Tech Diversity Awards 2022
On Thursday 26 May, some Melbourne-based Salsarians took the opportunity to come together and support diversity in our industry. With COVID-19 and the many Melbourne lockdowns it was the first time in years (literally) that we’d been at such a large social gathering…around 500 people!
The evening started with a foyer reception, where we managed to get a quick photo with Salsa Board member and co-founder of the Tech Diversity , Deirdre Diamante.
After the foyer reception we went inside for dinner.
Welcome to country
The welcome to country started with a video of members from the Wurundjeri Council performing an indigeonous dance. Council member Stacie Piper then spoke about her experiences of country.
Tech Diversity Academy launched
Next, Tech Diversity Director Luli Adeyemo took to the stage and officially launched the Tech Diversity .
Keynote speaker — Ally Watson
The evening’s keynote speaker was Ally Watson (OAM), Founder and CEO of Code Like a . Ally talked about being the only girl in her university IT class in Scotland, about being told during job interviews ‘You’d be our first female hire’ and about her move to Australia.
After she relocated to Australia she decided she wanted to meet other women in tech and decided to host an event. She was expecting about 10 people, but 100 women turned up. And that was the start of Code Like a Girl.
It was a fascinating keynote that showed how far we’ve come, but also how far we’ve still got to go.
The award winners
We’d like to congratulate the 2022 award winners. All the winners, merit recipients and nominees show us diversity in tech in action. Through the winners, diversity in all its forms is celebrated, including gender diversity, neurodiversity, racial diversity and people with disability.
The winners are:
Business — STEM
Education — Generation
Government — Tailored Talent Program (NSW Public Service and )
Marketing, media and advertising — Return to Work Program
Tech for good: health and wellbeing — Zooming in on a vision for health and wellbeing (Blind Sports & Recreation )
Tech for good: environmental sustainability — SolA 2021 by Solar
Tech for good: social impact — She’s a
Diversity Atlas results
Before the last set of awards, we also heard about the results from the event’s diversity survey, conducted by Diversity . With over 200 respondents, the results covered stats such as age, gender, generation by gender, LGBTIQ identification, disabilities, and languages spoken at an advanced level. There were lots of interesting stats, such as the generation by gender (71.4% of the Gen Z attendees were women, whereas 52.6% of the Boomers were women). We also had two Jedis in the audience!
Tech diversity pledge
Attendees were also encouraged to take the tech diversity and inclusion , to help promote diversity and inclusion and to make it all happen faster.
Salsa’s take
It was a wonderful evening for us all…a great time to catch up with other Salsarians and enjoy wonderful food, but more importantly it was an honour to be celebrating tech diversity. And yes, I was the only woman on the Salsa table, but only because two other female Salsarians got sick at the last moment!
