Where women belong GHC16

Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder) and Megan Smith, United States CTO gave the closing keynotes for GHC16.

In an interview with Julia Boorstin (from CNBC), Marc spoke about his company motto of 'equality' and how he strives to bring equality for all his employees. 'I am myself and I am also all my employees' - when we see ourselves in each other, that's when we can be truly equal. His call for action is for every one to do at least one thing to promote equality. His advice is to -

1. Identify what specific outcome you want - something you can say in 10 words
2. Identify what your values are - prioritize these in order
3. Once you figure these two out, you will find a way to achieve your goal.

Megan started off by showing us pictures of women who've been forgotten in modern history textbooks. Her call to action is to contribute to efforts to lift up missing figures from history. She also shared new initiatives that the Government is introducing to promote STEM in the country. It was really informative.

There was a panel discussion with Mimi Valdes (executive producer of upcoming movie 'Hidden Figures'), Janet X (astronaut in training) and Christina (electrical engineer at Johnson Institute) about the changing attitudes to African American women at the workplace and what women can achieve if they want to - even go to the Moon or Mars. 'Hidden Figures' is based on the true story of 3 African-American women whose mathematical contributions were critical in launching the man on the moon. The movie will be released to limited audiences during Christmas 2016 and released widely on Jan 6 2017. Do watch it - it promises to be really good.

The results of the ACM poster competition were announced at the event. Clarissa Tuxen from Emory university won the best poster award in the undergraduate category while the award in the graduate category went to Setareh Ariafar from Northeastern university.

All the components at the keynote brought home the message that women deserve a seat at any table they wish to be at and are contributing in various roles in cutting-edge technology. I left the conference proud of being a technical women and feeling connected to so many others like me.