Tag Archives: International Women’s Day

How can computing education promote an equitable digital future? Ideas from research

Post Syndicated from Katharine Childs original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/computing-education-gender-equality-equitable-digital-future-iwd-23/

This year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) focuses on innovation and technology for gender equality. This cause aligns closely with our mission as a charity: to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. An important part of our mission is to shift the gender balance in computing education.

Learners in a computing classroom.

Gender inequality in the digital and computing sector

As the UN Women’s announcement for IWD 2023 says: “Growing inequalities are becoming increasingly evident in the context of digital skills and access to technologies, with women being left behind as the result of this digital gender divide. The need for inclusive and transformative technology and digital education is therefore crucial for a sustainable future.”

A woman works at a multi-screen computer setup on a desk.

According to the UN, women currently hold only 2 in every 10 science, engineering, and information and communication technology jobs globally. Women are a minority of university-level students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, at only 35%, and in information and communication technology courses, at just 3%. This is especially concerning since the WEF predicts that by 2050, 75% of jobs will relate to STEM.

We see this situation reflected in England: computer science is the secondary school subject with the largest gender gap at A level, with girls accounting for only 15% of students. That’s why over the past three years, we have run a research programme to trial ways to encourage more young women to study Computer Science. The programme, Gender Balance in Computing, has produced useful insights for designing equitable computing education around the world.

Who belongs in computing?

The UN says that “across countries, girls are systematically steered away from science and math careers. Teachers and parents, intentionally or otherwise, perpetuate biases around areas of education and work best ‘suited’ for women and men.” There is strong evidence to suggest that the representation of women and girls in computing can be improved by introducing them to computing role models such as female computing students or women in tech careers.

A learner and educator at a desktop computer.

Presenting role models was central to the Belonging trial in our Gender Balance in Computing programme. One arm of this trial used resources developed by WISE called My Skills My Life to explore the effect of introducing role models into computing lessons for primary school learners. The trial provided opportunities for learners to speak to women who work in technology. It also offered a quiz to help learners identify their strengths and characteristics and to match them with role models who were similar to them, which research shows is more effective for increasing learners’ confidence.

A young woman codes in a computing classroom.
A woman teacher helps a young person with a coding project.
A girl does physical computing in a classroom.

Teachers who used the resources reported learners’ increased understanding of the types and range of technology jobs, and a widening of learners’ career aspirations. 

“Learning about computing makes me feel good because it helps me think more about what I want to be.” — Primary school learner in the Belonging trial

“When [the resources were] showing all of the females in the jobs, nobody went ‘Oh, I didn’t know that a female could do that’, but I think they were amazed by the role of jobs and the fact it was all females doing it.“ — Primary school teacher in the Belonging trial

Learning together to give everyone a voice

When teachers and students enter a computing classroom, they bring with them diverse social identities that affect the dynamics of the classroom. Although these dynamics are often unspoken, they can become apparent in which students answer questions or succeed visibly in activities. Without intervention, a dominant group of confident speakers can emerge, and students who are not in this dominant group may lose confidence in their abilities. When teachers set collaborative learning activities that use defined roles or structured discussions, this gives a wider range of students the opportunity to speak up and participate.

In a computing classroom, a smiling girl raises her hand.

Pair programming is one such activity that has been used in research studies to improve learner attitudes and confidence towards computing. In pair programming, one learner is the ‘driver’.  They control the keyboard and mouse to write the code. The other learner is the ‘navigator’. They read out the instructions and monitor the code for errors. Learners swap roles regularly, so that both can participate equitably. The Pair Programming trial we conducted as part of Gender Balance in Computing explored the use of this teaching approach with students aged 8 to 11. Feedback from the teachers showed that learners found working in structured pairs engaging. 

“Even those who are maybe a little bit more reluctant… those who put their hands up today and said they still prefer to work independently, they are still all engaging quite clearly in that with their pair and doing it really, really well. However much they say they prefer working independently, I think they clearly showed how much they enjoy it, engage with it. And you know they’re achieving with it — so we should be doing this.” – Primary school teacher in the Pair Programming trial

Another collaborative teaching approach is peer instruction. In lessons that use peer instruction, students work in small groups to discuss the answer to carefully constructed multiple choice questions. A whole-class discussion then follows. In the Peer Instruction trial with learners aged 12 to 13 in our Gender Balance in Computing programme, we found that this approach was welcomed by the learners, and that it changed which learners offered answers and ideas. 

