September has been busy and amazing times for Women in Cloud community. As a board, we are driving forward on several fronts to continue outreach to develop on-going partnerships and driving access for Women leaders, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs.
On the heels of UN IdeaGen, Women in Cloud communicated participated as the delegation in some amazing Industry Events to help share learnings, drive awareness and action on developing business in the Cloud.
WIC at NewTech Northwest https://www.newtechnorthwest.com/
Jacqueline Touma, a co-founder of Women in Cloud and CEO of her own start-up Curious Enterprises, spoke at the NewTech Eastside, Women in Tech Night at eBay in Bellevue Washington. She spoke about the WIC mission, the success of the initial WIC Accelerator companies and upcoming ways for women and male allies to get involved to support entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in businesses of all sizes.
A call for sponsors, speakers, and volunteers is going out for the upcoming Summit on January 26th in Redmond Washington. She spent time on the need for organizations like Women in Cloud, citing the disappointing statistics and trends lines that continue to persist and a call to action.
A key message she focused on was that “Working together, women with male allies are taking deliberate micro and macro steps to drive momentum and lasting change towards diversity, inclusion and economic growth, not only for Women themselves as individuals but for their communities locally and globally. We can enact real change and have seen it in less than a year when Women in Cloud was formed, with $50M in opportunities on the horizon coming from our WIC accelerator.”
WIC at Amazon-AWS, Women@Compute https://aws.amazon.com/
Sandy Carter, Corporate VP at Amazon hosted their quarterly Women @Compute, an internal event to help Amazonians to learn and explore new ways to engage in the community focused on digital transformation. Product management, Entreprenuership, Girls In Tech, Intrapreneurship and Customer Obsession was part of the conversation.
Chaitra Vedullapalli and Jacqueline Touma were invited to participate in Women@Compute at Amazon HQ in Seattle to help inform on what Women in Cloud were all about. Chaitra presented on the WIC mission of helping more female #entrepreneurs and women leaders’ access and gain more from Cloud business and technology opportunities. She emphasized created right access to women entrepreneurs to build their business will have a direct impact on the company’s bottom line.
In addition, Yardley Ip Pohl, the founder of Women in Product and Chief Product Officer at Thrive Global, presented a talk on Product Management Excellence and hosted a roundtable with AWS product managers.
We are committed to an industry-wide initiative to drive awareness and adoption leading Cloud-based technologies, programs, and resources for Women. AWS is a leader and critical influencer in the Cloud, dedicated to enabling Women entrepreneurs, technologists and leaders to drive business success.
WIC at 451 Research, Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit https://451research-hcts.com/
451 Research each September hosts the premier forum for executives in the hosting, cloud, data center and managed services sector in Las Vegas, Nevada. The agenda is carefully crafted by 451 Research analysts and industry experts to provide timely, actionable insight into the competitive dynamics of innovation. The three-day schedule provides a plethora of networking opportunities and fosters industry-changing relationships.
Women in Cloud were invited to take part in the overall conference and a specific panel on Opening the Closed Loop: Increasing Diversity in Cloud.
Panelists included: Kelly Morgan Research Vice President – Infrastructure, 451 Research; Melanie Posey Research Vice President – Voice of the Enterprise, 451 Research; Chaitra Vedullapalli Chief Marketing Officer, Meylah & Co-Founder, Women in Cloud; Karen Fassio, Director of Marketing, Microsoft & Co-Founder Women in Cloud and Meg Ramsey Vice President – Cloud Services Product Management, SunGard AS.
The conversation focused on the immense opportunities of Cloud-based technologies and how unlocking access was critical for Women in technology to fully succeed. As Chaitra discussed ‘There is no opportunity with access to financing, business resources and mentorships to make it real. Citing 451 Research Insights on the status of VC funding, Women in the Corporate Boardrooms and Women Entrepreneurs, she surmised that only by ensuring this equitable access will create the right solutions in the market”
Karen Fassio added that “By connecting women, entrepreneurs with women mentors, with programs like Cloud Accelerators with access to corporations for co-sell and co-build opportunities is the right supportive environment where women in business can flourish’
Our sincere thanks… with more to come
The Women in Cloud community and the team are thankful to these organizations for the opportunity to speak and participate in these events and gatherings to further support Women in technology.
We will keep you in the know about more outreach events and partnership on the horizon. We invite you to learn more about Women in the Cloud and opportunities available to you, by visiting www.womenincloud.com and to connect with any of our board members.
Don’t forget to register for our Annual Summit on Jan. 26th, 2019 in Redmond Washington. More information coming soon!
Join us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.