 Hello, everyone. I'm excited to be here today recognizing the women in Drupal community. My name is Denise Amling, director of Agil at Bixel, and I'm an avid Drupal user and advocate for the last six years. Bixels of women owned small business determined to improve people's lives through human-centered strategies and transformative technologies. We are so pleased that we can be here to support this luncheon, to bring all of you together alongside our co-sponsor Agilana. Increasing the inclusion of women in tech is vital, so their voices are better heard, so that better products are built through collaboration across diverse groups, and so that the technologies being built incorporate less biases into their system. Women make up less than 20% of those graduating with bachelor's degrees in computer science, technology, and engineering. And looking through an intersectional lens, trans women make up less than 9%, and black women only 3% of computer science graduates. And that number's actually gone down from its high of about 35% in the 1980s. And personal fun fact, that's actually when my mom graduated with a degree in computer science from UC Santa Barbara, top of her class. Yeah, come on. All at her nose, she got an applause. Looking at the workplace, the picture isn't much better. With only about 25% of technology jobs held by women. 5% of tech jobs are held by black women, and disabled women hold less than 4%. So I challenge you today, in this luncheon, to think about what we, our companies, and Drupal, and the wider community can do to bring more women into the technology field. At Bixel, we're organizing, conducting, and participating in events like these to bring awareness and create space for the women in technology. We're putting a focus on bringing women tech while they're in college through meetups and info sessions with their technology team so those college students can meet and learn from potential role models and mentors. We're also diligently working to increase the number of women on our technology team because right now our team is just slightly above that national average. But we are proud to say that 15% of our technology team are women of color and 2 thirds of our 2023 intern class are women. And we're still looking for a couple more female interns too. We're also looking for how we can do more in the community, and we'd love to partner with all of you here in this room on this effort. So how can we take action together to increase the representation of all women in the technology space, particularly with those intersectional barriers? I hope that you can use this time to meet and learn from some amazing women, expand your network, and get inspired on how, and start planning on how to bring more women to technology. And with that, I'm gonna pass back to the DrupalCon organizers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome, so thank you all for coming out. I just wanted to quickly introduce Jess Romio. She is joining us today from Pfizer. She is the director of web publishing platforms. Jess has been working in the digital space for about 15 years, and today she's going to be giving us a wonderful talk on women in tech and tech leadership. So with that, I will welcome Jess to the stage. Thanks so much. As she mentioned, my name is Jess Romio. I'm with Pfizer, and I was pleased to hear we were talking about growing the number of women who will grow through and graduate with those computer science degrees, but much of what I'm talking about are both the traditional paths and non-traditional paths into tech jobs and tech leadership. Clearly my hair color changes often, but that is me. Hoping for our overview, I'd love to learn a little bit more about the people that are in the room. If folks that are in the room and at DrupalCon are folks that do have that computer science degree, if yes, if not, I'll talk a little bit about who I am, how I ended up here, talk about careers, life, and family, diversity in 2023, which is extremely important and something that we're working on very diligently at Pfizer, I'm proud to say, and good, bad, all kinds of different news for everyone. So I'd like to get a sense of everyone is in the room a bit. I realize we're eating and this might be a little challenging, so I'll do my best. But in my mind, I'm thinking that folks are women and those who identify as women who've returned to the job market post-pandemic, perhaps, because I know we lost a lot of women from the job market during the pandemic as we all had to start to work from home. If we have children, our children were home. We were basically assistant teachers for a lot of the teachers that were teaching our kids remotely and some women did, in fact, drop out of the workforce during that time. So as folks are starting to come back, I'm hoping that there are some folks with that situation in the room today who may be wanting to make some changes, interested in technology, maybe this is a new career move for folks or folks who have been in tech for quite a while. And women in the tech world who might be looking to advance their current position, different opportunities, looking for something new within the Drupal community, within a different type of organization or business. I just want to take a little bit of a poll to see how many folks in the room are developers. You can raise your hand. Nice. That's exciting. Any folks who are tech managers or managers of development teams? Great. And anyone that would consider themselves a different role but is also in tech maybe not necessarily a manager or a developer? Great. Yes, products, yes. I'll talk a little bit about product owners too during this as well. Anyone looking to become a manager that may be looking to advance to the next stage, managing people, want to be a people manager? Great. Also wondering what folks are looking to learn. I think I have an idea, but if anyone wants to speak out about something in particular that they're looking to learn, I'm happy to hear that and work that in. If not, I can of course save questions for a little bit later. Nobody? Yeah, that's great though. I feel like that background is extremely helpful for what you do because I've worked in client service and in the tech industry as well and sales. And I think that being able to translate what your developers are doing to folks who know much less about technology is extremely important and I feel like that social work background and talking to people and interacting and education is excellent for that. So happy to go into that a little bit deeper as I get a little further along because that's definitely part of what I'd like to talk about too. Anyone else? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's great. That's so good to hear. I too work with a very globally dispersed team at Pfizer. So when we shut the doors and sent everyone home at the start of the pandemic, my group in particular was very accustomed to working remotely. We all had done it for quite some time. So luckily for us, we were very much able to kind of stay in step and we have folks all around the world. Every continent, our scrum masters are awesome and incredibly important. Our product owners at keeping everyone together and making sure that folks are able to communicate to the best of their ability given time zones. We're definitely kind of a, I guess 24-7, like 365, considering we're all over the globe, which I think is really helpful, but can also be challenging sometimes to make sure that people feel heard, people feel seen, that we have that connection. I know we won't have a connection exactly like a connection as groups that are in the office every day with each other, like being able to high five each other during a launch and what have you, but we really, really do our best to create spaces where we can communicate, have a great time, make sure that we all have at least one touch point a week where we are actually all together in a virtual way, not talking about work, like doing fun stuff. And I think that that really helps because you get to know your global coworkers a lot better when you're not like, what about you're a ticket number, blah, blah, blah, like when we're really just playing trivia or having a fun time together. And I think that that fosters connection too. And like I'd mentioned, I'm proud that at Pfizer, we're really paying attention to our numbers and statistics and like what diversity looks like across the organization. I think that I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a couple of sessions that were also on diversity. And I feel like it was good to hear that some of the things that were in those presentations were things that we were doing and that we were able to kind of push out to the whole organization. So I'm excited about the future of diversity at Pfizer. I know that Pfizer in particular are looking to increase their female leadership by I believe it's 45% over the next five years. So people at those VP levels, at those C levels, like it's what historically was like older white men like we're trying to shake that up a little bit and make sure that we have the C level and the high level community looks like people like out and about and not just that one group of guys. So I feel fortunate about that, but thank you. Thank you, yep. I definitely have a big portion of that. Actually maybe I should advance some slides a little bit. Absolutely we'll talk about that because it's a big part of my sort of history into getting into tech. I was a single parent for the majority of my son's young childhood. And so making sure that I had that balance was extremely important to me. But I'll go into a little bit more I think on the next slide. I did want to discuss a bit. One of the very first questions I get often is if folks need a computer science degree or background to break into tech in any way. When I'm having conversations with women who may want to do something different, try something in tech. And I think it's amazing to have that degree and that background. There are definitely, I mean women are in such high demand right now for those positions at least in my experience at like the enterprise level like we're absolutely like going out working with organizations like Girls Who Code and trying to get folks and the word out about those types of positions. But I also strongly believe because it's been my experience that the computer science degree is not 100% necessary to do so many positions in tech. If you're a project manager, if you're a product owner, scrum master, salesperson, client service, like do you need to understand the technology? Uh huh. But like the folks that you work with you can talk with them, meet with them, get an understanding of what they're working on, help them organize their day. I think those soft skills are often underrated and maybe not talked about as much but they're so, so critical in what we do to keep folks organized, keep folks on task to run an organization and much of these management positions in tech require that touch equally, if not more so for those positions. So it's absolutely important to open your mind and like advocate for yourself. Even if you don't have that computer science degree you are absolutely in need in this industry, particularly in IT groups and in what we were doing at Pfizer within the digital verse, which is what I just talked about here. I'll talk a little bit about my path to where I am today. As I mentioned, did not have that computer science degree. I went to school for English literature. Yep, loved English Lit, loved to read, wanted to study it, thought about education, ended up, my first position outside of college was in textbook publishing, which was great, I enjoyed it immensely and honestly that's really where I started to get interested in technology and development of websites because I started working not only with the printed word but also with our digital companions and I thought, this is kind of cool. But I was in more of an editorial and project management role, which was fine but I was interested and then moved on to another publishing company that worked with audiobooks and ebooks. And then I started moving on to more digital technology and that is when I was introduced to healthcare and pharma and there are plenty of people who I think in the development and the creative fields hear healthcare and pharma and are like, ugh, that's not creative, what am I gonna do? It's so boring. I have a great time in the pharma space and in the healthcare space. We definitely do have the ability to bring creativity, bring new ideas about how we want to build or make something or reach our patients, reach healthcare providers that I think from the outside looking in, you just might not think that it's that interesting but it's actually really, really fun. I've had a great time with it. And then moving on to creating platforms within our group, I work for the web publishing group which consists of multiple digital platforms, one of course which is Drupal based, which would be why I'm here, which I know inside and out but my reach has extended beyond the original platform I was working on to four others. So it's interesting, not just creating and building platforms and working with the people who are doing the coding but also being able to have input and be able to share my opinion, excuse me, opinion for some of the larger important decisions about how Pfizer goes about creating their websites, their digital companions to share with patients and healthcare providers. It's incredibly important as well. Obviously the digital side was super important during the pandemic, not that the pandemic is over completely but at the start of the pandemic making sure that we had the ability to grab people for clinical trials so that we could get started working on the vaccine. All of that was done through websites and outreach, digital outreach to folks to get folks involved and sooner rather than later. Now to what you had brought up, life and family, do they have to come second? I'm definitely not, definitely not. I know that the juggling is extremely hard. As I mentioned, it was just my son and I for many years. I think that making sure that you go into interviews into conversations with folks with your non-negotiables. This was incredibly important for me as I moved from being on my own with my son going into conversations about new positions in digital or tech, leading with this is what I need. Like if you want me, if you want me at your company, if you wanna talk to me, these are the things that I need. These are not negotiable. Here are things that I would like. Some of these are negotiable but I need the time to be able to take my kid to school. I need the time to be able to go to doctor's appointments. I need the flexibility to work remotely. This was back before being able to work remotely was as common as it is now. Companies were much more resistant to allowing folks to do so. They thought that people just weren't working. I don't know if the jokes on them are on us after the pandemic because all I kept hearing was how productivity went through the roof with everybody at home and which led for not a great work-life balance because we were like, oh my gosh, we have to keep ourselves going, keep our mental health in a good place, keep our families moving, keep our kids going to virtual school. I felt fortunate to have a teenager at that time. I would love to say he was able to completely do it on his own but he was not. For parents with smaller children, it must have been unbelievably difficult to get your kids able to sit still in front of a computer with a teacher who was not right in front of them and help them through their day while you're also doing a full-time job. I can't imagine how hard that must have been but I do feel fortunate that my son was a bit older. But again, coming in with those non-negotiables, incredibly important, just walking in and saying, this is what I need. This is what I need if you want me here. If that doesn't work for you, thanks for your time. I think it's really important. I also think, I alluded to it a little bit earlier, the rules have changed drastically since COVID, especially regarding remote work with pushing your need for work-life balance with discussions about mental health. I feel like we weren't having these discussions at all before COVID came kicking in our door, which was wrong. I'm glad that we're having these discussions now and we're open about them and we're able to have groups, we use teams unfortunately instead of Slack but have groups on teams where people can just come in and have conversations like having a mental health awareness group and talking about what's going on with our lives that isn't necessarily work-related or if it is work-related, if it's work stress that's making you feel like ultra-anxiety, being able to talk about that and feel safe talking about that, I think is one positive from what we've just come out of. But companies are much more willing to work with your non-negotiables, with your schedule. I do feel like there was talk in the media about how folks in tech were in such high demands and then oh, folks aren't in demand and now oh, folks are in demand again. From my experience, from where I'm sitting, as I work with hiring for Pfizer, we've always been in demand. There was never a time where it was like, oh, not in demand. Especially women in technology. We are always, always searching for women in tech. So that's, I think, good to know, good to keep in mind. Don't downplay or overlook your value. In the current, future climate, like definitely self-advocate, it is so important. But yeah, during the past few years, I think we all kind of got a wake-up call regarding the need to seriously advocate for ourselves for work-life balance. Because as we were all home, there was no work-life balance. It was just work, kids' bed, or if you don't have kids, work bed, work again. So I think definitely being able to talk to that and highlight that as a need, as you're moving on within your career, is