Celebrating Women in Cloud: Charting the Route for Fellow Female Leaders By Kelly Browning

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The cloud has officially touched almost every aspect of the business: from infrastructure and AI to mobile workforces and social impact. We hear about major industry trends, technologies, and M&As, but what we don’t often hear about are the women in the workforce that are powering these technologies and organizations.

I’ve been working in the Cloud Computing community for the past 2.5 years and while the technology advancements and latest startups are constantly changing, one thing has remained the same: the amount of women in the industry who are highlighted is nowhere near their male counterparts who are touted as industry experts, thought leaders, and keynote speakers. Attend any tech conference or industry trade show and guaranteed it’ll be the one place you’ll ever go where the line for the women’s restroom is shorter than the men’s. Great for us at the time, but not as great for the overall industry in the long run.

So how do we address this ongoing issue? By coming together and sharing our stories, experiences, insights, expertise, and advice to lift each other up and give voice to those who wouldn’t otherwise be heard.

BrightTALK has done this by launching an online Women in Tech community where we’ve partnered with the Women in Cloud initiative to help provide a platform for these conversations. Since it’s inception in November 2016, we’ve grown the community to over 18,000 subscribers.

Check out some of the sessions hosted on BrightTALK here:

The Women in Cloud Summit is another fantastic way of addressing and closing the gap between female and male leaders in the industry. It’s a once-a-year opportunity to come together and hear from the top women in Cloud Computing on how they’ve gotten to where they are today and what both men and women can do for future generations of women in technology.

Whether you’re looking for a mentor/mentee relationship, how to stay ahead of the technology curve in this fourth industrial revolution, network with like-minded professionals or learn a new skillset, there’s something at the Women in Cloud Summit for everyone.

Register here to join us in January and play a key role in supporting the Women in Cloud community.

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Please connect with Kelly Browing to explore mutual opportunities!

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Women In Cloud Summit 2019: Save the date & call for speakers

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Welcome to the “Women In Cloud Annual Summit: Now we Accelerate!”
Women key drivers of economic growth. However, we continue to face substantial hurdles in accessing the resources needed to launch and grow businesses and careers. From addressing the financial inclusion gender gap in funding to providing women the tools, knowledge, and networks they need to reach their full potential, Women in Cloud in 2019 declares this is the year to ACCELERATE.

We are pleased to announce the Second Annual Summit, a one-day immersive experience on Jan26th, 2019 at the Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond Washington. This event is open to everyone.

This year’s summit is designed to connect you to cloud industry leaders, women-led cloud companies, intrapreneurs and allies of all types.

The 2019 Summit will explore:

  • Enabling New Innovations: Provide ways to leverage and adopt cloud technologies to innovate
  • Personal & Skill Growth: Give women access to personal and cloud-related skills development
  • Networking: Accelerate ideas and access to resources including strategic partnerships
  • Customer Connections: Identify new ways to acquire customers, understand the customer experience & drive customer obsession

As a past supporter of Women In Cloud experience and events, we wanted you to be the first to know! Please save the date and we look forward to seeing you there!

Step 1. ARE YOU READY TO ATTEND

  • Registrations are now open.
  • Grab your tickets and secure your 30% discount by Nov10th. Use Discount Code (WICEarly)
  • Secure your spot today and also consider sponsor D&I ticket.

Step 2. CALL FOR SPEAKERS

We are building a full day agenda of keynotes, breakouts, lightning talks and workshops in the areas of personal and business acceleration. Ready to submit a session? Apply to speak

Step3: DIVERSITY & INCLUSION SCHOLARSHIP TICKET 

Would your company like to provide an event ticket for one or more aspiring entrepreneurs or diverse young women growing their career? Are you a diverse emerging technical or entrepreneurial talent who’d like to apply for a D&I scholarship ticket?

Reach out here!

Step 4. PROMOTE & ENTER TO WIN $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD

Calling all social media champions!  We’d love your help to get the word out and invite your network of amazing women leaders and entrepreneurs.  By doing so you will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 Amazon e-gift card. No cost to enter and you can participate till Jan04th, 2019. You can enter either via an email address or facebook account.  Promote, Participate & Win!

Step 5. SPONSOR THE SUMMIT

Sponsors get amazing access to leaders, entrepreneurs, a potential job candidate, investors, community leaders and many more during the summit to connect. Learn more by downloading the sponsorship kit.

WHO IS WOMEN IN CLOUD

Women in Cloud is a community-led initiative supporting technology entrepreneurs who identify as women! Via private-public partnerships with innovative companies and leaders in tech, Women in Cloud creates access to partnership opportunities, programs that accelerate business growth in the cloud and strategic alliances that advance the success of women in tech. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter and our website at https://www.womenincloud.com/summit2019
Media Contact: Jacqueline Touma, jtouma@womenincloud.com
Sponsorship Contact: Raisa Noelle; raisa@womenincloud.com
Speaker Contact: Chaitra Vedullapalli, cvedulla@womenincloud.com
##Press passes available, Press announcement

 

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Women in Cloud (WIC): Out and About, Driving Impact: September Roundup

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Image may contain: 5 people, including Chaitra Vedullapalli, people dancing, people on stage and text

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/

See the source image

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/

Image may contain: 7 people, including Yardley Ip Pohl, Sandy Carter and Chaitra Vedullapalli, people smiling, people standing

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.

