How Women In Cloud Drove Leadership, Workforce & Economic Development In The Trillion Dollar Industry in 2021

"A small act is worth a million thoughts." - Contemporary artist?Ai Weiwei?on taking action

It’s no secret that our world has been through an incredible transformation over the past couple of decades, and even more so accelerated by the global pandemic.??COVID, climate change, economic recessions and resurgences, social justice reform, gender inclusivity, among other challenges that we are faced with on a daily basis.??

4 years ago, we made a bet on #collectiveaction as an approach to drive economic access in technology sector via Women In Cloud platform. Every year our network grows in double digits because our ecosystem contributes to developing people and businesses.

At Women in Cloud, we are a community-led economic development organization taking collective action to generate $1B in net new global economic access for women entrepreneurs and professionals by 2030 through partnerships with corporations, community leaders, and policy makers.??All of which are united by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are driven by job creation, technology innovation and sustainable economic access for women.

Data also suggests that Fortune 1000 companies make up over $14.2 trillion in revenue, making up two-thirds of the U.S. economy, according to the latest numbers. Digital transformation powered by cloud computing is estimated to be around $700 billion and 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels by 2025, according to Gartner.

Our approach to unlocking economic access is fueled by collaborative thinking, innovative solutions and collective action. Through our collective contribution model, we leverage the resources of corporations, individual women and allies to drive workforce development, economic development and policy advancements. Through educational programming, events, and committees, members connect, learn, and transform ourselves as we transform industries.

As a collective network, we are leading the transformation of the enterprise market. And the 2021 collective impact results validates our contribution in six ways of transforming people and companies:

#Female Founders Building Cloud Solutions For the Trillion Dollar Enterprise Market: In the past few years, we have graduated over 70 companies through the cloud accelerator with a total valuation of over $350M. All of them listed on Women In Cloud and Microsoft Marketplace, winning enterprise brands, and most of them have doubled their customer portfolio in the enterprise market.

#Leadership Representation: Over 1200 leaders inspired the technology ecosystem via our four signature stages and industry stages. At our 2022 Annual Summit, we will provide access to over 200+ leaders to share their perspectives, solutions, and commitment to drive inclusion in the market. In addition, via the #WICxAllies Inaugural Award, we will be showing allies in our ecosystem who are proactively sponsoring and advocating for inclusion.

#CloudSkilling Program: To address the key issue around workforce development, we partnered with Coursera and Microsoft to make Azure skilling and certification scholarships. We have delivered over 1500 scholarship and wrap-around services over the last 8 months.?

#empowHERfamily: To address the COVID crisis in India, #empowerHERfamily, a cross-sector economic relief initiative has been launched to empower 1M women in India to have an effective future by curating actionable digital solutions to provide economic relief. The network stepped up to raise $60K to save 150 families out of poverty in 3 months.

Business Introductions: The COVID19 research report suggested that the community needed warm introductions to connect, learn and grow their network. We launched the Get Introduced app, and Cloud Leader circles within our signature events to provide access to over 2500 introductions to help the network connect with each other resulting in 5000 hours of contributions.

#Leadership Spotlights: In partnership with M12, we’ve also launched the #empowHERaccess digital advocacy campaign to spotlight more than a hundred champions, including thought leaders, technology entrepreneurs, role models, advisors, mentors, and other allies of women in tech. The digital spotlight campaign reached more than 1.4M impressions and 144K people across social media channels.

Download the #CollectiveImpact Report

Don't miss the Women In Cloud Annual Summit 2022. Start 2022 off right and join our movement of Collective Influence by sharing event access with your team members, customers and anyone you feel would benefit from?Women?In?Cloud’s impactful content.?

What to expect??

• Hear from?Innovative Thinkers and Thought Leaders?like Pamela Maynard (CEO of Avanade), Joyce Mullen (President of Insight North America), Rodney Clark (CVP at Microsoft), and Gavriella Schuster (Ex. Microsoft CVP, Board of Director) and 130+ speakers
• Enhance your?Leadership & Professional Skills?with our Bootcamps & Skill-Building Workshops
• Celebrate?Female Tech Founders?at the #CloudInnovateHER Global Pitch Challenge &?Cloud?Accelerator Graduation?
• Ask our WIC?Cloud?Leaders Challenging Questions at the?Focused Roundtable Discussions

My sincere gratitude to all the people who have joined the movement to drive inclusion and equity for all. Happy New Year to all of you.

A Gift of Free Complimentary Access to WICxAnnualSummit2022:

We have 50 FREE complimentary tickets available for @WICxAnnualSummit2022… and ALL you have to do is submit a question to the?#WomenInCloud?Town Hall! In addition to gaining a free complimentary ticket ($149 value), you will get your question answered by the?#WomenInCloud?Leadership and Board of Advisor community!

Your questions can range from general questions like “What are new programs in 2022?” to personal questions such as “I am struggling to get access to recruiters, how can WIC help?”

Seize the opportunity to get guidance from industry leaders by submitting your question by January 14th!?https://lnkd.in/gEG64CwQ?

If your question is selected for the Town Hall discussion, you will receive an email to redeem your free ticket. Take time to ask meaning and valuable questions for the community to thrive together.?

See you all in two weeks as we celebrate collective impact and personally commit to becoming a better version of ourselves to lead inside and the world. Together, we rise.