incredibly important. And I also have been able to see that change happening and see from inside an enterprise-level, huge organization, like big changes like this happening in fairly short order, where now we're able to go out and look for people from different parts of the globe. We're not worried about them needing to sit in an office. Those requirements are very different now, which is excellent. And it only benefits us, as much as it benefits folks who we're bringing in. Because we're able to really bring in the right person, the right people, regardless of where they are, regardless of where they can sit. It's amazing, and I think that we're better for it. Yeah. I kind of went through this a little bit, but I mentioned it's not easy to hire and retain top-digital talent, which is why I'm saying everyone is in such high demand right now, and that it's definitely the right time to be confident, ignore the imposter syndrome that you might be feeling, and self-advocate when you're having these conversations about potentially propelling yourself to a management position, a leadership position. This is a great time for that. People are listening that may not have been listening before, which I think is amazing. Talked a bit about diversity already, but I'm finding that diversity, I'm gonna crack myself up with this, diversity at Pfizer is absolutely as much as sometimes I feel like there are buzzwords a bit, it is so, so important right now. The focus is on it. I'm thrilled that the focus is on it. Diversity in every respect, and that we're even able to have these conversations so bluntly is amazing to me. It's really the best time to kind of launch into either a new tech career, or just doing something new within your organization. I think, as I mentioned, we're always searching for women in tech. We're partnering with groups that are working with kids in school, elementary school, high school, who are interested in STEM. I think it's incredibly important to start young, but I also think that if you're coming into the industry as someone who is much less familiar with it, like I started studying English literature and found myself here, I think it's absolutely doable. I think you bring a fresh perspective to things. I think that you're able to maybe communicate in a way that some of your peers aren't. All of that is super necessary. Short read crap. Yes, as I mentioned a million times. We're everyone in this room, everyone outside, very much in demand. I think that having a computer science degree is excellent. I think those statistics that we heard earlier about computer science degrees hurt my heart with women and those degrees, so making sure that we're able to increase those numbers is incredibly important, but I also feel like folks have so much opportunity, even without coming from that path, to work in tech, to learn different programming languages, to learn from your coworkers and your peers. It's absolutely a possibility and definitely how I ended up within leadership, within technology. And career before family, no, of course not. Go in with those non-negotiables. Feel confident in telling people those non-negotiables because they will respond to them, they'll respect you for them, do it. Thrilled about diversity, now being a hot topic and I hope that we can keep it a topic and not just a kind of buzzwords, like it's incredibly important to make sure that the folks that we're working with represent the patients that we're trying to reach, the healthcare providers that we're working with. That landscape needs to equal and I think that there's absolutely good news for everybody in this room. I realize we only have a few minutes left so I do want to open it up to any questions or any other topics that folks might want to discuss, their own experiences that they might want to bring up. Sure, go ahead. Me too. I think that it hits you at every stage of your career. I feel like in the beginning in particular, I was well aware that there was a lot that I didn't know that I wasn't as super technical as some of my coworkers and rather than hang out with those insecurities, I would approach people and be like, hey, I know nothing about this, can you talk with me about it? Can we just maybe go grab some lunch and discuss it because I very much wanted to learn and I'm happy to say that at this point, even in like people management and leadership, I'm still always reaching out and asking people because I feel that way all the time. I'm like, right before we started talking, I'm like, these people are in this room and they're gonna hear me speak and I hope I sound intelligent, because you have those moments. But I do think being open to learning and recognizing that you, even if you're in your particular role for several years, there's still so much to learn from the people around you, even if it's not necessarily about the technology you're working on, even if it's just about interpersonal skills, different types of people, that helps me feel more confident in what I'm doing because I think having empathy really makes a big difference even with something like imposter syndrome because I'm like, oh, I can't believe, I'll be like, I can't believe I'm standing up here and then I'm like, well, why wouldn't I be standing up here? It's like you need to do that switch and be like, anyone who would be standing up here would have that moment where they're like, can't believe I'm standing up here. It's just something that hits everybody. I think you feel less isolated and alone when you realize that. Everybody feels that way. They shouldn't. Everybody is in this room for a reason. Everybody knows what their, I'm sure knows their work inside and out and if they're new at their position, are excited to learn that job inside and out but I feel like imposter syndrome is very isolating but when you flip that switch to everybody feels this way, it's kind of like, oh, okay. And then, wait, I actually deserve to be here. I know what I'm talking about. I can have a conversation with people