Tag Archives: technical women

New Playing Cards Honoring Women of Africa and the Middle East

As of January 2015, these cards are available for sale on Notable Technical Women.

Adla Mahmoud Chatila – Lebanon Draft Card Design - Adla Mahmoud Chatila - Lebanon - TechWomen Emerging Leader . Nezha Larhrissi Taghi – Morocco Photo Nezha Larhrissi Taghi- Morocco - TechWomen Emerging Leader
Patience Mthunzi – South Africa Photo Patience Mthunzi - South Africa - TechWomen Emerging Leader . Arwa Yahia Al-Eryani – Yemen Photo Arwa Yahia Al-Eryani - Yemen - TechWomen Emerging Leader
Maysoun Ibrahim – Palestine Photo Maysoun Ibrahim - Palestine - TechWomen Emerging Leader . Josephine Kamanthe Ndambuki – Kenya Photo Josephine Kamanthe Ndambuki - Kenya - TechWomen Emerging Leader

TechWomen Mentor Eileen Brewer, Jessica Dickinson Goodman and I are partnering with Arezoo Miot (IIE TechWomen Director), Jill Finlayson and Julia Lovin (Council Co-Chairs of the TechWomen Alumnae Organization, and TechWomen Mentors) to create a new playing card deck honoring 54 of the remarkable TechWomen Emerging Leaders – from 16 countries in the Middle East and Africa since 2011.  We are building on the success and structure of the “Notable Women in Computing Card Deck”  that Jessica and I developed with Professor Susan Rodger (Duke University) to develop this new deck honoring global women of STEM.

TechWomen is a professional mentorship and exchange program developed in response to President Obama’s efforts to strengthen relations between the United States and the Middle East and North Africa.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first announced the TechWomen initiative on April 28, 2010 during President Obama’s Entrepreneurship Summit. In June 2011, TechWomen launched with 37 participants from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories. In 2012, the program expanded to include women from Tunsia and Yemen. In 2013, the cohort doubled in size with the addition of women from Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
TechWomen – Who We Are

The card design above is Jessica’s first draft proposal – still under discussion! It honors my 2012 TechWomen mentee and friend: Adla Chatila of Lebabon. This project is a labor of love for the women behind it, which is why we are licensing the card deck under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 U.S. License. We will make $0 profit from this project. We are still discussing how to fund production.

Thanks to the 70+ TechWomen Emerging Leaders who have already submitted their information to be considered for inclusion. I am very much enjoying my email communications with this inspiring and energetic group as we develop this exciting new project!

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After Everwise

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Yesterday, my last day as Vice President – Mentoring at Everwise, was when the big storm hit, so the company holiday party was postponed. I handed out train ducks as presents to the two other people in the San Francisco office – and left extras with Veronica French for staff who could not get to work due to wild weather.

Some of the deliverables I am proudest of during my half year with Everwise:

On to new adventures!

Image Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

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TechWomen Delegation to South Africa – Preparations

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Last night was the potluck holiday party for TechWomen, the professional mentoring program for women in Africa and the Middle East, an initiative of the US State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. TechWomen is run by the San Francisco office of the Institute of International Education. Dozens of mentors from Silicon Valley companies arrived (despite dire storm warnings) to enjoy each other’s company, celebrate the promotion of Arezoo Miot to Director of TechWomen, admire the newly-remodeled IIE offices, and to start discussions for next month’s Delegation to South Africa.

We also celebrated our new alumnae: Heather Ramsey and Trish Tierney (former executives for IIE) who have a new non-profit startup called WAKE International (Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange).

I am looking forward to planning my first trip to South Africa!

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Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

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Expert Mentoring Advice: Best Practices / Worst Practices

7 Best Practices _ Worst Practices

I think this has been the single most popular 1-page mentoring summary I ever published:

“Best Practices / Worst Practices” may have been published in other places as well – please tell me if you see it!
12/27/2014: another reference published by talentmanagement360.com.

To get “Mentoring in a Box” free:

  • Sign up using the Mentoring in a Box Registration (registration allows Everwise to follow up with updates)
  • Once you have had a chance to review “Mentoring in a Box” material, Please take this short survey so Everwise knows how to improve.

9/16/2015 update: Several of the documents in “Mentoring in a Box” have been updated and are available by Mentoring Standard.

Steven Spielberg

Sara Blakely

“Expert Mentoring Advice: Best Practices / Worst Practices” is adapted from “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009” SMLI TR-2009-18, by Katy Dickinson, Tanya Jankot, and Helen Gracon. Copyright 2009, Sun Microsystems, Inc.. All rights reserved. Unlimited copying without fee is permitted provided that the copies are not made nor distributed for direct commercial advantage, and credit to the source is given.

