This year, a group of Nerds attended the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). In addition to Nerds from our Women in Engineering and Data ERG group, it was the first time NerdWallet allies also attended. GHC is a computing conference that celebrates women in technology, and was virtual this year in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are takeaways from our five day journey listening to some of the coolest women in tech!

Biggest Takeaways

Elise Xu:

I often hear “you can’t be what you can’t see,” and GHC showed me all that I can be. Presidential Innovation Fellows and startup founders showed me that women innovate everywhere, from building online gaming communities to making internet discourse nicer. Of course, more representation is necessary, and more work should be done — there were fantastic sessions on effective allyship that showed me what I could do to champion all women.

Chloe Lin:

It wasn’t the same this year in a virtual setting but the experience was still valuable. I attended several sessions focusing on strategy and management in times of Covid. There were so many great women leaders who shared the frameworks they put together to get through difficulties, like the importance of the 'think big and start small' mentality, and staying close to customers to create a feedback loop. I certainly appreciate the strong support system which has built a long way for women in tech, yet there are so many things to be done, and we all have to be mindful of the changes and effort we can do to help those around us.

Vishal Kotcherlakota:

I wish we’d had a much more interactive experience, but I do still find the conference valuable. I appreciated the sessions on allyship and intersectionality, but I was also a huge fan of the sessions I attended on AI and machine learning. GHC is a legitimate conference with serious topics in the sciences and engineering. It was also a sobering reminder that GHC offers these panelists spaces that they may not readily find in other corners of the academic and professional community. As an ally, attending GHC was a prompt to me to be more aware of the contributions that women and people of color are making to the space, and a call to action. I better understand that the fight for equity is everyone’s fight, and I’m ready to take an active role in it.

Sam Dalton:

Signing up for GHC, I was hoping to get a sense of what it might feel like to be a woman in technology, and to better understand my own blindspots and biases. While the remote circumstances made the feeling less visceral and immersive, the intensity and content of the talks I attended certainly highlighted the myriad challenges that all women, especially women of colour, go through on a daily basis and throughout their careers.

The standout talk for me was “Seeing Beyond Yourself: Effective Allyship, Advocacy, and Activism for Women in Computing,” which hit home the notion that bringing change is a tax on women that ultimately takes their time and focus away from their actual career. It’s not enough to simply follow along and support those who are trying to drive change, but to actually be a part of driving it.

Zlata Arestova:

After attending the GHC for the first time, I am filled with inspiration and pride. Pride for all 30,000+ attendees who were able to join fantastic sessions, events, networking lounges, learn and now share their experiences with the larger group. Going to GHC was invigorating and energizing in so many ways. I’m so thankful to the NerdWallet’s Womxn group who was very supportive in getting me there. I was so impressed that not just women, but also men were able to join Grace Hopper this year, all to learn how to work better together and to support one another. Together, I believe we can build a great future.

Pallavi Jain:

I greatly appreciated the focus on intersectional inclusion this year and tailored my schedule to attend multiple sessions on equity and inclusion. Sessions like “Inclusivity Power-Up: Lessons Learned Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Software Engineers” did not shy away from explicitly calling out the lack of racial justice and providing guidance on effective allyship, learnings that I hope to incorporate in my contributions to NerdWallet culture. Although I missed the camaraderie and opportunity for Q/A that came with attending GHC in-person over multiple days last year, a remote option is one that I now believe should be made available every year if we are to really include everyone.

The importance of including allies cannot be overemphasized and I’m glad NerdWallet supported allies who wished to attend GHC as sessions focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion are not usually available in such depth and breadth at your run-of-the-mill tech conference. Just the awareness that these sessions provide is enough to improve the dynamics of everyday work interactions when we have allies present in meetings, in board rooms, and when we collaborate.

Reuben Abraham:

I was super excited to learn from all of the amazing women who presented across various topics at GHC. The biggest takeaways from me were about how to build successful product-driven companies; I personally took a lot of the lessons that various women founders and executives shared and tried to apply them to how we think about our work at NerdWallet. I learned that there is science behind product development and we should be forming hypotheses with clearly defined success criteria so we can quickly test various assumptions in those hypotheses, iterate and then double down to gain traction.

I’m hopeful that at NerdWallet we can advocate for all of the amazing and talented women we have, and elevate them into leadership roles, particularly in the Engineering organization. Then, they can use all of their skills and experiences to drive the company forward, just as all of the presenters did for their own respective companies.

Sharadh Krishnamurthy:

I signed up for vGHC for two reasons - learn more about the challenges faced by women and other URM groups, and to kick some unconscious bias by watching some great talks. I ended the conference knowing more - and with an awareness that what I thought I knew was the tip of the iceberg. I don’t know how well I tackled unconscious bias, but I certainly watched some amazing talks! I had two favorites:

• In “Lessons Learned in Founding A Meaningful, Thriving Business - So You Can Build Yours Faster” by CloudFlare COO Michelle Zatlyn, I learned, among other things, techniques to be intentional about inclusivity. Almost every minute of this talk was gold, and two that stood out to me:

  • Where and how does work get done? (is it inclusive, or after-hours-boys-club)

  • People who start the journey don't end it (life happens, let people go when it is time)

• In “Inclusivity Power-Up: Lessons Learned Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Software Engineers” by Morgan Weaver from 98point6, I learned how important it is to be mindful about my colleagues’ lives and the challenges they face, and how it can affect them at work. Something as innocent as “Let’s meet at the coffee shop down the street” could exclude some people. I also learned some cool mentoring techniques:

  • "I don't know, let's find out" breaks imposter syndrome and helps people learn how to learn; the same goes for sharing references so they can learn from where you learn

  • Interests outside of tech can be a bridge to CS learning, especially for people with a non-traditional background and other unique life experiences