LEARNING
With a full day of talks, panels and workshops, the Unicorns in Tech Summit offers you a unique opportunity to expand your knowledge and learn from the experts in your industry.
OPPORTUNITIES
This year we are introducing a tech job fair component to the program! Representatives of over 10 different partners will be at the summit, sharing information on their companies and seeking out talent to join their teams.
NETWORKING
The people are at the core of every Unicorns in Tech event: you’ll get to know new friends, colleagues and maybe even your future employer!
AUTHENTICITY
The Summit is a celebration of the diversity in tech — the whole spectrum of the LGBTIQ+ family and its allies is welcome with a simple motto: come as you are.
WAIT… WHAT IS THE
UNICORNS IN TECH SUMMIT?
The Unicorns in Tech Summit is a unique event taking place on October 14th and celebrating tech, diversity, and being LGBTIQ+ in the workplace.
As a legacy of the Berlin LGBT+ Tech Week, the Summit brings together experts and amateurs, juniors and seniors, recruiters and job seekers, and more!
Grab the opportunity to expand your network in a relaxed atmosphere, learn through talks, panels, workshops, discover new businesses and technologies, and maybe even bag yourself a new job!
PROGRAM
EXHIBITORS
METRO Digital GmbH
We combine more than 60 years of wholesale experience with state of the art tech to help our customers thrive. With other words: We put food on the plate byte by byte! We are METRO.digital.
📌 Berlin; București; Brașov; Cluj-Napoca; Düsseldorf; Ho Chi Minh City
🌐 Specialising in the future of food & technology
DKB Code Factory
At Code Factory we believe that every big journey starts with a first step. Our destination: creating tomorrow’s banking. Over five million customers have already placed their faith in us. Their wind farms and schools depend on our code.
📌 Berlin
🌐 Forging next level banking. With you.
Netlight
Netlight is a genuine consulting firm. We refine the concept of IT-consulting to be about talents who, in cooperation, create valuable results for our clients.
For genuine consultants the clients interest always comes first. Our clients are market leading within their field. Our goal is to deliver independent solutions and tangible results based on our clients’ conditions and business objectives. We accomplish this by focusing on competence, creativity and business sense.
📌 Berlin, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Helsinki, Munich, Oslo, Stockholm, Zürich, Amsterdam and Cologne.
🌐 IT Services and IT Consulting
Delivery Hero
Delivery Hero is the world’s leading local delivery platform, operating its service in over 70 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa. The company started as a food delivery service in 2011 and today runs its own delivery platform on four continents. Additionally, Delivery Hero is pioneering quick commerce, the next generation of e-commerce, aiming to bring groceries and household goods to customers in under one hour and often in 20 to 30 minutes.
📌 Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, Linköping, Mumbai
🌐 Leading local delivery company
Scout24
Scout24 is one of the leading digital companies in Germany. With ImmoScout24, an online platform for residential and commercial real estate, we successfully bring together owners, realtors, tenants, and buyers to make complex decisions easy – and we have been doing so for more than 20 years. With around 14 million users per month, ImmoScout24 is the market leader for digital real estate marketing and search. To digitise the process of real estate transactions, ImmoScout24 is continually developing new products and building up an ecosystem for renting, buying, and commercial real estate in Germany. Since 2012, ImmoScout24 has also been active in the Austrian real estate market, reaching around 3 million users monthly.
📌 Berlin & Munich
🌐 Digital marketplace for residential and commercial real estate
PRISMA European Capacity Platform GmbH
PRISMA is the leading platform for gas movement around Europe.
With the Green Transition being underway, we’re striving to make our platform a conduit for all future energy transition needs and secure the energy supply in Europe.
We connect around 20 markets by seamlessly giving fair access to more than 3000 energy players into the European energy infrastructure.
We envision a future where all energy markets will be connected and integrated.
Together we can change the energy game. One line of code at a time.
📌 Leipzig
🌐 SaaS
Deloitte GmbH
Deloitte provides industry-leading audit and assurance, tax and legal, consulting, financial advisory, and risk advisory services to nearly 90% of the Fortune Global 500® and thousands of private companies. Our professionals deliver measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in capital markets, enable clients to transform and thrive, and lead the way toward a stronger economy, a more equitable society and a sustainable world. Deloitte spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte’s more than 415,000 people worldwide make an impact that matters.