“I prefer talking in a group because then you get the other side of other people’s thoughts.” – Secondary school learner (female) in the Peer Instruction trial

“[…] you can have a bit of time to think for yourself then you can bounce ideas off other people.” – Secondary school learner (male) in the Peer Instruction trial

“I was very pleased that a lot of the girls were doing a lot of the talking.” – Secondary school teacher in the Peer Instruction trial

We need to do more, and sooner

Our Gender Balance in Computing research programme showed that no single intervention we trialled significantly increased girls’ engagement in computing or their intention to study it further. Combining several of the approaches we tested may be more impactful. If you’re part of an educational setting where you’d like to adopt multiple approaches at the same time, you can freely access the materials associated with the research programme (see our blog posts about the trails for links).

In a computing classroom, a girl looks at a computer screen.

The research programme also showed that age matters: across Gender Balance in Computing, we observed a big difference in intent to study Computing between primary school and secondary school learners (data from ages 8–11 and 12–13). Fewer secondary school learners reported intent to study the subject further, and while this difference was apparent for both girls and boys, it was more marked for girls.

This finding from England is mirrored by a study the UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 refers to: “A 2020 study of Filipina girls demonstrated that loss of interest in STEM subjects started as early as age 10, when girls began perceiving STEM careers as male-dominated and believing that girls are naturally less adept in STEM subjects. The relative lack of female STEM role models reinforced such perceptions.” That’s why it’s necessary that all primary school learners — no matter what their gender is — have a successful start in the computing classroom, that they encounter role models they can relate to, and that they are supported to engage in computing and creating with technology by their parents, teachers, and communities.

An educator teaches students to create with technology.

The Foundation’s vision is that every young person develops the knowledge, skills, and confidence to use digital technologies effectively, and to be able to critically evaluate these technologies and confidently engage with technological change. While making changes inside the computing classroom will be beneficial for gender equality, this is just one aspect of building an equitable digital future. We all need to contribute to creating a world where innovation and technology support gender equity.

What do you think is needed?

In all our work, we make sure gender equity is at the forefront, whether that’s in programmes we run for young people, in resources we create for schools, or in partnerships we have, such as with Pratham Education Foundation in India or Team4Tech and Kenya Connect in Wamunyu, Kenya. Computing education is a global challenge, and we are proud to be part of a community that is committed to making it equitable.

Kenyan educators work on a physical computing project.

This IWD, we invite you to share your thoughts on what equitable computing education means to you, and what you think is needed to achieve it, whether that’s in your school or club, in your local community, or in your country. 

The post How can computing education promote an equitable digital future? Ideas from research appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Message to the next generation of women disruptors in technology

Post Syndicated from Rajeswari Malladi original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/message-to-the-next-generation-of-women-disruptors-in-technology/

“Just because something works, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved” – Princess Shuri, Black Panther (2018 film)

Princess Shuri’s character is inspirational – she is a masterful scientist, engineer, and inventor. But how many such Princess Shuris are around us today?

Women in tech today

As per the National Girls Collaborative project’s State of Girls and Women in STEM report, published on March 31, 2021, women constitute 29% of the STEM workforce. Women STEM professionals are concentrated in different fields than men. Out of that relatively small percentage of women, about 27% are in Computer and Mathematical science, and 16% are in Engineering. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects computer and information technology occupations will add about 667 K new jobs by 2030. So this is a growing field, and presents a great opportunity for women.

Why are such a small percentage of girls opting for Computer Science and Engineering? Studies have shown that gender stereotypes, male-dominated cultures, and fewer role models are some of the key factors as to why girls don’t choose technology as their primary career.

The choice to avoid tech careers seem to be made right around late middle school to early high school. In part, this is because there is not enough awareness about different career choices available in the technology sector. Young people often do not know what it means concretely to be an engineer, builder, or a technology professional. In this blog post, we share some thoughts that can help young girls or women like yourself seriously consider technology as your career.