Links updated 13 June 2020

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Mentoring in a Box

Sonia Sotomayor

9/16/2015 update: Several of the documents in “Mentoring in a Box” have been updated and are available by Mentoring Standard.

For several months, Everwise has been developing “Mentoring in a Box” materials, to present best practices and structure for small mentoring programs. Some of the content is original to me, other materials were created by Everwise President Collin Schiller and the team.  Other sources include TechWomen Emerging Leader Seham Al Jaafreh (from Jordan), and material adapted from my Sun Labs Technical Report “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009”.

To get “Mentoring in a Box” free:

  • Sign up using the Mentoring in a Box Registration (registration allows Everwise to follow up with updates)
  • Once you have had a chance to review “Mentoring in a Box” material, Please take this short survey so Everwise knows how to improve.

Everwise “Mentoring in a Box” contents:

  1. Mentoring in a Box: Read Me First (PDF)
  2. Everwise Partnership Kickoff Guide (PDF)
  3. Everwise Getting Started Guide (PDF)
  4. Metrics Tracking Spreadsheet Template (Must Be Copied to Use)
  5. Mentoring in a Box – Mentoring Program Manager – Resources (folder)
    • 5.1 Mentoring Program Manager – Overview and Contents (PDF)
    • 5.2 Mentoring Program Manager – Basic Guidance (PDF)
    • 5.3 Mentoring Program Manager – Templates and Samples – Letters and Emails (Must Be Copied to Use)
    • 5.4 Template: Kickoff Call Agenda, Presentation Contents (Must Be Copied to Use)
    • 5.5 Everwise Mentoring in a Box, Sample Spreadsheet: Protege Roster (Must Be Copied to Use)
    • 5.6 Template: Pilot Program Candidate Selection (Must Be Copied to Use)
    • 5.7 Sample Pilot Results Report (PDF)
  6. Everwise: Mentor Recruitment (PDF). 9/16/2015: an updated version has been published by Mentoring Standard.
  7. Expert Mentoring Advice: Best Practices / Worst Practices (PDF). 9/16/2015: an updated version has been published by Mentoring Standard.
  8. Everwise: Mentoring vs. Coaching vs. Sponsorship (PDF). 9/16/2015: an updated version has been published by Mentoring Standard.

More materials will be added as they are developed.  Suggestions and your comments are most welcome!

Maya Angelou

Sheryl Sandberg

Links updated 13 June 2020

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Mentoring in Arab Culture

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One of my motivations in working with Mai Temraz (of Palestine) and Seham Al Jaafreh (of Jordan) to create the Arabic Mentor-Protege video set by Everwise was to respond to discussions I had in the Middle East last year. As I wrote in my February 2013 blog entry “Honoring Our Own Generosity“, I was surprised and concerned to be twice told that in Arabic, that the saying is not “Give and Take” but “Take and Give”. Some doubted that mentoring would work in Arab culture. Yet, I have been treated with nothing but extraordinary generosity in my travels in the Middle East.  Also, in the last four years, I have seen the TechWomen Emerging Leaders from the Middle East thrive in that professional mentoring program.  I think that mentoring fits beautifully into the ancient Arab tradition of hospitality.

In October 2014 in San Francisco, Mai and Seham and I worked together to record the seven videos posted on my YouTube channel:

The seven videos are getting a small amount of attention and I hope that they will get more.  These videos present mentoring in simple words, communicating to potential mentors and proteges. If you are interested in mentoring but do not understand exactly how it can work for your circumstances, this series is for you. Mentoring is new to many cultures, and not all languages even have a word for the practice.

Photo copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

 

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Notable Woman in Computing Duy-Loan Le

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I was honored to talk with Duy-Loan Le in San Francisco yesterday about mentoring, and about the Notable Women in Computing playing card and poster project in which she is one of the 54 honorees. You can read updates about the ongoing “Notable Women” production on my daughter Jessica’s webpage and on our Kickstarter page.

Duy-Loan Le is a wise and very successful person and technical leader. I have heard her story several times in keynote speeches: her life and remarkable accomplishments are inspiring.  Duy-Loan Le’s second edition card reads:

  • Senior Fellow-Texas Instruments, WITI Hall of Fame, ABI Women of Vision, Golden Torch Award for Exemplary Citizenship in the Vietnamese American community.
  • For contributions to Digital Signal Processor microelectronics technology, and as the 1st woman and 1st Asian TI Senior Fellow.

Thanks to Everwise Founder and CEO Mike Bergelson for taking our picture!

Image Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

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