With only a few weeks to Christmas, the year has flown by. This year TechWomen had many things to celebrate, here are some of the highlights.
We hosted successful events for the International Womens day in Auckland and Wellington early in the year which were well attended; we had some amazing guest speakers.
The Mentoring Circles pilot ran with 16 people in Wellington and we are now planning to run similar circles in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch in 2019. Thank you to those who took part in the pilot and helped us create a reusable handbook to enable us to scale this programme across the country.
ShadowTech launched in Wellington during TechWeek then ran in Auckland, Christchurch, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Dunedin. We had 650 high school girls and over 100 organisations participate nationally.
On the 14th of November TechWomen in collaboration with CreateOps successfully ran the first pilot of ShadowTech Teachers in Auckland, with 35 digital technology high school teachers taking part. They were hosted by IBM, Xero, Auckland Transport, Genesis energy and Air New Zealand. The teachers had the opportunity to experience the corporate world, make industry connections and take their learning back to the classroom. Although this program was run in only one day, we would have reached close to 10,000 students.
Some great feedback from the Teachers:
“Best 1-day PD of the year for me. It was such a rich and rewarding experience that I will now try my best to convert that to a similar experience for my students in my classroom.” Yong Ai – Head of Digital Technology – Tangaroa College.
“It was a great experience and I came away with some great contacts, amazing resources and the feeling that industry are really interested in helping to support teachers in the education of our young people.” – Linda McCavana – Head of Department -Digital technologies -Birkenhead College.
Planning for ShadowTech 2019 is well underway and we are looking for more supporters, every little bit counts; please spread the word in your organisation and your networks. For more information please contact me, Eva Sherwood or Nick Elias. 100TechWomen is indefinitely on pause due to funding constraints and priority on ensuring ShadowTech goes ahead in 2019
Collaboration is important for TechWomen and this year we worked and supported many organisations and many of our members were speakers at events. On the 11th and 12th of December I am a keynote speaker at the Women in STEM Leadership Summit in Auckland. The first 20 people to respond with an email saying they are interested in attending will go into a draw to win tickets to attend the conference worth $2500.
Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to wish all our members and their families a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2019 we hope to see you at our events next year.
Best regards
Edwina Mistry
Executive Director
TechWomen NZ