The benefits of a career in technology and how to get started

Why choose a career in technology? Technology is integrated in many fields like healthcare, finance, the fashion industry, creative media, and others. There won’t be any field untouched by technology in the future. It offers an opportunity to work on the bleeding edge of innovation, the flexibility to work from anywhere. It gives you entrance into any field, and enables you to make a difference to millions of lives. As technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) develop, it is especially important for women to get involved to bring diverse viewpoints and help teams make better decisions.

We are calling out to all middle and high school girls to consider technology as a career choice. Join us in building an inclusive, accepting community in the technology sphere, and be at the forefront of innovation. You might be surrounded by students who may seem to know much more than you do and that can be scary sometimes. Don’t be intimidated! Don’t let it stop you from learning skills such as programming.

Treat learning how to program as another skill that you can pick up. Just as you learned to play a new instrument or a new language; with dedication, putting in the work, and sticking with it. Even if you think too much time has passed and others have passed you by, it is never too late to learn. There are many wonderful technologists who learned their first programming language in college, or later in life.

You can get started with beginner courses and tutorials available online – many are free. You already use tech with your phones, social media, and the internet – time to move from being the users of today’s technology, and become the builders of tomorrow’s technology!

Get support on your journey

It all starts with taking the first step. It can be as simple as joining a coding club like GirlsWhoCode, or using resources like Code.org. You don’t have to do it alone; encourage other girls to join. It is best that you start this in middle school and continue through high school. This will help you make steady progress and be able to network with other girls who are on the same journey as you. Find some local competitions, submit some ideas, participate as group, and have fun! Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, they are part of learning. Form a close mentor group that you can reach out to if you hit any hurdles. Master one skill before moving on the next, and think of these as discrete modules and layers. Set intermediate milestones, which will help you eventually reach the final goal.

Technology is a foundational skill just like math, reading or writing. Getting technology skills will help you in many ways, and offer you many paths to choose from. Careers in software development, user interface design and development, and program or project management are just a few. Think about how you can apply technology to the area that you are most passionate about.

Closing remarks

On this International Women’s Day, and Women’s History month, we want to give our heartfelt message to young minds that “Yes, you can”! No matter what career path you choose, you will come across technology in your respective fields. By learning the foundations, you will be able to leverage technology in your careers. Grow your network, find role models, dream big, and be fearless in achieving your dreams.

Good luck budding Princess Shuris. The tech world awaits you!

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Building your brand as a Solutions Architect

Post Syndicated from Clare Holley original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/building-your-brand-as-a-solutions-architect/

As AWS Solutions Architects, we use our business, technical, and people skills to help our customers understand, implement, and refine cloud-based solutions. We keep up-to-date with always-evolving technology trends and use our technical training to provide scalable, flexible, secure, and resilient cloud architectures that benefit our customers.

Today, each of us will examine how we’ve established our “brand” as Solutions Architects.

“Each of us has a brand, but we have to continuously cultivate and refine it to highlight what we’re passionate about to give that brand authenticity and make it work for us.” – Bhavisha Dawada, Enterprise Solutions Architect at AWS

We talk about our journeys as Solutions Architects and show you the specific skills and techniques we’ve sought out, learned, and refined to help set you on the path to success in your career as a Solutions Architect. We’ll share tips on how to establish yourself when you’re just starting out and how to move forward if you’re already a few years in.

Establishing your brand

As a Solutions Architect, there are many resources available to help you establish your brand. You can pursue specific training or attend workshops to develop your business and technical acumen. You’ll also have opportunities to attend or even speak at industry conferences about trends and innovation in the tech industry.

Learning, adapting, and constantly growing is how you’ll find your voice and establish your brand.

Bhavisha Dawada, Enterprise Solutions ArchitectBhavisha Dawada

Bhavisha helps customers solve business problems using AWS technology. She is passionate about working in the field of technology and helping customers build and scale enterprise applications.

What helped her move forward in her career? “When I joined AWS, I had limited cloud experience and was overwhelmed by the quantity of services I had to learn in order to advise my customers on scalable, flexible, secured, and resilient cloud architectures.

