Grace Hopper 2017: A Recap

Another Grace Hopper Celebration has come and gone, but the inspiration, excitement, and community certainly haven’t. I had the opportunity to attend my first GHC in 2015, when it was hosted in Houston, and while it was just as enormous, I noticed several differences in the approach that I took to attending this year’s conference.

Coming in as an Anita Borg Institute GHC Scholar, I was fortunate to have my registration and expenses paid for by Guardian Life Insurance, whom I had the opportunity to meet and speak with during the Expo. While the program itself came with numerous perks (including paid meals and a special scholars reception), I noticed that the size of the scholars class made it harder to get to know everyone to a close degree. Luckily, we had the chance to talk and mingle independently outside of the Scholars Reception, and the number of international scholars and the vast backgrounds covered made for an incredible group of individuals.

As always, the keynote speakers were amazing. I was impressed by Dr. Fei-Fei Li’s discussion of values in artificial intelligence, Dr. Ayanna Howard’s talk on the inherent bias humans have to trust robots (and the consequent responsibility developers have in designing intelligent systems), and Dr. Telle Whitney’s heartfelt goodbye to AnitaB.org.

Emerging Technology Trends

One interesting trend I noticed this year was the prevalence of AR/VR and artificial intelligence. While cybersecurity, blockchain, cloud computing, and data science were also buzzwords, compared to the 2015 conference and other tech conferences I’ve been to this year, those two fields were discussed far more in-depth, with dozens of sessions focused on various research projects and products built for these emerging technologies.

In 2015, big data and diversity in the workplace have been hot topics in Silicon Valley, with the majority of main-stage speakers tackling these ideas. Considering GHC 2015 took place in the wake of the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign, numerous organizations and advocates spoke about how to bring issues of women in tech to the public view.

This year, there was also more awareness of intersectionality and mothers in tech than in the past. I think there has been an effort from within as well as partner organizations (like Lesbians Who Tech) to promote greater awareness of intersectional discourse.

Student Opportunity Lab

I didn’t go to as many tech talks this year since I had several interviews scheduled during the conference, but I did get to attend several one-off events, one of which was one of the highlights of the conference.

The Student Opportunity Lab wasn’t featured like many of the Leadership Building Workshops (most likely because the majority of attendees weren’t students), but I found it incredibly valuable. Professionals from CRA-W and various industry companies held 20-minute-long discussions about a specific topic, usually relating to skills building, educational paths, or careers in technology.

I came into the session without knowing what I wanted to concentrate on. Having only introductory knowledge of blockchain, cybersecurity, web development, data science, analytics, cloud computing, and robotics, I could see myself working in several different areas. It can be challenging to determine the type of work you want to do when you haven’t had hands-on experience in these fields. I wanted to find out what skills I could focus on developing that would contribute to my career, regardless of what field I ended up in.

I had the opportunity to meet with:

• Leslie Cahill and Katie Buettner from Intuit for a discussion on careers in UX
• Alexa Hale and Christina Aguilera from Walt Disney to talk about tech opportunities in the entertainment industry
• Kaylin Lee and Stephanie Zhang from Amazon to talk about business intelligence
• Tamara Louie from Pinterest to talk about transitioning into data science and opportunities to pursue opportunities within the field
• Jolie Martin from Pinterest for a discussion on combining data analytics fields as a quantitative researcher

There were so many more interesting sessions, but I was blown away by the care and attention each of the speakers placed on the specific advice they gave to each of us. Alexa and Christina took the time to ask every mentee about our passions and goals, recommending specific career paths or opportunities if we were interested in computer graphics or systems engineering. Tamara was also helpful and transparent about her experience in the industry and her background that led her to become a data scientist.

During the conference, I got to meet up with a ton of alumni and current students from MIT. Since I was traveling on my own to the conference, I didn’t have a group to travel with, so it was cool to meet the other women who were here on scholarships or with SWE. We had a meetup with NCWIT on the last day of the conference where I got to catch up with some of the other Aspirations award winners from my year and alums who were here for the conference or work.

Career Fair/Expo Hall

The Career Fair was, as usual, overwhelming and incredibly exciting. With over 18,000 enthusiastic and passionate women in technology in attendance, it’s no wonder engaging conversations were occurring left and right. Even though I picked out a few companies to talk to before the fair, I found myself gravitating towards interesting startups, launching into conversations about current products, research, and opportunities at dozens of companies.

The evening private events held by each of the companies did not disappoint. While I didn’t do a great job sourcing events and RSVPs, I still managed to make it to most of the events and parties after hours.

On the second day, I found myself hopping from events hosted by BlackRock and Athena Health and meeting developers from eBay, GE, and Veritas. Athena Health had one of the most engaging and passionate groups of engineers that I met at the conference— nearly every single person at the event had a genuine passion for the product and the problem the company was solving, and they each knew their role and the ways they were tangibly contributing to the company. Even though I didn’t initially consider a career in healthcare technology, they opened my eyes to new possibilities.

In addition, although I didn’t consider working for a non-profit, after Daniella and Yada (two of the speakers on the panel I moderated on how technologists can bring social impact into their careers and the workplace) invited me to the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative mixer, I realized that there were more opportunities available to make a direct impact through technology than I could have imagined. One of the engineers on the team was particularly engaging in how he described his role in incorporating technical responsibilities into Summit, a novel learning platform that CZI developed for schools. The enthusiasm that everyone had — as well as the knowledge that they were directly contributing to a project that would make a positive difference in the world — was infectious and made me reconsider the ways I could evaluate potential companies for impact.

One of the women I met at the Scholars Reception spoke about how she tried to find companies that were doing useful, but also interesting work. As a data scientist, Orsolya was interested in working for companies with unique datasets. In her case, she had an affinity for music, and no company has a better music data culture than Spotify. I noticed that a lot of companies with recommendations-driven products had begun hiring machine learning engineers and data scientists, so her advice particularly resonated.

Navigating Social Impact as a Techie

When Daniella, Gemma, Yada, and I were preparing for our panel discussion on Thursday, we weren’t expecting as huge a turnout as we got. The fact that so many attendees were interested in creating social change within their companies and in their careers was both surprising and incredibly inspiring.

Daniella made excellent points during the panel about the differences between non-profit and private sector companies in how they could use funding to achieve their goals, as well as the importance of sentiment data in analyzing the impact of non-profits.

Gemma also talked about the difficulties of raising funds for non-profits and the invaluable role that foundations can play in helping to bring social initiatives to light. Yada brought up the idea of data-driven impact, expanding on the idea that non-profits need to be held accountable to show that they’re delivering on their goals.

There were so many attendees afterward who spoke with us about opportunities in working with the UN, Ashoka, GenerationOn, Global Teen Leaders, and other organizations with the mission of empowering young people to become leaders in their communities.

Lifting Each Other Up

One of the most poignant moments for me at the conference was during the final keynote on Friday. Dr. Jennifer Chayes (a past ABIE Award winner) said that when she was in her early career, she never considered diversity or women in tech issues that she should get involved in. I saw so many similarities between her perception of the tech industry and my own — because I was brought up in an environment that wasn’t as toxic as those many other women face, I had the unique privilege of not worrying about whether or not I had a place in STEM or computing.

It wasn’t until she entered the later years of her mid-career that she realized just how huge of an issue diversity — or lack thereof — within the tech industry really was. Even though I’m only in the early stages of my career, I’ve already noticed that despite the feel-good discussions we often hold about how we can diversify hiring women engineers in companies or retaining talent, diversity is still a huge problem and the leaky pipeline is still one of the biggest reasons why there aren’t more women in technical and leadership roles.

Diversity isn’t something that can only exist for one person alone — it has to exist for everyone. More than anything, GHC 2017 brought the energy and passion we need to have these discussions in a public setting, and it was a reminder that no matter how far we’ve come, we still have so much more work to do.

With attendees coming from a diversity of backgrounds, the conference provided the perfect atmosphere to feel completely accepted and welcome within the tech industry. As many of the speakers iterated over and over again, the biggest way to bridge the diversity gap is to lean on one another and to support each other, whether through making asks for promotions, reaching out to role models, or being unafraid to say no to what others (or even society) expect from you.

Even between botched interviews and awkward conversations, there was no lack of encouragement and inspiration. There’s a reason why the Grace Hopper Celebration is one of the biggest and best tech conferences each year, and to think that I just had the privilege of witnessing community at its finest is almost surreal.

If you’d like to chat more, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn. I’d love to discuss social impact, diversity in tech, and opportunities for students in computer science.