Piloto 151, Evertec launch speaker series on female tech leaders in P.R./LatAm
With the purpose of increasing women’s participation in the technology sector, Piloto 151, with its series Womentechover, and Evertec, announced the launch of a speaker series in Puerto Rico and Latin America to highlight the stories of female leaders in the industry who can serve as role models and help move the diversity needle.
The series will launch with Myra Ruiz, vice president of banking delivery channels at Evertec. Her talk, “Disrupting Agile,” will focus on how to maximize agile methodology tools in the context of emerging technologies.
Agile refers to an iterative development process that increases agility, speed and flexibility in projects to respond to clients’ needs.
“We continue to forge alliances and launch new initiatives to foster greater diversity in STEM fields at all levels. Greater diversity translates to increased innovation levels and performance at the organizational level,” said Alexandra López-Soler, senior vice president of marketing, communications and innovation at Evertec.
Last week Evertec launched a working group of female leaders in STEM fields to increase the number of female students applying to Evertec’s Scholarship Program.
According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, at the national level women represent only 25% of all computing jobs, only 11% of top executive positions at Silicon Valley companies and just 5% of startups are founded and led by women.
In addition, only 28% of computer science degrees are awarded to women. In Latin America, the statistics are even more grim.
A 2014 Mozilla Firefox survey found that less than 7% of all programmers in Peru were women, only 10% of programming jobs in Mexico were occupied by women and in Chile, women’s participation in the field was only 5%.
“This strategic partnership will allow us to inspire more women to pursue careers and opportunities in the tech sector by leveraging Evertec’s female leaders, both in Puerto Rico, as well as in the Latin American region,” said Sofia Stolberg, co-founder at Piloto 151.
“If we want to push the needle and change the statistics, then we have to expose more women to the experiences and accomplishments of successful women in the field,” she said.
The first talk in the series, which is part of a greater partnership between Evertec and Piloto 151, will take place Oct. 2. Those interested in attending the free event can register HERE.
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