Anita Borg Institute offers a scholarship for deserving students and faculty to attend GHC. Interested candidates fill in a formal application describing why they wish to attend the conference, submit resumes and provide letters of recommendations, if needed. Scholars are identified after their applications are reviewed by the scholarship committee.
This year, 500 of these applicants were chosen to be GHC scholars. I volunteered as a GHC Scholarship reviewer earlier in the year and know first hand how lucky they are to be chosen from the large pool of applicants. When I saw an opportunity to serve as mentors for these amazing women, I signed up for it.
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| Hilton Lanier Grand Ballroom |
The reception was held at Hilton's Lanier Grand Ballrooms this
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| Janet Cinfio |
evening. Janet Cinfio, SVP & CIO of Acxiom (the event sponsor), spoke a few words about why supporting these women is important. Then, the formal mentoring activity for the evening began. A brief talk on elevator pitch - what it is and what it should contain - opened the session. The scholars and mentors were provided different handouts. The scholars practiced their pitch according to their handout while we, mentors, provided feedback based on the criteria in our handout. The mentors moved to a different scholar every 3 minutes till it was time to wrap up.
This is the first time, GHC organized a reception style networking event and despite being a bit noisy initially, I must say it was a success from a mentor perspective. I met passionate women with bright ideas and learnt a bit about what they want to achieve. I can't wait to see what they do in the future. I also got to connect with other women from the industry who were also acting as mentors. So, it was win-win on both sides.
The scholarship program is one of many ways ABI supports women in computer science. These programs are not possible without support from people like us. Please donate at http://anitaborg.org/donate/ and your contributions will be matched by their sponsors thru the end of 2016 (doesn't this remind you of NPR fundraisers) and if your employer matches your contribution, you have thrice the impact. So don't wait to become involved.
Awesome! I just heard about the conference and I might try to get a scolarship to go next year -- i'll have to look at the details of how it works! :) I live in Montreal (Canada), so it's pretty far! Hope you enjoyed the conference.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed it. You should try to go next year. I'm sure you'll have a great time. Scholarship applications are due feb/march.
DeleteAs one of the scholarship recipients for 2016, I would like to say from the bottom of my heart how grateful I am to all sponsors, application reviewers, mentors, and specifically you, Prana. It would never have been possible for me to attend without it. It was an amazing opportunity and I am trying to think ahead to next year (which will be my senior year) to how I could find a way to get to GHC17 :) Thank you again!
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