UPDATED 16:25 EDT / OCTOBER 19 2016

WOMEN IN TECH

With great coding power comes new records for women in tech | #GHC16

If you’ve ever wanted to break a Guinness World Record, now is a great time to be in Houston, Texas. Tomorrow, for eight hours, there will be an attempt to break the record of most people programming, and they will need more than 1,000 people to participate. What better place to try and beat a record than at a conference designed to celebrate women in computing?

“There are more and more women in technology, and we want to encourage that,” said Stella Goulet, CMO of Avanade Inc. With inclusion and diversity, you come up with great ideas, resulting in better solutions for the clients, she added.

Goulet was joined by Stephen Kelly, EVP and chief human resources and leadership officer at Avanade. The pair were interviewed by Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and John Furrier (@furrier), hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, taking place at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

Mentorship

A common cliché is that with great power comes great responsibility. As Avanade grows, it has taken that statement to heart. “You have to live by the ethos and values you desire,” said Kelly, adding that the company views it as a corporate responsibility. To that end, they put a high value on inclusion and mentorship, even offering what they call “speed-mentoring” at their booth.

They have a history of offering mentorship, including an annual program that 40 women participate in each year. The program serves as a learning experience for both mentee and mentor. As 25 percent of the Avande mentors under this program are men, the men gain a new perspective through teaching a younger generation of a different gender. “It’s a great win-win for passing knowledge and learning,” said Kelly.

As the field grows and changes, it’s about accepting that someone else’s career development will be different than a single path, and employers finding ways to be agile toward these trends, according to Goulet and Kelly. Mentorship is a great way to build those relationships and invest in the future, as are conferences like the Grace Hopper celebration, celebrating both those who have overcome the struggles of being one of the few women in tech, to the future of a much more diverse workforce, they concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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