NCWIT Empowers Girls in STEM through Tech Blazers Event

On October 22nd, National Center for Women in Information Technology(NCWIT), hosted their Tech Blazers event for over 100 female highschool students excited to hear from women currently working in the tech industry. NCWIT is a non-profit community with over 1400 member organizations which work to increase women’s participation in tech.

The Tech Blazers event was part of Aspirations in Computing, an NCWIT program that provides girls and women with opportunities in tech and celebrates their achievements. These values were all reflected in the Tech Blazers event by giving highschoolers the opportunity to connect with and hear from inspirational women in tech. To connect the attendees, NCWIT used Glimpse, a platform for round-robin video calls with icebreaker questions, games, and a photobooth. Erika Karsh, an organizer of the Tech Blazers event, said, “Glimpse helped us replace those one on one connections and face to face abilities that we weren’t able to do before and in a personalized, unique, and fun way.”

In addition to events like Tech Blazers, members of NCWIT are provided with resources like a Facebook group and Slack channel consisting of over 20,000 community members. Within these communities, women can organically network and share opportunities for mentoring, internships, jobs and scholarships.These communities are important because in the tech industry, many women don’t feel a sense of belonging in their workspaces. “Community is so essential because it helps women encourage each other to pursue and persevere,” Karsh said.

With everything virtual, NCWIT is finding innovative and impactful ways to continue to empower women in tech. They are cultivating a community of passionate, supportive, and accomplished women in tech and computing and supporting the next generation of young women in STEM.