Inclusive Digital Transformation, since 2014
The Digital Leadership Institute has the honour of inviting our key stakeholders and community members to join us in celebrating the fifth edition of the European Ada Awards, recognising top European girls and women in tech and the organisations supporting them, AND the success stories of the 2017 Digital Brusselles project, with support from our wonderful partners and the Digital Belgium Skills Fund. Join us by registering at this link!
Congratulations to the finalists of the 2017 European Ada Awards, a global initiative recognizing outstanding girls and women in digital studies and careers across Europe, and the organisations who support them! Join us on 30th of November at BeCentral, Cantersteen 12 in Brussels to the 2017 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles Celebration where the winners will be announced!
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2017 European Digital Women of the Year™ Award Finalists:
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Cat Lamin – Consultant at Pi-Top (United Kingdom)
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Cat is a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified Teacher. She initiated an event called Coding Evening for Teachers in UK that brings together teachers, coding professionals and tech enthusiasts and allows them to work together to discuss ideas for the classroom. Her independent work has led to her being invited to Brazil to train and speak to a number of Brazilian teachers about the importance of computational thinking and basic computer science skills. She is a role-model for young, female coders and a lot of her outreach work includes working with groups that are actively encouraging girls to get involved with coding, including girls-only CoderDojos in London.
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Pascale Van Damme, Vice President and General Manager at Dell EMC Commercial Belux and Head of EMEA NATO & NATO Alliances, President Agoria Digital Industries (Belgium)
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When she started at Dell, Pascale was the only woman on the local leadership team. Tackling being female leader challenge in a positive way along with the learning experience is what motivated her to start building alliances to raise awareness around gender equality and bring about change. Pascale has been active for years in mentoring young women, speed-dating with students and coaching female entrepreneurs. She is a role model to women thinking about entering a career in the digital world and to those who have started a career within Dell. She regularly “talks the talk” and “walks the walk” regarding the skills needed for a career in tech, at high-level events such as the NATO’s annual cyber symposium NIAS where as a speaker she raised awareness around the need for female talent in cybersecurity along with diversity and inclusion in any future-oriented organization.
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Egle Ciuoderiene, International Cooperation Advisor at the Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology (Lithuania)
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Egle inspires people of all ages to take part in the ICT industry through whatever means, despite any boundaries imposed by the society. She continuously shares her experience in breaking the industry’s boundaries through interviews and personal communication. Egle always emphasises that girls should not be afraid of the digital occupations, as she herself has made a successful transfer from a humanitarian background. Egle shares her experience and motivates women to partake in the fields of Computer Science – she has recently joined the Baltic Institute of Advanced Technology, which aims to create, develop and disseminate scientific knowledge and expertise about in the field of technology and innovation.
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2017 European Digital Impact Organisation of the Year™ Award Finalists:
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Teen-Turn (Ireland)
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Teen-Turn works with companies throughout Ireland to cross the digital divide by providing hands-on work experience in technology career environments to teenaged girls from disadvantaged communities in order to address the industry’s social inclusion, gender disparity and skills shortage challenges.
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Girls’ Day (Germany)
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Girls’ Day is an organization that invites technical enterprises, enterprises with technical departments and technical training facilities, universities, and research centres to present themselves at an open day for girls called Girl’s day.
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StartHer (France)
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The mission of the French group is particularly to thrive women into the technology sector and to encourage diversity in a traditionally male environment. StartHer organized many events throughout the years, either in the form of a mini-conference around a specific topic with people who work in the tech sector or through a Happy Hour of pure networking to facilitate trade within the networks.
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2016-2017 European Digital Girl of the Year™ Award Finalists:
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Under 10 year-old category
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Helena Staple (United Kingdom)
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Helena is a regular member of a CoderDojo Ham, a volunteer-led free coding club for youngsters based at Kingston University London. After becoming proficient in Scratch she moved on to learning Python. Over the last year she has developed a strong interest and commitment to mentoring younger children learning Scratch. From a shy start she has grown in confidence and communication skills, and is now at ease helping children considerably older than her. She created a wonderful project to make a personalised interactive Birthday Card in Scratch and developed a great instruction handout entirely on her own. This has become one of our most popular Scratch activities. Older children trying it are constantly astonished that it was made by such a young ninja!
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Zara Ilyas (Ireland)
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Zara has attended CoderDojo since the beginning and came to every Robotics session. She has an insatiable passion for technology and learning, and is a reliable partner and an inspiration for other young girls that share the same interest.
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Ruby Scott Kenny (Ireland)
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Together with her good friend Zara, Ruby is a regular participant to the CoderDojo events, inspiring other girls and her professors alike. She is always keen to support her colleagues in understanding technology and always interested in learning more.
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11-14 year-old category
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Aoibheann Mangan (Ireland)
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Aoibheann Mangan has been working hard promoting technology and coding for girls over the last number of years delivering workshops in her local education centre and school. She has been a mentor with Coder Dojo in Cloghans Hill Coder Dojo and Robeen coder dojo for the last 2 years delivering workshops to lots of boys and girls many of whom have no internet or computers at home. Aoibheann has encouraged girls to give it a go and do their best and made several workshops girls only events where she has shown them that girls can do anything they want when it comes to digital skills. Aoibheann has campaigned in Ireland for better internet for rural Ireland highlighting how unfair it is for young people growing up with no broadband.
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Charlotte Johnson (United Kingdom)
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Charlotte has really enjoyed the fun and skills at CoderDojo Scotland. She had a great experience at Coolest Projects 17, at CodeEU17 and was named one of three coding rising stars in UK 2017. She partnered with one of her coding colleagues with whom she is working on a project for Coolest Projects 18.