To tackle this challenge, I built a learning plan for areas I was interested in and I wanted to go deeper. AWS offers several resources to help you cultivate your skills, such as AWS blogs, AWS Online Tech Talks, and certifications to keep your skills updated and relevant.”

Jyoti Tyagi, Enterprise Solutions Architect Jyoti Tyagi

Jyoti is passionate about artificial intelligence and machine learning. She helps customers to architect securely with best practices of the cloud.

What helped her move forward in her career? “Working closely with mentor and specialist helped me quickly ramp up with necessary business and technical skills.

I also took part in shadow programs and speaking opportunities to further enhance my skills. My advice? Focus on your strengths, and then build a plan to work on where you’re not as strong.”

Clare Holley, Senior Solutions Architect

Clare helps customers achieve their business outcomes on their cloud journey. With more than 20 years of experience in the IT discipline, she helps customers build highly resilient and scalable architectures.Clare Holley

What helped her move forward in her career? “Coming from the database discipline, I wanted to learn more about helping customers with migrations. I took online courses and attended workshops on the various services to help our customers.

I went through a shadowing process on diving deeper on the services. Eventually, I was comfortable with the topics and even began conducting these workshops myself and providing support.

This can be a repeatable pattern. We are encouraged to experiment, learn, and iterate new ways to meet and stay ahead of our customer’s needs. Identify quarterly realistic goals. Adjust time on your calendar to learn and be curious, since self-learning is essential for success.”

Maintaining work-life balance

As a woman in tech, work-life balance is key. Despite being career driven, you also have a life beyond your job. It’s not always easy, but by maintaining a healthy boundary between work and life, you’ll likely be more productive.

Sujatha Kuppuraju, Senior Solutions ArchitectSujatha Kuppuraju

Sujatha engages with customers to create innovative and secured solutions that address customer business problems and accelerate the adoption of AWS services.

What helps her maintain a healthy work-life balance? “As a mother, a spouse, and working woman, finding the right balance between family and work is important to me.

Expectations at work and with my family fluctuate, so I have to stay flexible. To re-prioritize my schedule, I analyze the impact, reversibility, raise critical feedback before jumping into a task. This allows me to control where I spend my time.

In this growing technology industry, we have innovative and improved ways to solve problems. I invest time to empower customers and team members to execute changes by themselves. This not only reduces the dependencies on me, it also helps to scale changes and get quick returns on benefits.”

Reach out and connect to others

To continue to succeed as a Solutions Architect, in addition to technical and business knowledge, it is important to discuss ideas and learn from like-minded peers.

Clare highlights the importance of growing your network. “When I joined AWS, I looked into joining several affinity groups. These groups allow people who identify with a cause the opportunity to collaborate. They provide an opportunity for networking, speaking engagements, leadership and career growth opportunities, as well as mentorship. In these affinity groups, I met so many awesome women who inspired me to be authentic, honest, and push beyond my comfort zone.”

Women in tech have unfortunately experienced lack of representation. Bhavisha says having connections in the field helped her feel less alone in the field. “When I was interviewing for AWS, I networked with other women to know more about the company’s culture and learn about their journey at AWS. Learning about this experience helped me feel confident in my career choice.”

Continue your journey

Take the AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate certification to build your technical skills. This course validates your ability to design and deploy well-architected solutions on AWS that meet customer requirements.

We also encourage you to attend our virtual coffee events, which provide a unique opportunity to engage with AWS leaders, career opportunities, and insight into our approach to serving customers.

Ready to get started?

Interested in applying for a Solutions Architecture role?

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Women write blogs: a selection of posts from AWS Solutions Architects

Post Syndicated from Bonnie McClure original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/women-write-blogs/

This International Women’s Day, we’re featuring more than a week’s worth of posts that highlight female builders and leaders. We’re showcasing women in the industry who are building, creating, and, above all, inspiring, empowering, and encouraging everyone—especially women and girls—in tech.

A blog can be a great starting point for you in finding and implementing a particular solution; learning about new features, services, and products; keeping up with the latest trends and ideas; or even understanding and resolving a tricky problem. Today, as part of our International Women’s Day celebration, we’re showcasing blogs written by women that do just that and more.

