Our TechWomen delegation is a Rwanda New Times front page story today! Read all about it: “Silicon Valley women gurus inspire Rwandans” by Collins Mwai, 27 January 2014.
Tag Archives: technical women
“Silicon Valley Women Gurus Inspire Rwandans”
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
Rwanda Delegation Pre-Trip Briefing
Last week, several dozen US-based mentors and program staff gathered at the Institute of International Education offices in San Francisco for a pre-trip briefing for TechWomen Rwanda delegation members. Others phoned into the crowded room. The delegation’s enthusiasm and energy level are high! TechWomen 2013 Emerging Leader delegates from Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya will join us in Kigali.
TechWomen’s 2014 Emerging Leader application is now open! The deadline to apply is 23:59 Cairo time, Monday, February 10, 2014. The delegation will be in Rwanda during the application period. So, while we are making presentations at girls’ schools and technical events, we will encourage women working in STEM to apply to TechWomen.
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
Katy’s 2013 Book List
I am in the process of switching from an iPad to an iPad Mini for my upcoming TechWomen mentoring program delegation trip to Rwanda, so I have been sorting what Kindle ebooks and iBooks I will take along… I am a big reader, finishing one to two books most weeks. When I was ten years old, the librarian in our local public library mentioned that I averaged a book a day (shorter books, back then!). In 2013, I started reading books online, so now I can track my titles. Below are some of the books I read in 2013 that I liked best, meaning I will probably read them again.
* means a re-read (because it was too good to read just once!)
- Bryan, Christopher, And God Spoke / The Authority of the Bible for the Church Today (2002)
- * Bull, Emma, Bone Dance (1991)
- * Bull, Emma, War for the Oaks (1987)
- De Quincey, Thomas, Miscellaneous Essays (1859)
- * Dickens, Charles, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (2011) – 2013 focus was on The Christmas Carol
- * Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Volumes I and II (1986)
- * Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers (2010)
- Flint, Eric 1632 (2000)
- * Gaiman, Neil, Anansi Boys (2005)
- * Gaiman, Neil, and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens / The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)
- Holy Bible – New Revised Standard Version (1989)
- Hunt, Linda Lawrence, Bold Spirit / Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America (2003)
- Ilibagiza, Immaculee, Left to Tell / Discovering God Admist the Rwandan Holocaust (2006)
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Christianity / The First Three Thousand Years (2009)
- * Melville, Herman, Moby Dick / Or, The Whale (1891)
- * Modesitt, L.E., The Magic of Recluce (1991)
- * Nix, Garth, The Abhorsen Trilogy (2003)
- * Pierce, Tamora Beka Cooper: The Hunt Records (2006)
- * Pratchett, Terry, Small Gods (1992)
- * Pratchett, Terry, The Wee Free Men (2003)
- Sandberg, Sheryl, Lean In / Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
- Sansom, C.J., Dissolution (2003)
- * Sayers, Dorothy, Lord Peter Views the Body (1928)
- * Sayers, Dorothy, The Nine Tailors (1934)
- * Shakespeare, William, The Compete Plays of Shakespeare (2011) – in 2013, focus was on Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night
- * Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash (1992)
- Verghese, Abraham, Cutting for Stone (2009)
- Webb, Maynard, Rebooting Work / Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship (2013)
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
Getting Ready for Rwanda
Last week, my son Paul asked why I was looking so sad. I explained that I was reading a series of books about Rwanda, and in particular about the genocide of 1994. I will be traveling with the TechWomen (US State Department mentoring program) delegation to Rwanda next month and am learning about the history of that area of Africa.
As disturbing as my reading is, I know the importance of advance preparation when traveling. In 1979, after I graduated from U.C. Berkeley, I backpacked for six months through Europe, ending up with a long stay at the Kibbutz called Ashdot Ya’akov near the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After the Teheran hostage crisis developed in November 1979, I headed home, ending up in an almost-empty youth hostel one night on Mount Carmel. One of the other hostel guests was a young woman from Germany who had come to Israel for a vacation during her college break. At the time, German schools did not teach about the Holocaust. When I met her, this girl was deeply shocked after someone told her about the history of her homeland and the place she had come. She spent the night sobbing with grief, saying over and over “I did not know. I did not know.”
