We are pleased to announce that Women Who Code DC is launching a mentoring program in November 2015. Our Mentoring Program Launch will be held on Sunday, November 15, 5:00–7:00 p.m. http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-DC/events/226117092/
Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWiT), will be our keynote speaker for this event. NCWiT has put together a fantastic package of materials entitled Mentoring-in-a-Box, which you can read more about here: https://www.ncwit.org/resources/mentoring-box-technical-women-work. The Mentoring-in-a-Box materials will serve as the primary resource for our mentoring program.
Our kickoff event will also include a panel of women in technology sharing their own experiences of being mentored and mentoring others. Lilibeth Gangas, Innovation Strategist at Booz Allen Hamilton; and Shireen Mitchell, Director of Web & Interactive Media at the Women’s Media Center (WMC) and founder of Digital Sisters (DS) will be featured on the panel, along with Lucy Sanders.
The purpose of this event is to highlight the importance of mentoring for women in technology and give women an opportunity to share their own experiences of mentoring and being mentored, and to ask questions about the mentorship process.
In subsequent months, we plan to have follow-up events focused on aspects of mentoring including a session for CEOs and Executives about “What you can do to help women in technology”; an event for mentors and protégés to share what they’ve learned about the mentoring process; and some ongoing working/study groups to help individuals improve their mentoring experiences.
The overall focus of our mentoring program will not be to specifically “match up” mentors with protégés, but to provide tools and information to support women in finding their own mentors and identifying mentoring opportunities both at their workplaces and in the larger community of Women Who Code.
We already have a lot of great mentoring happening naturally through the events and other resources that are available to Women Who Code DC members. Here are just a few great opportunities for mentoring that we offer:
- Study Groups — We have meetups almost every night of the week, from Front End Hack Night, to Android Development, Python, Ruby on Rails, and Algorithms. These are all fabulous opportunities for women who are interested in the same programming languages or platforms to get together and learn from each other.
- Slack Channels — There are some really great conversations and advice provided in our online Slack channels. Sign up now if you aren’t part of the dialogue yet! Here is a link to more information about how to participate on Slack.
- Virtual Office Hours — We have several very busy professionals who have offered their time to our members by holding Virtual Office Hours to help with short- or long-term projects.
- Tech Talks and Ask Me Anythings (AMAs) — Many of our study groups offer Tech Talks specific to the language or platform of the group, which allows participants to learn more about a subject in-depth and meet other experts in that field. Additionally, our Entrepreneurship leads have started organizing virtual AMAs on Slack where members can ask the founder of a startup or other technology business all kinds of questions over a short period of time, usually a few hours.
There are so many wonderful opportunities for mentoring and being mentored within Women Who Code DC. Our goal is to continue to develop the Mentoring Program so that all women can have access to mentors and to increase awareness of the crucial role that mentoring plays in helping women in technology to excel in their professional careers and advance to positions of leadership.
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