Women in IT Ulrike Weitz

Background  Tech-Ed two years ago  Invited all the technical ladies to lunch  Great support from all the ladies  But what next?  Women in IT was launched on 1 Sep 2005

The Microsoft Women's Forum (internal) Key Projects: 1.Development for Women  Identified a need for Assertiveness, Negotiation and Conflict Mgmt Skills 2.Bring a Girl Child to Work  Support Cell C Initiative  In addition, Take Work to Girl Child Initiative  Mentorship of girls in previously disadvantaged communities  Fund Raising for tertiary education - bursaries 3.Internal Networking  Opportunity for women to network on a different level. Created interest groups e.g. Community work, Décor, Gardening etc 4.Parenting Forum  All Microsoft employees are invited to this forum

Creating an Industry Forum Women in IT  Women can share with like minded people – other women  Learn and leverage best practices from each other  Building a network  Mentor/Coach role  Bursary program  Training opportunities Creating Change  We each have a responsibility as senior women in this industry to drive the diversity agenda.

Launch of the initiative  Launched the initiative on 1 Sep 05 with 100 ladies attending  Launched websitewww.womeninit.co.za  Got the necessary sponsors onboard, MS, SAP, FS, Futurex, Bytes Technologies, Word’s Worth  Did BMI-T research in Oct/Nov with some great results – want to conduct some more research during this year  Database currently on 460 people and we are aiming to get 1000 women to join by the end of this year  Ezine in Nov with lots of interesting news etc  2 Bursaries awarded to two final year students studying in IT  Mentoring matching  Training sessions planned around emotional intelligence  2 nd networking opportunity on 22 Feb 2006