our certificates the following week. Jack helped me to start the first EfM program at Elmwood Correctional Facility (Milpitas, California). There are about 25 EfM seminars in prisons in the USA but ours seems to be the first class in a county jail. We just started our second EfM term inside Elmwood. Our seminar includes have six men in Year-1 plus four continuing to Year-2. Thanks to the University of the South, The Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, CIC Ministries, and Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church for their joint and generous support of this program!

If you are interested in volunteering in a Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) jail, please contact the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy (CIC).

Two photos taken by Elrond Lawrence of the 4 November 2016 presentation in Salinas:

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Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews, Politics

Tagged as Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy - CIC, Jail, John, Silicon Valley, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, teaching

November 29, 2016 · 12:17 pm

TechWomen 2016 Fellows – Next Steps

The 90 TechWomen 2016 Fellows returned to their 19 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. After a very busy month in the San Francisco Bay Area and a week in Washington DC, they have been been reconnecting with home and family. Some of us mentors in the Silicon Valley have continued working remotely with our mentees since we last saw them in Washington DC. Two groups with whom I have actively continued to work are Team Tunisia (the development group of six from Tunis, plus three TechWomen mentors), and the TechWomen 2016 Fellows who have become Certified Mentors with my company, Mentoring Standard.

Team Tunisia has met remotely twice already and is busily developing plans, branding, and social media for WAKTECH. WAKTECH will developing a software application plus community system to improve public transport in Tunis. Our team won one of the TechWomen Pitch Day seed grants last month and we are now looking for additional sources of funding and support. While we were in Washington DC, Team Tunisia was able to meet His Excellency Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States. We brought along our TechWomen trophy to show him!

12 TechWomen 2016 Fellows have completed the submissions required to become Certified Mentors after returning home. They have demonstrated that they hold the following three qualities:

Significant Mentoring History.
Good Reputation.
Respectable Professional Experience.

Congratulations and welcome to:

Engy Abdalla	Architect & Interior Designer, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Alexandria, Egypt
Yousra Anwar Abdelhady	Independent Trainer, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Alexandria, Egypt
Chioma Hannah Ezedi	Programmer, Abububakar Tafawa Balewa University, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Bauchi, Nigeria
Yelena Filipchik	Sales Intelligence Manager, PepsiCo, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Almaty, Kazakhstan
Habsatou Nadia	Project Engineer, Cameroon Telecommunication, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Kitio Tsamo Arielle	Founder: WIT, Computer Science Lecturer Assistant: University of Yaounde 1, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Diana Hasan Nassar	Product Manager: souq.com, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Amman, Jordan
Estelle Ndedi-Nzalli	Computer Sciences Engineer, Information Technology Department, Ingenieris, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Dr. Francisca Onaolapo Oladipo	Professor, Federal University Lokoja, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria
Gulshnar Salpykova	IT Specialist, Transtelecom JSC, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Astana, Kazakhstan
Yomna Emad Saleh	Business & Innovation Consultant: Innovety, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Cairo, Egypt
Nazira Sheraly	CEO, Agroholding Jashyl Charba, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic

I am very proud of all of them! More information about each of these remarkable mentors is on Mentoring Standard’s Honor Roll.

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Advising 6 TechWomen from Tunisia

Since August 2016, I have been honored to be one of three Impact Advisors to the six TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Tunisia. We started meeting while the ELs were still in Tunis and we have continued our discussions at least weekly since. Mercedes Soria (Vice President of Software Engineering, Knightscope), Fatema Kothari (Senior Consultant,
T-Mobile), and I have had a wonderful time working on this.

On 7 October, the ladies presented our plan for WAKTECH at the TechWomen Pitch Day hosted by Oracle here in the Silicon Valley. This is the Executive Summary for WAKTECH, from our Action Plan:

The biggest public transport issue in Tunis is delay. Bus and metro schedules are confusing and unreliable. What makes this issue worse is the lack of total absence of online and offline information about these delays. Users are deprived from real time information about it. WAKTECH will be the first mobile platform to centralize the information about public transportation in Tunisia. It will provide all the needed information about traffic, schedule and transit itinerary. The particularity of this application resides in the community of trusted users who will be its main source of data.

We will be building an application that enables users to share information about public transit like departure and arrival times or possible incidents. Based on that data, the users can access at any moment that information to schedule their trip, be on time, and save money. Using WAKTECH will help create the smart Tunis everyone is dreaming of where technology serves the citizens to manage their time effectively and create a community of responsible users.

Our Tunisia team was one of 19 that presented – one from each of the TechWomen countries. I was so proud of their poised and professional presentation! Tonight at the TechWomen Community Celebration in San Francisco we will hear the results of the pitch judging – only five teams will win one of the cash prizes. There were many superb presentations and inspiring projects proposed for Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Wish us luck!

