Women in Technology: Supporting Diversity in a Technical Workplace

How to Sponsor a “Diversity Circle”

in a Technical WorkspaceAmy Therrien, Senior Software Development Manager, AWS

Lee Kear, Solutions Architect, AWS

April 19, 2016

Diversity Circle Sponsorship

The flywheel for growth

Amazon S3—unleashing untapped potential

Growth of

Amazon S3

innovators

Career

development for

innovators from

innovators

Innovation

leaders

Role models

attract more

innovators

Amazon S3 women’s circle

Membership selection (17 members)

• Common

• All women (inherent)

• All part of the Amazon S3 organization (acquired)

• Diverse

• Diverse levels of experience (acquired)

• Diverse roles: managers, product managers, software

engineers, systems engineers (acquired)

• Diverse cultural backgrounds (inherent)

Sponsoring

• Identify

• Time/budget

• Coaching

• Facilitating

Facilitating trust

Safe environment for learning

Strong relationships keep circles

together

Make it fun!

• Blackberry picking

• Happy hour

• Lunches

Facilitating a structure

• Monthly meetings on topics covering experiences and

knowledge

• Amazon S3 topics are defined by the circle: negotiation,

leveling the playing field, communication, confidence, work-

life balance, and so on

• Establish role models

• Individual mentoring for the first role models

• Leverage existing career development techniques and

resources

• Guest speakers, published resources

• Provide feedback, encouragement

Sample meeting

Knowledge sharing

• 10 minutes: Grab lunch and

greet/mingle

• 30 minutes: Video on “Leveling

the Playing Field”

• 40 minutes: Interactive

worksheets, open discussion

• 10 minutes: Planning next

session

Experience sharing

• 10 minutes: Grab lunch and

greet/mingle

• 5 minutes: Introduction of guest

expert on “Confidence”

• 60 minutes: Pre-prepared Q&A

with guest product manager

• 10 minutes: Planning next

session

Logistics

Do’s

• Stay connected to participants’

managers

• Advocate for your circle

participants outside of the

circle

• Make time for retrospectives

Don’ts

• Get into expanding circle churn

• Feel like you need to limit this

to women

• See this as a replacement for

all other mentoring

Measuring success

Role model innovators

Growing influence

Diversity Circle:

Benefits of Participation

Personal and professional development

How we started

Networking opportunities

What do participants get out of a circle?

Experience sharing

Knowledge sharing

Two types of meetings

Leveraging resources

Career development resources

My favorite:

“Communicating

with Confidence”

www.leanin.org

A Story

Confidence

The confidence

flywheel

Practice new

behaviors

Confidence

Success

Strategies

Communication changes

have an impact on

perceptions

Remove lessing language:

- Just

- Sorry