intelligently about website X or whatever it is that's on the table. I should be speaking up in this meeting or things like that because I feel like it can force you to get very quiet when you should be very loud. So yeah, I think, I hope that was helpful. At least that's how I think about it. Talking to other people, talking about how they, when they feel that way, I think helps me. Okay, sorry. That's a great question. I think that this luncheon is a great start for more of this because I do feel like more conversations about women in Drupal, women in tech, women in leadership, mental health, like all of these conversations, we should be able to have more of them. We should be able to have more talks like this within the track of a conference like DrupalCon or in your own company, like being able to start small groups or small Slack channels or Teams channels where, hey, anyone interested, we're gonna meet for lunch at this time, let's get together and talk about whatever that might be on your mind or that issue at the time, like work-life balance. How's everybody feeling right now? I'm like, who's overwhelmed? Who's not overwhelmed as if anyone's not overwhelmed? But I do think starting small is great, but the fact that we have a room full of people that are here having lunch and talking about this at DrupalCon I think is a great start. I know there have been conversations before this at DrupalCon. I don't wanna be like, this is the first, but I do think that the number of people here and the interest will lead to more in conferences like this and more conversations like this, which I think is very important. Yeah, of course. If you're interested in maybe, we can set up a regular Zoom calls or like some kind of DrupalCon association can help with that because maybe figure out a way where we can have like lightning talks like today from different area, from women that are developers, from women that are in leadership, women that are doing design and how we are, you know, all this. So I absolutely encourage you to take action. This lecture is probably the best place to start. Women in DrupalCon are the best. Thank you also so much. Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I'm positive I'm beyond time. So I, if anyone has any additional questions, happy to. Yep. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That's great. Yeah, and absolutely, please feel free to reach out to me after this. I'm happy to share my email, LinkedIn, all of that. I would love, love to make some connections from this conversation just to keep our momentum going. That would be amazing. No, I need to get in. Yes. Okay, perfect. Yeah, I know people. You're right. That's great. Absolutely. That's a great point. Yeah, I agree. It absolutely helps. We have it where I am as well within Pfizer and it definitely helps. Oh, sure, sure. It was less a question and more speaking about the in between, between having a computer science degree and not, there are plenty of courses that people can take in many different places. I know there's like you mentioned LinkedIn Learning, there are different courses that are free just to pursue educating yourself, your interests. Also spoke about starting, taking kind of what we talked about today and bringing those things back to where you work. So being able to start groups at your companies, being able to have conversations with the women that you work with that may want to be involved in those conversations or in decisions about this because you build your support network that way and lift each other up that way, which I think is really important too. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's incredibly important. I think that that goes to the imposter syndrome part too. Definitely. You have to, you have to, no one's your bigger advocate than yourself. You have to. You won't get it if you don't ask. Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's important that we don't lose the momentum, that we leave, but we make connections here and we're able to talk about what each of us are doing within our organizations and even personally, I mean, it really helps to have people to be able to talk to and you don't feel as isolated. You're not feeling that imposter syndrome as strongly like you're not alone. Definitely, we need to connect with each other more and lift each other up more. But absolutely, that's incredibly important. I think pay transparency in general is very important. I'm very glad that Pfizer has that as well. That pay transparency is important. If they see folks that are being paid too low, they get bumped up, the manager reaches out to them and says, hey, PS, like 80% of the people at your level are making this much, we're gonna raise your salary, which seems crazy to me in a great way because I've never heard of that before. So it's wonderful. So I got incredibly important and I think changing the way that we think about that is very important because as you said, it's not an us problem, right? I realize that we're way beyond time. But if anyone has anything else they want to bring up, go for it. Good, yeah? That's honestly, that's a great question. I work with folks who are new to the industry on an everyday basis and make, especially since we're globally dispersed, it's easier when you have someone who's brand new to the industry kind of sitting next to you. I think that making sure that you're able to partner with folks like that and folks can be intimidated and less likely to ask questions. I think just being available and introducing them to different parts of it and making yourself very approachable is important. But it can be very intimidating when you first enter this field, I think. And you don't necessarily see people that look like you or that you can go to and say, hey, how was it for you? I think just making sure that you make those folks feel safe and comfortable enough to ask questions is a good start. But it's a tricky thing because of that intimidation. Thanks guys. Yeah, okay, thank you. Guys and gals.