We’ve included all kinds of posts for you to peruse:

  • Architecture overview posts
  • Best practices posts
  • Customer/partner (co-written/sponsored/partnered) posts that highlight architectural solutions built with AWS services
  • How-to tutorials that explain the steps the reader needs to take to complete a task

Architecture overviews

How a Grocer Can Deliver Personalized Experiences with Recipes

by Chara Gravani and Stefano Vozza

Chara and Stefano bring us a way to differentiate and reinvent the customer journey for a grocery retailer. Their solution uses Amazon Personalize to deliver personalized recipe recommendations to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and in turn, increase revenue. They consider a customer who is shopping for groceries online. As they place products in their basket, they are presented with a list of recipes that contain the same ingredients as those products added to the basket. The suggested recipes are then personalized based on the customer’s profile and historical product preferences.

Best practices posts

Best practices for migrating self-hosted Prometheus on Amazon EKS to Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus

by Elamaran Shanmugam, Deval Parikh, and Ramesh Kumar Venkatraman

With a focus on the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, Elamaran, Deval, and Ramesh examine some of the best practices to follow if you’re moving a self-managed Prometheus workload on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus.

Optimizing your AWS Infrastructure for Sustainability Series

by Katja Philipp, Aleena Yunus, Otis Antoniou, and Ceren Tahtasiz

As organizations align their business with sustainable practices, it is important to review every functional area. If you’re building, deploying, and maintaining an IT stack, improving its environmental impact requires informed decision making. In this three-part blog series, Katja, Aleena, Otis, and Cern provide strategies to optimize your AWS architecture within compute, storage, and networking.

Customer/partner posts

Scaling DLT to 1M TPS on AWS: Optimizing a Regulated Liabilities Network

by Erica Salinas and Jack Iu

Erica and Jack discuss how they partnered with SETL to jointly stand up a basic Regulated Liabilities Network (RLN) and refine the scalability of the environment to at least 1 million transactions per second. They show you how scaling characteristics were achieved while maintaining the business requirements of atomicity and finality and discuss how each RLN component was optimized for high performance.

How-to tutorials

Monitor and visualise building occupancy with AWS IoT Core, Amazon QuickSight and Raspberry Pi

by Jamila Jamilova

Occupancy monitoring in buildings is a valuable tool across different industries. For example, museums can analyze occupancy data in near real-time to understand the popularity and number of visitors to decide where a particular gallery should be located. To help with cases like this, Jamila brings you a solution that monitors how building space is being utilized. It shows how busy each area of a building gets during different times of the day based on a motion sensor’s location. This device, a Raspberry Pi with a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, senses motion in direct proximity (in other words, if a human has moved in or out of the sensor’s range) and will generate data that is stored, analyzed, and visualized to help you understand how best to use your space.

Create an iOS tracker application with Amazon Location Service and AWS Amplify

by Panna Shetty and Fernando Rocha

Emergency management teams venture into dangerous situations to rescue those in need, potentially risking their own lives. To keep themselves safe during an event where they cannot easily track each other by line of sight, a muster point is established as a designated safety zone, or a geofence. This geofence may change in response to evolving conditions. One way to improve this process is automating member tracking and response activity, so that emergency managers can quickly account for all members and ensure they are safe. Panna and Fernando bring you a solution to apply to this situation and others like it. It uses Amazon Location Service to create a serverless architecture that is capable of tracking the user’s current location and identify if they are in a safe area or not.

Optimize workforce in your store using Amazon Rekognition

by Laura Reith and Kayla Jing

Retailers often need to make decisions to improve the in-store customer experience through personnel management. Having too few or too many employees working can be detrimental to the business. When store traffic outpaces staffing, it can result in long checkout lines and limited customer interface, creating a poor customer experience. The opposite can be true as well by having too many employees during periods of low traffic, which generates wasted operating costs. In this post, Laura and Kayla show you how to use Amazon Rekognition and AWS DeepLens to detect and analyze occupancy in a retail business to optimize workforce utilization.

