Pass It On Award Winners

Faiza Yousuf is a software engineer with over 12 years of experience in Product Development and has been a serial founder focusing on initiatives related to gender inclusion and access to tech education.

She is currently leading the Product Development wing at Genetech Solutions. Faiza is a multi-award-winning community leader. She founded WomenInTechPK, cofounded CodeGirls, is a country ambassador for CyrptoChicks, and serves as a director at CaterpillHERs.

Faiza is a TOP-RATED-PLUS freelancer on Upwork and was featured in many of their campaigns. She also worked with P@SHA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee to improve gender parity in Pakistan’s tech ecosystem. She is a well-known international speaker, loves to read, and enjoys writing about tools and practices.

Our Project

WomenInTechPK was founded in September 2016 to connect local women technologists, to extend support, amplify their voices, and give them access to opportunities, including, capacity building, employment, and mentorship.

We run various programs and campaigns, organize conferences, workshops, and meetups and collaborate with a wide range of local and international organizations and initiatives to work for inclusion in tech.

Our goal is to give better access to opportunities to women and help local and international organizations (both public and private sectors) in creating women-friendly work policies.

Grace is a 3rd year computer science and business student at western university. She is the founder of the Women in Computer Science Committee at her university, which is starting this year. She aims to ensure that all women at her university feel heard and have a safe space where they can also have access to resources and opportunities.

She has participated in over 16 hackathons, placing in 9. She likes to design, do front end development, and case competitions. She was also a recipient of the Major League Hacking (MLH) Top 50 award for her involvement in hackathons, as well as community organizing. She is an organizer for eHacks, an international hackathon with a pitch component that focuses on making technology and computer science more inclusive to all.

I am starting a Women in Computer Science committee at my university, and I intend to reach at least 50-100 women including at Western and across various universities. (Events may be open to all women to keep things as inclusive as possible, and depending on if they are in person/virtual, and if there is any confidentiality etc. )

In order to do this, we would need to fund the cost of educational software subscriptions for programming learning resources, and a memory card with ample space to support the marketing, promotion, and recording/streaming (when applicable) of events, workshops / tutorials. (Large storage capacity will be most needed for hackathon / competition if done in person as virtual participants may still want to participate in workshops / listen in, and current situation with COVID still makes future of events uncertain)

At Present: Working as a Socialist namely Campaign Mobilizer for Women and Children at Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India.

The quarry workers are the workers who mainly work in the hazardous work space inside the quarries with no academics and majorly work with the bonded labour systems in Dinidigul District in Tamilnadu, India. They live with the families inside the quarry sites. The children of the quarry workers are having no/limited facilities to have educational opportunities. They get education mostly in the nearby primary schools. Having after their primary education, to pursue their higher education they need to travel a lot. As their living areas are quite far away and in remote, they suffered a lot to get the education and most of the children are dropping out and they work in the quarry sites along with their parents. They also face various exploitation and abuse issues at workplaces. The outbreak and the lock down of Covid 19 worsened their situation too.

Quarry Workers Development Society (QWDS), the registered organization who works for the welfare of the Quarry workers since 1989, have identified more than 300 such school dropout children and taking various steps to mainstream them with various academic initiatives. Part of the students also need to have a market linked computer courses in the areas of designing need to be taught and to be linked with the potential agencies and to help to transform them as skilled workers. This would help them to improve the quality of lives and to earn substantial income for them. This would not only help them to make the self confidence but to move away from the present bonded labour systems as well.

We have proposed to give 100 such girls in two trades of computers such as Basic Computer Applications along with Certificate course in Tally (Accounting Software) and Certificate Course in Desk Top Publishing. For each trade 30 girls will be trained by the trainer Cecilin Sudha, an expert."

Nadia is working as a the head of computer system department at the Southern Technical University in Iraq. She finished her PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Brunel University London, while studying in the UK she was volunteering with Code Club.

