Thursday, October 09, 2014

Facebook, Box and Pinterest want to mentor young women in tech


You won't see as many women as there are men when you walk down the halls of tech company HQs -- not even eBay's, which has one of the most diverse workplaces in the industry. In an effort to change that and promote gender diversity, Facebook, Box and Pinterest have launched a mentorship program called Women Entering and Staying in Tech or WEST, for short.

It puts interns and up-and-coming professionals in several one-on-one and group meetings with women holding technical roles in the three companies over the course of a year. These meet-ups will happen both in person and online, but for now, the program will focus on engineering, operations, product, design and web development roles, in particular.

Sadly, though, the pilot run slated to begin in early 2015 will only be available to folks in the Bay Area, so everyone else will just have to cross their fingers and hope WEST opens its doors to the rest of the country in the future. If you do know Bay Area women just starting out or are making their way up in tech, send them over to WEST's website where they can sign up to be notified when applications begin.

Share

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites