Retaining Women in Tech

Karen Holtzblatt is a thought leader, industry speaker, and author. As co-founder and CEO of InContext Design, Karen is the visionary behind Contextual Design, a user-centered design approach used by universities and companies worldwide. Her latest book, Contextual Design, 2nd Edition: Design for Life, details the new techniques needed for product innovation today. Recognized as a leader in requirements and design, Karen has been twice honored by the ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction)-an international society for professionals, academics, and students. She was first awarded membership to the CHI Academy and then received the first Lifetime Award for Practice presented in recognition of her impact on the field.

Karen is also the Executive Director of WITops, a non-profit dedicated to finding practical and effective ways to understand and influence the experience of diverse people working in tech companies, especially women. Known for pioneering transformative approaches, in 2013 Karen turned her energy to the challenges of retaining women in technology. Through collaboration with volunteer colleagues and students worldwide, WITops teams have developed the @Work Experience Framework and Measure defining the key workplace experiences needed for women to thrive. Then they turned their attention to solutions, developing critical intervention techniques and materials to help companies improve their culture for diverse teams. All work at WITops is grounded in deep field research and quantitative techniques which drive ideation and iteration of tested solutions.

Karen is a Research Scientist at University of Maryland's iSchool. She regularly consults with universities to help improve their HCI programs-including building in awareness of issues that new workers, especially diverse people, will face. Karen has more than 30 years of teaching experience, professionally and in university settings. Karen holds a doctorate in applied psychology from University of Toronto. Contact Karen with questions at karen@incontextdesign.com.

Nicola Marsden is a professor of social informatics at Heilbronn University, Germany. She combines insights from psychology, software engineering, design research, and organizational behaviour to improve collaboration and foster innovation in technology development. Her research is based on a combination of experience in both academia and industry, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. In her transformation work with people, teams, and organizations she offers a balance between scientific knowledge and a practical approach.

Throughout her career, Nicola has worked toward bias-free equal opportunity for women. Nicola is vice chair of the National Competence Center Technology-Diversity-Equal Opportunities in Germany, a non-profit dedicated to ensuring equal opportunity for women and men in STEM education and industry. The competence center produces research-based resources and developed and coordinates nationwide initiatives such as the Girls' Day or Boys' Day program. This program helps young people choose a profession based on their individual strengths and talents, rather than clichés or gender stereotypes.

Nicola's most recent academic research examines behavioural design to de-bias collaboration, human-computer interaction, and design processes. She has also worked as a key collaborator with Karen Holtzblatt on the mission of WITops to understand and create solutions to retain women in technology.

Her extensive work with corporations also uses a theory-based, practical systems perspective to design, implement and manage innovation projects, change processes, training and development programs, and strategic development projects. Her long-standing experience working with organizations in different countries allows Nicola to translate research into everyday practices to improve group dynamics and perspectives. Contact Nicola with questions at: nicola.marsden@hs-heilbronn.de.