📌 International
🌐 Business Consulting and Services
Le Wagon
Le Wagon emerged in 2014 as one of the first tech bootcamps in France, offering web development and data science programs. Now, it has grown to a robust global community of tech talents with over 40 Le Wagon campuses all across the globe. With this expansion and a recognised pedagogy and human-centric approach, Le Wagon has helped over 16,000 developers, data scientists, designers, and entrepreneurs start their new careers in tech. Eight years on, the school continues to inspire tech aspirants to find their path in the industry and has developed to become the world’s most acclaimed coding bootcamp according to student reviews on Switchup and Coursereport.
📌 Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, London, Melbourne, Mexico, Montreal, Singapore, São Paulo, Paris, and other cities worldwide.
🌐 Tech Education
ebay Kleinanzeigen
Since 2009, eBay Kleinanzeigen has brought the best of all worlds together: a beloved brand, awesome colleagues and a business model with societal impact: sustainability.
As Germany’s No 1 platform to connect, buy, sell, or simply give away items, we help people find whatever they’re looking for in their local communities – whether it’s a sofa, a concert ticket, a car, an apartment, a job, a pet sitter, financial services or even new friends. Every connection made or item found makes a difference by creating a world where people share more and waste less. Join our team and bring the joy of sustainable trade to everyone.
📌 Berlin, Dreilinden, remote
🌐 e-commerce
mobile.de
Founded in 1996, mobile.de disrupted the status quo of buying and selling cars with the first online vehicle marketplace, driven by the idea to create something new.
Today, we are the No. 1 marketplace in Germany – with 17 million unique users per month and a powerful network of 42,000 dealers. As a one-stop-shop we provide trustworthy and simple solutions for all of our customers. And we will not stop innovating until buying a vehicle is as easy as a Sunday morning. If you are driven by an eagerness to learn and passion for collaboration then we should get to know each other.
📌 Berlin, Dreilinden, remote
🌐 Automotive e-commerce
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn is an international provider of mobility and logistics services and active in over 130 countries. We design and operate the transport networks of the future. With the integrated operation of transport and infrastructure and the intelligent linking of all modes of transport, we move people and goods – on the rails and roads, by sea and by air.
📌 International
🌐 Transport
TALKS
Find the Others – How to Create a Queer Community at Work
Find the others – that is what I tried to do when starting my job at a tech consulting firm three years ago. Being the only queer person in the room or even at work was nothing new to me, however this time I did not want to believe that it was true…
In this talk I will tell you about my journey of starting a thriving LGBTQIA+ community and share my learnings so you can “find the others” and build a safe community that extend beyond your company network.
Jörn Fleger (he/him)
Engagement Manager | NetLight →
Jörn is a passionate driver of innovation and diversity in tech. As an Engagement Manager at Netlight Consulting, he brings people and companies together to co-create, evolve and innovate at the forefront of digitalization. Starting his career 7 years ago in the Berlin start-up scene, Jörn has contributed to the growth of companies in various roles and has underlined his practical experience with a MSc in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Lund University, Sweden.
Firmly believing in the importance of people, Jörn works towards creating a diverse and inclusive environment for everyone to thrive in. At Netlight, he founded an international resource group for people from the LGBTQIA+ community called “Prism”. Furthermore, he is also collaborating with other DEI ambassadors in Hamburg’s tech scene to challenge the status quo across the industry.
#careertalk #buildingcommunity
Experience as an Undercover Minority: How to Find the Right Team to Work With
A friend wanted to attend an event and told me: “I don’t want to be the only minority there, so can you come with me? You’re technically undercover”. I’m a queer Caribbean person, but I don’t fit the stereotype that some people have in their heads.
This situation made me realize that I have privileges that help me identify false allies, problematic traits on teams I have worked with, how to advocate for myself and others, and how to look for the right place in the future. I’ve met friends and colleagues from diverse backgrounds with similar or worse experiences than mine. However, I’ve gathered some points we need to ask ourselves when joining a new team or company: How can I grow here? How are they listening to me or others? Is my work appreciated or silenced? Who is a team player? Who can give good feedback with respect and dignity?
