TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation

I was part of the TechWomen Delegation to Kyrgyzstan from 23 February – 4 March 2017 in Central Asia. We spent a week giving talks and making presentations to women, girls, technical startups and the STEM community.  35 participated in the Delegation – from the USA, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and of course Kyrgyzstan. In addition to the mentors from the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area and the Fellows from Central Asia, our Delegation included staff from the Institute of International Education and the US State Department.

Three of us had an accidental tour of Istanbul getting to Kyrgyzstan since our flight connections didn’t.  We hired a driver during our day of waiting for the next Bishkek flight and saw Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and other remarkable locations in that beautiful and cosmopolitan city.  Since there is a Travel Warning for Turkey, we avoided crowded areas.

Each Delegation member had the opportunity to give several professional presentations. In addition to general mentoring sessions, my presentation topics included: Successful Mentorship (at the Kyrgyz State Agrarian Academy), Crowd Funding (part of the “Silicon Valley Experts Symposium” hosted by the US Ambassador, Sheila Gwaltney and the Kyrgyzstan Information Technology State Committee), Women in Tech: Challenges and Opportunities (at StartUp Tuesday), Social Media Marketing and Professional Networking (at the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University), and Challenges and Opportunities in STEM Careers (in the American Corner, for high school students). After the presentations were over, a small group of us rented a bus and drove to see the remarkable 9th century minaret called the Burana Tower near Tokmok.

The day I arrived in Bishkek was when my mother died.    I knew when I left that this was a possibility even though I thought (and hoped) she would be with us much longer.  I had made all of the preparations in advance and both of my brothers were with her when she died.  I saw continuing my participation in the Delegation as a tribute to the woman my mother raised me to be – but it was hard to be away from home at such a time.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2017 by Katy Dickinson

TechWomen Kyrgyzstan Delegation, and Uzbekistan Trip

In February-March 2017, I will join the TechWomen Delegation to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. I look forward to working Yelena Filipchik and other TechWomen Fellows in Bishkek, spending a week giving talks and making presentations to women, girls, technical startups and the STEM community.  After the week in Kyrgyzstan, Saida Yusupova has invited me to Tashkent in Uzbekistan for a few days to help give Technovation training on mentoring and leadership.

So far, I have been focused on getting my flights sorted out.  Spending hours on the Hipmunk travel site, I discovered that (depending on the day of the week) you can economically get to Bishkek from either San Francisco or San Jose, flying through Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai, Frankfurt, or Beijing.  My flights will go through Dubai. Just travel time (not counting layovers) will be about 20 hours each way.

It cost about $1,000 less to buy two round trip tickets: California-Kyrgzstan-California and Kyrgzstan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgzstan than to book a single trip.  This means I have to transfer my bag from airline to airline myself but the layovers are very long, so there is time for that.  I am still thinking about what to do during the unavoidable 19+ hour layover in Dubai coming home.

I am also reading up on what to see in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on the Lonely Planet website.  The TechWomen Delegation orientation meeting by IIE is next week.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2016 by Katy Dickinson

Introducing Harpswell Women

Today I ran a blogging workshop online for 18 women, of whom most were in Cambodia with the Harpswell Foundation school in Phnom Penh.  The women are college students in Psychology, International Relations Agronomy, Mathematics, Medicine, Communications, and Dentistry, among other study disciplines.

Harpswell in a Nutshell

“We operate two dormitory and leadership centers for university women in Phnom Penh that provide free housing and food, leadership training, and critical thinking skills to some of the brightest and most ambitious young women in Cambodia while they are attending universities. Our students attend 20 different universities in Phnom Penh… Our alumnae are becoming a powerful wave that will help move Cambodia into the future.”

Some of their stories:

• Srey Pov is one of the Harpswell women who is working on a video project in her home village of Siem Reap. She says that: “…the video project brought me closer to my past dreams, and that it has given me the opportunity to share my story with other people.”
• Somaly Soun is from Sihanoukville, which is a beautiful fishing village on the beach where they eat a great deal of seafood.  Her mother is a housewife.  Somaly is a first year student studying to be a Dentist. She says: “I want to tell the world about my community and how they live.”

We created this blog post together.  I learned of the Harpswell school from Heather Ramsey, Trish Tierney, and Amanda Schwartz of WAKE International.  I am delighted to meet these impressive students!

My “How to Blog: Best Practices” slides are on Mentoring Standard’s website.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2017 by Harpswell Foundation

TechWomen 2016 Fellows – Next Steps

The 90 TechWomen 2016 Fellows returned to their 19 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. After a very busy month in the San Francisco Bay Area and a week in Washington DC, they have been been reconnecting with home and family. Some of us mentors in the Silicon Valley have continued working remotely with our mentees since we last saw them in Washington DC.  Two groups with whom I have actively continued to work are Team Tunisia (the development group of six from Tunis, plus three TechWomen mentors), and the TechWomen 2016 Fellows who have become Certified Mentors with my company, Mentoring Standard.