Adding Build MLOps workflows with Amazon SageMaker projects, GitLab, and GitLab pipelines

by Lauren Mullennex, Indrajit Ghosalkar, and Kirit Thadaka

In this post, Lauren, Indrajit, and Kirit walk you through using a custom Amazon SageMaker machine learning operations project template to automatically build and configure a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. This pipeline incorporates your existing CI/CD tooling with SageMaker features for data preparation, model training, model evaluation, and model deployment. In their use case, they focus on using GitLab and GitLab pipelines with SageMaker projects and pipelines.

Deploying Sample UI Forms using React, Formik, and AWS CDK

by Kevin Rivera, Mark Carlson, Shruti Arora, and Britney Tong

Many companies use UI forms to collect customer data for account registrations, online shopping, and surveys. These forms can be difficult to write, maintain, and test. To help with this, Kevin, Mark, Shruti, and Britney show you how to use the JavaScript libraries React and Formik. These third-party libraries provide front-end developers with tools to implement simple forms for a user interface.

Multi-Region Migration using AWS Application Migration Service

by Shreya Pathak and Medha Shree

Shreya and Medha demonstrate how AWS Application Migration Service simplifies, expedites, and reduces the cost of migrating Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)-hosted workloads from one AWS Region to another. It integrates with AWS Migration Hub, which allows you to organize your servers into applications. With the migration services they discuss, you can track the progress of your migration at the server and application level, even as you move servers into multiple Regions.

Tracking Overall Equipment Effectiveness with AWS IoT Analytics and Amazon QuickSight

by Shailaja Suresh and Michael Brown

To drive process efficiencies and optimize costs, manufacturing organizations need a scalable approach to access data across disparate silos across their organization. In this post, Shailaja and Michael demonstrate how overall equipment effectiveness can be calculated, monitored, and scaled out using two key services: AWS IoT Analytics and Amazon QuickSight.

Use AnalyticsIQ with Amazon QuickSight to gain insights for your business

by Sumitha AP

Sumitha shows you how to use the AnalyticsIQ Social Determinants of Health Sample Data dataset to gain insights into society’s health and wellness and how to generate easy-to-understand visualizations using QuickSight that could improve healthcare professionals’ decision making.

We’ve got more content for International Women’s Day!

For more than a week we’re sharing content created by women. Check it out!

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Celebrate International Women’s Day all week with the Architecture Blog

Post Syndicated from Bonnie McClure original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/celebrate-international-womens-day-with-us-on-the-architecture-blog/

Companies committed to diversity (gender or otherwise) tend to be more creative and innovative and have higher retention and engagement rates. Diverse leadership can provide excellent role models for younger people looking for a career in STEM, those who are transitioning into the industry from an “unconventional” career path, or those who are returning to work.

This International Women’s Day, we’re featuring more than a week’s worth of posts that highlight female builders and leaders. We’re showcasing women in the industry who are building, creating, and, above all, inspiring, empowering, and encouraging everyone—especially women and girls—in tech.

Though the number of women in tech roles is slowly increasing, they are still underrepresented. As shown in the graph that follows, women worldwide hold, on average, 21% of IT and technical roles.

Female representation in technology organizations in 2021, selected countries

Female representation in technology organizations in 2021, selected countries

This number drops to 12% when you look at cloud computing roles like Developers/Engineers, Data Engineers, System Administrators, DevOps Engineers, and Architects.

Share of male and female workers across professional clusters

Share of male and female workers across professional clusters

The technology industry has a challenge—but also an opportunity—when it comes to equal gender representation. By highlighting the work that women are doing right now to slowly but steadily change what it looks like (literally and figuratively) to work in tech and with continued commitment and effort, we can create a path to success for everyone.

She Builds Tech Skills re:Invent Roundup

AWS She Builds Tech Skills is a skill development program aimed for builders and cloud enthusiasts to create an inclusive environment to learn and develop cloud skills. Their mission is to build a community with world class leaders and influence diversity representation amongst technical roles in technology.

To kick off this week, we’re featuring a video from She Builds Tech Skills, hosted by Mai Nishitani and May Kyaw, Solutions Architects at AWS. In the video, they chat with six female Solutions Architects from around the world about their favorite services and features from re:Invent 2021, and they give advice on how to get started using these services in your architectures.

