THE ALLIANCE
Women in Agile Initiative
Initiative Purpose
The purpose of the Women in Agile initiative is to encourage, support, and expand women’s presence in the Agile community. Ongoing efforts across Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) fields strive to increase recruitment of women in order to promote diversity benefits in their respective industries. However, recruitment activities often do not address the engagement and professional growth of women who are currently working in the aforementioned industries. These women must be empowered and active to create a sustainable community of female leaders and mentors to lead the next generation of women. In addition, greater levels of involvement from women in the Agile community will enhance the knowledge and idea sharing experience, benefiting the whole community of people of all genders.
This initiative expands on last year’s event at Agile2018, which informed attendees of the problems and current state and how to meet the issues with compassion. This year’s event strives to activate attendees to self-organize both at the event and in their local communities to make small but cascading changes. This initiative will create an avenue empowering attendees to take individual and group action through a motivating keynote, collaborative workshops, targeted networking, and will launch three new female speakers into the community through our New Voices program. These activities will address the symptoms of the involvement gap and will provide a sustainable learning environment to increase involvement, idea sharing, and motivation toward the broader causes of this inequality. The results of the initiative will allow the Agile community more sustainability through increased knowledge sharing, inclusion, diversity, and passionate involvement in the future.
