Building a Community of Women Developers

Lesbians Who Tech's #WeAreTech at Microsoft

Transcript

1. Building a Community of Women Developers: Lessons from Ada Developers Academy Liz Rush @lizmrush
4. “I really was always sort of technically inclined, but I didn’t have a support network that would have fostered any technical schooling or anything like that.” — Elise Worthy, Ada Co-Founder & CTO
6. A 2008 Harvard Business School study on women in the STEM workforce found that 56 percent of women left the tech industry. Many of those women went on to seek employment elsewhere, citing extreme work environments, hostile macho cultures and a lack of compensation as the primary reasons for their departure.
8. “My cohort had a few problems at our internships and we all will have problems as we go forward — that’s just kind of the way things will go until we hit a more critical mass… The bigger and better Ada gets, the stronger that network will be.” — Davida Marion, Ada Alum
11. Of the 50 largest cities in the US, Seattle has the greatest wage gap: women earn 73¢ for every dollar men make (and we know it just gets worse when we break it down by race)
13. “The only reason I thought I could do this was after seeing my own female role models…Having more role models will be outstanding for other women.” — Calla Patel, current Ada student
15. Women hold roughly 15% of software jobs. Washington has 20,000 open positions in science, technology, engineering, and math, with the highest demand in and around Seattle.
17. “I’ll go to a meetup that’s all men, walk up to a conversation and it’ll all stop.” — Davida Marion, Ada Alum
18. “Part of what is so difficult with retention is not knowing other women and being alone. To have women you can talk to, and to know you have that network — The program is obviously helping with the pipeline, and bringing more women into the tech industry. But to have this network really helps keep women in it.” — Ellen Wondra-Lindley Ada Alum
20. Learn more about Ada at adadevelopersacademy.com or on twitter: @adaacademy