One of PowerToFly's missions is to provide educational outlets for women in tech, business and beyond. We strive to do this through our events, mentoring programs and through our bi-weekly VIP virtual Lunch & Learns, lead by women across a wide spectrum of fields.
This is why we were thrilled to partner with such a like minded company in Pluralsight, who are making it easy to keep up with technology through expert-led courses, assessments, and tools in fields such as software development, IT ops, data, and cyber security, for an evening of networking and learning on November 28th.
Held at Pluralsight's Boston office, we hosted a packed room of experienced women from throughout the Boston area (and even one attendee who was in town from Maine!). Hosted by PowerToFly's Lauren Hagerty, who also leads our Lunch & Learns, the theme of the night's discussions were the "Challenges and Solutions for Women in Tech." While, it's clear that women have made great strides in STEM fields in recent years, we all know there is plenty of room for improvement and our expert panel was on hand to offer advice and to elaborate on their own career journeys.
The evening kicked off with a keynote address by a male ally in Pluralsight's commitment to diversity and inclusion, Head of Data Product James Aylward. While a good portion of our attendees were already familiar with Pluralsight, a product demo by Product Manager Keisha Johnson and Software Engineer Shayna Cummings shed even more light on the ins and outs of what exactly makes Pluralsight's platform so successful.
The centerpiece of the evening was a panel discussion featuring a quartet of women software engineers at Pluralsight: Kelly Furness, Allison Browne, Isabella Beltran, and Margarita Dekoli. Over the past year, I've attended dozens of event on behalf of PowerToFly and this was truly one of the most open and frank conversations that I've been a part of as our panelists discussed their career experiences being, at times, the only woman at the table, common misconceptions of women in tech and what efforts can be made to encourage more women to enter careers in tech (and what companies can do to retain them once they are there).
The evening concluded with plenty of time for our attendees to network with both the panelists and other Pluralsight employees. As they headed out into the chilly Boston night, they also had an opportunity to snag some great Pluralsight swag too.
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Pluralsight is one of Great Places to Work and FORTUNE Magazine's "Best Small & Medium Workplaces 2018" and has been named one of the top 100 private cloud companies by Forbes. Their partners include Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. Most recently, Pluralsight was named a "Top Workplace in Boston" by The Boston Globe.
Pluralsight is hiring! Visit their page on PowerToFly to learn more about their open roles.
PowerToFly's Lauren Hagerty kicked off the night.
Pluralsight's Head of Data Product James Aylward delivered the evening's keynote address.
Software Engineer Shayna Cummings during the night's product demo.
Product Manager Keisha Johnson discussed Pluralsight's platform.
Our panel discussion with Margarita Dekoli, Allison Browne, Kelly Furness and Isabella Beltran.
Our panel discussion.
Our attendees had plenty of time to network with members of the Pluralsight team.
A great night of networking!