Team Tunisia has met remotely twice already and is busily developing plans, branding, and social media for WAKTECH. WAKTECH will developing a software application plus community system to improve public transport in Tunis. Our team won one of the TechWomen Pitch Day seed grants last month and we are  now looking for additional sources of funding and support. While we were in Washington DC, Team Tunisia was able to meet His Excellency Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States. We brought along our TechWomen trophy to show him!

12 TechWomen 2016 Fellows have completed the submissions required to become Certified Mentors after returning home.  They have demonstrated that they hold the following three qualities:

1. Significant Mentoring History.
2. Good Reputation.
3. Respectable Professional Experience.

Congratulations and welcome to:

Engy Abdalla	Architect & Interior Designer, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Alexandria, Egypt
Yousra Anwar Abdelhady	Independent Trainer, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Alexandria, Egypt
Chioma Hannah Ezedi	Programmer, Abububakar Tafawa Balewa University, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Bauchi, Nigeria
Yelena Filipchik	Sales Intelligence Manager, PepsiCo, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Almaty, Kazakhstan
Habsatou Nadia	Project Engineer, Cameroon Telecommunication, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Kitio Tsamo Arielle	Founder: WIT, Computer Science Lecturer Assistant: University of Yaounde 1, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Diana Hasan Nassar	Product Manager: souq.com, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Amman, Jordan
Estelle Ndedi-Nzalli	Computer Sciences Engineer, Information Technology Department, Ingenieris, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Yaounde, Cameroon
Dr. Francisca Onaolapo Oladipo	Professor, Federal University Lokoja, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria
Gulshnar Salpykova	IT Specialist, Transtelecom JSC, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Astana, Kazakhstan
Yomna Emad Saleh	Business & Innovation Consultant: Innovety, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Cairo, Egypt
Nazira Sheraly	CEO, Agroholding Jashyl Charba, TechWomen 2016 Fellow	Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic

I am very proud of all of them!  More information about each of these remarkable mentors is on Mentoring Standard’s Honor Roll.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2016 by Katy Dickinson

TechWomen Visit US State in Washington DC

The TechWomen mentors and our mentees enjoyed our first full day of meetings in Washington DC today.  Speakers at the US State Department included TechWomen’s champion Evan Ryan (Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs), Catherine Novelli (Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment), and our beloved founder of TechWomen, Sheila Casey (Deputy Director, Office of Citizen Exchanges, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs).  We also heard from Dr. Jennifer Blum of the Association for Women in Science and Ziad Haider (Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs, US State Department).  Oracle gave us a lovely reception in their corporate townhouse this evening.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2016 by Katy Dickinson

Africa Wins!

At yesterday’s TechWomen Community Event, all five Pitch Day seed grant prizes went to teams representing countries in Africa: Cameroon, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya! All 19 presentations from Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa were so inspiring, I am sure the judges had a tough time deciding which to honor.  It was a pleasure to spend the evening with my daughter Jessica.

I am so very proud to have been one of the Impact Advisors for Tunisia! Our WAKTECH action plan to improve transportation in Tunis included six from Tunisia and three from the San Francisco Bay Area:

• Melek Jebnoun- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Raoudha Lagha- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Salma Saidi- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Salma Sayah- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Sinda Soussia- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Yosr Tammar- Tunisia Emerging Leader
• Fatema Kothari- California Mentor and Impact Advisor
• Katy Dickinson- California Mentor and Impact Advisor
• Mercedes Soria- California Mentor and Impact Advisor

Early tomorrow, TechWomen shifts from the San Francisco Bay Area to Washington DC. What a month this has been!

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2016 by Katy Dickinson

Advising 6 TechWomen from Tunisia

Since August 2016, I have been honored to be one of three Impact Advisors to the six TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Tunisia. We started meeting while the ELs were still in Tunis and we have continued our discussions at least weekly since. Mercedes Soria (Vice President of Software Engineering, Knightscope), Fatema Kothari (Senior Consultant,
T-Mobile), and I have had a wonderful time working on this.

On 7 October, the ladies presented our plan for WAKTECH at the TechWomen Pitch Day hosted by Oracle here in the Silicon Valley. This is the Executive Summary for WAKTECH, from our Action Plan:

The biggest public transport issue in Tunis is delay. Bus and metro schedules are confusing and unreliable. What makes this issue worse is the lack of total absence of online and offline information about these delays. Users are deprived from real time information about it. WAKTECH will be the first mobile platform to centralize the information about public transportation in Tunisia. It will provide all the needed information about traffic, schedule and transit itinerary. The particularity of this application resides in the community of trusted users who will be its main source of data.

We will be building an application that enables users to share information about public transit like departure and arrival times or possible incidents. Based on that data, the users can access at any moment that information to schedule their trip, be on time, and save money. Using WAKTECH will help create the smart Tunis everyone is dreaming of where technology serves the citizens to manage their time effectively and create a community of responsible users.

Our Tunisia team was one of 19 that presented – one from each of the TechWomen countries. I was so proud of their poised and professional presentation! Tonight at the TechWomen Community Celebration in San Francisco we will hear the results of the pitch judging – only five teams will win one of the cash prizes. There were many superb presentations and inspiring projects proposed for Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Wish us luck!

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2016 by Katy Dickinson