My goal is to open a conversation on how we can help each other to find a place where we belong, a place in which we can thrive, and to share our experiences. We must remember that we all are successful even when one of us is successful.
Liselot Ramirez (she/her)
Software Developer (Frontend) | DKB Code Factory GmbH →
Hi there! I’m Liselot, a software developer from the Dominican Republic, currently working as a Frontend Developer in DKB Code Factory. I put a lot of love into my work, as I believe that science and technology should be instruments of agency for the people. With these values, I went to study for the Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar. In my studies, part of my research included the relation between technology and mental health for the LGBTQA+ community. For my side projects, I like to make small devices that can help with accessibility in the real world, so I’m interested in ubiquitous computing, user interaction, and smart electronics. When I’m not online, you can find me watching football, playing mini-golf, or tinkering with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis.
#careertalk #belonging
Where Product and DEI meet
The businesses and the products we all are working on have the potential to impact the lives of millions. It is essential to look at these millions of users not just as a number but to understand their intent, motivation, and challenges. We want the users not only to be seen but validated, uplifted, and thought of in the product design process. In this talk, I will share the basics of inclusive design, the methodology, and the tools we can and need to use to build impactful products. I will provide some examples and discuss the three main areas of product inclusivity: Belonging- Expanding what’s possible for everyone. Trust and safety- Ensuring our users’ psychological and physical safety during their journey. Crisis response- Supporting our users through critical moments. Hope you join and enjoy the conversation 🙂
Ghonche Tavoosi (she/them)
Senior Product Manager | Adevinta →
Hi, I am Ghonche. I come from Tehran, a place full of life where people get in trouble for the most trivial things. I stand with LGBTQIA and my life outside of liberal hubs is what allows me to truly savour the accomplishments of our global struggle. I burn to figure out how stuff works by meticulously taking it apart and then teaching myself how to make it. Better. For work, I lead efforts of diverse teams to create and improve beautiful, highly functional products. I do this by maintaining an environment that encourages collaboration, one where people feel free to speak up, try stuff out and let ideas flow freely. I rely on iterative work processes, always driven by user feedback, and – in case it wasn’t entirely obvious – I really geek out on data. I guess my career had an early start, as I have somehow accrued 8+ years of experience working on products, but also on entrepreneurial projects in 2 companies I started myself. I am currently responsible for the leasing product of [mobile.de](http://mobile.de) part of Adevinta.
#techtalk #productmanagement
How planet-centric design helps drive innovation that matters?
Many of us are already familiar with the Human-Centric Design approach. It allows us to zoom-in on our customers, their problems, and needs to design the most desirable solutions. Today’s global issues urge us to simultaneously zoom-out on the societal and planetary challenges. We need to create solutions that do not only benefit a single customer but also create a positive impact on our society and environment.
This talk will focus on (1) what planet-centric design is, (2) the importance of thinking about innovation as a system and acting together rather than alone, (3) clear first steps on how anyone in a digital product environment could apply planet-centric design in their work.
Ieva Elena Ladigate (she/her)
Senior Design Strategist | Goodpatch→
Ieva Elena Ladigaitė is an expert in digital product innovation. She helps teams to discover strategic problems and validate solutions that create value for customers, businesses, and our planet long-term. Tools she never leaves behind are the questions ‘Why’ and ‘How might we’, and a stack of yellow post-it notes. With her business expertise, design mindset, and unexpected energizers, she always aims to create an impact that matters to our society. Ieva is based in Berlin and works at Goodpatch, a digital product design firm headquartered in Tokyo.
#techtalk #planetcentricdesign
Skateboarder or Queer - the importance of representation in the skatepark and the workplace
Growing up being a skateboarder and it being the center of my universe I never had any queer rolemodels within the scene and even more the scene was very toxic and queerphobic. When the moment came to out myself, I more and more divided myself from the scene. Nowadays there are queer and even trans professional Skateboarders, but inside a skatepark there is still a lot of toxicity. That taught me a lot about the importance of representation through all layers and in a company through all career steps.
