- November 4, 2018
- Posted by: Team SAi
- Categories:
By Prasha Sarwate, Project Founder & Manager of the HerSTEMStory Podcast
How many times have you felt real FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) when other people attend conferences? I personally felt left out as I couldn’t attend any of these fancy conferences. I didn’t have a sponsor, any extra cash, or vacation days to participate in some of these huge networking events. So, me and some of my podcast guests decided to host our very own virtual conference. An online conference that’ll be available for free to anyone in the world. We decided to host it for free as we wanted it to be accessible.
Wonder Women in STEM Virtual Summit 2018 was organized in collaboration with the founders of Women of Color in STEAMM, and Lotus STEMM, 2 Canadian organizations working on closing the gender gap.
On Oct 20th we hosted this event with 10 speakers that included 3 keynotes as well. In total, there were 7 hours of action packed STEM support content that women could use to help them progress in their STEM careers. The topics covered STEM career tips, mental health, STEM entrepreneurship, and 2 panel discussions. It was a very engaging day and people from around the world joined us. With over 75 sign ups we were very thrilled by the response.
One of our attendees was at a wedding with her 2 yr old son and she was able to call in and attend the entire conference, which made it all worth it!
Our keynote speaker Christine Lui, the founder of Two Photon Art, spoke in depth about how one can be an entrepreneur while being in school and how asking for equal pay is extremely important. Melissa Marquez shed light on what she learned from Sharks about entrepreneurship and diversity. Finally, Susanna Harris, the founder of The PhDepression LLC spoke about the taboo behind mental health in academia and how to tackle it.
Panel discussions were open and honest and ranged from resume writing to mentorship and imposter syndrome. It’s safe to say that the conference was a success and we have plenty of requests to do more of these. We are currently planning it for next year.
Due to time and availability limitations some people couldn’t attend and so we decided to post the entire UNCUT video online. You can watch the 7hrs of great talks here: https://youtu.be/SrIMfnf_r2o. You can also find the full agenda in the YouTube description of the video.
If you’d like to know more about the conference, our speakers or us please write to us at herstemstory@gmail.com.
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