Outreach/
Diversity
As the only female to graduate with a computer science degree within four years of my undergraduate alma mater I understand what it is like to be in the minority. I believe that diverse ideas inspire ingenuity. It is impossible for one person to know everything, just as it is impossible for one group of people to understand the viewpoint of all people. Thus diversity is essential to ensuring fostering the most productive community.
In 2015 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln I helped found our ACM-W (The Association for Computing Machinery's Council on Women) chapter and served as the first President. We called our chapter "Computing for All" because we didn't want to be exclusive to women, we wanted anyone who desired an extra support system to feel welcome. The first thing our chapter did was develop a Code of Conduct I share below. Please feel free to use ideas from it to develop your own code of conduct for your workspace, or even just as a reminder to yourself.
Sit With Me
In my time with Computing For All - an ACM-W chapter - at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln we held a Sit With Me campaign in front of the Union inviting people to sit on the red chair and tell them what diversity means to them to bring attention to the issue of diversity in tech.
The Sit With Me campaign was created by members of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, a non-profit coalition that works to increase the meaningful participation of girls and women in computing fields and careers.
See photos from the event here!
In 2015 I was selected for the BRAID initiative which stands for Building, Recruiting, And Inclusion for Diversity. The BRAID program is co-led by AnitaB.org and Harvey Mudd College. BRAID departments have "committed to implementing a combination of four commitments in efforts to increase the participation of students from underrepresented groups — racial/ethnic minorities and women — in their undergraduate CS programs". Below is a photo of the first BRAID cohort attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Harvey Mudd President Dr. Maria Klawe.
