With much excitement and anticipation, I joined CodeCraft’s Marketing Manager, Halie Noble, in front of the Boulder Theater yesterday for one of the best tech events I’ve attended this year. There was a line of excited investors, founders, friends, family, and women entrepreneurs and business leaders buzzing around the front of the theater, not to mention a full steel-drum band ushering us into the venue. The energy was electrifying.
What followed, after a dynamic introduction from MergeLane’s Executive Director, Sue Heilbronner, was a series of speakers passionately advocating for more women to enter both the tech and startup spaces, and for these women to get the funded! The speakers, who were well-established founders, budding entrepreneurs, and proud mentors, rocked the crowd as they introduced incredible new products and services ready to disrupt industries across the globe. (My favorites included: Alchemie, Globig, and BallotReady.)
One of the moments that I will never forget is listening to the incredible Azure Antoinette - dubbed the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation - whose prose brought both laughter and joy to the audience - and then tears to my eyes as she talked about the struggle that we face as women creators and entrepreneurs.
My favorite line from her poem goes something like this:
No one is foolish enough to bottle a shooting star
Her words reminded me of the toughness, tenacity, resilience and above all courage that we must all muster when entering the startup world, where many of us are riding bikes as we build them. Sometimes the weight of carrying a new business can be crushing, we can feel underprepared, and entering the unknown can be terrifying, but Azure’s words reassured us to keep charging ahead.
She reminded me that I am blazing a path for future women leaders in the tech and startup spaces and although this work is never done, we are carrying the torch forward and lighting the path for others to follow in our footsteps.
As the campus director of CodeCraft, a boutique coding school in Boulder, CO, I am proud of our mission, which is to diversify the tech industry by bringing more women, minorities and diversity into this space - including diversity of thought, experience, culture, and socioeconomic status.
Together at CodeCraft, we are all disrupting the tech industry in ways that will make it a better and more humane space for future generations. I am proud to be a woman leader in this company and I can’t wait to be inspired by the next round of women leaders in MergeLane’s 2017 Demo Day!