Women's Tech Hub

A Social Enterprise Working On Increasing Gender Diversity In The Tech Sector

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Women’s Tech Hub is a social enterprise working on increasing gender diversity in the tech sector. We believe there is a want in the industry to ensure there are the skills to enable the industry to thrive, and for that, we believe that diversity is the key. We have over 1000 members in our local network that believe in our cause and wish to be part of it, as well as some large and small local companies that wish to support us.

We set up because we recognised that there was a missing piece in the puzzle, whilst we were all working with women’s groups in networking to support women through girl geek dinner, girl games, etc. we believed that there also needed to be a two-way conversation with industry to help us proactively support our mission. We were also being approached by businesses, who were searching for ways to help improve their diversity but were struggling with a manner in which to reach out to women and other groups.

We would like to eventually franchise and have a Women’s Tech Hub in every city as we see this as a general issue and not just the South West and Bristol. We are moving constantly towards this aim through building up a reusable model and understanding what would be needed to expand and allow a franchise model.

Women’s Tech Hub ~ Bristol grew out of Bristol Girl Geek Dinners, where Serrie Chapman and Constance Fleuriot met and recognised a need to share what women in tech were discussing within the industry. They wanted to develop space for clear conversations about the lack of diversity in tech while actively developing solutions – the idea of Women’s Tech Hub was born.

Dr. Constance Fleuriot Artist and writer developing my own creative practice and games projects as well as working for others, eg as a gameswriter for Auroch Digital. As a creative technologies researcher I’ve worked for HP, Intel, NESTAfuturelab, pmstudio/Watershed and other community-based and educational organisations. I help people to develop ideas and research plans and especially enjoy working on projects that encourage people of all ages to be creative producers, rather than consumers. I run grrrlgames to encourage women into games design and am a co-founder of women’s tech hub.

Thanh Quan Nicholls Having worked across a variety of sectors, I bring 18 years of professional management and economic development experience to senior relationship building and partnerships. I am an experienced creator of new teams and collaborations. I provide market development of workspace, thought leadership on flexible working, city promotion and inward investment, economic development and strategy, research and evaluation, community and business engagement, and project and programme management.

Serrie Justine Chapman Serrie has a 20+ year career ranging from pre-silicon verification of System-on-chip design, requirements management, product management, model-based system engineering and is currently working as a principal safety engineer in ISO26262 on an autonomous bus project (which she loves!). She has been involved from an early stage in the Bristol Girlgeekdinners project (set up in 2010) and has been an organisor for the past 5 years and a bit.

We have created a great support system for women in tech, focusing on practical strategies such as peer mentoring, training & confidence-boosting. We recognise that the more we support each other, the more we can get out there and inspire others. We have many returners in our network and seek to get them back into the industry they love, as well as many women talked out of tech who have enough interest to want to change careers and need support navigating the industry.

Currently, we run a networking group on Fridays supported by a local co-working space Desklodge where we meet members and help them navigate their way into tech, support women struggling in the industry and offer general support and career advice. We have partnered with a local progressive recruitment agency with this so that we can also manage the interface with recruiters by having a clear and positive engagement.

We run a bi-weekly workshop peer-supported learning where we invite companies offering support to both women learning, or in tech, to improve their skills whilst also supporting our Women tech Founders members on financial and business support. We partnered with a local group called codehub on this, so whilst it has some women-only group we are inclusive of men also. This is now managed mainly by our new COO Susie King, who has stepped up to help the group manage, grow and organise itself – a silver lining for us!!

We have an inclusive careers fair where we ensure that all members wishing to talk to tech companies or looking for a new job to come along and we coordinate the event to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak to the companies they wish to speak to (something lacking in many tech career fairs) The next one is on November the 9th in Bristol at the Colston Hall where we are partnering with the WISE campaign (Women in Science and Engineering) and Technotopia (supporting children and families to engage in tech) to host a Tech Fair.

We love collaborating as we believe that through collaborations we are more able to meet our common goals. We aim to improve the diversity in tech to help enable tech to be inclusive, support women into great careers and also allow them to have a supported voice. Since we have been going we have helped over 200 members through support to change or move jobs and careers.

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