Sessions

Closing the Gender Gap in Technology

It’s no secret that the tech industry has a serious gender imbalance. We live in an era in which girls are told they can do anything, so why aren’t there more women in leadership roles to look up to? In 2012, Reshma Saujani founded Girls Who Code with the mission of correcting this disparity. Since then, she has sparked a national conversation about increasing the number of women in tech, and Girls Who Code has reached nearly 40,000 young girls, 90 percent of whom have declared or intend to declare a major or minor in computer science. With Google and Twitter as backers, and Facebook and AT&T (among others) signed on as mentors, the program aims to enroll 1 million women by 2020.

Drawing from her new book, Women Who Don’t Wait in Line, Saujani will advocate a new model of female leadership focused on embracing risk and failure, promoting mentorship and sponsorship, and boldly charting your own course, both personally and professionally. She will weave in stories of accomplished women who have overcome roadblocks and forged new paths, share her personal story, and inspire and ignite you to help remake the U.S.