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15-17 year-old category
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Maeve Galvin (Ireland)
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Maeve has won her age category in the Tech Week Ireland Scratch competition for three years running. She is now a mentor teaching younger children Scratch in her local CoderDojo, giving up her free time every weekend and preparing lessons every week.
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2017 European Ada Awards and Digital Brusselles Celebration:
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2017 European Ada Award Winners will be announced at the fifth annual European Ada Awards Ceremony on 30 November 2017 at BeCentral, Cantersteen 12, ahead of the celebration of the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Lady Ada Lovelace! Public attendance is welcome but registration at this link is required!
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On 28 September in Brussels, Ms. Cheryl Miller, Founder and Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute, joined the first meeting of the Governing Board of the European Commission’s Digital Skill and Jobs Coalition, to which Ms. Miller has been appointed for a two-year term.
Ms. Miller joins representatives of eleven other Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition stakeholders in the Governing Board, whose organisations represent pledging members, national coalitions, and Coalition social partners.
On 25 October in Brussels, the Digital Leadership Institute launched Digital Brusselles, Europe’s first female tech incubator, with the mission of promoting inclusive digital transformation by increasing leadership of girls and women in the digital society. The launch event, which took place as part of the first Open Door Day at BeCentral, was supported by the Digital Belgium Skills Fund and dozens of DLI partners, and attended by hundreds of DLI community members.
Ms. Saskia Van Uffelen, CEO of Ericsson Belux and Digital Champion of Belgium, provided a keynote to kick off the launch event and was joined in a panel on “The Heart of Inclusive Digital Transformation,” moderated by Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, by luminaries from the Belgian and European technology ecosystem noted below:
The opening panel was followed with inspiring talks by Ms. Manon Van Hoorebeke, 2014 Digital Girl of the Year, and Ms. Christine Gerpheide, Senior Cloud Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services. Over the course of the afternoon, Ms. Sandrine Droubaix — DJ Sand — and Ms. Valentina Càla, DLI Digital Creative Officer, led hands-on digital music composition workshops for participants of the Digital Muse After School program and BeCentral’s Open Door Day .
The DLI Board and Executive Team are actively involved in initiatives with partners and stakeholders around the world that promote ESTEAM* leadership by girls and women. This month, DLI was selected as one of the Best 100 Startups in Belgium, and DLI team members joined Digital First on 19 October to celebrate. Also, as part of DLI activities supported by the Digital Belgium Skills Fund, on 25 October in Brussels we launched Digital Brusselles, Europe’s first female tech incubator. See the article about our recognition here and a video about the Digital Brussels launch below.
*Entrepreneurship & Arts powered by Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
6 September – Women in Tech.Brussels Breakfast (Brussels): On 6 September, Ms. Katja Legisa, Digital Brusselles Director, joined a Women in Tech.Brussels breakfast meeting to contribute to coordinating upcoming initiatives that promote women in technology in Brussels.
13 September – EIB Gender Action Plan Expert Engagement Meeting (Brussels): On 13 September in Brussels, Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, contributed to an expert meeting on the Gender Action Plan of the European Investment Bank.
15 September – Creative Ring Brussels “Women in Innovation” Meeting (Brussels): On 15 September at the BOZAR Lab in Brussels, Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, contributed to a Creative Ring meeting on the topic of Women in Innovation.
19 September – Women in Business.Brussels Platform Meeting (Brussels): Ms. Katja Legisa, Digital Brusselles Director, and Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, joined the 19 September meeting of the Brussels Women in Business platform.
26 September – WISE4ALL Launch Event: Women Contributing to Innovation (Brussels): On 26 September, Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, joined the WISE4ALL launch event at the European Parliament, in collaboration of MEP Pina Picierno and with support from the S&D Group, as part of a pan-European consortium promoting diversity in innovation. On the same occasion, Ms. Miller contributed to a round-table on Digital Manufacturing and New Innovation Processes.
28 September – First Meeting of the Governing Board of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition (Brussels): Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, joined the meeting of the first Governing Board of the European Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition on 28 September at the European Commission in Brussels. Ms. Miller was recently selected to the inaugural 12-member governing body of the DSJC.
4 October – Grand Opening of BeCentral (Brussels): On 4 October in Brussels, the DLI Team will join the grand opening of BeCentral, a community space in the heart of Brussels dedicated to closing the digital skills gap and accelerating Belgium’s digital transformation.
9 October – Women Code Festival 2017 Launch (Brussels): On 9 October at Co.Station in Brussels, Ms. Katja Legisa, Digital Brusselles Director, will contribute to a panel discussion as part of the launch of Brussel’s first-ever Women Code Festival.
19 October – Digital First 2017 (Brussels): DLI was selected among the Best 100 Startups in Belgium in 2017 by a jury organised by media company Digimedia. Ms. Valentina Calà, DLI Digital Creative Officer, and Ms. Katrien Geraedts, DLI Marketing & Communications Manager, were on hand at Digital First 2017 on 19 October, at Tour & Taxis in Brussels, to celebrate.
11 October – InnovIris Women in STEM Panel (Brussels): As part of the Brussels Women Code Festival and European Code Week, on 11 October Ms. Cheryl Miller, DLI Founder, provided a keynote presentation on Digital Brusselles: The Heart of Inclusive Transformation and contributed to a Women in STEM panel organised by InnovIris, the Brussels agency for scientific research.
Be sure to visit our Calendar, Upcoming Activities page, and sign up for the DLI Newsletter in order to keep up with DLI events and activities!
