Not only were we joined by 4 leading women with a wealth of experience in tech, as well as the diversity & inclusion space… but we also wanted this to be an interactive event where attendees were encouraged to share their own experiences and thoughts.

The theme of the evening; from resistance to resilience.

Panel Discussion: What does resistance to resilience mean to you?

Salma de Graaff

Salma began the event by describing how her journey began as one of resistance; having to cope with the resistance against her, before being given the opportunity to build her resilience. Identifying those blockers and attempting to understand the resistance, in order to figure out if it was something that could be influenced, is something which Salma highlights has helped her throughout her career. Building up resilience refers to building up your workplace confidence, giving yourself room to speak, the breath to be heard, learning where you can add value and how can you ask for help.

Saskia Nijs

From a diversity perspective, Saskia mentions how resistance is shown at three levels: the organisational level, the societal level, and the individual level. During her career Saskia highlights how she was often chosen as the ‘spokesperson’ for the organisation on topics surrounding emotion and people. However, Saskia tried to keep her voice down so as not to deal with the resistance towards her ideas on the topic. During a session of aikido, Saskia’s feeling of resistance turned to resilience as she understood that to keep your perspective, you must work together and bring people along with you.

When talking about the one thing she would change throughout her career, Saskia emphasises the need to be clear with the questions you wish to ask. ‘A powerful question achieves more than the right solution.’ Asking in-depth questions and listening allows us to create better quality, more diverse products.

Cheryl Razzell

Talking about her personal journey of resistance to resilience, Cheryl highlights her need to be resilient often as a result of being the only woman in the room. Expanding on her experience in order to have not just the technical knowledge, but also the experience of knowing how to deal with a situation and knowing when to raise your voice and ask questions, is how Cheryl has built her resilience.

Having confidence in your own voice comes from experience, learning from others, working with people, growing a support network and the realisation that you are not alone in your experience. In work and life, we need to support each other. We need to step in when we see bad behaviours and strive towards a better working culture.

Ivett Ördög

For Ivett, her experience of resistance to resilience started when she transitioned to a woman. Having experienced the beginning of her career in the industry as a male, Ivett was initially shocked when she came up against this resistance. Suddenly her abilities where questioned and this resistance caused her to lose her confidence and build up imposter syndrome.

Ivett highlights how transwomen are logical allies for women in tech as they have experienced both sides of the perspective. They have experienced the level of respect that they deserve, and they know how hard they should push to get that respect.

In parallel to Saskia’s experience, Ivett mentions how she was seen as the ‘diversity person’. Making her feel as if she was only hired to fill a diversity quota. Looking at the problem from a different perspective, Ivett advertises specifically to diverse candidates when hiring but has the same standard across the board so that people are only hired for their ability.

Breakout Rooms: Experiences around inequality and forging diversity in tech

Following the panel discussion, we split into breakout rooms for a deeper delve into diversity and equality in tech.

Experiences around inequality in your career

Talking about experiences around gender inequality in tech, issues were raised around sexual harassment and misconduct at work, how damaging it can be and the difficulties of speaking up about this experience in a heavily male dominated industry. It was great to see people feel safe enough to open up about their experiences and share them with the other attendees.

How can we forge more diversity in tech?

The question being: can we increase gender equality in tech without positive discrimination? However, an interesting point that was raised suggested that in order to reach equality you need to treat people inequal because they require more support. This is something that people must be aware of – equality will not happen without awareness – which can happen in different ways, for example using quotas or diversity recruitment.

The need for male allies was also discussed. It was highlighted that in order to make a positive change within the industry, men need to start from a point of understanding and then take action. Which raised the question; how can we get more men to think about this?

Thank You

Thank you to Salma, Saskia, Cheryl and Ivett for taking the time to speak about your experiences and making the event such a success.

Thank you to everyone who attended for offering your opinions and making the event so insightful.

If you are interested in speaking at, or attending, or next event, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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With technical talks and demo’s discussing everything from how to successfully operate 100’s of satellites using agile aerospace, automation and Python, to mobile apps testing with Java and Kotlin, this was not an event to be missed.

We were delighted to be joined by our two fantastic speakers, Kattia Flores Pozo, Engineering Manager, Space Operations at Planet and Syeda Mehak Zahra, Software Engineer at ADVA.