Code Club is a free cost programming club for young children, when returned to Iraq she decided to establish clubs in her community. She started the first club in 2018 to support young females learn coding, she started by training female trainers and continued with supporting the community with her team during the COVID pandemic by offering online training. In 2022, she is the national partner with the Raspberry Pi Foundation for Code Club and CoderDojo in Iraq, and supporting 12 clubs in different areas in Iraq. She is working with her team to offer glob

Ashima is the founder and CEO of Dreami, a mentorship platform dedicated to making mentorship and sponsorship scalable and accessible. Ashima started her career in chemical engineering where she experienced a lack of career support in a male dominated industry.

After pivoting her career to the Tech industry, Ashima managed corporate strategy at Cisco and led product strategy at Zendesk. Dreami has been supported and recognized by Techstars, Nasdaq Milestone Makers, Microsoft's M12 SaaS launch lab, Antler VC and Girls in Tech for her work with Dreami. In her free time, Ashima can be found deep in the Sierra Nevada hiking or backpacking.

Dreami is on a mission to break down the social barriers to accessing career support at the right time. Dreami is a beautiful and simple software platform that streamlines training, matching, scheduling and tracking to create tailored and high impact mentorship and sponsorship programs. Dreami is geared towards making mentorship for under-represented individuals more accessible including women, BIPOC individuals, veterans and individuals with disabilities. Dreami was created to implement long-lasting change: mentorship typically requires social capital, which is not equitable. With Dreami, our vision is to break down that status quo and open up a critical resource to all individuals, no matter their pedigree or social capital. Through Dreami, we have made mentorship accessible at: Techbridge Girls, Women in Product, Latinas in Tech, Baddies in Tech, SheSecures (Women in Cybersecurity), Operation Code, Code your Future and many more organizations dedicated to making the technical career path a viable one through support.

Ila Adhikari is an Engineer, Writer, and Educator. She is also the Manager at Nepali Women in Computing (NWiC) - CELEBRATE. She has worked as a Software Developer and is interested in Human-Computer Interaction, Behavioral Technology, and Data Visualization.

Storytelling has always been Ila’s priority in writing, teaching, or data. And she delves into topics that interest her by exploring and developing new projects. She feels fortunate enough to have been part of fantastic tech communities that have helped her grow.

An advocate of diversity and inclusiveness in tech, she loves to share inspiring stories about women in tech through NWiC.

The project, NWiC CELEBRATE, is an initiative by Nepali Women in Computing (NWiC), an Anitab.org Systers Affinity Group. We cover powerful narratives of Nepali women in technology and their journey of hard work, perseverance, and achievements.

About 52% of Nepal's population is women, while only 26.17% and 19% of Science and Engineering students are women. Even worse, only 7.8% of people in research positions are women. We at NWiC strongly believe that these numbers need to change. So, we have been working to establish NWiC as a global resource that Nepali women can use to advance in their careers in tech.

At NWiC, we believe in the power of stories. Inspired by Wogrammer, Nepali Women in Computing - CELEBRATE was started in November 2019 to share and celebrate the success and accomplishments of Nepali women technologists around the globe. In Nepal, women are brought up with narratives that showcase women to be homemakers and caretakers. NWiC calls these narratives an ""Invisible Manual"". We have an age to get married and have children. We can only do certain things in specific ways. Our social norms are designed in ways that stop women from dreaming big. ""Tech is not for women"" is an existing norm in our country. We believe it is time to break this, and there is no better way to start it than by inspiring more girls to consider a tech career.

From Ila

One of our dreams is to disseminate our stories to a larger audience. As a part of that dream, we plan on publishing a physical copy of a compilation of our published stories in the form of a book. We have planned on creating the first special edition of the compilation as an eBook where we will handpick the ten most impactful stories as voted by the members. This eBook will be used for kickstarter campaigns, presentation at GHC, and to aid the collection of funds for the actual publication. Finally, the physical copied of these books will go to the libraries of schools all around Nepal.

