Women in Tech

Last week on February 26th, Ms. Gorzynski gave me the opportunity to be the moderator for the Women in Technology Panel. I automatically said yes.

Five amazing women came to East Leyden to talk to females about their career. The panel ladies were:

• Jordan Pedraza: Program Manager at Google for Education
• Salma Saad: President and Founder of Schoolishness LLC
• Nichole Baiel: User Interface Developer at Adage Technologies
• Nichole Buckle: Web Developer at Performance Trust Capital Partners
• Katie Harington: Social Media and PR Lead for Land of Nod

All these women were very inspiring. They gave us many helpful advice when pursuing our career. This was a great opportunity to any ladies who are interested in the technology field. Sometimes they may feel intimidated because it is often times dominated mostly by men. Women do get discriminated when it comes to this type of career. These ladies talked about their experiences about working with men and how it feels to be one of the very few females in their career.

Tech was not always their first choice when majoring. Mostly all of them went to college thinking they were going to major in a different field. They ended up graduating doing something completely different. This gave the students and I the chance to see that we don't necessarily have to have a major or career in mind by the time we go to college. This is good because we won't feel rushed once we graduate from high school.

All these women inspired me so much. There was one specific panelists that shared a sort of theory or experiment: A ceramics class was divided into two groups. One group was to create a one great sculpture by the end of the semester and however it turned out would be their final grade for the class. The second group was to create several pieces throughout the class. It turns out that the group that created more than one piece got a better grade. Why is that? They had more opportunities to make mistakes while in the process and when you make mistakes you learn. You don't succeed until you struggle or fail with something.

I really enjoyed this experience. It opened up my eyes to the world. I realized I can do anything I desire with my life and that I don't need to have a solid choice when it comes to choosing a career. I still have a lot of time to think about what I want to do and there's also different careers that I don't even know of that I could be interested in. The good thing about technology is that it's always changing so there's always going to be more jobs opening.

The Women in Tech went very well. It not only provided information about tech careers for women, but it also inspired us and that's what females need sometimes.

Thank you to everyone that contributed on making it happen and a BIG thank you to Ms. Gorzynski for organizing everything. She did a marvelous job.

Ms. G, the panelists, and I.