Operating Satellites Using Agile Aerospace, Automation and Python

Kattia kicked off the event by speaking about how Planet successfully operates 100’s of satellites using agile aerospace.

Planet have two different constellations of satellites in orbit continuously taking images of Earth daily.

In order to download the images that the satellites are taking, Kattia highlights the need for a Global Ground Station Network: antennas that will talk to the satellites telling them what to do. Mission control optimises the resources on the ground. Once the data has been downloaded, it then needs to be stored, analysed and processed ready for the customers. All of which is automated.

Agile aerospace is a philosophy of spacecraft development that encourages rapid iteration, on both hardware and software. Continuously improving what is flying into space. To emphasise the pace at which agile aerospace occurs, Kattia mentions that in the last year alone Planet launched 5 different rockets; one of which had 26 satellites. Their global ground station network also received over 5 petabytes of data.  

To hear Kattia talk more about Planet’s space and scaling operations watch the full video here!

Mobile Application Development in Android

For the second talk of the evening, Software Engineer at ADVA, Syeda Mehak Zahra provided an introduction into mobile application development in Android.

Android is an open platform for mobile development, providing a complete stack for Middleware applications. Powered by Linux operating system.

Syeda goes on to highlight and explain the 4 basic building blocks for Android:

• Activity
• IntentReceiver
• Service
• ContentProvider

Comparing Android UI elements to Swing UI elements, Syeda mentions the following differences:

• Activities in Android refers almost to a (J)Frame in Swing
• Views in Android refers to (J)Components in Swing
• TextViews in Android refers to a (J)Labels in Swing
• EditTexts in Android refers to a (J)TextsField in Swing
• Buttons in Android refers to a (J)Buttons in Swing

To hear Syeda talk about the steps to mobile application development, watch the full video here!

Thank You

Thank you to both Kattia and Syeda for speaking at the event and making it such a success and thank you to everyone who attended; we are already in the process of planning an exciting event in celebration of International Women’s Day – stay tuned!

The aim of these meetups is to provide a platform for women working in engineering and cloud to share their knowledge, tell their stories and offer advice on the journey to success. If you are interested in speaking at, or attending, our next event don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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The theme of the evening focused on the future of software engineering and design patterns.

W.I.T. Republic’s Women in Software Engineering events were founded to connect, inspire and develop the careers of female technologists in order to make technology a more diverse and inclusive working environment for all. Don’t forget to check out our Eventbrite page for upcoming events!

Design Patterns for the Future of Software Engineering

After initial introductions, Software Engineer at Marley Spoon, Ana Schwendler, began the evening by speaking about design patterns for the future of software engineering.

Ana began by touching on why we use design patterns and how they can help to shape the future of software engineering. Design patterns are general and reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software design. Whilst not algorithms, design patterns give a general concept of how to solve a problem. Ana highlighted that knowing design patterns allows you to effectively communicate with other members of your tech team when developing a new feature, of refractoring processes, as everyone is aware of the idea behind the concept you are implementing.

Talking on topics that relate to the future of design patterns, Ana mentioned three things:

• Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) – enabling you to automate and assemble builds from developing to live, easily and in a reliable way
• Progressing Web Apps – guaranteeing that your project will be reliably available in all kinds of possible views
• Internet of Things – evolving software must be reusable and easily handed over when necessary so we need to have patterns in mind that will make this technology move forward

Design patterns are beyond programming language; therefore, you are not dependent on any structure to apply those ideas.

Ana went on to give an overview of the design patterns she has been studying recently, which fell into three categories:

• Creational: Abstract Factory, Builder, Factory Method, Object Pool, Prototype, Singleton
• Structural: Adaptor, Bridge, Composite, Decorator, Façade, Flyweight, Private Class Data, Proxy
• Behavioural: Chain of Responsibility, Command, Interpreter, Mediator, Memento, Strategy (to name a few)

To hear Ana talk more about these design patterns, watch the full video here!

A Digital Native Future: How Software Engineering is Changing

For the second talk of the event, Rania Mohamed, Cloud Solutions Architect at Google, spoke about how Software Engineering is changing.

The term ‘Digital Natives’ refers to people who were raised in the technology era. Rania emphasises how the digital native sector are changing the demands and expectations of technology; they want more accessibility and connectivity.

Digital Native is not to be confused with Digital Transformation. Digital Native is the goal, Digital Transformation is the process.

