Amazon Web Services is sponsoring new cloud computing and product management courses now available to more than 27,000 women who are members of the nonprofit Advancing Women in Tech, including in Greater Washington through the organization's D.C. operation.
Alongside California-based Coursera, the partnership will offer two self-paced, online courses that were validated for college credit by the American Council on Education: real-world cloud-product management specialization and real-world product-management specialization.
Advancing Women in Tech was founded by Nancy Wang, the director of product and engineering and general manager for AWS Backup Data Protection Services at Amazon Web Services. The nonprofit works to catapult women, especially women of color, into big tech leadership roles through education and mentorship.
The nonprofit's member base can access 75 hours-worth of educational content via Coursera to earn credits toward a postsecondary degree or land cloud computing and product management roles at major tech companies. It’s available to them for $79 per month, but AWIT will also offer scholarships to students who can’t afford to pay, Wang said.
“We don’t believe in having programming or having content that is out of reach for deserving individuals because of cost,” she said in an interview.
The organization no longer maintains a list of credit-accepting institutions, but credit will be applied based on an individual's program of study and how that coincides with the courses offered at their institution. For these two courses, the American Council on Education recommended each for six credits.
Wang knows what it’s like to be the only one in the room. She's seen how a dearth of women, particularly women of color, discourages others from pursuing leadership roles.
“The lack of representation then influences clear decisions... It really flows downhill from there,” said Wang, who is based in Seattle. “That’s a problem that we’re all focused on solving.”
So, in 2017, Wang founded Advancing Women in Tech to funnel young women into management, boardroom and C-suite roles and activate others in tech leadership to support that change. The organization expanded its operations to D.C. in 2020, quickly growing in the two years since to more than 200 individual members here locally.
The goal? Closing tech’s gender and racial gaps at top tech companies like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook (NASDAQ: META), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet Inc.'s Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
In 2021, Amazon reported that women held 26% of executive or senior-level roles at the company — up from roughly 18% in 2014, according to data analyzed by data firm DiversIQ. Alphabet reported women hold 32% of top roles, doubling from 2014. And Microsoft reported that women held 33% of those positions, a jump from 13% in 2014.
The lack of representation for women of color in top leadership roles is anecdotally even more stark, though little data from tech companies exists in public reports that specifies the breakdown. But, in 2021, Amazon reported that people of color holding executive roles jumped from 10% in 2014 to 32%. Google reported a jump from 24% to 35%, and Microsoft reported a jump from 19% to 36%.
AWIT pairs up-and-coming tech “rockstars” with experienced executives for mentorship, and seeks the input of those top executives — including at locally based companies like McLean’s Capital One Financial Corp. — to inform the educational curriculum, Wang said. The next partnership Wang wants to bridge is with community colleges, she said.
In the 30 years that AWIT mentor and Prince George’s County resident Kimberly Ellison-Taylor spent working in data centers, information technology and tech, she’s seen gaps in representation persist.
“I could see that at each place, there weren’t as many people who looked like me that were in the room,” said Ellison-Taylor, who previously held leadership roles at companies like Oracle and Motorola. “In order to develop more capacity, we had to have conversations around the coursework.”
Ellison-Taylor, now the founder and CEO of consulting firm KET Solutions LLC, is also an adjunct professor for Carnegie Mellon University’s chief information officer certificate program. She’s very familiar with the technical competency and career skills women need to catapult into these top roles.
“I want them to see themselves in me,” she said. “They need to understand that they can do it.”
The other piece of it is male allyship, both Ellison-Taylor and Wang pointed out. That comes from mentorship, but also candid conversations about the challenges women face and the support they need.
“We need allies to take the time, peel the onion back, look at what’s needed, to give us stretch assignments, to not just tell us what we want to hear but what we need to hear,” Ellison-Taylor said.
