women in technology: supporting diversity in a technical workplace
TRANSCRIPT
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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