Prior to Digital Native, software developers and engineers were focused on time to business market, environment governance, business quality and B2B/B2C integration. Utilising agile methodologies, DevOps and Test Automation. Rania highlights that now this focus has shifted towards the customer experience and journey, to become proactive rather than responsive, and to build smart services. Utilising AI and Machine Learning, the Cloud, Edge Computing and the Internet of Things.

To hear Rania talk about this focus shift in depth, watch the full video here!

Thank You

We wanted to say a huge thank you to both Ana and Rania for their insightful and engaging talks, and the attendees for contributing to a great event.

If you are interested in speaking at our next event don’t hesitate to contact Women In Tech Republic directly! 

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The event was a huge success, with insights shared between all three speakers about how they started out in the tech world, and the experience they have gained, working within the software engineering field.

From Weekend projects to real customers

Catalina began her presentation by talking about her start-up business, mila.health, that she began back in April of this year with two other co-founders.

The talk continued on about how mila.health was created and designed to proactively help and support employees on their mental health, with the ability to have 1:1 sessions with health experts on video calls. The presentation guided us through how mila.health started, she began by using WordPress to create the website, in order to show the benefits and solutions that companies could get out of the app.

Catalina expressed how she knew that she needed to develop her skills in web development, as she felt her mobile development skills were not enough, she took a course to learn about React, to gain proper experience and not just guess work to develop.

Finally, Catalina ended the presentation with advice reassuring people that mistakes are there to be made, nobody gets the right solution from the start. Don’t be afraid to make big changes when it doesn’t feel right and start small so you can build on this.

Coding in the real world

The second talk from the event was given by Mabel Otto, Tech Lead at Zoomin.tv. Mabel started off talking about her background within tech, sharing her experience with operating systems, cloud, as well as her work with programming languages.

Starting with how code should read, Mabel mentioned how code should read like a novel, when writing code, it must be easy to recognise what you are writing, everything needs to be clear. Mabel goes on to ask, ‘will other people be able to understand my code?’ Mabel explains that if it is not clear, then your code needs to be corrected and checked. Mabel explained that by naming your code, this will aid you to see what the code is doing and will help to avoid making mistakes.

Throughout the talk, advice on other aspects of coding were given, such as interfaces, looking at when and why you should use them. As well as this, she also looked at the source control, focusing on why and when to submit to it.

Pair Programming: The bridge between communication and code

Our final speaker was by Ahsana Choudhury, Software Engineer at JP Morgan Chase & Co. The talk began by speaking about pair programming; a development methodology that involves two engineers, the navigator and the driver. It went on to explain that part of pair programming, its fundamental role is for both engineers to swap roles in order to get a fresher perspective on the product.

Next in the talk, Ahsana provided three important driving forces within cultivating pair programming, which aid the success of the product; these driving forces are:

• Improves quality of software design
• Enhances technical skills
• Improves team communication

These driving forces for two engineers, can help spot any areas within the product that could be improved, she also mentions how this is beneficial when looking at opportunities for growth within the product.

Towards the end of the talk, it was emphasised how soft skills are just as important as technical skills, stating that it is important for teams to understand and harness this for basic communication, Ahsana goes on to explain how these are some of the fundamentals and foundations of successful programming.

We would like to thank all our speakers, Catalina, Mabel and Ahsana for sharing their knowledge on each of their topics, and for everyone who attended the event, it was a huge success.

If you would like to get involved for our upcoming Women in Software Engineering events, please get in touch!

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We were delighted to be joined by two leading female entrepreneurs; Kathryn Van Nuys, FinTech Start-up & Venture Capital BD at AWS and Brittany Hart, Founder of Platinum Cubed.

Forecasting a Career in Cloud

FinTech Start-up & Venture Capital BD at AWS, Kathryn Van Nuys, started the evening by talking about forecasting a career in cloud.

Kathryn highlights that during the process of looking for a new role, a key lesson she learned was always being open to new opportunities. After being contacted about a role within a start-up, and originally planning not to go to the interview due to her background working for larger organisations, having been convinced to attend the interview, she ended up liking the people and getting the role. Gaining her first experience with start-ups and – in Kathryn’s words – changing the course of her career.

Working for this start-up allowed Kathryn to take on new responsibilities, move across continents and make a personal connection.