Philipp Ebner (he/him)
Senior People & Culture Operations Specialist | Dept →
Passionate HR professional with strong entrepreneurial and leadership experience. Integral in building effective talent organizations and maintaining employee satisfaction through implementation of strong perks and benefit programs. Managed Teams of up to 180 people with highest people satisfaction through strong focus on communication and problem solving. Experienced in Mentorship and strong interest in everything concerning DEI and sustainability. Global Pride Lead to organize educational and entertaining events for the company LGBTQIA+ community.
#careertalk #representation
How to enter tech and find your first "home"! - career advice from a bootcamp graduate and talent acquisition expert of ImmoScout24
Looking for a more diverse and tolerant city to live in I happened to find my way into tech. I will take you on my journey of continues learning after I graduated from a coding bootcamp and share my failures and lessons learned on my way to find my perfect “work home”. My colleague Alice Wrede, Head of Talent Acquisition at Scout24, will give you insights about how you can improve your personal brand on linkedIn and what questions you should ask to find out whether the company promotes an inclusive culture or if you should continue looking further.
Alice Wrede (she/her)
Head of Talent Acquisition | Scout24 →
Hey folks, I’m Alice – a passionate talent acquisition leader from Berlin. At Scout24 I’m responsible for a team of eight talented talent acquisition experts with the mission to build a diverse workforce where all individuals feel welcome and safe! In my spare time I love to spend my time in nature with my horse and dog. I also travel as much as I can to learn more about new cultures and good food.
I’m excited to meet you in person and help you finding your perfect future work – “home”. Please also hop by our booth! I’d love to get to know you.
Joseph Welling (he/him)
Platform Engineer | Scout24 →
Hiya – I’m Joe! I’m a Berlin based cloud infrastructure engineer with a background in law. After completing my studies and working in law for a few years I realised that I wanted a more dynamic, exciting and challenging field so I moved to Berlin and entered tech! Hopefully you can learn from some of my mistakes and make your transition into tech a little bit easier. I’m a Chess Failure, Plant Dad, Commie, Wine Maker, Hiking Fool and looking forward to meeting you all!
#careertalk #startingintech
Before It's Game Over: Rethinking Gamification
When we talk about gamification, we often act as if there is an inherent magic and power to game mechanics that, when implemented, act as human cheat codes that allow us to motivate (or manipulate) people. But this understanding of gamification presents a great risk to both effective and ethical design. We’ll explore how gamification is really system design, how it relates to your purpose and value, and what you need to do to keep your design ethical.
Melinda Jacobs (she/her)
Founder | Perkio →
Melinda Jacobs is a gamification expert, tech entrepreneur and N7 paragon. She’s a geeky nerd who found a way to combine her love of games and her fascination with people’s behavior into an award-winning expertise. As the founder of the digital experience agency Subatomic, she’s helped companies and organizations develop interactive experiences that change behavior through play, games, and gamification for over 10 years. Her current role is as a founder and co-CEO of Perkio where she’s on a mission to improve the way we approach company culture & wellbeing in organizations. She routinely gives talks around the world on playful design, behavioral science, and technology ethics.
#techtalk #gamification
The Essentials of Tech Due Diligence - what you need to know as a founder or CTO
Some of the most important milestones in the life cycle of a venture-funded startup are financing rounds and often also the successful exit.
These are accompanied by due diligence processes and here more and more often: a tech due diligence. Making a good impression here is the key to success. Often founders and CTOs do not know what to expect.
In this workshop, we want to share the essentials of our experience from several hundred TechDDs and show what a company can do to go into this process top prepared:
– Which aspects are crucial?
– What are dos and don’ts?
– When and how to address problematic issues?
Also, there will be space for Q&A!
Chris Philips (he/them)
Managing Director | Philipps & Byrne →
Chris is the founder and Managing Partner of Philipps & Byrne, a tech advisory company based in Berlin specializing in Tech Due Diligence. He has worked as Interim CTO for over 10 years with many well-known companies. He has performed hundreds of Tech DDs worldwide. Chris is a regular conference and keynote speaker and has contributed to various books regarding Tech & Agile leadership. Chris also is an active business angel and board advisor and has supported various LGBTIQ initiatives.
