Women in Tech: a Q&A Discussion

Join Lerato Matabola, Talent Manager at Basalt Technology, one of South Africa’s leading software development companies, as we shine a spotlight on an area of industry that is in a growth process but that needs to be championed - empowering women in tech.

As South Africa celebrates Women’s Day on the 9th of August, there has never been a better time to open up discussion on the increasingly important topic of female inclusion in the booming tech sector. We have several leading women from different roles in the SA tech industry joining us today who are thought leaders and pioneers themselves. Together we will be discussing how business leaders can nurture job creation by creating more opportunities for female developers today.

The panel:

• Zandile Keebine, the Chairwoman and founder of GirlCode, a non-profit organisation aimed at empowering young girls and women through technology. Under her leadership the organisation has flourished to host monthly coding and robotics workshops teaching over 3000 girls from primary and high schools, providing vacation work opportunities to university students and job opportunities to hundreds of girls.
• Nicole Borges heads up Strategic accounts for Africa at one the largest global fintechs, FIS Global. Nicole is the former CIO at Standard Bank where she worked for 15 years and has made a significant impact overall – not only on the technology journey and landscape of areas she has worked in, but also to the career and lives of so many other females in technology and young people through the Graduate program, the Diversity & Inclusion forums, and women in technology movements.
• Samantha Perry is the co-founder of Women in Tech ZA, an initiative which aims to bridge the gender diversity gap in the tech sector. Samantha has a master’s degree in ICT Policy and Regulation, sits on the UN Office for South South Cooperation Women in Tech program secretariat and is a regular judge of the GSMA GLOMO Awards.

[abongiletenza]

Totally love Samantha's humor, I would definitely love working with her, any day!
Zandile's concept of moving things to WhatsApp as a means to assist underprivileged youth really hit home, especially considering how the likes of CellC gave its users the opportunity to use WhatsApp at a fraction of what they could have been paying. Now's the time for all these innovative solutions to help move the world forward.
Nicole's point on being authentic really resonates with me. "Always arrive"...

Great discussion, and a beautiful set of questions presented by Lerato. Can't wait for another amazing webinar. Nice Basalt!