women in technology: supporting diversity in a technical workplace

Women in Technology: Supporting Diversity

in a Technical WorkplaceNeha Sherpa, Software Development Engineer, AWS

Amy Therrien, Senior Software Development Manager, AWS

July 13, 2016

Diversity circle sponsorship

The flywheel for growth

AWS —unleashing untapped potential

Amazon S3 Women’s Circle

Membership selection (17 members)

• Common

• All women (inherent)

• All part of the Amazon S3 organization (acquired)

• Diverse

• Diverse levels of experience (acquired)

• Diverse roles: managers, product managers, software

engineers, systems engineers (acquired)

• Diverse cultural backgrounds (inherent)

Two circle starts

AWS S3 Women’s Circle• Common

• All women (inherent)

• All part of the Amazon S3

organization (acquired)

• Diverse

• Diverse levels of experience

(acquired)

• Diverse roles: managers, product

managers, software engineers,

systems engineers (acquired)

• Diverse cultural backgrounds

(inherent)

AWS Platform Circle• Individual mentor-mentee relationships

• Aggregation of established relationships

• Common organization

Sponsoring

• Identify

• Time/budget

• Coaching

• Facilitating

Facilitating trust

Safe environment for learning

Strong relationships keep circles

together

Make it fun!

• Blackberry picking

• Happy hour

• Lunches

Facilitating a structure

• Monthly meetings on topics covering experiences and

knowledge

• Amazon S3 topics are defined by the circle: negotiation,

leveling the playing field, communication, confidence, work

life balance, etc.

• Establish role models

• Individual mentoring for the first role models

• Leverage existing career development techniques and

resources

• Guest speakers, published resources

• Provide feedback, encouragement

Knowledge sharing

Inspiration

Practice

Retrospective

Four flavors of learning activities

Sample meeting

Knowledge sharing

• 10 minutes: Grab lunch &

greet/mingle

• 30 minutes: Video on “Leveling

the Playing Field”

• 40 minutes: Interactive

worksheets, open discussion

• 10 minutes: Planning next

session

Experience sharing

• 10 minutes: Grab lunch &

greet/mingle

• 5 minutes: Introduction of guest

expert on “Confidence”

• 60 minutes: Pre-prepared Q&A

with guest product manager

• 10 minutes: Planning next

session

Logistics

Do’s

• Stay connected to participants’

managers

• Advocate for your circle

participants outside of the

circle

• Make time for retrospectives

Don’ts

• Get into expanding circle churn

• Feel like you need to limit this

to women

• See this as a replacement for

all other mentoring

Our experiences and learnings

Practice skills example

Background:

design reviews

What we did:

technical presentation practice

Examples of learnings

• Experience sharing

= Inspiring stories

• Knowledge sharing

= Learning and

growing

Leveraging resources

My favorite:

“Communicating with

Confidence”

A story

Strategies

Communication changes

impact perceptions

Remove lessing language:

- Just

- Sorry

Measuring success

Career path

Growing influence

Start your own circle

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