So far, I have read:
- Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda book by Rosamond Halsey Carr (2000)
- “The Country That Bans Plastic Bags” 2/13/2013 blog by Tom Carver
- We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1999) book by Philip Gourevitch
- Left to Tell: Discovering God Admist the Rwandan Holocaust book by Imaculee Ilibagiza (2007)
- Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide book by Imaculee Ilibagiza (2008)
- CIA “World Fact Book” Rwanda
- The New Times – Rwanda’s First Daily http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/ (newspaper)
- “Healing Hearts Northwest – The Life and Times of our Kigali, Rwanda Medical Mission” – an interesting blog with a good reading list at the bottom
Of course, I am also working on all of the other preparations needed for a big trip, particularly since I will take a few days after the delegation period to trek with Ecotours to visit the mountain gorillas. I visited the PAMF Travel Medicine department and have new Yellow Fever, MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), and Typhoid immunizations. I tried out my old hiking boots and got a flat (see photo below). So, I am now getting used to a new pair of Lowa – Renegade boots. Ged Caddick of Ecotours has warned us to expect mud, so I also bought new rain gear at REI. I have binoculars but I am still thinking how to pack without zip lock bags…
Images Copyright 2013-2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
We Are Citizen Diplomats
Last month, I attended a reception in San Francisco for IVLP (The International Visitor Leadership Program – the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program). At that event, I sent this tweet:
State Dept Intl Visitors program since 1940s hosted 200,000 to US (7,000 by @IVLPSF) 330 later were heads of state: We are citizen diplomats
07:04 PM – 20 Nov 13 @katy_dickinson
I was surprised when this tweet was redistributed several times. After each retweet, I considered what it means to be a citizen diplomat. I learned about IVLP through the TechWomen program and the Institute of International Education (IIE West Coast). I was pleased to be an ILVP event host myself – having a group from the Middle East and North Africa for dinner and a WP668 caboose tour in April 2013.
The phrase citizen diplomat was used by the State Department speaker to describe those who support the IVLP program. The State Department website defines citizen diplomacy as:
Citizen Diplomacy is the concept that the individual has the right to help shape U.S. foreign relations “one handshake at a time.” Citizen diplomats can be students, teachers, athletes, artists, business people, humanitarians, adventurers or tourists. They are motivated by a desire to engage with the rest of the world in a meaningful, mutually beneficial dialogue.
This week, I have been making travel arrangements for my first visit to Sub-Saharan Africa, as part of the TechWomen delegation to Rwanda in February 2014. This will be my third time as a delegation member, having also traveled to Morocco (2011) and Jordan (2013) with the US State Department’s TechWomen program. While it feels presumptuous to call ourselves so, I think the hundreds of remarkable and generous Silicon Valley women professionals who have served as TechWomen mentors since 2010 are indeed citizen diplomats.
When our 78 mentees from the Middle East and Africa were working with us in October 2013 here in California, the US federal government shut down for 16 days. It was an embarrassing but excellent example of both the good and bad sides of the American democratic system. The bad side was watching some of the world’s elite and most powerful leaders squabbling in public. The good side was watching America continue to function pretty well without them. I imagine the other TechWomen mentors got to discuss all of this as often as I did with our international guests. If that isn’t citizen diplomacy, I don’t know what is.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Silicon Valley Bethlehem and Cable Car
We enjoy Christmas events old and new here in the Silicon Valley. Our EfM class went to the Bethlehem – Walk Through the Christmas Story together a week ago – followed by dinner at Mio Vicino in Santa Clara. An unofficial highlight of the show was watching one of the flock headbutting all of the other sheep in turn while the shepherds and angel said their lines.
Last night a group of us current and former-Huawei staff got together for dinner (at Il Postale in Sunnyvale) followed by a motorized Cable Car Ride to see the holiday lights in Willow Glen.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, News & Reviews
TechWomen: Next Steps, Open Source
We Mentors are sad to see our 78 TechWomen Mentees start their travels home today to their 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East. This has been a life-changing program for all of us. It will take time to process our experiences and understanding and to decide what to do next. Larissa and I just sadly said goodbye to our Mentee Imen who just started her long trip home to Algeria. Our parting advice to her had to do with open source.
All TechWomen emerging leaders are impressive and accomplished. This group of 78 was selected from almost 2,000 applicants. Some of them already know their next steps. Janet (pictured with me above, at the US State Department) is raising four sons, teaching Electrical Engineering at a technical college, and running a K-12 school with 450 students in Cameroon. Busy lady!
Imen spent this month working with Larissa at Mozilla working on open source software. When she gets home, Imen’s co-workers, family, and friends are going to ask about her TechWomen experience – and open source will be part of that discussion. Here are some of the websites Larissa and I recommend for newbies to open source:
- The Ada Initiative, Supporting Women in Open Technology and Culture
- CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project, Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing
- OpenHatch, particularly good training missions
- The Open Source Initiative
- Outreach Program for Women (wiki.gnome.org)
- SourceForge
Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
KatysBlog 