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, Mentoring Standard, Uncategorized

Tagged as Africa, Central Asia, Mentoring, Middle East, Silicon Valley, technical women, TechWomen, Tunisia

July 22, 2016 · 4:25 pm

Caboose and Cactus Arroyo

My office replaced a swimming pool. WP668 is the 100-year-old railroad caboose in San Jose, California (“the Capital of the Silicon Valley“) where I work for Mentoring Standard. Above is WP668 in our backyard now, and below is what the same space looked like in the year 2000. The swimming pool was removed ten years ago – see more photos on the WP668 webpage.

I designed the landscape setting for WP668 based on large rocks and cactuses, including a Y-shaped arroyo (or dry creek) that is small enough to be called an arroyito. Like the bones of California, our arroyito is largely made up of granite, basalt, limestone, and quartz, with jasper, serpentine, sandstone, conglomerates, and other stones for variety. We bought two large boulders from South Bay Materials but the other rocks were adopted as individuals. Every time we go on vacation or a road trip, we come home with new garden rocks, so the arroyito becomes more solid and complex year-by-year. My family complains when they have to ride home from a trip with their feet on top of the latest stones headed for the arroyito but they still help me stuff rocks into the car.

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Bishop Mary Visits Jail

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves and Deacon Robert Seifert spent the afternoon at Elmwood Jail yesterday with the Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church jail ministry team, lead by the Reverend Peggy Bryan. In addition to the St. Andrew’s volunteers, Elmwood Chaplain Jennifer Bales went with us yesterday to two dorms. The first was a minimum security area holding about fifty inmates where St. Andrew’s offers Christian worship service every Sunday afternoon. The second area was a medium security dorm where I teach a Education for Ministry (EfM) seminar every Wednesday night. EfM is a University of the South – School of Theology extension program.

In thanks for her support – both financially in paying for half the cost of their EfM books and tuition, and spiritually with her prayers – the inmates signed a printout of our group-written “Collect for Week 14” as a gift for Bishop Mary. “Collect” is another word for prayer. We wrote this collect as part of our 1 June theological reflection exercise in class. The text is:

Collect for Week 14

Dear God, omnipotent in heaven, creator, Love, and perfect.

You watch over the oppressed, create people in perfection, never leave us alone, bring joy, and protect your creation.

We pray that you give us freedom, protection, wisdom, and guidance. Increase our faith, give us knowledge to know you better.
So that we are in heaven with you.

We praise your Holy Name. We keep our eyes on the prize: getting into heaven and gaining eternal life.

Amen.

My goal in asking Bishop Mary to visit was that the inmates would know that whether they are released soon or spend the rest of their lives in prison, they are valued human beings and part of a faith community who are praying for them. Many if not most of the Elmwood inmates are recovering (or not) from substance abuse, or are mentally ill. “Of the 3,600 inmates at the Main Jail and Elmwood in Milpitas, 43 percent suffer from a mental illness” officials reported in September 2015. Many of the 120 recommendations by the Blue Ribbon Commission for improved jail operations are with regard to Mental Health services. Even for the healthy, jail is a depressing place. Knowing that they are important to someone is a step forward.

If you are interested in volunteering to visit jail in Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley), California, please contact the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy (CIC).

Sharing Space

Current news about Bathroom Bills and silly videos like “Sitting in Bathrooms with Trans People Ep. 1” reminded me of how the Silicon Valley company where I worked decades ago managed the bathroom question.

Our company loved to dress up for Halloween. One year, Angel*, a very tall Hardware Diagnostics staff member came to work on Halloween dressed as a woman. Up until then, we had thought of Angel as a man, so when he loomed over all of us wearing platform shoes and a dress, it was considered a very good costume. The next day and after that, Angel continued to dress as a woman. For most of us, this was our first experience with a Transgender person and there was initial confusion; however, we had work to do and most of us ignored Angel’s transition as being none of our business.

Then, we noticed Angel using the staff break area sink for tooth brushing. When I asked why not brush in the bathroom, Angel said that the men in our building objected to sharing the Men’s Rooms and had forbidden her access. Angel said she waited until she got home to use the toilet but that she wanted to brush her teeth after meals.

The next week, the women staff (Engineers, Managers, Support, and Administration) went to lunch together to discuss what to do. A few days later, several of the women met with Angel and offered her use of the Women’s Rooms. Angel agreed. The only real change in behavior was after that, the women used bathroom stalls for privacy when changing clothes. The men continued to be rude to Angel but at least she had a place where she could brush her teeth and use the toilet at work.

*name changed

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Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Silicon Valley, Sun Microsystems, technical women

Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

Being the Only Woman in the Room

Honoring Jail Ministry

TechWomen 2016 Fellows – Next Steps

Advising 6 TechWomen from Tunisia

Caboose and Cactus Arroyo

Bishop Mary Visits Jail

Collect for Week 14

Sharing Space

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