Patricia Letaru is the founder of ""Let the girls shine in STEM"" program, which she started after receiving GHC18 students scholarship. She is a full stack software Engineer providing a solid understanding of Object oriented programming, Solid web and mobile systems development, .NET and SQL for Database management.

Ms. Patricia has devoted all her energy to increase the number and quality of Tech users in Uganda through this program. In a period of 24 months, over 200 girls have benefited from the Four (4) cohorts conducted with 80% of the beneficiaries joining the Tech field. This is yet another opportunity to conduct the 5th Cohort with the help of this funding.

“Let the Girls shine STEM” empowers girls and women to excel in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) from the classroom to the boardroom. This is done by providing female students in primary school, secondary school, college, and the general public with mentor-ship, exposure, and experience.

At the end of the first Cohort, It was discovered that knowing the fundamentals in computing greatly affects the mindset of the girls. The girls realize that every small step counts in the Tech journey.

Ana Veroneze Solórzano is a Brazilian Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University, in Boston, USA. Ana received her MS and BS in Computer Science (UFRGS and UFSM) in Brazil. She has been researching in the field of High-Performance Computing for five years.

During her undergraduate program, Ana was a research intern for the National Institute for Space Research – her internship research was adjudged as the first place winner in the ACM SRC at Grace Hopper Celebration 2019, when she attended as a GHC Scholar. Besides research, Ana is deeply engaged and committed to improving the diversity in computing. She co-founded Brazilians in Tech, an NGO to support and empower Brazilian women in STEM careers through its platform (http://braziliansintech.com), events, communication channels, and opportunities.

Beatriz currently works as an IT Infrastructure Consultant focused on Cloud at Telefonica Brasil, where she is also leader of the diversity subcommittee focusing on the equity and gender inclusion pillar.

She believes that through technology, it is possible to positively transform the world, so she dedicates much of her time to causes that have the goal of democratizing access to education and supporting diversity in this field. For three years, Beatriz has been working voluntarily as a Community Manager at SysAdminas, which is an organization focused on boosting women in the IT Infrastructure sector in Brazil.

Beatriz has been recognized in programs and awards from several technology organizations, including Microsoft MVP, Google's Women TechMakers Ambassador, Elastic Contributor, VMware vExpert and IT blog Awards by Cisco.

The SysAdminas Community is an inclusive, non-profit group that provides a support network for women who want to learn content related to IT Infrastructure in a safe and welcoming environment since 2018. Our goal with this initiative is to encourage them to participate in the technology area in Brazil.

She is now a student at An Giang University. She used to study at Ho Chi Minh University of Technology. During her time at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, she was involved in the science project of first aid medical products synthesized from biological components.

Biomedical Engineering Summer School Wilhelmshaven 2022 is a Jane university summer course related to Biomedical Engineering and is 3 weeks long. This course focuses on ”Applied Artificial Intelligence”, “Basics of Biomedical Engineering” and ”Biomedical Signal and Image Acquisition, Processing and Analysis”. These are all new and necessary knowledge for students of An Giang University.

This cooperation project of Jade University and An Giang University aims to a better future for human health and to apply advanced modern technologies such as computers, smart materials, simulation software and more. Developing biological products for human health is about helping to improve the lives of women, children, the elderly and men. This is a positive and legitimate purpose for today's youth, who are students of the two schools, to learn from each other.

Brown Ofonime is a STEM Educator who creates a STEM curriculum to advance STEM subjects for upper grade students at public School. Ofonime believes that analytical skills are not only a fundamental part of academic excellence, but are also the building blocks of critical thinking in high school and beyond.

In addition to voluntarily creating, updating and managing the STEM curriculum for the school, she runs an after school coding program where she works one-on-one with students voluntarily. She was also nominated as a Global Ambassador in the year 2020 by the Womentech Network. Ofonime holds a Master’s Degree in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool.