Whilst at her previous role, having been contacted by a friend about a role at AWS, initially again, being uninterested in the role after wondering how her skillset would fit in to a cloud technology company, after being urged to meet the team, Kathryn ended up getting the role. Although you might not get every role, Kathryn highlights that being open-minded to opportunities allows you to expand your network.

Moving on to discuss cloud computing, Kathryn indicates that what made her enthusiastic about her current role was the value proposition that cloud offers start-ups – low cost, easy to use infrastructure. Particularly when focusing on financial service industries, the cloud provides global, secure, and reliant infrastructure for companies to build. Kathryn goes on to mention that when looking at the innovation that is occurring within the financial services sector, she is excited by the fact that the cloud is powering these disrupters in the financial services space.

Highlighting the AWS Loft, a co-working space with technical resources and programming, Kathryn emphasises that through her role and her team, AWS don’t just support start-ups with cloud infrastructure, they also provide access to a wealth of resources and support.

When speaking to investors Kathryn mentions that understanding the technology and how things work can make you a lot more effective on the business side of a venture.

Steps to Starting a Technology Consulting Company

The second talk of the event was given by Founder of Platinum Cubed, Brittany Hart.

During her talk Brittany focuses on three key lessons that she learned when starting her own consulting company, that those looking to start their business should consider.

The first piece of advice was: ‘give it a full body yes’. Wanting to play a more complex role within a company and actively shape that role, Brittany changed her mindset to a ‘full body yes’. Allowing her to become the CEO of a thriving consultancy. To give it a ‘full body yes’ you must remove the doubts from your mind about your capability and tackle any boulders you might face along the way. Talking about her own experience, Brittany mentions the guilt she felt around being a working mother. To overcome this her family relocated to another state to be around a support system that would help her launch the business.

Transform strangers into advocates. Brittany indicates that this strategy is applicable to people in any stage of their business, whether they are just starting out or attempting to maintain their position in the market. Brittany highlights 3 group of ‘strangers’:

• Salesforce Partner Alliances
• Salesforce Account Executives and RVPs
• Your customers

Watch the full video here to discover how these connections helped Brittany during the process of starting her own Salesforce consultancy.

The final piece of advice given by Brittany was to join forces, not compete. When launching a technology consulting company, Brittany indicates that you are quite likely to have a surplus of resources and a lack of sales. Joining forces with other companies is a great way to redistribute your resources, grow your own company, and help others do the same. This also helps to build relationships that can lead to referrals.

During the networking session after the presentation both speakers spoke about their top tips for others looking to start their own business, as well as the best piece of advice they have received throughout their career.

We’d like to thank both Kathryn and Brittany for taking the time to talk at our event, as well as everyone who attended, for making the event a real success.

To stay updated on W.I.T. Republic’s upcoming events, follow our Eventbrite page here!

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Both speakers gave engaging talks around their topics; the power of growing your network in the Salesforce ecosystem, and thoughtful lightning page design.

You can watch Karen’s previous talk at our Women In Tech New York event, where she speaks about how to be an advocate for women in the industry here.

The Power of Growing Your Network in the Salesforce Ecosystem

Karen began the event by discussing the benefits growing your network within the Salesforce ecosystem can have, relating this to her own experience within the ecosystem.

At the beginning of her career, Karen mentions that she was an introvert, yet having been invited to many networking events by her mentors, Karen realises that networking has shaped her as a person, particularly in her career. Not only has her management style evolved as a result of networking, but she has become more confident in herself.

Wanting to give back to the network, Karen’s original intention was to share what her mentors had taught her over time. This led her to co-found a women in tech initiative at her previous company. At her current position in Saberpoint, Karen realised that in order to effectively do her job, she needed a broader reach of people, this included mentors, access to people with different skillsets and backgrounds as well as a support group; to achieve this she needed to network. From networking within the ecosystem, Karen highlights that she has been able to refer opportunities to others, share knowledge, establish connections with clients and personally develop herself.

Throughout her experience Karen has discovered 4 core values to networking: getting new ideas, making it as easy as possible for people to recommend you, improving your creativity and developing long lasting relationships.

To emphasise the power of networking, Karen shared some interesting statistics:

• 85% of positions are filled through networking
• 95% of professionals consider face-to-face communication vital for long-term business
• 70% of people found a job through a connection at a company
• The close rate for face-to-face meetings is 40%

Opening the discussion to the floor, Karen provided advice for following-up with connections in your network.

