Students attend Qualcomm EmpowHERment Summit

10/26/2015 Claire Hettinger, ECE ILLINOIS

Qualcomm hosted the EmpowHERment Summit this summer and 12 female students from Illinois attended.

Written by Claire Hettinger, ECE ILLINOIS

Qualcomm hosted the EmpowHERment Summit this summer and 12 female students from Illinois attended. Qualcomm's goal is to disrupt the male-dominated tech environment and encourage women in STEM pursuits.

Anku Adhikari
Anku Adhikari

The purpose of the conference was to encourage young women to be more comfortable with their career perspectives. The students who attended the conference included Anku Adhikari, Archana Manjunath, Ishita Bisht, Kelly Mesa, Lili Su, Naphat (Quinn) Lertratanakul, Molly Pace, Narae Yoon, Renee Tso, and Sarah Shim, as well as Veronica Peterson and Mariya Vasileva, both CS @ ILLINOIS students. 

Molly Pace, a senior and president of Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering, said the conference helped give her confidence and taught her tips for when she's the only woman in a classroom, or once she graduates, on a team of engineers.

“The conference gave me more confidence and it was useful to hear different perspectives," she said, "and learn I’m not alone, people feel the same way, and I’m not being over-sensitive." 

The conference also included an all-night hackathon with the participants focusing on six projects that could benefit from a female perspective, including projects from Girls who Code, PinkThink, and The National Center for Women & Information Technology.

"The projects were all related to women in STEM, which I thought was a good way to showcase how there are still so many issues with that, and also to showcase how females have that kind of unique perspectives to solve those problems," said Veronica Peterson, a junior in CS.

Qualcomm focuses on diversity in the workplace, as well. Peterson worked as an intern at the company over the summer as well as attended the conference. Her experience there served to further assure her of the possibilities for women in technology fields.

“I met with a woman who worked in robotics and who had similar backgrounds and feelings about technology as I did,” Peterson said. “It was a relief to meet someone who had the same type of background and experiences as me and to see that she was doing so well.”

Pace said female engineers gave talks about why women need to be in technology and what they bring to the field.

“There are a lot of women in tech roles, and even at U of I, I haven’t met some of them so it was great to build camaraderie with everyone,” Pace said.

Molly Pace
Molly Pace

Graduate student Anku Adhikari said she gained a valuable networking opportunity talked with potential future collaborators in same research areas and made friends who she still keeps in touch with.

She said the best part of the event for her was the hackathon as it was challenging yet highly rewarding, to learn new skills and complete the task in a short period of time.

"During the conference it was helpful to hear about general challenges other professional women in STEM fields have faced and what they did to overcome it," she said. "Going ahead taking up challenges and proving yourself should be something each women in this field can do to personally to help reduce the gender gap in STEM fields and standout as role models to inspire future generations of girls.”

The women said they were encouraged knowing that other college and professional women were facing similar problems, Peterson said.

“It was good to see there are still role models in the tech world, that do find that work life balance of having both worlds,” Peterson said. “No one is going to say that it is easy to do, but women just need to evaluate what their short-term and long-term goals are.”


Share this story

This story was published October 26, 2015.