We spoke about the shortage of women in the tech landscape, with Gbemisola stressing how it’s important to encourage young girls to explore tech from the ground-up; mentorship was spoken about from all of our panel members, explaining that while you may not be the most skilled in your field of work, we can all still be mentors and the knowledge we can share with others is probably more impactful than we think. We also explored communities and allyship; being part of like-minded communities and sharing ideas with people similar to one-another is a pivotal way to overcoming imposter syndrome. Rianne also spoke about learning to speak up for yourself in a particularly male-dominated environment, she inspiringly spoke about how we must address any issues we will uncomfortable with, and use it as an opportunity – ‘sometimes you have to be the change you want to see.’

Confidence was a prevalent theme discussed; Rianne expressed how she keeps a ‘brag book,’ which documents any key achievements or successes she is proud of, this in turn gives her the reassurance that she is performing well and allows her to feel self-assurance within her working environment. Rihanna also spoke about feeling unconfident in the interview process; despite her clear achievements and successes, many women still feel inadequate when competing with others for a potential role.

We conducted some live research during the discussion. 100% of our audience believed that it is going to be important to their organisation to hire diverse talent in 2021. 33% believed that diversity is a barrier to career progression, with 30% not believing and 37% unsure on whether this is a barrier.

We would like to thank our amazing panel members for their inspiring stories and ideas, as well as our fantastic audience who kept the chat box alive throughout the evening. We must also thank the incredible Coding Black Females for collaborating with us on this event, and we hope we are able to continue working and amplifying the voices of women in technology together. Finally, thank you to our sponsor JFrog for their continued support – we’re looking forward to announcing the winner of the Nintendo Switch giveaway!

If you missed out on the webinar - don't worry - you can watch the video footage here:

Recap - Webinar #7: Black History Month: Diversity in DevOps

Awards