Happy 6 years to US Baddies in Tech!!! 👩💻 💕 🥂
LinkedIn just reminded me that I've been building Baddies in Tech for 6 years now! Whew - I can't believe it! 😅 🎉 People often ask me how the idea came about and how I built the largest community for Black women and women of color in technology. Here's the full journey - typed out for the first time ever: 2018: I had just graduated Syracuse U with a Biology, and started my tech career working in business development at an AI health-tech startup. Being the "only" in my workplace, I quickly realized that tech was not made for someone like me. I was looking for a network, mentors, allies - anything to help me grow in this new and unfamiliar space. At the time, I didn't realize that the problem I was feeling was a systemic one. December 2018: I had just turned 22. I took a selfie while traveling for work. I was killing it on the job, receiving compliments from the client, and I was feeling myself because I looked great while doing it! I hash-tagged the selfie #baddiesintech, and to my surprise when I clicked on the hashtag, I saw there were no other posts under it. I had just discovered something! 😯 March 2019: I posted for the first time on the @baddiesintech Instagram page. It was a spotlight on Bianca Maxwell Harris, who was building a skincare app, Skinary, at the time. The entire point was to highlight women of color who were doing big things in the tech industry. People LOVED it! Before then, there wasn't a space where Black women and women of color could combine their interests in lifestyle, beauty, wellness, with technology. There wasn't a space that encouraged women of color to bring their full selves to the tech industry. June 2019: I moved back to my home country of Ghana to go through the MEST Africa tech entrepreneurship program. This was my crash course in all things startup development, and was the foundation for everything I did next. I met amazing innovators from all over Africa, built three different startups over the course of the 1 year program, and learned to story tell and pitch. I shared all of this journey on the BiT platform, and we began to grow. March 2020: By now, the Baddies in Tech Instagram was 10K+ strong. The pandemic hit (I was still in Ghana) and the murder of George Floyd brought companies looking to diversify to our platform, BiT made it's first $$ through brand and recruitment partnerships with tech companies and startups. We were all stuck at home, so I also started hosting online events focused on professional development to engage the BiT audience, and the community continued to grow June 2021: I moved back to the United States. I began working full-time, again at a health-tech startup, this time in a diversity recruitment function. I made a lot of impact in that role, and continued to build BiT on the side. Jan 2022: I made it official by incorporating Baddies in Tech! I was back in the States, and (rest in comments)....
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