#techtalk #duediligence
AI @ Deloitte
AI is no longer on the horizon. It’s here now, surrounding us and profoundly affecting how we live and work. There are high expectations towards AI (GPT) but also many challenges on how to implement it. So what is AI? And why is it difficult, but worth it? We’ll shed some light on this.
Björn Bringmann (he/him)
Managing Director | Deloitte →
Dr. Björn Bringmann is a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting GmbH, where he is head of the Deloitte AI Institute, Deloitte’s Center for Artificial Intelligence. He combines over 20 years of experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning with expertise from strategic consulting to support clients from various industries in their digital transformation for sustainable growth. In addition to Deloitte, Björn was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and has published numerous scientific papers for internationally renowned conferences and journals.
#techtalk #AI
Fundraising: How to please your (impact) investor?
You will get a quick intro on how (impact) VCs think and which information they need to see to be more inclined to invest in your startup. This is followed by a 15 minutes Q&A, to answer your individual questions to make the session as practical as it gets.
Karla Schönicke (she/her)
Venture Scout | Ananda Impact Ventures →
With 10 years of experience working in the Berlin startup scene and the last 6 of them in Product (going from Junior to Head of), Karla has seen her fair share of startups and scale-ups from the inside – from 8 to 350 people, B2B and B2C, in FinTech, SaaS, E-Commerce, WealthTech and HRTech.
This year, she decided to switch from the tech industry to Venture Capital. Starting in February, when she co-initiated the first Female Business Angel Academy #FINacademy with the Female Investors Network (FIN) to get more women into startup investments. The second edition will start in October.
Then in June, she joined Ananda Impact Ventures as a Venture Scout leveraging her extensive professional network to find impact startups that fit the investment thesis. In addition, she’s served as a jury member or mentor in several accelerators, such as Venture Villa, Up2B and reaktor.Berlin.
#careertalk #venturecapitalists
The power of Information - Merging UX and Data to reduce bias and build a better world
More than ever, processes are being digitalized for the saque of efficiency, and our digital presence generates several sets of data about each one of us. They tell a lot about our tastes and behaviours – but also as importantly, about how we think and act. On the dark side, we have ethical concerns and data learnings from biased human beings. As tech workers, we have a shared responsibility into making sure the things we build will have a positive and inclusive impact in society. In this talk, I will share knowledge about the possibilities of positively using data and digital information visualization techniques to expose and reduce human bias in sensitive processes – so we can focus on what really matters and bring people together. We’ll discuss practical cases, the role of User Experience design in data products, and share easy practices and methods we all can incorporate into our processes to make sure we are leveraging data into building a better world.
Larissa Dorneles (she/they)
Product Designer| Delivery Hero →
Hey there! I was born and raised in the outskirts of Brazil, dealing with lack of opportunities and a conservative environment that always made me dream about what was different – and better – in other parts of the world. As I grew up aware of prejudice, privileges, human bias and a world that ruins itself by cutting opportunity to many great people, I’ve made it my mission to grow as much as I can, open up the path for the next generations to come, and contribute to a fairer, happier world.
Currently working as a Product Designer at Delivery Hero and leveraging data to build better experiences to delivery riders across 60+ countries, I’ve been proudly working with technology since I was teenager building websites for local businesses. I’ve have built a career around UX, product and data, building digital solutions that make an impact on millions of people around the world. With an academic background in Information Science and past experiences gravitating from software houses, early-stage startups, silicon valley unicorns and social impact ONGs, I believe our roles are not limited by resources or different positions – and we all have the responsibility to generate positive impact and build awesome stuff.
#techtalk #UX #data
Digital Finance - why should a tech person consider working in Finance?
For tech people interested to evolve into business functions, or specialising into one of them, I recommend looking at finance.
A traditionally neglected backoffice function, finance has become a critical success factor in most ventures and is in heavy demand for efficient, digitally guided processes. Also, most finance employees are not very tech-savvy, so that a coordinating function brings much value to the company as a whole, smoothes processes between finance and tech and makes sure finance requests are met in a technically sensible way.
This coordinating function could be called “Finance Technology”.
