Girls’ Day 2024 at Zenjob
I’ve always been a strong supporter of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) because I believe it’s important to have a heterogeneous work environment with people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives whose ideas are given equal weight.
This is why, six weeks into my tenure at my former job at SoundCloud, when I received an invitation to be part of the team organizing Girls’ Day 2021, I immediately accepted.*
Girls’ Day, or Mädchen-Zukunftstag, is an initiative of the German government that began in 2001 and takes place every April. Its goal is to expose teenage girls to STEM. It does this by inviting girls to visit companies and find out more about job possibilities and opportunities.
While I’m not a father myself, I do have a 12-year-old niece in Honduras who would love to be part of an event like this, and this was one of my biggest motivations to take part in the event.
At SoundCloud, I was tasked with coordinating the Engineering workshop, as well as recruiting woman-identifying role models in the company to participate in the activity. The event was hybrid, given the COVID-19 restrictions at the time, and it was as satisfying as it was challenging. But the company had done this multiple times in the past and they ran a tight ship.
The following year, shortly before I left the company, there was another Girls’ Day coming up, so I made it a point to volunteer once again. This time, the event was onsite and even more satisfying than the previous one. Seeing the faces of participants and immediate reactions firsthand as they learned to code is not only something I’ll always remember, but something I want to continue experiencing year after year.
Bringing Girls’ Day to Zenjob
In my new role at Zenjob, I brought up the idea of hosting Girls’ Day here to Amara Sommer, who is a junior accountant at the company. Something I learned from past experience in marketing is the fact that you have to know your audience. Amara not only has a knack for smoothly tackling every single logistic problem that comes her way, but she’s also a mother of a daughter around the same age of the girls that Girls’ Day targets. This, along with her big heart, made her the ideal person to pitch this idea to.
She was on board with the idea and took ownership almost immediately. More specifically, she handled all the logistics flawlessly — from securing a conference room on one of our busiest days in the company, to organizing lunch, to being the point of contact for the girls (and their parents) — and everything in between. I was tasked with the rest, namely creating a program and using my persuasive skills to get people involved in the project and across the finish line.
Planning and execution
Bringing Girls’ Day to Zenjob was an undertaking that required a lot of people. And rather than writing about it from my point of view, I invited those involved to share their own experiences in the planning and execution of the day.
Amara
As Leo already mentioned, he came to me with the idea. I had heard of Girls’ Day before and was excited to take part. After we decided to do it, I took care of all the logistics and administrative tasks, and I left Leo in charge of organizing the talent, so to speak.
More specifically, I dedicated my time to speaking with the Girls’ Day organization itself, getting our offer online, gathering the participants’ information, and putting together the skeleton of the day.
Leo
May marked my two-year anniversary at Zenjob, and over the last 24 months, I’m happy to say that I’ve built a network of like-minded people who are socially conscious, aware of their privilege, and willing to invest personal time into projects like this. So as we were laying out the draft of the day, I reached out to Marie Aurhammer, Julia Burja, and Betty Kallinikou and asked if they’d help coordinate the day.
They all said yes, even before I had a chance to explain what was needed. This is the level of commitment that gets us places at Zenjob. And once they were onboard, it was even easier to get more people to join us.
Betty
When Leo approached me with his idea to do Girls’ Day at Zenjob, I didn’t even let him finish his sentence. To me, it was pretty obvious I would support him any way I could, for one very good reason. As someone who grew up in Germany and had the opportunity to be part of Girls’ Day when I was younger, I didn’t want to miss out on the chance of doing this for the bright and motivated girls of today.
I can still remember some of my own Girls’ Day visits that I had almost 20 years ago because they were well organized and so much fun. And I immediately knew I had to do my part for this — and I’m very glad I did.
Leo
When I met Lisa Knolle for the first time, I’m sure I said something along the lines of “Welcome to the company! What are you doing on April 25? Can I count on you doing a presentation for Girls’ Day?”