Thoughtful – Lightning Page Design: Who are those records for anyway?

The second talk of the event was given by Salesforce Administrator, Jennifer Kleinfeld, and focused on maximising your lightning page design.

A reoccurring point during Jennifer’s talk, were the aspects of good design. Good design is:

• Aesthetic – effects who is using it when they are interacting with your design
• Understandable – it clarifies the structure of work
• Purposeful – fulfils a purpose with success in mind
• Designs as little as possible – don’t burden with non-essential items

In order to create effective lighting page design, you need to consider the different needs and viewpoints of the lightning page; the customer, the businesses and the user. Make sure to ask the right questions; who is it for? How will it be used? What are your challenges? Mapping users by persona helps to understand what their needs are when making changes to the design.

Jennifer highlights three design areas to consider:

• Surface – colours, fonts, branding, visualisation
• Structure – scope, layout, flow and discovery
• Purpose – user’s intentions, goals and desired actions

Referencing a person that Jennifer learns from – Gary Vaynerchuk – Jennifer emphasises that your design has the possibility of being imperfect, and there will be a point where you have to adjust. Eventually business needs change and your design should reflect that. The important thing is to write good documentation so that people can build on your design.

Before finishing her talk, Jennifer provided a few tools and ideas to help build lightning pages (these are just a few):

• Reduce clicks and scrolls
• Consider mobile view vs desktop view
• Custom paths
• Utility item pop-up notes
• Kanban

Thank you to both Karen and Jennifer for their insightful talks, and all the attendees for making the event interactive and engaging.

We’re always looking for more speakers, if you are interested in speaking at our next Women In Salesforce event, please get in touch!

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You can learn more about Natalie’s journey into a career in tech, and her thoughts on AWS and GCP, as part of our WomenInTechQA here.

The event was a real success, with insights shared between both the speakers into the world of software engineering.

The Show Must Go On – Navigating a Career in Software Engineering

Jacquelyn began the event by talking about what she as learned during her career in the theatre and how that resonates with what she has also learned during her time in the tech industry.

The first piece of advice Jacquelyn gave was to ‘know your type’. Talking about her time in the theatre, Jacquelyn mentioned how she used to audition for every type of role and could not work out why she was not getting these parts. It came down to the fact that she wasn’t right for the roles. Knowing what genre of role suited her best; meant that she could practice her craft in that particular area, and progress within her career. Relating that to a career in the software engineering space, Jacquelyn emphasises that it is important to ‘know your type’, so that you can master it and then move on to another ‘type’ and repeat the process, so that you end up with multiple tools under your belt.

The second piece of advice was ‘Yes, and…’. This advice was centred around the concept of adlibbing, accepting what the other actors on stage with you are saying and going with the flow. When navigating a career in software engineering, Jacquelyn emphasises that it is important to led with ‘Yes and…’ in order to create new opportunities and grow within your career.

All the World is a stage. When directing a play, Jacquelyn uses techniques like the use of colour, in order to steer the audiences attention to where she would like it during the performance. This is similar to developing your user interface and the use of coloured buttons to grab your users attention. Jacquelyn highlights that is important to tell a story and focus the eye.

Always be audition ready. According to Jacquelyn theatre professionals are always looking for their next role, and as such need to be constantly prepared. This is a good mindset for software developers as well. Learn the skills that will get you hired, and practice; coding tests, interviews.

For the fourth piece of advice; make your own opportunities, Jacquelyn references her friend Sarah Cooper, who published her own books, started a blog, and is now getting her own Netflix special. Don’t wait for others and don’t ask for permission, make your own opportunities.

The final advice the Jacquelyn gave was around the premise of the show must go on. Rehearsals are important, they are where all the work gets done. The key points to this are: start with a good team, commit to the work that needs to be done, be professional and the magic will happen.

Opening the discussion to the floor, Jacquelyn talks about how teaching will develop your own development, as well as how the industry became exclusive to women.

How to Scale Your Cloud Without Breaking the Bank

The second talk of the event was given by Platform Engineer at Babylon Health, Natalie Godec. Natalie provided advice and a technical demo on how to scale your cloud without breaking the bank.

