Women && Tech
In 2012, the stories of women working in technology were not widely disseminated. Wanting to help, I designed an app with a discoverable database of qualified women in the industry. I open sourced my designs, hoping for a team to rally round and build it. This brought together a delightfully diverse group of volunteer designers, engineers, writers and photographers. We decided to start at the beginning by simply telling stories, launching the Women && Tech project as we know it today, an interview series with inspiring women.
My role: Founder & lead, brand, design, copy
Team: Women&&Tech
We wanted to do justice to the rich stories of the women we were featuring. At the time, design decisions such as widescreen images, playful animations, quality editorial, and experimental frontend (we were one of the first to use curtains.js) were not something the women in tech world was embracing.
We procured sponsors, ran a popular newsletter and social media accounts, held events and became a voice in the rising sea of women in tech voices. The landscape has since changed considerably – which was the point all along.
Another aim, though peripheral, was to put Toronto on the map in digital design. We like to think we contributed to that culture by bringing together collaborators – writers, editors, photographers – and creating something we could all be proud of.
Photo of Nora Young, an early interviewee and host of the popular long-running CBC program Spark, taken by a student volunteer, Rachelle Sabourin
We recorded stories from dozens of women at a Google tech event
The late-night launch team huddled together in a hangout
The first interview page design