Women Who Code Portland Celebrate “International Women’s Day” at Intel

On International Women’s Day, Intel and their Open Source Technology Center (OTC) hosted our 14th Networking Night at their Executive Briefing Center in Hillsboro, OR.

Every month, we meet at a different tech company to learn, make new connections, and hear other women in the industry speak. Last week, the theme was “How Women Power Intel Open Source” and we were very thrilled to have nine engineers and a designer share their journeys and the work they do in open source for Intel.

In front of over 100 attendees, Mauri Whalen, vice president in the Software and Services Group and director of core system software in the Open Source Technology Center at Intel Corporation, got the festivities started. She shared how she started programming in 1982 and how few women there were in her engineering program in college. She then spoke about Intel’s commitment to open source and the Linux ecosystem.

The rest of the night, we heard from engineers, researchers, and directors working on Security, IoT, Systems Engineering, Android, Chrome OS, QA, and UX.

Constanza Heath, a Security Researcher in OTC and a five-year veteran at Intel, spoke about the importance of releasing to open source. Upon joining the security team, she collaborated with Intel Labs to fix a cryptography issue by providing her own open source library; once she released it, several groups within Intel started using her code.

Constanza Heath, Terri Oda, and Shelly Walbert discuss their contributions to open source for as part of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center.

After a wonderful night of food, networking, and tech talks, we were quite fortunate to receive a $1,000 donation from Intel to help support our programs. Women Who Code Portland is made up of 1,200 members and we meet regularly for weekly JavaScript study nights, monthly Networking Nights, and technical workshops.

Mauri Whalen presented a $1,000 donation to Caterina Paun, Director of Women Who Code Portland

Our future Networking Nights will be hosted by New Relic, Instrument, Treehouse, and R/West. For more information and to join our group, check out our Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-Portland/

For Intel Press Inquiries, contact Surendra Chawla (phone: 503–866–5751 , email: surendra.chawla@intel.com).

Women Who Code PDX
We organize study groups, networking events, technical workshops, and social events for current and aspiring devs. http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-Portland