Impacting Our Community Doesn’t Stop At The Office

This article was originally published at diamondandbranch.com

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Whenever I’m asked to give a short bio about myself, the last line always reads: “She is passionate about creating opportunities for women to join the tech industry and stay there!”

‍It’s not hard to see why I was drawn to Diamond + Branch’s mission to “work with women-owned businesses and purpose-driven organizations to increase their positive impact on our community.” But, creating that ‘impact on our community’ doesn’t stop at the office.

‍For me, that means spending my ‘spare time’ creating tech events and opportunities in San Diego where EVERYONE feels welcomed, well-represented, included, and comfortable, regardless of gender OR color, ability, identity, or any other factor.

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Over the months, I’ll tell you about ALL of the ways I’m helping to create this more inclusive tech industry in San Diego (#humblebrag).

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Let’s start with my position as Managing Director for the San Diego chapter of Girls in Tech (GIT SD), a non-profit dedicated to support and accelerate the growth of women in the tech and entrepreneur industries by creating and sharing opportunities to engage, support, promote, educate and accelerate women throughout their professional journeys.

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In the past months, GIT SD has put on monthly networking events, where women can meet like-minded women in the industry and build connections to mentors or even potential employees/employers in their field. For women looking to level up in their careers, we have partnered with organizations to create resume and interview workshops as well as fireside chats and panels focused on career advancement advice. We’ve even hosted job opportunity events with local tech giants, like the NBC station, Intuit, and others.

The most fun and community integration have come from our Hackathons! In the fall, we hosted our very first Hacking for Humanity, where people from every sector of the tech industry (developers, designers, project managers, marketers, etc) came together to build tech that would help in the fight against hate crimes. It was a weekend of hacking, networking, and learning — all for such an important social cause.

Diamond + Branch doesn’t just tolerate the time and energy that goes into this community involvement, it embraces it! For every panel or mentor hours I plan, Lindsay is right there volunteering her time! Of course she is, because for Diamond + Branch ‘being a positive impact on our community’ is part of who we are.