On the 8th of August in celebration of National Women’s Day in South Africa, we hosted a virtual Girl Talk emceed by Kaluba Chikonde!
The event was opened with a video consisting of our executive members describing “what it means to be woman”, watch it below:
The Girl Talk panelists:
We had a panel of 4 lovely and talented women working in the tech industry who discussed and shared with us their experiences of what it’s like for them to be working in a male dominated industry.
Software Engineer II at Microsoft
Product Owner at Allan Gray
Founder of Mbasane – Women in Information Technology
Software Development Engineer II at AWS
The Girl Talk focusing on the following topics:
- Being the Only Woman in the Room
- Imposter Syndrome
- Work Life Balance
- Secrets to Success
It was definitely insightful to hear the different women’s take on the topics.
After being asked how Susan strengthens her logical muscle of dealing with tasks and if her ‘gut feeling’ play an important role in her leadership, she gave the following response:
When faced with a problem, I ‘strengthen the muscle’ by applying a process – breaking the problem down, doing research, diagramming – diagramming (not necessarily any specific method) helps clarify things for me. Gut feel also definitely starts to play a bigger part once you have experience, but sometimes you have to come back to the process!
Susan Brock
There are times we get wrapped in trying to be perfect and fit the norm, and Sara gave us a friendly reminder:
“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes”.. and .. “Don’t be afraid to be different”
Sara Mahdy
We are so grateful to everyone who was involved, from the emcee Kaluba whose infectious energy really boosted everyone’s spirits; the panelists who took the time out of their busy lives to share their tech journey’s with our members, and last but certainly not least the wonderful members who were so interactive during the entire session!