TechWomen at ABI Women of Vision

At least 12 TechWomen mentors -Hoda Eldardiry (Xerox PARC), Meredith McKenzie (Juniper Networks), Shalaka Prabhune (Symantec), Shawne Van Deusen-Jeffries (Juniper Networks), Rekha Pai (Juniper Networks), Claudia Galvan (Anita Borg Institute), Myra Nawabi (Lockheed Martin), Ruth Davis (Santa Clara University), Lisa Ramirez (Juniper Networks), Erica Lockheimer (LinkedIn), Audrey Van Belleghem (Anita Borg Institute) and I – were in the audience for tonight’s inspiring Women of Vision annual awards gala by the Anita Borg Institute, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the Silicon Valley.  5/15/2015 Thanks to Jeannice, here are more names of TechWomen mentors who attended: Jeannice Fairrer Samani (AACSB University), Felicia Mayo (Juniper Networks). Please send more names if I have missed anyone!

2015 WOV Awards honorees were:

• Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Founder and CEO, Drawbridge – for Technology Entrepreneurship
• Julie Larson-Green, Chief Experience Officer, Applications and Services Group, Microsoft – for Leadership
• Camila Fernandez Achutti, University of São Paulo, Brazil – Student of Vision Award

Student of Vision Award Finalist Julia Edwards (of Smith College) was also acknowledged. It was a pleasure to see so many of my remarkable and accomplished sister mentors present to honor our technical community leaders.

Photos Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

InovAtiva Brasil Wins Big!

This week, I received good news from Marcos Vinícius Souza, Innovation Director (with Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade), and leader of the InovAtiva Brasil mentoring program for entrepreneurs. You may recall that I was in Brasil in July to lead an Everwise design workshop and to help recruit InovAtiva senior mentors.

InovAtiva selected 74 startups for the final program round who enjoyed a huge success when they presented to investors and large companies. This was considered the largest pitch session ever in Brazil. InovAtiva Brasil also just won a prize: “Best Innovation in Public Administration – 2014”. This important honor was awarded by Brazil’s National School of Public Administration/Ministry of Planning.

I am very proud to have contributed to this successful program!

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

Everwise, InovAtiva, BayBrazil Annual Conference

Ilana Robbins Gross and I from Everwise attended the BayBrazil annual conference: “Brazil in the 21st Century” yesterday on the Stanford Law School campus. I have known Margarise Correa (Founder & CEO of BayBrazil) for some years and admire both her leadership and ability to bring together the Brazilian diaspora of the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area. Ilana and I were there to learn and expand our network and also to meet potential mentors for the InovAtiva Brasil mentoring program I have been working on for the past year. Everwise just launched the mentoring platform for InovAtiva!

The conference included notable speakers, including the Honorable Mauro Vieira (Ambassador from Brazil to the USA) and Virgilio A.F. Almeida (IT Secretary, Ministry of Science, Technology of Brazil). Both the Stanford Law School and the co-sponsor Rock Center for Corporate Governance welcomed us. Big technical companies were represented by Airbnb, Uber, Evernote, YouTube, Visa, Nike, Google, and DocuSign. The entrepreneurial community had speakers from Movile, Fazedores.com, ADVANCE Medical, and SambaTech. Financial interests were discussed by BNDES, Redpoint e ventures, Valor Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Atomico, eBricks, and Silicon Valley Bank. I was not surprised to meet Lucie Newcomb (a sister TechWomen mentor) also attending the conference. It was a fascinating and worthwhile day!

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

What I Learned in Brazil

For many months, I have been enjoying working with the InovAtiva Brasil team – developing an entrepreneurship mentoring pilot program. Even though the Everwise team was only in Brazil for a week, I took away three new cultural ideas:

1. Never put your purse on the floor – purses should be placed on a chair or table.
2. It is OK to use your whole name in business correspondence – including all of those middle names that your mother only uses when you are really in trouble.
3. Do not touch your food – use a napkin or toothpick when you cannot use a knife, fork, or spoon.