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Special Offer – Discount Rate for 451 Research Summit

We are excited to partner with 451 Research to host thought leadership conversations in the cloud industry at their 14th annual Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit. 451 Research’s, a leading information technology research and advisory firm, 14th annual Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit (HCTS) will take place September 24-26 at Bellagio Las Vegas. As a valued media partner, Women in Cloud members can attend this year’s conference at an exclusive discounted rate. Register between now and August 31 for only $999!HCTS welcomes executives in the hosting, cloud, datacenter and managed services sectors to hear timely, actionable insight into the competitive dynamics of innovation from 451 Research analyst talent and guest speakers from AWS, Microsoft, Huawei, ING, DH Capital and more. By attending HCTS, you’ll gain access to a plethora of networking opportunities and 1:1 meetings with 451 Research analysts to discuss the impact of this year’s theme – the Age of Consumption – on your business.A few sessions we think you’ll find incredibly valuable include:

Building Partnerships with Hyperscalers – Hyperscalers continue to dominate the cloud market. Their scope and scale have enabled them to build rich service portfolios that are difficult to compete against. Rather than compete, there is an opportunity for service providers to partner.

Beyond Cloud – The Digital Revolution is powered by cloud but businesses and their service provider partners need a strategy to achieve digital transformation. “Beyond infrastructure” services will continue to be a vital maintenance capability that businesses look to service providers to offer – akin to changing the lightbulbs in the building. Going forward, however, there is also an opportunity to provide transformation-oriented professional services and multi-cloud/hybrid implementation to help businesses rewire the building support new requirements.

Winning at Every Stage of the Cloud Journey – Cloud is a journey, and different enterprises are at different stages in their quests for value-driving, utility-based computing. To stay relevant for the full journey, successful service providers will need to guide their customers thought this journey and anticipate their needs. Winning a customer at one part of the journey does not mean that you will keep them for the next stage.

Interested in sending 4+ team members?

Group pricing is available for companies interested in sending 4+ members of their team to HCTS. Contact Meghan MacDonald, Director of Marketing, to discuss your options.

meghan.macdonald@451research.com

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Women in Cloud Accelerator – Class of 2018

On March 2nd, Women In Cloud Accelerator was launched with the Class of 2018 participants.

We congratulate and extend a warm welcome to the following companies who were qualified and attended the immersion session:

  • Clever Databases
  • Stylyze Inc.
  • Plantmatch, LLC
  • RightSciences
  • Daysaver
  • Agile Impact Group
  • Bitlume Inc
  • Computing Kids LLC
  • genneve
  • Automaton Marketing Inc.
  • Red Sky
  • Visual Media Group, DBA

The Women in Cloud, an organization dedicated to fostering women-led businesses to leverage cloud solutions and services to inspire their success and growth, launches their new Accelerator Lab.  The Lab is an immersive 6-month program to assist women-led companies to start and build their businesses with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft distribution channels.

“Super excited to accelerate our business and learn more about how we can learn from the Cloud and improve our business proposition, and I hope to get more clients,” said Amelia Neighbors, from Clever Databases.

The Accelerator Program has proven methodologies, resources, and tools to grow a business in the Cloud.  What is “Cloud”? According to Microsoft, “cloud is the delivery of computing services-servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more-over the internet, the cloud”. What is it about Cloud computing and why is it so popular? The Women in Cloud Accelerator Lab, answers these questions and coaches women-led businesses, who want to accelerate their B2B solutions using Cloud Computing. The Accelerator Lab includes a 1-day workshop, targeting coaching, free migration to Azure, up to “100 hours of interactive training to discuss strategy, lead generation, co-selling, deal negotiation and pitch preparation”, and much more.

Feedback from the participants of 2018 Class:

“When successful women come together great things happen. Red Sky is thrilled to be part of Women in Cloud Accelerator program sponsored by Microsoft, HPE and hosted by Meylah. This is the missing link for our growth and boost in revenue leveraging the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and secret sauce of the mentors. This is a huge opportunity for us to build our cloud business and utilize the support of these great partners along this exciting journey.” Sharon A. Davison, Ph.D. CEO Red Sky

“For the first time, I can see tangible ways to leverage the expansive networks of Microsoft and HPE to take my business to a B2B audience. They’re helping me visualize what a go-to-market cloud partnership looks like to grow my business.” Jill Angelo, CEO of genneve

“The journey to building a business in the cloud requires both a willingness to learn new ways of thinking about our business and a deeper understanding of the opportunities available.” Rebecca Ralston, CEO of Agile Impact Group

 

Gretchen O’Hara, VP Go-To-Market Strategy, One Commercial Partner at Microsoft, and one of the driving forces and founders of Women in Cloud, declares,  “We are deeply committed from Microsoft on this initiative, one of the things I am very excited to announce, is I have been working personally to get a Microsoft Executive assigned to each and every one of you as a mentor and advisor of this incubator, and I have been able to accomplish that.”

To learn more about Women in Cloud and the Accelerator Lab, go to www.WomeninCloud.com

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