| Welcome to our first MassWIT newsletter. MassWIT's mission is to support and enable women to reach their career and personal goals. Although there are thousands of professional working women there hasn't been an easy way to connect with each other and share insights and resources. MassWIT helps to make that process happen.
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Suzanne Zellner,
Executive Director |
MassWIT's position is that all of us can help each other in different ways. Experienced women can mentor younger women and help them steer through the pitfalls that may be face them. Women fresh out of school or even in school now can help us understand what the generation "raised with the Internet" views as important. Techie women can provide the technological perspective, and business women in the tech sphere – the vast majority of women who work in and around technology but don't have technology backgrounds themselves – can bring the business viewpoint to the conversation. So we use the lists, our events, and now communication via our e-newsletter to bring these different viewpoints together.
We hold events monthly, we don't charge dues, and our activities and events are sponsored by corporations who want to help women in technology advance in their careers. Our events have featured female CEOs, journalists, and other prominent women in the tech and general business. Events are a great way to network and meet other MassWIT members.
We are constantly looking ahead at what we want to accomplish and figuring out how we are going to fit it into our already busy lives. Just as important is to acknowledge our successes, celebrate them, and see what we have learned from them before we move on to the next big thing.
On that note, it is incredible how much has been accomplished at MassWIT in the last year. I feel like I have just started to tap the incredible wealth of knowledge, experience and energy that are represented by our membership. Let me celebrate some of our many successes:
- MassWIT organizational goals were developed this past winter to help us focus our efforts and determine where we would spend our time. The Executive Committee chose three areas of focus for 2002 and with those in mind we have been working hard to line up speakers for events, select organizations with whom we would like to partner, and identify other ways we can accomplish our goals. Our focus has been to:
1) Promote women leadership, and women in leadership positions
2) Grow the organization to over 2002 members in 2002
3) Help our members strive for work-life balance
- We had our first event in the September 2001 and never looked back. We have had panel events, speaker workshops, co-sponsored job fairs, and hosted pure networking events. The monthly free events have been incredibly successful and have grown in number with each event. We are fortunate to have hosted wonderful, high caliber speakers who have generously shared their insights and ideas with us. We hold events the first Thursday of the month to help our members plan their calendars in advance, but some months we have had more than one event!
- The list*serv is the core of MassWIT and is an incredibly active community resource. It is a great way to expand your network, get a recommendation, or find a job lead. And every month there are more MassWIT members to whom you can connect, either on the list or at our monthly events. We have more than doubled our membership in the past 12 months to more than 1,700 today!
- We have now launched an e-newsletter to keep you in the loop on what is happening at MassWIT, to help us keep a pulse on your needs, and in the future to introduce you to some of the outstanding members of MassWIT. We will also let you know how you can get more involved.
I also want to thank the Executive Committee from last year (Gwyn Thakur, Barbara Bix, Sonny Kim, Heather DeSimone, Jayne Wilson, Deb Lally, and Asha Radhakrishnan) and our incredible volunteers whose hard work has made the past 12 months so successful. We have been having a lot of fun and we couldn't have done it without you!
I invite members to join me in building and organizing MassWIT, to take the organization to the next stage of development. I want to bring in more volunteers at all levels, whether you are interested in joining the Executive team to help run the organization, joining one of the committees, you want to help out at an event, or something in between. Whatever your level of interest or time commitment, there will be a way for you to get more involved and reap the benefits of more actively engaging with other successful professional women.
Keep an eye out for more information on how you can become more involved.
I look forward to seeing you at our next event, on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Sun Micromeetings are held
on the first Thursday of every month from 6:30 to 8:30 at Sun Microsystems Burlington campus.
Cheers,
Suzanne
You can reach me directly at szellner@attbi.com