Million Women Mentors Summit & Gala Celebrates Major Milestones for Women in STEM
Washington, DC (PRWEB) October 05, 2016 -- The second annual Million Women Mentors Summit & Gala, held in Washington, DC on October 4 and 5, 2016, brings together leaders with the shared goal of attracting and retaining more women in the STEM workforce through high quality mentorships. Representatives come from industry, higher education, government and nonprofit organizations from around the country for the two day workshop.
Since launching less than three years ago, the movement has accumulated nearly 850,000 pledges to mentor women and girls, of which 400,000 are complete and the movement has committed to securing 1,000,000 pledges by the end of 2016. The two-day event brings together 37 state delegations, many led by Governors and Lieutenant Governors. Currently, 17 Lieutenant Governors serve as chairs of their respective delegations and four will be attending from Alabama, Arkansas, Maryland and New Jersey.
Million Women Mentors (MWM) aims to increase female participation in the STEM workforce by providing a national platform to engage industry, government and implementation partners. It seeks to tap into the tremendous human capital potential of our nation’s employers to excite, inspire and recruit the next generation of STEM professionals. This Summit provides a unique opportunity for partners and sponsors from around the country to share insights into what is working and seek answers to shared challenges. National nonprofit partners participating in the Summit include FIRST, MIND Research Institute and Girls Inc. Leading sponsor corporations will also send delegations including Tata Consultancy Services, BP, Walmart, PepsiCo and Intel. Greta Van Susteren will keynote the Summit Luncheon and Megan Murphy, Washington Bureau Chief and Executive Editor at Bloomberg News, will keynote and emcee the Million Women Mentors Gala.
This year’s Summit takes place at Washington’s historic Omni Shoreham Hotel where hundreds of participants will celebrate accomplishments and focus on solving shared challenges.
Key Summit Highlights include:
New Online Portal - A new, mobile-friendly Million Women Mentors web portal created by Tata Consultancy Services supports mentors and mentoring programs with new features such as the ability to log the progress of working with mentees and sharing documents and resources among communities of mentors, companies and/or girl-serving organizations.
MWM Awards - The Summit concludes with a Gala on the evening of October 5th where 6 awards will recognize excellence over the last year in supporting Million Women Mentors. Award recipients include: State of Tennessee, MIND Research Institute, Science Olympiad, Cognosante, Omega Travel, University of California - Davis and Walmart.
Women’s Quick Facts - The release of a highly anticipated compilation of compelling data facts about women in today's society. The publication will be launched during the Summit luncheon.
As a founding sponsor of Million Women Mentors, Tata Consultancy Services has been a leader in the MWM movement by completing 32,467 mentorships - over twice its initial pledge of 15,000 - and through the design of both the original and redesigned web platforms.
"With over 119,000 women in our own workforce we are a proud founding partner of Million Women Mentors, and deeply cherish the results that this movement has achieved over the past three years. I strongly believe that income equality is the foundation for gender equality & social equity. By bringing together the combined power of purpose, people and technology, we are removing barriers for women in STEM education and careers, helping them realize their full potential. We are proud to support this initiative through mentoring and by providing the technology to enable impactful mentorships in STEM fields." - Balaji Ganapathy, Head of Workforce Effectiveness, Tata Consultancy Services and Vice Chair, MWM Leadership Council.
As the recipient of the Corporate Excellence Award, Walmart Corporation joins a group of leaders who are making an impact across the nation. MWM Awards recognize excellence in reaching new groups of women and girls over the past year. “At Walmart, empowering women in STEM is a key to our success. We’re proud to do this work with Million Women Mentors and honored to receive this award,” said Walmart’s President and CEO Doug McMillon.
The release of the Women’s Quick Facts book creates for the first time a “one-stop shop” for critical data points about women in today's workplace. “The worldwide release of the Women’s Quick Facts is a must have resource and is mission critical to drive targeted enterprise growth enabled to broaden deeper female diversity among the STEM Talent pipeline and STEM workforce,” affirms Heidi Kleinbach-Sauter, SVP, Global R&D, PepsiCo.
To join the conversation on Twitter, follow #mwmsummit2016
To learn more about Million Women Mentors, please visit the website (millionwomenmentors.org).
Ted Wells, STEMconnector®, +1 202-677-5834, [email protected]
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