Veronika von Heise-Rotenburg (she/her)
CFO/MD | everphone GmbH →
Dr Veronika von Heise-Rotenburg is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Co-Managing Director at everphone. In this role, she is responsible for accounting, controlling, data, refinancing and legal for the phone-as-a-service provider. Veronika is a proven expert in digital finance and asset-based financing and has many years of experience in the field of fleet lending.
Before everphone, Veronika, who holds a doctor of law, was with the British online used cars dealer Cazoo. Here, as director of the legal and finance department, she was responsible for the company’s expansion into the European markets on a legal and financial level. She joined Cazoo as part of the acquisition of the car-as-a-service service Cluno, which she led as CFO and Managing Director.
Veronika studied law and economics in Augsburg. She also holds an MBA in General Management from the University of Dayton and a PhD in International Capital Markets Law from the University of Augsburg.
#techtalk #digitalfinance
3 Hacks To Make Your Workplace Communication More Inclusive
In this talk you will learn how to take first steps to make your workplace communication more inclusive.
As companies are striving to become more diverse, inclusive communication is not only an aspect of allyship and appreciation, but also a sought-after skill.
Michael will share 3 easy hacks and tools that you can implement immediately. And he will explain, why these are an important add to an inclusive work environment. Also, there will be time for a short Q&A.
Michael Martens (he/him)
CEO & Founder | Fairlanguage.com →
Michael Martens is co-founder and managing director of Fairlanguage. He advises organizations on all aspects of inclusive communication. Before Fairlanguage, Michael lead and consulted on digital transformation projects and inspired over 100 different groups in workshops and seminars.
#careertalk #inclusivelanguage
💰 PANEL: Investing in diversity beyond gender - why and how?💰
Funds are increasingly emphasizing the importance of female founders – but there are more and equally important diverse founder groups out there, such as LGBTQ+ founders. We will explore the experience of funding LGBTQ+-led startups from both an investor and a founder perspective, and will dive deeper into why we need representation in the ecosystem’s C-suites. Additionally, we want to highlight some of the reasons why our community hasn’t been receiving the same spotlight and capital as other founders, and consider some strategies to improve this going forward.
MODERATOR: Marla Rinne (she/her)
Investment Analyst | Atlantic Labs→
Marla is an investor at Atlantic Labs, one of the most active pre-seed & seed VCs in Europe. She mainly focusses on dev tools, cybersecurity, and health. Previously, she worked as an investor at Partech in Paris.
PANELLIST: Sarah Finegan (she/her)
Director | Antler →
Sarah Finegan is a Director at Antler, an early stage VC. Sarah co-leads Antler’s operations in DACH & Eastern Europe with the founding Partners, where she drives early-stage investments in the region. Embracing her passion for entrepreneurship and tech innovation, she continuously screens and invests in early-stage ventures. Sarah brings a depth of experience working across finance, early stage technology companies and venture capital including with Goldman Sachs, MiddleGame Ventures and Outlier Ventures.
PANELLIST: Oliver Beach (he/him)
Co-Founder | Hyphen →
Founder | Out in Tech UK →
Oliver is the Co-Founder of Hyphen, a talent development platform which empowers organisations to develop Gen Z professionals. He also founded Out in Tech, an LGBTQ+ network, in the UK and built it to over 2,500 members. Oliver was formerly Director/GM at Emeritus, Flatiron School, and Jolt.
PANELLIST: Karla Schönicke (she/her)
Venture Scout | Ananda Impact Ventures →
With 10 years of experience working in the Berlin startup scene and the last 6 of them in Product (going from Junior to Head of), Karla has seen her fair share of startups and scale-ups from the inside – from 8 to 350 people, B2B and B2C, in FinTech, SaaS, E-Commerce, WealthTech and HRTech.
This year, she decided to switch from the tech industry to Venture Capital. Starting in February, when she co-initiated the first Female Business Angel Academy #FINacademy with the Female Investors Network (FIN) to get more women into startup investments. The second edition will start in October.
Then in June, she joined Ananda Impact Ventures as a Venture Scout leveraging her extensive professional network to find impact startups that fit the investment thesis. In addition, she’s served as a jury member or mentor in several accelerators, such as Venture Villa, Up2B and reaktor.Berlin.
