This Was Never the Plan

About a year ago, today, I started the Women in Tech Campaign. The campaign, was meant to last one month. The sole goal was to redefine the term ‘women in tech’ to be more inclusive of all roles and experiences. We thought ‘easy enough’ — let’s just share some stories of women with different backgrounds. We figured we’d promote some great women, get some media coverage, have an event, and call it a day.

We were wrong.

About 3 weeks in, I was collecting a story from a woman who my mother would describe as ‘one smart cookie’. She was driven, wildly accomplished, and highly respected in the ‘tech’ community. She was and is, someone I truly, deeply admire.

Let me set the stage.

There I was, a nobody, waiting for her to call me into her office. I was so excited. Finally, someone besides my friends were willing to share their story with me. She had cleared 20 minutes to talk to me and boy, was I ready. She called me in.

I started asking what I thought were ‘ambitious questions’ about her past, present and future. She answered each prompt with elegance and ease, in a way that only a seasoned pro can. It was clear she’d heard these questions before; we had different definitions of an ‘ambitious question’.

But to me, her answers were inspired. They left me in awe but also, admittedly, made me feel somewhat insignificant. How could I ever be as awesome? How could I ever be as successful and eloquent? The internal self-doubt ‘broken record’ played on in the background of my thoughts for some time.

But then she turned to me, looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘are you sure you’d consider me a ‘woman in tech’?’.

My initial reaction was, well, reactionary. Do you know that old peppy le pieu skit where he sees a cute girl and bonks his head on a wooden pole a few times to pull himself together? That was me.

‘WHAT?! Of course you are!!’ I practically yelled.

This amazing woman, who had accomplished more with her pinky then I think most people accomplish in their lifetime, was asking me for validation. How could this be and who am I to give it to her?

She laughed at my enthusiastic response, said a gracious thank you, and I left.

I pondered this exchange for some time after and I realized I saw in her something so clearly present in myself. Doubt.

The question she asked, ‘are you sure I am a woman in tech’, marked the first of many similar interactions I had with women just as spectacular. Now, I am asked this almost daily. Doubt wasn’t just in her. It wasn’t just in me. It was in most women I talked to.

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself an ‘expert’ on the social psychology of ‘doubt’, but it seemed to me that there was something cultural happening with the label ‘women in tech’. Something that was making these strong, accomplished women who, without hesitation, were ‘women in tech’ question if they had a place in this community-even more so if they did not identify as engineers.

It made me, honestly, very frustrated. Why was it wrong to identify as a ‘woman in tech’ without a robust set of ‘technical skills’? Who was it that was setting these rules and telling my role models and me that we weren’t good enough or skilled enough to be considered ‘women in tech’?

The more women I spoke to, the more I realized I wasn’t the only one asking these questions. It pretty quickly became clear that my ‘one month plan’ wasn’t going to do. I promptly tossed it in the trash and started re-drafting.

Next thing I knew, it was a year, 80 profiles, hundreds of women, and thousands of tweets later. The Women in Tech Campaign is now a company, called ‘All Women in Tech’. We run the Women in Tech Campaign at a much larger scale and host ‘#TechIsMore’ online + offline conversations that aim to build a more inclusive tech community.

We believe-and have always believed-that no woman who is solving problems with technology or a part of the tech ‘industry’ should be denied the right to proudly identify as a ‘woman in tech’. If you believe this too, join the #TechIsMore conversation on 8/3 more info → bit.ly/TechIsMore. Or follow us at @WITCampaign

-Emily, Founder Women in Tech Campaign