STEM A GIRL IN PUBLIC SCHOOL PROJECT is an initiative for public schools, specifically targeted at empowering young girls in public schools across Africa, with the basic STEM education. Most of these girls' dream of getting a STEM education is blurry with the kind of system in public schools as compared to private schools. Therefore, if the award is given to me to push forward the impact of STEM, I will be putting smiles on the girls out there. Most of these girls are underrepresented and don't understand STEM education but after going to schools with STEM kits to push the STEM education as part of giving back to my community, I have seen girls from this community hug me tight and eager to share their mathematics scores with me just to show they are getting the message of STEM. I have seen girls ask me when next i will be coming to their school for the STEM activity and some of these girls have ask me to talk to their parents about STEM education so that they will be free to follow their dreams and about 80% of these girls are girls displaced from their homes due to BOKO HARAM bombing where they were forced to flee from their homes.

Dana Škorvánková is currently a PhD student in the field of Computer Vision and Artificial intelligence at the Comenius University in Bratislava where she obtained her bachelor and master degree. Her research is focused on the human body, movement analysis, and related tasks. In the past, her theses have been awarded by both the head of the department and the head of the University.

The funding will be used to cover the expenses connected to participation at the international scientific conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Since my research paper has been accepted to the conference, I will present my work there to other researchers and community, and thus gain more visibility and attention for the research. The paper will be also included in the proceedings of the conference, published and indexed in multiple online databases.

Aachal Thapa is a Software Engineer. She earned a master’s degree in Software Engineering from George Mason University and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from St.Xavier’s College, Kathmandu, Nepal. She is currently working as an Application Engineer at GSTV, Michigan, USA. Aachal is the Vice President of NWiC and thoroughly enjoys leading NWiC Educate sessions every month as well as designing contents for social media. Aachal was a part of Girls in Technology when she was back in Nepal.

Nepali women in Computing started a virtual monthly series called NWiC Educate in December 2020. It is a space to discuss and debate social issues which are misunderstood, misinterpreted and under represented; topics like Diversity and Inclusion, Gender Equality, Nepali women are unequal by Law, Imposter Syndrome in the workplace, Disability inclusive development and sexuality, Mental Health, Diversity in Tech, etc.

Even though we are a tech community, there are a lot of these hidden social cues that one has to learn and unlearn every day in modern workplace settings. Sometimes, they are part of a much bigger problem. Whereas other times, there are things that need to be talked about - things that might not concern us directly in the regular scheme of things, but are equally important, and impact in intangible ways.

We firmly believe that discussing social issues in everyday life helps create awareness, and better understanding of problems regarding their exact nature and causes. By reaching young people who are going to be navigating these ingrained work as well as social situations that have internalized a lot of biases and to put bluntly, unpleasant conditions for minorities to thrive in, we want to educate them enough to unlearn those biases they’ve grown up with, and be able to reject them when they come across one.

NDEMANOU is a founder of NKWANGTECH, computer sciences teacher and also Teacher assistant. Besides managing her classes, she also coordinates computer sciences activities, manages her NGO and design empowering and Professional orientation sessions for students.

Since 2014 she has been involved in many community initiatives addressing women and youth issues in STEM. She focuses on women and the empowerment of young girls and mothers. She motivates them to pursue careers in the STEM fields and creatively think on the many ways STEM tools can enhance their entrepreneurial skills and create opportunities. Pamela is committed to reducing the unemployment rate in the west region and in her country. Pamela holds a Master Degree in software engineering and wants to become a DeVops Specialist.

From Pamela

The ""Women Up"" project is a nkwangtech foundation initiative which aims to introduce more women to the rural zone of Bafoussam and areas on the use of computers as powerful tools to increase their productivity and empower financial inclusion. Two years ago, we were looking for a way to drag more young girls into the IT field, and we decided to talk to more women, especially moms so they will empower their own girls. During our first empowering session, we noticed that most of the women in the room were full of brilliant ideas of small business but they were facing the same challenge, financial issues. We decided to introduce them to an online program where they could win financial support if their project got selected after a rigorous process. Then we faced a second issue, they were lacking digital literacy. It was so difficult to follow because some of them were not even able to turn a computer on. 30 were enrolled through the program, 6 made it to the pitch. This is the real life of many women in the rural areas: they are full of ideas and motivations but because of the lack of digital inclusion and financial support, women are not able to fulfill their ambition.

