Tag Archives: TechWomen

September 11, 2012 · 10:44 pm

TechWomen at Huawei

We are having a good first week with the three TechWomen mentees hosted by Huawei in Santa Clara, California. We are still sorting out offices and equipment and accesses and orientation and starting work on our projects. Tonight, John and Paul and I went to a sushi dinner with two TechWomen and then on a tour of the San Jose TechShop where we have a family membership. We visited the textile area, wood shop (including my favorite Powermatic lathe), metal shop, laser room, and other technical and tool delights.

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Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, John, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, technical women, TechWomen

September 6, 2012 · 10:57 pm

TechWomen 2012 Orientation

Today was when the TechWomen 2012 mentors and mentees (“Emerging Leaders”) all met for the first time – at the orientation event hosted by Oracle in Redwood City, California. It was an exhilarating day – both catching up with returning 2011 mentors and meeting the three mentees who will be hosted by Huawei in Santa Clara this month. I have been working with the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program since 2010 and am so very pleased it is going well in its second year. As both a Professional Mentor and the manager of the TechWomen program overall for Huawei, I am looking forward to working with our mentees, one each from Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco.

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Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, Mentoring, Middle East, TechWomen

August 7, 2012 · 10:23 pm

TechWomen Mentor Training

TechWomen mentor training was today, hosted by Walmart in San Bruno, California. About TechWomen:

Harnessing the power of business, technology and innovation, TechWomen brings emerging women leaders in technology sectors from the Middle East and North Africa together with their American counterparts for a professional mentorship and exchange program at leading companies in the United States.

Pairing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power diplomacy” with “21^st Century Statecraft,” TechWomen works to empower women and girls through technology. It connects and supports the next generation of women in technology sectors by providing them the access and opportunity needed to pursue careers in technology.

TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). … partnering with the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) to implement this initiative.

This is the second year for TechWomen, with Silicon Valley companies hosting women from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, and Yemen. I was the Process Architect for TechWomen from 2010-2011. Today, I gave a short talk on the Best and Worst Practices in Mentoring. I am proud to be a Professional Mentor myself this year. Each mentee has both a Professional and a Cultural mentor assigned to her. Huawei hosted three mentees last year in Santa Clara (two from Lebanon and one from Egypt) and will host three more this year (one each from Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco). We are very much looking forward to meeting them in September!

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Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Egypt, Geeks, Huawei, Middle East, teaching, technical women, TechWomen

July 21, 2012 · 1:36 pm

Non-Travel Diary 4

While my husband John is in China on business for Huawei, I am keeping a non-travel diary. This has been a relatively quiet week. In addition to working full-time at Huawei:

There was a small amount of progress on our home construction projects. The painter spent a half day painting the wrong color stain on the baseboards. When I pointed out the error, he spent about the same amount of time sanding that color off and re-staining. Nobody was happy.
Thursday, I joined the monthly Board meeting of the Santa Maria Urban Ministry. We said an appreciative goodbye to our summer intern. The SMUM Tech Team (of which John and I are members) was assigned some new projects by the Board.
My newly-assigned 2012 TechWomen mentee from Lebanon and I made first contact. We exchanged introductory emails and are starting to make preparations for her visit to the Silicon Valley in September. Her background is impressive – I very much look forward to working with her in person. TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
I communicated with the 2011 TechWomen mentees with whom I am presenting a panel at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2012 (Baltimore, MD). I am the moderator of the panel called “Technical Women in the Arab Region: Challenges vs. Aspirations”. We have travel funding confirmed for three of the panelists and we are working on support for our fourth. The ladies are traveling from Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon for GHC12. I am very eager to see them again!
Paul and I took our Wood Shop basic safety and equipment introduction at TechShop San Jose last night. We enjoyed learning to use the miter saw, table saw, band saw, electric sander, and drill press. The scroll saw is being repaired so we will learn how to use that later. I made a heart for John and Paul started work on an infinity symbol using the band saw. One of the other students laser-engraved the heart for me. I want to take a TechShop laser class next!
This morning, we had a community yard sale. Despite being on Craigslist and putting signs up on nearby corners, it was very poorly attended. However, it was fun to hang out with the neighbors. Our neighborhood apparently has 7 boys and 1 girl aged between 6 and 12 years old – who spent the morning rocketing from sale to sale comparing stuff and giving updates.
John comes home Tuesday morning!

Women of Vision 2012

The annual ABI Women of Vision event was last week – inspiring and interesting, as always. Huawei sponsored my attending the “Top Company for Technical Women” workshop in addition to the evening banquet and awards ceremony. Winners this year:

Leadership Award:
Jennifer Chayes, Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director, Microsoft Research New England
Innovation Award:
Sarita Adve, Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Social Impact Award:
Sarah Revi Sterling, Faculty Director, ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder
Anita Borg Top Company For Technical Women Award:
American Express

It was particularly enjoyable to spend social time with women who participated in the 2011 TechWomen program – and who have applied to be mentors again in 2012.

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Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

May 9, 2012 · 9:25 pm

Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board Meeting

Today was the annual in-person meeting of the Advisory Board of the Anita Borg Institute. As usual, we met at the HP Labs building in Palo Alto, California, which hosts the ABI offices. Amazing technical leaders from all of the great Silicon Valley and US technology companies, plus some universities and government groups were there. We discussed plans for the future and presented some of our accomplishments for the year, including the publication of my committee’s Famous Women in Computer Science web resource. We took home posters for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, to be held 3-6 October 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Most of the Advisory Board members and ABI staff will get together again tomorrow night at the Women of Vision event in Santa Clara. Huawei is sending a group to this inspiring annual gathering – I am very much looking forward to it!

Drafting Proposals for the Hopper Conference (GHC12)

I am working with two teams on panel proposals for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing, to be held 3-4 October 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland. Submissions are due 16 March. I have been going to the Hopper Conference for many years and have presented regularly. I am particularly excited about GHC12 because all of this year’s TechWomen mentees will be attending. My daughter Jessica usually attend GHC together.

Here is what we have so far for the two proposals:

Panel Proposal #1

“Silicon Valley Inside Out: Surviving the Distance” presents a panel of very senior technical women who work in R&D in the Silicon Valley, for companies based outside of the USA. Topics to be discussed include: culture and language, effective communication, distance collaboration and management, localization, norms and taboos, conflict resolution, issues and risk-mitigation.

Panel Proposal #2

“Mentoring Between Cultures: TechWomen” is a panel on mentoring between technical women, using the successful TechWomen program as an example. The panel members are senior women who work for Silicon Valley technical companies and served as mentors to one or more women from the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) during the first TechWomen term in 2011. Topics to be discussed include: best practices and tips for mentors and mentees, mentoring program design, effective mentoring across cultures and time zones, the benefits of women mentoring women and technical mentorships, the career advantages of mentoring for both mentees and mentors, how mentoring drives transformation, etc.

GHC presentation proposals are accepted based on evaluation by several judges. Competition is ferocious. I hope we are accepted. Wish us luck!

Tag Archives: TechWomen

TechWomen at Huawei

TechWomen 2012 Orientation

TechWomen Mentor Training

Non-Travel Diary 4

Women of Vision 2012

Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board Meeting

Drafting Proposals for the Hopper Conference (GHC12)

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