WWCode CONNECT 2019 Retrospective and Stats

Women Who Code CONNECT 2019 was a powerful and inspiring event that brought hundreds of tech professionals from around the world together to celebrate innovation, learn new skills and concepts, and interact with some of the most talented and celebrated personalities in the industry. Lives were changed, careers were bolstered, and insights were illuminated over the course of the conference.

Taking place on April 13th, 2019 at the offices of Pinterest, WWCode CONNECT had over 800 people in attendance, including 110 that were awarded free scholarship tickets to ensure that even those who could not afford to attend could still benefit from the event. Attendees were treated to brilliant and motivational talks from 68 speakers, many of whom were top names in the tech industry.

In addition to the main WWCode CONNECT Conference, this year we also hosted an Awards Ceremony where we celebrated the accomplishments of several impressive women in the industry. That event was attended by 167 people. We also hosted a WWCode Leadership Summit where 108 Women Who Code Directors, Leads, and Evangelists from every corner of the globe gathered to learn valuable leadership skills and gain insights into how to better support their local Networks. And we also hosted an awesome Conference After Party that was enjoyed by 331 of the conference attendees.

“This being my first time to attend the Women Who Code connect, I was able to connect with amazing women in different technology fields and companies and also got to listen to different work cultures which was very interesting and eye-opening. I made good friends and I surely will attend another connect and ask my friends to attend too.”
- Madona Syombua, WWCode CONNECT Attendee

In addition to the live events, this year’s WWCode CONNECT also featured a number of virtual options for participation. At the in-person conference, we featured a career center where companies could interact directly with attendees that were looking to find new professional opportunities. However, those that couldn’t attend had a chance to upload their resumes for review by those companies, and we had over 530 submitted to our database. We also debuted our new LIVE From CONNECT feature this year, that allowed people from around the world to view a live feed of one of the speaker rooms from the convenience of their computer screens. 

One of the highlights of WWCode CONNECT was during Women Who Code CEO and Board Chair Alaina Percival’s keynote speech, where she announced that the organization had grown to over 180,000 members around the world. Other Keynote speakers included Candice Morgan, Head of Inclusion and Diversity at Pinterest, Tara Hernandez, Engineering Manager at Google, Radhika Malik, Investment Manager at the Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Andrea Gallego, Chief Technology Officer at the Boston Consulting Group, as well as many other notable personages.

“I feel like this experience was really important for my career as well as for all women in tech who attended or were speakers at this conference. Both our ML engineer Oshima-san and Engineering Manager Fujita-san had a really good experience for their career development as well by attending an international tech conference and collaborating between the Japan and US teams at Mercari.”
- Tutti (Tuane) Quintella, Software Engineer at Mercari, Inc and WWCode CONNECT Speaker

A number of organizations that are helping build a more diverse and inclusive tech industry signed on to support the conference. This included Pinterest, The Home Depot, PayPal Inc., Atlassian, Boston Consulting Group, VMware, Capital One, Zume Inc., LinkedIn, Cisco, Auth0, Netflix, Nike, E-Trade, DoorDash, SoundCloud, Oracle, Collective Health, Walmart Labs, Mercari, Tibco Software, Inc., ThoughtWorks, J.P. Morgan, Tala, and Google WTM. 

All in all WWCode CONNECT 2019 was an important experience that celebrated the power of coming together to innovate, create, and build the future. The environment was both inclusive, and diverse, and provided an excellent field of opportunity for people from a myriad of backgrounds and situations to meet, network, and celebrate cutting edge technology and the breakthroughs that are changing our world every day.