Lisa
It was only my third week at Zenjob when Leo approached me, but I immediately loved the idea. I’ve spoken at similar events in the past, and I even first discovered the university where I studied Computer Science via Girls’ Day myself, so I was very happy I got the chance to contribute.
Having an open space to ask questions but also get playful with tech is really important — especially for those who don’t normally have the opportunity to be in these kinds of environments. And even though more and more women are pursuing careers in STEM, as a girl or a woman, each time you hear another person sharing her experience, it alters your perception.
That said, I was very happy to contribute with the topic of artificial intelligence (AI). Explaining a technology that’s currently disrupting the tech space to a generation growing up with it being completely normal was an interesting challenge. It was absolutely amazing to see the curiosity and eagerness the girls approached their projects with.
Leo
While planning, I had a rough idea of what we could do: an introduction to what each of us does at Zenjob, along with a Q&A session. That seemed like a solid plan until Marie brought up the idea of building a product, from beginning to end.
Marie
When I first heard Leo mention Girls’ Day, of course I had to say yes to helping out. Fifteen years ago, I had the great experience of visiting my aunt who works in a technical field, so this was really a full circle moment for me.
Being a product manager at a tech company has allowed me to approach this project in a really different way: I wanted to make sure that the girls aren’t just seeing or hearing what we do, but that they get to spend the day in our shoes doing hands-on work. This idea of having them build something came to us at the last minute, and I’m both happy that we pulled it off and impressed by everyone who made it happen.
In retrospect, I can see that we went about everything backward, but we were determined to find a way, and we did. We began by finding out which tools we could use to allow the girls to write code, and pretty quickly we decided on a game creator.
Leo
When April 25 rolled around, we were all as nervous as we were excited. Every single presenter did a fantastic job, including our superb designer Julia, who is Ukrainian and was worried about how her German would come across.
Amara
That morning, we welcomed the girls and showed them around the office before sitting them down and beginning our workshop.
Marie
For the workshop, we split the girls into groups of two and created four versions of a 2D arcade platformer game — from concept to playing.
We started with understanding the basics of the game requirements. Then the girls went to speak with volunteers from the Talent Care team, who taught them about stakeholder management, which gave them an idea of the requirements and constraints for what they were to build. This helped them determine which type of character, background, and obstacles they needed to consider. Then we gave them some time to come up with background stories and gave them paper and pens to draw up their prototypes, while leaving lots of room for creativity.
We then turned the drawings into prototypes and tested them before letting the girls jump into developing the games themselves using a game development tool. In the end, they even got to play their games a little bit.
Amara
I really enjoyed taking part in the organization of the day. The girls were really eager and excited to learn something new. All the talks and activities were met with enthusiasm, and I think I can speak for everyone involved that it was a worthwhile experience.
Julia
I have always been fascinated by volunteering and making a positive impact on society, and I did a lot of volunteering work during my studies. Then, when the full-scale war in Ukraine started, I spent time helping people with their work applications in Germany. So it was a great opportunity to make a contribution to society in another way. The day was wonderful, and I came away from it feeling super fulfilled.
Leo
As the icing on the cake, Bhuvana Vijayan and Alina Zimmermann talked to the participants about their experience during the day, their takeaways, and their learnings. They also shared about potential work opportunities at Zenjob in the near future. Maybe we’ll have some participants joining us by the end of the year, who knows?
Conclusion
All in all, this was a successful first Girls’ Day at Zenjob, and it all came together thanks to the collaborative effort of many people. One thing we know for sure: We will definitely host Girls Day next year. We learned a lot — not just about logistics behind the organization, but also about how this core team was able to deliver a memorable experience in a short amount of time. Stay tuned!
*On a funny note, the SoundCloud Girls’ Day organizer later shared in confidence that inviting me to that first event was an accident; they originally wanted to invite someone else with a similar email address, but they figured that if I didn’t want to participate, I would say something.
