Advancing Women in Product, a nonprofit created with the goal of helping more women and people of color advance in the technology sector, has opened a D.C. chapter.
The 3-year-old organization already exists in other metro areas that boast major tech presences — San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York, among them. Expanding into Greater Washington, where government technology is a massive engine and Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) HQ2 is bound to attract more tech firms and talent, makes sense, said Nancy Wang, co-founder and CEO of the national AWIP and head of data protection services at Amazon Web Services.
She started the organization, which has 16,000 members worldwide, shortly after leaving Google as a product manager and before joining AWS, the cloud computing arm of Amazon. Wang is currently based in Seattle, but said the D.C. area is “near and dear” to her. It's where she started her career, working on large-scale data systems for the federal government almost a decade ago, a sector that will be a starting focal point for the local iteration.
“D.C. is very special because it is the market where most federal innovation projects come from,” she said in an interview. “The timing is right to help these companies think about increasing equity and representation in their workforce.”
A higher share of leadership roles are filled by white men in the technology fields compared with other industries, according to tech trade group CompTIA, citing a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report. In terms of gender, 80% of tech executive roles are held by men and 20% by women, compared with 71% held by men and 29% by women across the overall private sector. Many of the industry's largest players, like Microsoft Corp., Google and AWS are still largely white and male, particularly in their management positions.
Because of the big role contracting plays in the Greater Washington economy, the organization will first focus on those federal “public-private partnerships,” helping more women and people of color access more senior leadership roles in both the federal workforce and contracting world, said Pamela Furst, AWIP's D.C.-area chapter head and a senior manager at ECS Limited, a facilities and engineering firm with offices in National Harbor, Chantilly, Manassas and D.C.
“The government is leaning more and more on private industry to help them build their tech solutions and meet their mission demands,” said Furst, who had reached out to AWIP almost a year ago about launching a D.C. chapter. “We would like to help women and underrepresented minorities find success on both sides.”
Part of that is making sure that they have the skills to succeed in those roles, Furst said. The organization's two-pronged approach will be to offer skills workshops and mentorship programs.
Already, the D.C. chapter counts LaDavia Drane, the head of global inclusion, diversity and equity at AWS, as its first executive advisor. Sandy Carter, a vice president of AWS’s worldwide public sector, will also help stand up the D.C. chapter as she makes a move from the West Coast to the D.C. area.
AWIP funds its programs and all regional chapters through donations from companies like AWS, HubSpot Inc., Expanse Networks Inc, Fitbit, Madrona Ventures Group, Mixpanel and PayPal. While the group declined to divulge its budget or startup costs, or its strategy to attract paid membership in the current tough economy, it did say that individuals can sign up for free membership through its Mobilize platform.
The D.C. chapter will debut its first online event next month, featuring speakers like Jill Singer, vice president of defense and national security with AT&T’s government business arm; Russell Travers, former acting director and deputy director of The National Counterterrorism Center; and Brandee Daly, CEO and founder of cloud computing services firm C2S Consulting Group, based in Herndon.
