AdRoll Group Loves the Grace Hopper Conference
Written by , February 14, 2019 Grace Hopper is happening on October 2-4 2019 and the Call for Participation, Abi Award nominations, and Scolarship applications are now open! Here is why we love Grace Hopper.
10-15 minute read
In September 2018, sixteen Rollers joined around 20,000 attendees from all over the world for Grace Hopper, the largest gathering of women in computing. Although women make up more than half of the U.S. workforce, we make up less than 20 percent of the tech jobs, which makes this conference extra magical to the women in attendance.
As Julie Zhou, our Director of Product Management described it, “I found it inspiring to be amongst so many ambitious and talented women in one place…many people have a picture in their mind of what a tech conference looks like and that picture tends to have lots of young, white men there.”
Although there are plenty of opportunities to network, Grace Hopper is also an opportunity to learn. There were ten technical tracks that covered topics all the way from product to Computer Systems Engineering and Computer Science. Jessica Grist, Sr. Software Engineer at AdRoll Group, said she “really liked that there was the option of a 20-minute quick introduction to a specific topic or a longer 1-hour deep dive and that an in-depth technical talk could coexist with work-life balance talks. More than anything, she loved the recruiting and interviewing efforts, focused on attracting and networking with women in technology.”
In the conference’s spirit to get and keep women in the computing workforce, we all happily spent countless hours chatting with hundreds of women interested in careers across data science, engineering, and product. “It was inspiring to see so much female talent in one place… Also special for me was that my mom was there as an engineering lead at her company (UBS Financial Services)… Her presence gave me a better appreciation for the women from the previous generation,” said Kelly Eng, Sr. Product Manager at AdRoll Group.
We also appreciated the men that came to represent AdRoll with us! Patrick, our SVP of Engineering, “was excited by all their enthusiasm and hoped he could make this a more welcoming industry.” Attending a conference where men were the stark minority resulted in many of them empathizing with our experience as women in most technology conferences.
Overall, the enthusiasm during our recruiting efforts by our entire team throughout the conference was a sincere reflection of the commitment to diversity and inclusion that I have happily seen continuously nurtured throughout my year here at AdRoll Group.
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, we successfully hired Kruti Chauhan, who shared, “meeting with the Adroll Group Team, I learned about their support for women in their engineering teams… it was indeed a celebration to bag an offer from AdRoll.”
I can’t wait to continue to see the fruition of our investment in diversity come thrive this year!
Do you enjoy working on a company that cares about a diverse and inclusive world? Roll with Us!