Talking about the main benefit of cloud, Natalie mentions how you can build fast, scale in seconds and only pay for what you use. Whilst this sounds amazing is it? Natalie goes on to discuss that when working in production and expanding into different areas a more accurate definition of the cloud is not that you pay for what you use, it’s how you pay for what you forgot to turn off. During her talk Natalie explains different methods that you can use when scaling your infrastructure, to avoid paying for what you aren’t using.

Natalie’s key take-aways for keeping costs down were:

• Tag everything
• Monitor your resource usage
• Monitor the cost per usage trends – some of the tools available to help with this are AWS Cost Explorer, GCP Billing, Grafana, Cloudability, during her talk, Natalie goes through how to utilise each of these tools to monitor costs.
• Consider using preemptible resource types
• Shut down your environments when they are not used

Whilst talking about monitoring your costs in Kubernetes, Natalie provided a technical demo of the commands that you could use to discover if your service needs the amount of memory that it requested.

Watch the full demo here.

During the networking session at the end of the event, Natalie talks about the use of service mesh’s for cost monitoring and discusses the benefits of AWS and GCP.

We’d like to thank everyone who attend the event, as well as our brilliant speakers Jacquelyn and Natalie for making the event such a success.

If you would like to get involved with our next Women In Software Engineering event, please get in touch!

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The event was a real success, with interesting insights shared between our two speakers and the attendees throughout their presentations and the networking session. Below are some key take-aways from the event as well as the full event video.

Breaking the Rules to Improve Business and Lives

Co-Founder and Managing Partner of CoastalCloud, Sara Hale, started the event by discussing how businesses can change the traditional workspace to encourage more diversity and retain women in tech. 

Sara emphasised how changing the way companies measure and define success in their workplace performance can make all the difference. Increasing diversity in your organisation will ultimately make you more profitable and increase client success.

Sharing some research findings from LinkedIn, it was clear that more needs to be done to improve diversity and inclusion in the industry; 28% of software engineers are women, an increase of 3% in 15 years. Taking a historical look at the workplace, Sara highlighted how the media tend to also change the way they portray the workplace, and women in the workplace. The definition of the workplace is changing because the workforce is changing. 

The 3 goals of Sara’s presentation were to discuss and offer strategies for:

1. Diversity and Inclusion = employee satisfaction
2. Client Success = customer retention
3. Profitability = a sustainable business model

In order to create a workplace that values a balance between work and family Sara offers eight solutions. Solution 1: telecommuting. As the current pandemic has highlighted to many businesses, in some cases it doesn’t matter where your employees work as they can still get the job done thanks to the technology that is now available. 

But there are debates about telecommuting. Working remotely has the potential to offer more distractions than in an office environment and it can be difficult to gage how productive employees are during the day. There’s the challenges of creating a team culture and developing rapport when not face-to-face, people may work to different schedules and it can be hard to ‘switch-off’ from the job. However, telecommuting might work for your organisation and lead to a better work-life balance for your employees reducing staff turnover.

The second solution Sara proposed was to create more flexibility. Flexibility can be your biggest tool for recruiting and retention; it’s ideal for people with children who need a schedule that fits around their life for now, or who are responsible for senior care, or have other responsibilities. Sara offered her top tips for creating a flexible workplace:

• Check-ins help to gage the workload
• Metrics can be created for some roles
• There should always be someone ‘holding down the fort’
• Need for an understanding among employees so they work as a team

The third solution: inclusive interviews. Can the talent that you are trying to hire see themselves working there? Do they feel that their priorities outside the workplace will be respected?

Solution four: use technology. Take advantage of the most modern technology to offer these flexible and telecommuting workplaces.

Solution five: recruit differently. Not all tech candidates went to tech schools. Consider looking in different places and for different criteria other than a degree. Perhaps look at aptitude and skills that are needed for the role. 

The sixth solution is to track and highlight promotions. Sara indicates that women may not go after promotions as much, so it is important to track promotions and do it equally, even if it is not being asked for.

A must for imporving diveristy and inclusion within your oganisation is to get the help of your employees (solution seven). Advocate internally to recruit more diverse candidates.

The final solution Sara offers is to talk and promote the benefits your organisation offers for women as one size does not fit all. Instead of asking your candidate to adjust to your workplace, the workplace needs to adjust for the talented tech candidate.

Think Like a CEO

Deena Tearney, Founder and CEO of Pacific Point, focused her talk around a question she gets asked a lot: ‘How did you do it?’

The short answer is that Deena thinks like a CEO. Throughout her talk, Deena shares three mindset take-aways, in order to think like a CEO and links each mindset to her own journey as an entrepreneur:

1. Cast a Vision

Having a vision is a part of your mindset, it allows you to look ahead and visualize how you see yourself. Vision drives your daily action. Deena emphasises how having a vision can help you to have hope in the day-to-day as you work towards becoming a CEO. Vision allows you to have perspective and can motivate you when going through those tough days. It can also help you to action what needs to be done to achieve your end goal.

Deena’s vision for Pacific Point was to become the leading CRM Salesforce consulting partner in the state of Hawaii. Four years after starting the business, Pacific Point transitioned from offering generalist IT services to the point where Salesforce consulting services represent over 90% of their revenue.

2. Control what you CAN control (put in the work)

This is what helps you to think like a CEO when you face challenges along the way. This is even more pertinent during the current pandemic where there is a sense of uncertainty. It is important to adapt to your surroundings. Deena highlights how companies are seeking fast solutions, they want to leverage her company differently than they have in years passed and they want more for less. Deena emphasises that what she can control in this situation is how she and her company respond to this change in client need. 

Having this feeling of control is empowering and enables you to become a navigator in difficult circumstances.

3. Never give up

Deena mentions that this is perhaps the most difficult mindest of all three. For her company and herself personally, Deena highlights that there were a number of times where they were not taken seriously.

There are countless times when you feel the pressure and wonder if it is all worth it, but having a vision helps you to stay motivated and focused, controlling what you can helps you be empowered to move forward, and having the belief and strength of mind to never give up is how Deena did it, and how you can begin to think like a CEO.

During the networking session after the two presentations, both speakers spoke about what inspired them to take the leap into starting their own businesses.

Thank you to both of our speakes for their inspiring talks, as well as everyone who attended the event. This was a great way to start our W.I.T. Republic US Entrepreneur meetup series. Don’t forget to register on our meetup page to stay updated on upcoming events!

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Taking Risks and Learning From Failure

Ami kicked-off the event by talking about being ‘in the game’ of entrepreneurship, and the worth that people place on risk-taking. Hosting an interactive session, Ami emphasised her points by getting the attendees to participate in the presentation.

After asking attendees to describe in one word what it takes to be an entrepreneur, (answers included: grit, vision, resilience, determination, perseverance, believe), Ami shared the results of a survey which found that the biggest obstacle aspiring entrepreneurs must overcome, is the ability to take risks. Expanding on this, Ami explained that it’s not just the idea of ‘stepping in with both feet’, it’s the whole breadth and depth that we account as risk.

Ami highlights that in some cases loss aversion, and not the ability to take risks is what stops us from becoming entrepreneurs. Loss aversion is when you put more emphasis on a loss relative to a gain, this element of aversion can lead to suboptimal decisions. Ami mentions that it is important to look at risk as a spectrum and to tackle each part of that spectrum, to determine how much of the risk is completely financial, or due to personal ‘risk appetite’ levels. Breadth of skills, exposure and diversity per se are valuable in mitigating risk.

Finishing her presentation, Ami shared a mantra for entrepreneurs looking to ‘join the game’ and reduce risk: OODA; Observe Orient Decide Act (and repeat).

Creating Traction and FOMO

Leitha talked about how to create traction and the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) in early-stage startups. Throughout her presentation Leitha used a meme of a dancing man as an analogy for the process of creating traction; at the start of the meme the man is dancing alone, but by the end he has a full party in swing.

What do they mean when they say ‘Get in touch when you have more traction’:

• Profitability
• Revenues
• Number of active users
• Number of registered users
• Amount of engagement
• Partnerships / clients achieved
• Amount of traffic generated

Leitha mentions two paths for gaining traction; the growth path and the revenue path (or even sometimes both), and the importance of demonstrating your vision as well as your passion for the project to bring people onboard.

Early-stage startups may not have traction but they do have promise:

• Spirit and ambition
• Intelligence
• Connections/network
• Consistency
• USP

Highlighting any press and awards that your startup has won, user testimonials, and any goals that you have beyond profit are great ways to offer confidence and trust to people looking to partner or invest in your business.

To hear Leitha talk about how you can create traction through your users, investment and your team and network, watch the full event video here.

The Pillars of Building a Sustainable Business

The final presentation of the event, given by Founder of Rise & Lead Women and CEO of Ataro Foods, Ebere Akadiri, focused on the 3 pillars for building a sustainable business:

• Pillar 1: Your Vision

“Your vision starts from you.” If you do not feel fulfilled by your business it will not be sustainable and succeed. Before starting your entrepreneurial journey, Ebere emphasises that it is important to clarify; what your purpose of starting is, your core values, what you are offering and who needs it, as well as your strategic objectives. 

• Pillar 2: Customer Development 

To check that there is a customer need for your product, before you spend your time, money and effort launching the business, market and test it. Create and sell your Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

• Pillar 3: Building a Strong Team 

“You can’t walk alone for a very long time.” Having a team around you is important when building a sustainable business. Develop a structure and system within your organisation so that when you start to make profit, you can hire people and let it, essentially, run itself. 

Ebere also discusses the need for entrepreneurs to develop a leadership mindset. Thinking and understanding your business as a leader allows you to effectively delegate tasks to your employees. Leadership is also about learning your own weaknesses and strengths. The purpose of leadership development is to grow your business, it helps you to hire employees, communicate your vision and manage different types of partnerships.

We’d like to thank everyone who attended the event as well as our brilliant speakers, there were some fantastic insights shared between you all during the presentaions and networking session. Don’t forget to register on our meetup page to stay updated on upcoming events!

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For our first event we were joined by two fantastic speakers, both experienced Salesforce professionals: Anna Pappas, Senior Director, Financial Services GTM Lead for Salesforce at Capgemini, and Devin Spence, Solution Architect and Founder of Seelman Consulting.

Partnering With Salesforce

Anna started the event by talking about how your professional journey can get you to one of the greatest modern day tech companies. Providing a bit of background into her career, Anna mentioned how she began as a marketer in the manufacturing industry, then moved to product management in industrial products, and has also worked in banking and sales in consulting.

Throughout her career two things have remained consistent:

• The need to know who the customer is, and everything about them
• The requirement to deliver an excellent customer service

…. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Anna emphasised how Salesforce goes beyond CRM, to encapsulate an entire platform delivering a true customer 360 experience. Salesforce has understood that businesses from a digital transformation perspective require more than just a front office, they want; integration, analytics, security, IoT and collaboration.

Discussing how Capgemini work within the Salesforce environment, Anna segmented their activities into four sections:

• Innovations; proliferation of technology
• Omni-Channels; exponential growth of channels and business touchpoints
• Technologies; emergence of new online, and ecommerce platforms
• New Business Models; a new wave of Challenger banks, FinTechs and BigTechs

To hear Anna talk in detail about these segments, watch the video of the event here.

Finishing her presentation, Anna highlighted the market opportunity for this industry: the financial services industry is growing at 22% and is the fastest growing industry for Salesforce. 

Fighting Back Against the Transformative Pandemic

The second speaker of the event, Devin Spence, provided a narrative for how to turn the events of the current pandemic into a positive, alongside as a manager how you can support your team members, and finally the impacts of the pandemic as a woman in tech.

Devin spoke about three key aspects that will help you to become an all-star consultant, during the pandemic:

• Being an active listener 
• Transition to a ‘true partner’ 
• Keep the engagement 

As a manager, to effectively support your team members during these uncertain times, Devin emphasised the importance of things other than billable hours, how mental health days should be mandated and to successfully manage a team, you first need to lead by example.

The final topic of Devin’s presentation focused on how to keep your sanity as a woman in the tech industry. With the pandemic creating extra pressures on industry professionals, Devin discussed the following factors as a way to prevent the position of women in tech from both stagmenting and reversing to how it was in the past.

• Flexibility
• Reflect on what’s important and prioritise
• Accountability
• Lend a hand where you can

During the networking session both Anna and Devin spoke about the challenges they have faced throughout their career in the tech industry, and how these can be overcome. It was also emphasised how the position of women in the industry is changing with Anna commenting: “Women today dominate in a lot of these areas, it may not feel like it but I promise you, there’s a lot more women in technology today than there have ever been.” 

As always, we’d like to thank everyone who attended the event as well as our brilliant speakers, this was a great start to the Women In Salesforce series. If you’d like to speak at our next Women In Salesforce event, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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