As a bonus, Mai and May followed up with these women to chat about how they’re celebrating International Women’s Day this week and every week.

Poornima Chand, Senior Solutions ArchitectPoornima Chand

Poornima Chand is a Senior Solutions Architect in the Strategic Accounts Solutions team at AWS. She works with customers to help solve their unique challenges using AWS technology solutions. She enjoys architecting and building scalable solutions. Her focus areas include Serverless, High Performance Computing and Machine Learning.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Poornima is an active mentor in the AWS She Builds CloudUp program. She loves to celebrate women’s achievements and plans to spend International Women’s Day interacting with and learning from Women@Amazon and women from customer teams.

Ai-Linh Le, Solutions ArchitectAi-Linh Li

Ai-Linh Le is a Solutions Architect based in Sydney, Australia. She started her career as a software engineer and still likes to be hands-on in developing and building solutions and demos. She enjoys working with customers and helping them to build solutions and solve challenges. Her areas of focus include data analytics, machine learning, and DevOps.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Ai-Linh is passionate about continuous learning and exploring new technologies, and is a mentor in the AWS She Builds CloudUp program.

Nelli Lovchikova, Enterprise Solutions ArchitectNelli Lovchikova

Nelli has nearly twenty years of experience helping companies build amazing things as a software engineer and architect. She strongly believes in engineering excellence and continuous learning and improvement.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Nelli constantly researches and experiments with bleeding-edge technologies and ideas and is always happy to take other people on that journey with me, share my findings, and inspiration.

Natalie White, Enterprise Solutions ArchitectNatalie White

Natalie White is an Enterprise Solutions Architect in southern California. Her 15-year software development career across four industry verticals prior to joining AWS and her advocacy for AWS Developer Tools and Infrastructure as Code services help her earn trust with her customers’ builders and executive stakeholders and accelerate their time to done.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Natalie is an active member in the Society of Women Engineers and a leader of her daughter’s Girl Scout troop, so she will celebrate International Women’s Day with Women@Amazon and across engineering domains, industry verticals, and age groups.

Deval Parikh. Senior Enterprise Solutions ArchitectDeval S Parikh

Deval Parikh is a Sr Enterprise Solutions Architect at AWS based out of Los Angeles. She is passionate about helping enterprises re-imagine their businesses in the cloud by leading them with strategic architectural guidance and building prototypes as an AWS expert.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Deval is passionate about helping women STEM roles. She leads various affinity groups in AWS North America, including Women At Solutions Architecture and YouthTech. On weekends, she teaches high school and middle school students programming in Python and Spark. Outside of work, she loves to paint with oil on canvas and hiking with her friends. You can view some of her artwork at www.devalparikh.com.

Viktoria Semaan, Senior Partner Solutions ArchitectSemaan

As a Senior Partner Solutions Architect, Viktoria is helping AWS Strategic ISV Partners to build joint innovative solutions on AWS. She has 13+ years of experience in solutions architecture, leading multi-site automation and transformation projects. She is a public speaker and content creator and often shares learning opportunities on social media.

How does she encourage and mentor women in tech and beyond? Viktoria is passionate about coaching, talent development, and mentoring others. She is a mentor at the AWS She Builds CloudUp program, which focuses on empowering women and helps them to learn AWS services and products and become AWS Certified.

Would you like to know more?

If you want to hear more about AWS She Builds Tech Skills, please reach out to May or Mai on LinkedIn for more information, subscribe to their YouTube channel for the latest videos.

We’ve got more content for International Women’s Day!

Tomorrow we have a technical post, Deploying service-mesh-based architectures using AWS App Mesh and Amazon ECS from Kesha Williams, an AWS Hero and award-winning software engineer.

Later this week, we’ll share:

  • A collection of several blog posts written and co-authored by women
  • Curated content from the Let’s Architect! team and a live Twitter chat
  • A post on Women at AWS – Diverse Backgrounds, Common Goal of Becoming Solutions Architects
  • Another post on Building your brand as a SA

Enjoy!

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