Women Techmakers is Google’s global program that celebrates women, encouraging them to pursue and excel in technology careers. Kicked off in 2012 by former Vice President of Google, Megan Smith, Women Techmakers is now led by a global team of Googlers who are passionate about empowering women in technology through increased visibility and proper resources.
The goal of this program is beautifully explained in the following excerpt taken from anitab.org stating how Women Techmakers Empowers Women Globally.
“Our goal is to inspire passionate, creative women through interations with thought leaders, design sprints, technical workshops, and networking opportunities,” said Natalie Villalobos, Google’s Women in Technology Advocate leading Women Techmakers. “Overall, we aim to tear down the boundaries of inhibiting women from participating in the industry.”
To accomplish this, Google created a global event series for International Women’s Day(IWD). Summits were held at Google offices around the globe, along with meetups at several universities and with Google Developer Group chapters.
Women Techmakers has introduced many other programs to provide women with resources to excel in the field of technology, which includes the Women Techmakers Scholars Program is furthering Dr. Anita Borg’s vision of creating gender equality in the field of computer science by encouraging women to excel in technology and become role models and active leaders in the field. The program is held in three regions — Europe, the Middle East and Africa region, United States & Canada region, and the Asia Pacific region.
Women Techmakers has also partnered with Udacity to offer a Women Techmakers Udacity Scholarship. This initiative offers 100 full scholarships for technical certification courses to women in the Women Techmakers community.
The scholarship will provide women around the world with free access to one of Udacity’s Google-certified online Android Basics, Full Stack Development, Android Developer, or Front End Web Development Nanodegree courses, for one year.
Membership in WTM empowers women in their careers by providing curated resources and events, as well as tools from Google, their partners, and the global tech ecosystem. We have 50+ ambassadors across India, who are regularly organizing meetups and workshops to revive and inspire the community.
Women Techmakers global partners include Girl Develop It, Women Who Code, National Center for Women & Information Technology, and AnitaB.org.
Women at all levels are encouraged to participate in Women Techmakers — from founders and CEOs to designers and developers or beginners in any technology-related role. The team believes that no matter your career, background, organization, or identity, you are welcome in the industry, and they want to help you find what you need to be successful.
Women Techmakers BVP
WTM-BVP is a community that provides a network for women who are passionate to work on Google’s open-source technologies. We believe staying together is progress and working together is a success.
We connect, inspire, and guide women in computing and technology. We achieve this by hosting events, launching resources, and piloting new initiatives with communities and partners around the world. Events are free to attend and open to all interested in discussing and learning more about software development with tools and technologies from Google or the open-source community.
By joining Women Techmakers you’ll receive resources, tools, and opportunities from Google. We organize CodeLabs, tech talks, hackathons, events, devFests, and study jams, the highlights of the same would include IWD summit, TensorFlow Dev summit, and Cloud Study Jam.
WTM-BVP is currently being led by Gunnika Batra and Harshita Diddee.
Our mentors Mr. Mohit Tiwari and Dr. Arvind Rehalia have always been motivating and have guided us on a path to make the community successful.
We have a great team with 55+ members and 15+ core team members, constantly working towards supporting and empowering women in the field of technology by providing visibility, community, and resources.
I wanna Join!
Every year we send out registration forms for women interested to join the community at the beginning of the semester. Recruitment for the core team would be held around the end of your even semester. We recruit women for our core team by taking a short interview which aims to know your technical skills on the particular chapter for which you applied and your soft skills like communication, attitude, and management abilities.
Some important points to be taken into consideration to excel in your interview would be to have good knowledge for the chapter you applied for, A project to showcase your technical skill. In any technical interview, it is best to not to just say that you have a particular skill, but have a project that would support your statement. So I would like to encourage you to seek new interests and work on your skills, and start a project. Don’t worry, the first project can be a small and simple one but it should challenge you and portray your efforts for the same.
We encourage women to come out of their comfort zone and explore the areas of their interest.
Women Techmakers is working towards true gender equality in tech and we need everyone in tech to help us reach this goal. Come be a part of the community and help it nurture while growing with it.
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