#VCpanel #LGBTQfounders
🤔 PANEL: Is tech really a 'gender diversity friendly' field? 🤔
Have you ever been at a tech conference and realized that there’s practically only men surrounding you? This is not a coincidence. In Germany, only about 16% of tech specialists are women, which doesn’t improve by much when you look at other countries. There are multiple reasons why men are overrepresented in STEM fields, so let’s talk about how it affects us and how we could improve that situation. During this panel, we will discuss the experiences and challenges for FLINTA* people in the workplace, as well as strategies to overcome them and support each other in our careers.
MODERATOR: Ross Bermudez (they/them)
Frontend Engineer III | Anaconda →
Ross is a software engineer with nine years of experience, with their main focus being frontend development. For the past few years, they’ve been working in cross-functional teams and gaining experience in mentoring and team management. They’re specially interested in FLINTA* representation in tech, and drives initiatives at her current job to level the playfield for diverse candidates and coworkers. In addition to that, they’re trying to get a FLINTA* group within Unicorns in Tech. Reach out to them to know more!
PANELLIST: Jenn Cartossa (she/her)
Software Development Engineer 2 | Amazon →
Jenn has been a developer for almost a decade, working in a variety of fields and projects. While her main focus has been scalability, Jenn enjoys designing software for diverse users. She is an experienced mentor and consistently advocates for FLINTA people in tech.
PANELLIST: Athena Lam (she/any)
Content Strategist | Piccolo Portfolios
Athena creates content to help individuals and teams shape, show and share their best work. She creates public resources and workplace initiatives supporting LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC professionals and serves as an AsiaBerlin Ambassador. Athena co-founded TEDxYouth@HongKong and MakerBay Hong Kong, and previously served as a Board Member for the non-protifts Yarrow Society and Planet Ally. She has also been featured as an INvolve OUT Rolemodel and as a Prout-at-Work LGBTQ Voices professional.
PANELLIST: Ghonche Tavoosi (she/they)
Senior Product Manager | Adevinta →
Hi, I am Ghonche. I come from Tehran, a place full of life where people get in trouble for the most trivial things. I stand with LGBTQIA and my life outside of liberal hubs is what allows me to truly savour the accomplishments of our global struggle. I burn to figure out how stuff works by meticulously taking it apart and then teaching myself how to make it. Better. For work, I lead efforts of diverse teams to create and improve beautiful, highly functional products. I do this by maintaining an environment that encourages collaboration, one where people feel free to speak up, try stuff out and let ideas flow freely. I rely on iterative work processes, always driven by user feedback, and – in case it wasn’t entirely obvious – I really geek out on data. I guess my career had an early start, as I have somehow accrued 8+ years of experience working on products, but also on entrepreneurial projects in 2 companies I started myself. I am currently responsible for the leasing product of [mobile.de](http://mobile.de) part of Adevinta.
PANELLIST: Michelle Hirsch (she/her)
Head of MATLAB Product Management | MathWorks →
Dr. Michelle Hirsch is the head of MATLAB Product Management and MATLAB Product Marketing, responsible for driving the overall strategy and direction for the scientific computing platform used by millions of engineers and scientists worldwide. Michelle is also an out transgender woman who strives to make it easier for LGBTQ+ people to bring their whole selves to work.
#FLINTApanel #genderdiversity
Trans in Tech: Tolerance is not enough
Nearly 10 years ago, I was grateful to my employer for supporting my gender transition – despite the challenges I had to work through. I was just happy that I wasn’t fired for being trans. We’ll look at what went well and what didn’t go so well to give attendees a sense of how they can be strong allies to their transgender coworkers, or how they might approach transitioning at work themselves. But “not getting fired” is definitely not good enough. We’ll look at the progress since then as transgender employees today seek a true sense of belonging at work, not just tolerance.
Michelle Hirsch (she/her)
Head of MATLAB Product Management | MathWorks →
Dr. Michelle Hirsch is the head of MATLAB Product Management and MATLAB Product Marketing, responsible for driving the overall strategy and direction for the scientific computing platform used by millions of engineers and scientists worldwide. Michelle is also an out transgender woman who strives to make it easier for LGBTQ+ people to bring their whole selves to work.