We decided to put in place the Women UP project: During 5 weeks members volunteer to teach 30 Women how to master the use of a computer, Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and how to take advantage of opportunities over the internet.

Mai is an interdisciplinary designer, and creative social entrepreneur, with a background in mechanical engineering from the National University of Singapore. Mai enjoys working at the intersection between arts, technology and social innovation, taking inspiration from nature, craftsmanship, indigenous materials and processes to create sustainable developments.

An advocate of diversity and inclusiveness in tech, she loves to share inspiring stories about women in tech through NWiC.

NWiC CELEBRATE covers stories of solid representation of Nepali women in technology. We believe these stories will empower and help retain women in tech, through which we aim to motivate more girls to pursue careers in tech. We publish a story every month on our medium page and website. So far, we have covered the stories of twenty-six powerful women technocrats of Nepal. As the Manager at NWiC CELEBRATE, I have been reviewing these stories' writing, editing, and publishing for the past year and a half. We have a talented group of women technologists as our writers, and the whole process, from nominations to interviews to writing a draft, is genuinely inspiring.

Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC) is a global community of women from Pakistan & their global allies. Since its foundation in 2015, PWiC has been focused to collaborate, inspire, celebrate, mentor and create opportunities for women across the world. This vision is shared by all the 65+ volunteers from about 12 global chapters of PWiC.

The Systers Pass it On Awards funded by AnitaB.org resonates very closely with our upcoming flagship event at Pakistani Women in Computing called GetHired.

GetHired is an annual global event that the PWiC hosts every year with the support of volunteers and partners all over the world. The purpose of this event is to enable women to find opportunities in the industry and prepare them through simulation of the interviewing process.

Lea Ndi Britha Ateh is a detailed software engineer and entrepreneur with 7+ years of professional experience in full-stack web development, application development and information technology. Highly familiar with analysis, Design, Digital Marketing, computational thinking, testing, and operating system software.

Our project is to help equip 10 women in Cameroon every half of the year with digital marketing skills which cut across basic coding skills, social media marketing, eCommerce strategy, marketing analytics, and more. This program comes with a three months internship after the 3months training with our company and other partner companies we work with. The world is becoming more digital and every organization, company and individual must be able to properly market themselves online.

By nature, women are gifted in this domain and with more women serving their communities as digital marketers, they can better relate to the needs of their children, themselves and even their spouses hence we want to build confidence in women and the capability to apply modern marketing strategies on the job. As a result, drive growth with multichannel campaigns powered by data and customer insights they possess. We want to be able to empower as many women as we can with these skills beginning with 10 women every half. The training will be organised as boot camps with certificates being handed over at the end of successful completion of the internship as earlier mentioned.

Pass It On Award Winners

Pass It On Awards Program

Meet the Pass It On 2022 Award Winners:

Faiza Yousuf

WomenInTechPK

Grace Gong

Western Women in Computer Science Committee

Cecilin Sudha

Train and equip the academic school dropout girls of the quarry workers with the computer skills to transform their lives

Nadia Al-Aboody

Support the next digital makers in Maysan

Ashima Sharma

Mentorship for Women in Tech

Ila Adhikari

Patricia Letaru

Let the Girls Shine in STEM

Ana Veroneze Solórzano

Brazilians in Tech

Beatriz Oliveira

Comunidade SysAdminas

On Ngan

Biomedical Engineering Summer School Wilhelmshaven 2022

Ime Linua

Dana Škorvánková

Presentation at DSAI Conference

Aachal Thapa

Pamela AZANFOUET NDEMANOU

Selma Ndi

Mai Nguyen

Jaya Rajwani

GetHired by Pakistani Women in Computing

Lea Ndi Britha Ateh

Empower a woman, Better her community

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