Women in technology leadership roles came together during the annual CloudNOW Top 10 Women in Cloud Innovation Awards to discuss the progress women are making in tech, as well as the current cultural, political and economic challenges still being faced by women. This year’s event included a showing of the trailer of a groundbreaking documentary The Chasing Grace Project, a documentary series about women in tech.

“It’s a documentary series of six episodes about women in tech. It really talks about the culture of tech, the adversities that women face. It doesn’t shy away from those but moves pretty quickly to inspirational stories of women who have navigated a successful path in tech so that other women can learn from those experiences,” said Jennifer Cloer (pictured), co-founder and executive producer at Wicked Flicks Productions, the company behind The Chasing Grace Project.

Cloer spoke with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the CloudNOW Top 10 Women in Cloud Innovation Awards on the Google campus in Mountain View, California. They discussed how Cloer’s film documents the current state of affairs for women in the technology industry.

‘Chasing Grace’

When Cloer started the project, she was surprised by the outpouring of women who volunteered to share their stories on camera. She spent four months at the beginning of the year interviewing more than a hundred women, trying to understand the collective experience of women in tech.

“I’m inspired by the courage of these women … a lot of times, when women speak up, they become that woman in the office … talking and causing trouble and complaining. And that’s not the case. These women are sharing stories that are important for all of us to understand,” Cloer said.

As Cloer concluded her interviews for the project, she had amassed a set of common challenges faced by the majority of women and got to work telling their stories. Building an awareness of these common problems was the first step charting a course toward a more diverse workforce, she stated.

“They seem to feel like they hit a wall. … There’s the talk about the ceiling, but a lot of them talk about they hit a wall that others don’t see, but all of a sudden they can’t go any further. A lot of microaggressions that we’ve all heard and read about, dismissiveness, being overlooked in meetings and for promotions,” Cloer concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW 6th Annual Top 10 Women in Cloud Innovation Awards.

Photo: SiliconANGLE