Inclusion, Inspiration, Lessons, and Leaders: Women Opening Doors and Blazing Trails

As we continue to get a strong start to 2020, we’re following so many stories of women’s leadership—from obstacles to be overcome and inequality that women still face to initiatives empowering women, strategies to get ahead, and inspirational leaders in tech and finance. Check out a few stories below, and keep striving, thriving, and helping one another! 

Melinda Gates Names Chicago First Gender-Inclusive Tech Hub, from Forbes—“Pivotal Ventures is teaming up with with Break Through Tech and SecondMuse to launch GET (Gender Equality in Tech) Cities. Their plan for increasing equality in the burgeoning Chicago tech world is three-fold: getting more women interested in pursuing tech careers, creating an inclusive environment which generates opportunities for these women, and ensuring that women of color are provided the same pathways and opportunities. Here are the details of how they are reinventing the tech hub.”

The Top 10 Mistakes That Keep Women Entrepreneurs From Scaling to $1 Million, from Entrepreneur—“Where are the million-dollar women? In 2018, just 1.7 percent of women-owned businesses generated more than $1 million in revenue, and the challenges are even greater for women of color entrepreneurs. Why is it that even though women own 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S., making "real money" is more the exception than it is the rule? What's getting in our way when it comes to business ideas that make bank?”

LinkedIn Co-Founder Blue Outlines Risks of Blockchain Sexism, from Cointelegraph—“According to The National, the WEF has evaluated that it will take 257 years for women to have the same economic opportunities as men. In contrast, to date, women reportedly account for only 30 percent of tech-related jobs such as AI, blockchain, software engineering and cloud computing.”

How Shelley Zalis Strives to Bring Gender Balance to the Tech World, from VentureBeat—“Technology and automation and AI will eliminate a lot of entry-level positions. Those positions are held by women. That will impact change. When you look at a lot of the predictions of not even filling the pipeline for technology — these are big challenges, but also big opportunities in areas where we need to do a better job of filling the pipeline, making sure we groom the talent from high school through getting into the workplace so we don’t see such a big drop of women, even at the entry level. And it’s why we need more women in tech to begin with. Even though AI is going to automate a lot of jobs, you still need to have human input around how you formulate what you’re looking for.”

The Heroines STEM: Ten Women in Science You Should Know, from CNN—“despite challenges of gender discrimination and lack of recognition in the scientific community, countless inspiring women in these fields have made historic contributions to science and helped advance understanding of the world around us. Many were not recognized in their own lifetimes, but their achievements have helped generations of female scientists to come.”

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Giving Thanks for (and Recognition to) Women

The United States celebrates Thanksgiving this Thursday, so we wanted to use this week as an opportunity to highlight good news. Around the world, women are achieving, surviving, discovering, investing, thriving, competing, and helping one another. Please take a minute to check out just a few of their success stories as well as some insights about accomplishments, progress, and recognition. And we’re thankful for each and every one of you, as you join us in recognizing and empowering women every day!

Female STEM Entrepreneurs in Latin America Are Gaining Momentum, from Crunchbase—“Brazil’s Nubank is the largest neobank in the world. Yet few people realize this challenger bank is led by a female co-founder: Cristina Junqueira. [...] Women lead 35 percent of Latin America’s fintech startups. Junqueira is just one example; hundreds of brilliant women are applying to accelerators and competitions around the region to share their ideas as well. There are female founders behind several of Latin America’s top startups, although they are rarely in the limelight. Cristina Randall helped found Mexico’s Conekta, Blanca Trevino is behind Softtek, and Ecuador’s Kushki was co-founded by Madeleine Clavijo; these female co-founders have helped build these companies from the ground up.”

How One Girl’s Survival Should Inspire Us All, from CNN—“Bashar began to ask about my work as an advocate for the Yazidi community, and she asked if she, too, could speak on behalf of our torn Yazidi community. Only one month after her operation, Bashar courageously stood before the European Parliament in Brussels and gave her testimony as a survivor of relentless sexual violence under ISIS captivity. [...] We ask you to listen to Bashar's story. Seek out the voices of those who cannot be heard and amplify their message to your communities. We will not rest until every woman and girl is freed from the bonds of violence.”

Women’s Key to Business Success – Bragging More, from Forbes—“Not only does it feel tiring to explain Kuli Kuli’s many accomplishments, I also worry that whoever I’m talking to will find me arrogant. In fact, research shows the opposite. The same study on self-promotion showed that both men and women enjoy hearing women talk about their accomplishments, from achieving their goals to commanding respect in their fields. We all want to be inspired, and not just from the people onstage. Learning about other women’s successes, particularly women who are more advanced in their careers, inspires me to work harder and dream more.”

Badass Millennial Women Are Supercharging Startup Investments, from TechCrunch—“These companies are only viable because so many women — beginning with millennials but expanding out to the rest of us — are now willing and able to invest in themselves. United across a shared mission of female empowerment and inclusivity, She-onomy 2.0 is making it more realistic than ever to empower us to advance our careers, feel good about ourselves and stay healthy.”

Leading a Female Research Team, from Nature Middle East—“Members of my lab team have often come to me questioning their self-worth, wondering whether they are good enough and if they deserve their success. My challenge as lab head is to acknowledge the inconsistency between perception and the reality that women in STEMM leadership positions can inspire female researchers to self-validate, push beyond their comfort zone and own their worth.”

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