#careertalk #transintech
How to start an ethical and accessible tech project
In this talk I will share the main things to think about when starting your own tech project to ensure it is ethical and accessible from the get-go, based on my own experience of starting Yourequal UG, a social-impact business that empowers and supports underrepresented and marginalised employees to identify safe places to work.
From shaping your strategy to choosing your legal entity, partners, and tech stack, this talk will walk you through how we built Yourequal UG around ethical and accessible values and our takeaways, so that you can start your own tech project around the values that matter to you!
Lucie Le Naour (she/them)
Co-founder | Yourequal UG →
With a background in linguistics and translation, Lucie entered the Berlin tech scene in 2014, first as a machine translation language specialist, quickly switching over to technical writing, and eventually content design. From working in small start-ups to big tech corporations such as eBay and GitHub, Lucie has seen it all and has a lot to say about working as a queer, female-presenting person in tech! As a co-founder at Yourequal since 2021, Lucie takes care of all things content, product management and community building.
#techtalk #ethicaltech
Queer Sex Toys: Innovations and Opportunities in SexTech
In the past, sex products and SexTech has been designed for genitals. The industry assumed that if they designed products for genitalia then sexuality and gender expression doesn’t matter. They missed the memos about gender dysmorphia, genital diversity, and other more nuanced outlooks on the human condition. In this talk, Lex will discuss where companies miss the mark and highlight some companies doing a good job.
Lex Gillon (she/them)
Founder | Modality Group →
Lex Gillon (she/her) is the CEO and Founder of Modality Group, the market research firm making sex business more data driven. After graduating from Yale University, she started her research career in advertising as Strategic Planner at Ogilvy and Mather and has been conducting market research for 10 years. Lex splits her time between running her company and working in web3 as a project manager at Parity Technologies.
#techtalk #sextech
WORKSHOPS
Britta Cornelißen
Britta Cornelißen
Business Psychologist, Coach, Founder | COACHINGLAB745 →
Hey, I am Britta, business psychologist and coach. I support individuals, organizations and companies with the help of current scientific research to to work on topics such as personality development, self-efficacy and diversity and introduce them in daily life. I am super empathic, bursting of energy and I love empowering others. I am passionate for diversity, (female) empowerment and positive psychology.
Celebrate Your Strengths and Achievements
In my session “Celebrate Your Strengths and Achievements” you will receive quick input on why knowing your individual strengths and celebrating your achievements is a driver for success and happiness (not only) at the work place. Together, we will talk about each others strengths and celebrate our individual achievements.
I am looking forward to getting to know you and what makes you remarkable.
👜 Bring a pen & paper for this workshop
Le Wagon
These workshops are brought to you by the #1 rated coding bootcamp worldwide:
Le Wagon emerged in 2014 as one of the first tech bootcamps in France, offering web development and data science programs. Now, it has grown to a robust global community of tech talents with over 40 Le Wagon campuses in Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, London, Melbourne, Mexico, Montreal, Singapore, São Paulo, Paris, and other cities worldwide. With this expansion, Le Wagon has helped over 15,000 developers, data scientists, designers, and entrepreneurs start their new careers in tech. Eight years on, the school continues to inspire tech aspirants to find their path in the industry.
#1 Learn how to prototype an app with Figma in 2 hours
This workshop is for anyone who wants to try out if UX and UI design might be something to pursue! It’s created for complete beginners.
In this 2 hours workshop, you will:
• Learn how to use tools like Figma, Whimsical, and Maze
• How to prototype an app from start to finish by creating a user flow, using UI Kit, and building a wireframe
• Test how your design performs with actionable metrics
#2 Learn how Machine Learning can reveal gender equality (or inequality)
In this workshop, we will use Python and Pandas to analyse how gender equality (or inequality) reveals itself through data.
In this 2 hours workshop you will learn:
– The logic and foundations behind Machine Learning, to better understand how it can be used and where not to
– Different use cases of Machine Learning and we will give you the chance to solve two of the most typical Machine Learning tasks yourself
– regression and classification
– How to predict the gender pay gap based on some features such as job descriptions, age and other demographics
👜 Bring a laptop for these workshops
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