This last learning reminds me of my grandmother, Evelyn Louise Van Gilder Creekmore, who never broke a rule of politeness in her life. When the family was talking late at night at her home in Knoxville, Tennessee, she would sometimes share her secret plan. Grandma told us that one day she would give a formal dinner party. She would send out written invitations to all of her stuffiest social friends. Her table would be set with crystal, silver, china, linens and flowers. When the guests were seated and the dinner was served, it would be corn on the cob, olives, barbecued ribs and every food she could think of that was almost impossible to eat without fingers. Of course, Grandma Creekmore never did such a thing – but sometimes she liked to think about it.

Evelyn Louise Van Gilder Creekmore in 1940

Images copyright 2011-2014 by Katy Dickinson

Rock People

We are rock people. When my family travels or goes camping, we come home with rocks. We send each other photos of the rocks we have collected, and give garden stones for holiday and birthday presents. I have shipped rocks home from trips to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. (When a Customs agent asked “What do you have in there – rocks?” I replied “Of course!”) After a trip to Brasil and a week camping in the Sierras, I gave my mother a necklace with a natural Brasilian agate pendant, plus a river rock from the Sierras. These were much appreciated!

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

Watching New Cities Grow

I grew up in San Francisco and live in San Jose, California, two relatively-old cities – for the American west. SF was founded in 1776; SJ was founded in 1777. Both were incorporated in 1850. I have recently returned from an Everwise business trip to run a Mentoring Design Workshop in Brasilia (Brazil).  Brasilia was founded in 1960 and had a population of 2.8 million in 2013. A few years ago, I worked for Huawei in Shenzhen (China).  Shenzhen was founded in 1979 and had a population of 10.4 million in 2010.

Besides being new cities, Brasilia and Shenzhen have in common that their quick creation is associated with a great leader. I was last in Shenzhen in 2010, the 30th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. During that time, there was much honoring of Deng Xiaoping. Deng lead China 1978-1992. In Brasilia, we stayed at the Kubitschek Plaza hotel – whose name honors Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, Brazil’s President 1956-1961.

Both Brasilia and Shenzhen are still in a skeletal stage of civic development. That is, I saw big buildings and well-developed districts like good bones providing form and identity but also large areas of open land that were marked with actual or virtual/mental “Under Development” signs.

My son and son-in-law like to play the virtual land development game Minecraft together. Minecraft in multi-player survival mode has the concept of identification/ownership “waypoints” to mark areas someone plans to build on – even if nothing is there now. I think Brasilia and Shenzhen are full of waypoints where development is under long-term consideration. It will be fascinating to watch the flesh of mature cities grow up over the coming decades around their lovely young bones.

Images Copyright Katy Dickinson 2010-2014

InovAtiva Brasil: Core Team and Video

Ilana Robbins Gross, Colman Lydon and I from Everwise just got back to the USA from a week-long trip to Brazil. In Brasilia, Ilana and I managed an InovAtiva Brasil Design Workshop.  We were joined by Colman to discuss the new mentoring program with stakeholders and potential mentors in São Paulo. You can watch some of our discussions in the new YouTube video “Webinar – A Mentoria (reinventada) Para Empreendedores” – an hour-long discussion between me, Rafael Campos (Wenovate), and Felipe Gasko (Endeavor). Note that only the video introduction and closing are in Portuguese – the rest is in English.

Our InovAtiva Mentoring Program Core Team is remarkable and diverse.  It was an honor and pleasure to work with them during our trip:

• Secretariat for Innovation, Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade: Marcos Vinicius de Souza (Director), Igor Manhaes Nazareth, Maycon David Stahelin, Samuel Meireles Dias e Sousa
• Endeavor: Carolina Stochhe Barbosa
• Wenovate Center: Bruno Rodani, Rafael Campos, Carla Colonna
• Everwise: Ian Gover, Katy Dickinson, Jesse Soslow, Ilana Robbins Gross, Colman Lydon

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson