Inspiring Women February 2021

February 2021, Volume 5, Issue 1

2

profiles
7
CONTENTS
Encouraging Women Worldwide:
Bev Bachmayer tells us about lifting
women up via tech.
29
Creating Websites: Debbie Hastings tells
us about how she came to learn how to
create webites.
11
Creating
Impactful
Social Media
Posts: Adelina
Matinca talks
about finding a
new career with
social media.
40
Overcoming
Obstacles One
at a Time:
Maria Barros
Weiss talks
about the many
obstacles she’s
had to
overcome.
18
24
Developing “Curious Mind TV”:
Irem Sunar tells us about the new resource
she has created for children.
Keeping FAWCO
Tech Savvy: Cat
Conner talks about
her life as a
technology
consultant.
50
Specializing in
Web Security:
Susan Spälti
discusses her time
dealing with web
security.
We appreciate the support of our advertisers!
Advertisers Index
The Short List p.2 The Short List assists students with the college admissions and application process.
Ask your club to schedule a webinar to acquaint members on how to get started.
London Realty Intl. p.4 London Realty Intl. is owned by AWC London member Lonnée Hamilton, a
worldwide property consultant. Her firm works with the best agents across the globe to fulfill your
property needs.
London & Capital p.10 Whether you are a US Citizen living abroad, or a foreign entity with US
reporting, their dedicated teams take care of your wealth, giving you time to concentrate on the things
that matter to you. London & Capital has been supporting FAWCO since 2016.
Lauren Mescon, Rodan + Fields p.17 Lauren, member of AWC Amsterdam, has been an independent
skincare consultant for the past decade. Rodan+ Fields is world-renowned for their products.
Ponte Travels p.23 Ponte Travel Operating Director and FAWCO member Mary Stange offer
customized service and exclusive access to the world’s most fascinating places while working
responsibly to give back to local economies.
Janet Darrow Real Estate p.31 Around the corner or a world away, contact Janet Darrow, FAUSA
member, to find the best properties.
The Pajama Company p.46 The Pajama Company, founded by Ellie Badanes, member of FAUSA and
AW Surrey, sells pajamas that are cozy, cheerful and online!
3

features
14
Women in
Technology: A
historical
perspective on
influential
women in
technology.
36
Get Work
Done and
Have Fun
Virtually: A
step-by-step
guide to how to
collaborate
virtually.
21
27
What is Data Privacy?: What does it
mean when people talk about this
knotty topic?
FAWCO and Tech in Times of
COVID-19: What changes have
happened for FAWCO in the last 12
months?
44
47
ThePajamaCompany.com and Me:
Setting up an online business –
challenges and rewards.
Googling My
Way From
Journalism to
Engineering
and Back:
using Google as
a way of finding
answers and
help.
32
in every issue
Introducing
AWC Perth,
Australia: Club
President and
FAWCO Rep
tells us more
about their
club.
53
Why I Design for the AIWCD: Does
giving your time, for free, to your club
have any benefits for you personally?
5
6
Letter from the Editor
Rewiring the
Power: Magazine
founder Elsie
Bose looks at how
to find the gold
ring.
56
57
57
Inspiring You
The Inspiring Women Team
Acknowledgements
58 The Next Issue
59 “That’s Inspiring!”
60 Featured Photos
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Letter From The Editor
From a technological point of view, I am very much on the user rather than
creator side of the fence. Mathematically capable, certainly not gifted, I
definitely did not take after my Mum in this field. She was a mathematical
wizard who absolutely loved solving those complex mathematical equations
that gave so many of us heartache at school! She did things like solving
calculus problems for fun!
Mum was a Mathematics professor at the local university throughout my childhood, so whilst I did not
have her fascination for the field, I do think the fact that a woman could excel in this area was very
obvious to me. It’s not the case for all girls, sadly.
I also got first hand experience of her ability to teach this sometimes baffling subject to those less
personally gifted at maths. I remember vividly her setting me maths puzzles over breakfast for many
months in the lead up to an exam I was due to sit. Her relentless drilling got the desired result when,
against the odds, I got the top grade in “O” level Mathematics.
At the memorial service held to celebrate Mum’s achievements in an all too shortened life, we all loved
the image a former student, who spoke at the service, painted of her up in heaven teaching the angels
maths. Ever the teacher.
Today I am fortunate not to need to do more complicated mathematical puzzles than those involved in
household finances, grocery shopping and so on. But I am a big user of technology, although I
understand the mechanics of it very poorly indeed. How on earth does a mobile phone work? How does
Google tell me the answer to my latest query? How does Netflix get the latest episode of The Crown or
Bridgerton straight to me?
The women in this issue are so much more tech savvy than most of us. They have embraced tech and
used it in so many different ways both academically and practically, all of which you can read about in
the stories in this issue. As long as women like these understand tech for us, like the bumble bee,
maybe we can continue to fly anyway.
In the middle of a global pandemic, we have needed our tech, even more than we’d probably thought
possible, to maintain contact with our families and loved ones. Sometimes endless meetings on Zoom
can be exhausting, but I can not imagine how much harder this challenging time would be without tech
savvy people having come up with ways for us to stay in touch. So I give thanks that, like my Mum, these
tech savvy women have been using their skills and talents on our behalf. Thank you, ladies, and keep up
the good work!
I hope you enjoy this tech savvy issue. A request from me if I may: there is a short, five question survey
about the magazine here (p. 56.) We really would appreciate it if you could find a few minutes to
respond so we can keep improving the magazine for you, our readers.
Please stay healthy, happy and safe.
Best, Liz xx inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org
“A
erodynamically, the
bumble bee shouldn't be
able to fly, but the
bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on
flying anyway.” Mary Kay Ash
5

Rewiring
the Power
Technology careers aren’t for everyone, but they
are an option for all women. Inspiring Women
Magazine founder Elsie Bose, FAUSA, has been
thinking about power and women.
I have been thinking a lot about power these days. Not just the power that
the new technology requires – electrical power, bandwidth, speed etc. – but
the power it exerts as it enters and pervades every corner of our lives.
Capturing and controlling that power is the gold ring to the future.
I think, like most, the introduction of tech into our lives was a combination
of curiosity, amusement, frustration and eventually, acceptance. And while
most of us were working out what was happening, the industries that are
“technology” marched forward.
Unfortunately, for the most part, women were not part of the parade.
The women profiled in this issue are attempting to change that. A brief glance at their backgrounds and
experience truly blows the mind. They are software engineers, web security experts, logistic specialists,
web designers, graphic designers, social media mavens and more. What they “do” is incredibly
interesting and, at times, unbelievably mind-boggling! But the significant and important piece in all of
their stories is how they use technology and their skills to bring others along.
Their desire to share, teach and to encourage other women or youth will help to demystify the aura that
surrounds those who hold the power in the technology world. It will level the playing field. And like so
many other fields before this one, women will march forward on it and make their grab for that gold
ring for themselves.
Elsie advertising@fawco.org
6

PROFILE
Encouraging
Women
Worldwide
Bev Bachmayer, member and
current FAWCO Rep for AWA
Vienna, tells us about her efforts
to lift women up to a better life
with tech.
I was born in San Mateo, California, but moved to
the Central Valley of California when I was four; I
grew up in the rural community of Waterford. In
order for me to start kindergarten early, my
mother changed the birth date on my birth
certificate, as I was reading and writing early in
my fourth year. My parents built a house next to
my paternal grandmother’s, so I always could
walk next door and spend hours with her. As my
mother worked most of the day, my grandmother
was my sounding board for everything. Most of
my days were spent either swimming in the
canals in summer or sitting with my grandmother
and learning to sew.
Our family in 2005
Bev Bachmayer
My father believed I was his first son, my brother
being younger than me. I was encouraged to help
him in the heating and air conditioning business,
troubleshooting air conditioning units that were
not working. I remember crawling under houses
to help with units and testing them in the shop. I
was fascinated with finding out how to test
something to make it work.
High school and beyond
At 16, I entered my senior year of high school. As I
had completed all of the math and science classes
offered at my high school, I began taking
“computer classes” at the local community
college. Mind you, this was in the late 60s, and the
“computer” was a huge mainframe; plugging in
the wires for the “program” board made perfect
sense to me after working on AC units. I excelled
in this class and at the typing of the data on the
punched cards – as I had learned to type, like
most women were encouraged to do.
I am fascinated by technology and always have
been; troubleshooting is my forte, which is a
requirement for identifying issues. Whether it is
learning how to sew a complicated sleeve or
debugging a program, I easily identify the steps to
get the ideal result.
At 18, I married, quit college, and two years later,
had my first daughter. The second followed two
years after that. I moved to Oregon with my
husband, but four years later, found myself a
single mother with no real skills.
With my older sister Karen when I was about four
College was the first thought in my mind, so I
signed up at the local community college and
restarted my computer science degree,
graduating in 1983 with my bachelor’s degree. (In
7

Being in Europe gave me huge opportunities to
really begin working on standards and
optimization documents and algorithms.
Additionally, I started doing optimization trainings
for universities and discovered I really like
teaching people. I loved to see eyes widen when
someone understood the concepts.
Appearing as part of an Intel campaign on diversity
time, I went on to study for an MBA with a minor
in modelling and simulation.)
In those days studying computer science, I had to
cope with fellow students not understanding that I
knew what I was talking about. As the only woman
in the class, I obviously was there to find a husband
and couldn’t have a clue about computers.
Within nine months of graduating, I lost both my
beloved grandmothers... and achieved their dream
for me. I was hired by Intel and started working on
my career – with two young girls in tow.
From Intel to Austria
I worked for Intel for 34 years; about 12 years in,
while on a business trip, I met the man who is now
my husband. As both my daughters were adults, I
picked up and moved to Austria and started a new
project at Intel. These days I live just outside
Vienna, Austria.
At Intel, I worked deep in the processor, defining
the functionality of performance and debugger
counters in the processor. My patent, now
expired, defined use of parts of the processor,
proving the usability of performance counters for
debugging. Most of my career was spent on
performance analysis of programs, improving the
speed of instructions through the processor, as
well as teaching both professors and post docs
how to make their programs that analyze data
execute faster.
More recent involvement in the field
Since 2005, I have worked both through Intel and
with the Association of Computing Machinery
(ACM) to increase the number of women in
computer science. After the Grace Hopper
Conference in 2006, my goals changed, and I
started working with ACM to improve
opportunities for women studying computer
science in Europe. In 2013, when I became vice
chair of the ACM-W Europe committee, we
founded womENcourage, an event providing a
venue for women in computer science to network
and meet like-minded women.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning
have huge potential, and I believe the entry of
women into these fields will change the world. I
spend my time encouraging up and coming
women to strive to be the best they can be
through membership in ACM and IEEE (Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and
volunteering. I know that a greater number of
With delegates at the womENcourage conference in 2015
8

One of the biggest recent rewards came from a
young woman who contacted me to know if I was
the “Bev Bachmayer” who had mentored her as an
undergraduate in CS 20 years ago. She is now an
engineering manager and says that my
encouragement and mentoring is why she is
successful today.
Just as Fran Allen encouraged me, I hope to have
the same impact on young women I know.
Educating children in electronics in Rwanda in 2015, we
taught 120 girls from nine countries about electronics over 3
-4 weeks at the Rwanda Steam Camp.
smart young women studying computer science
will have a greater impact on new technology as a
tool for positive change.
Working in a worldwide position means working in
different cultures; I am amazed how, in some
countries, women are encouraged to enter highly
technical fields and how their proportion in these
fields might drop from 30 to 40% in one country
to 5-10% in another just a few borders away. As a
data scientist, I love to understand the numbers
and how different cultures work. In our group,
having 50% of the members born outside of the
country of work put another twist on the group
culture, as you might imagine.
Meeting a role model
Fran Allen is not really a mentor, just a woman I
look up to. A developer of computer language, in
1993 she was developing compilers at IBM, and
she was one of the few women in the industry
that you could strive to be like. I met her in person
at the Grace Hopper Conference in the fall of
2006, after she won the Turing award. She sat and
talked to me for almost an hour. She told me, “I
had no idea that I would be so encouraging and
that so many women would be inspired because I
did my job.”
Quick-fire questions for Bev
1. If you could change one thing about your past,
what would it be? I would have stayed in college
after getting married, even against my exhusband’s
wishes. I needed to be more persistent,
but that was not how I was raised.
2. What things about your career in technology do
you apply to your daily life? Troubleshooting is used
constantly in daily life. Just look at any goal and
how do you get there: that is troubleshooting.
3. If you could work with one famous person, past or
present, who would it be and why? This is a funny
question, because working with ACM, I am among
the women who are making the most difference in
this world. I cheered when ACM elected an allfemale
board; I personally know all of them
through my work encouraging women. It’s hard
work, but all of us together have achieved one
goal. Now we are working toward the goal of an
equal number of women and men in our field.
4. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and
why? All the young women now entering the
industry – they are our future, and it is for them
that we work so hard to give them
encouragement and hope.
5. If your life or career had not been in technology,
what would you have pursued? I think it would have
been teaching, perhaps math or science. I love
helping people succeed.
My successes over the years
My most significant award is the Intel
Achievement award I received for my work
optimizing the code for a customer in 2001. In
fact, I have at least 30 Intel award plaques.
My job is fun, and even to this day, I continue to
work on technical topics. Learning new things is
what keeps me going in these COVID times. I am
building a robot, learning to sew complicated
quilts and volunteering – for ACM and as the
FAWCO Rep for AWA Vienna. My goal is to
promote women worldwide, lifting them all up to
a better life.
Teaching kids about electronics in 2016
9

10

PROFILE
Creating
Impactful Social
Media Posts
Adelina Matinca, member of the
AIWC of Cologne, Germany,
describes learning her way
around social media as a career.
I was born in Constanta, a small town by the Black
Sea in Romania. I had an extremely memorable
childhood, and I count myself lucky in many ways.
Due to my grandmother’s career, she took me
along when I was still a small child to quite a few
official functions with people from all over the
world. After the Revolution, a time of turmoil, I
spent most of my summers in the south of
Germany, where my family had been running a
business. We later emigrated to Canada.
As I look back, this is where I began to build
resilience and where I started to understand how
quickly things can change. The full impact these
events had on me is probably lost, because I was
simply too young to process and analyze my
surroundings. But what they did leave me with is
compassion, flexibility and never taking anything
for granted.
Our family in 2005
Adelina Matinca
After leaving home
I grew up in Toronto, where I lived all the way
through finishing my BA at University of Toronto. I
loved the multicultural aspect and had friends
from all corners of the world. If you look at a city
map of Toronto, you can literally sketch out Greek
town, Chinatown, Little Italy – there is even a
“Little Mogadishu.” Aside from this wonderful
aspect, I always thought the city was too big with
way too much concrete. So I did something
about it…
As soon as I finished my BA degree and with a job
locked in, I decided to drive across Canada to
Vancouver. For me, this was a ritual experience. I
felt like I was shedding youthful layers and settling
into an adult job. Working in a law firm in the
trademarks department gave me a lot of
independence. Every weekend I would be
outdoors in nature, hiking, swimming, skiing,
biking, surfing, sailing – taking in all the beauty of
the Pacific Northwest. It was also at this job that I
met a lot of fantastic people and had a great
number of mentors. They all became my work
family and it was the best working environment I
could possibly have as a young adult.
I fell in love with Vancouver, created a tribe and
remained there for seven years.
As a young girl with my grandmother
From Vancouver to Cologne
While living in Vancouver I met my now husband.
He was doing an internship at the same law firm.
Chances would have it that we met during his last
week on the job. We continued to date long
distance, which, take it from me, is not easy. After
about a year, we decided that it might make more
sense for us to be under one roof and see what
11

was learning about content creation, content
moderation, the power of algorithms, ads, and
managing analytics, metrics and growing traffic. I
was able to successfully use a lot of my learning in
my own business.
The arrival of COVID-19!
When COVID-19 hit, I was forced to close down my
catering business – there simply were no more
events. This is when I knew I had to take it to the
next level. I took a step back and I pivoted towards
the tech skills I had spent so long developing in my
previous roles.
Kayaking in Haida Gwaii, B.C., Canada
happens. After living together in Canada, we knew
this was more than a one-time fling, so we were
faced with the decision of whether to stay or go
to Germany.
We decided to give Germany a try and, fast
forward to almost eight years later, here we are,
living in Cologne, a city that’s grown to be my third
home. At the beginning, Cologne made me use a
lot of my resilient powers I developed early on in
my childhood. I was in a new environment, with
(very) limited language skills and nobody I knew.
But my experience of moving around helped a lot
– I knew things would improve, and I had the tools
to shape that development. I took German classes
and joined associations, and soon the language
was no longer a barrier. I even went back to school
at the University of Cologne and got an MA
degree! New acquaintances started to transform
into strong connections and partnerships.
Blogging and cookery
When I moved to Germany, I started a blog, so I
could talk about traveling around Europe, my
experience as an expat and the food culture here
in Germany. I self-taught myself the ins and outs
of creating a website from scratch, making sure
my posts were search engine optimized, and all
about Google Analytics. I loved the technical side
of creating posts as well as the aesthetic side.
The desire to create content and graphics, design
PR kits, and manage social media platforms
blossomed naturally from there. Now, I work with
companies and brands all over the world to help
them with branding and managing their social
media accounts, while providing effective and
unique marketing strategies. I love my work!
Common misconceptions I face
I meet a lot of people who believe that social
media is just uploading selfies as you go along. In
a business context this couldn’t be further from
the truth. I often explain all the work that goes into
creating a post with an impact and a message. The
process can be described as more like an art form.
There are two components: word art and the
image art. There is also the technical component
such as key words, hashtags, tags etc. You want
the post to be discoverable and discovered by as
many people in your target audience as you can,
so you have to think about what words will
resonate with them. I think it’s important to
distinguish between a personal account, which can
of course showcase a selfie with you and your dog,
and a professional account, which purposefully
I have always had a passion for cooking, so I
started up a catering and events business in
Cologne. Again extremely hands on, I learned
about marketing and creating presences on
different social media platforms. At the same time,
I was also freelancing for a major social media
platform doing content review, and for a
marketing company as a social media manager.
These two positions taught me the ins and outs of
social media. From one side, I was working with
brands and companies, which gave me an insider
perspective on different strategies and marketing
niches. I basically started to understand what
companies are looking for. From the other side, I
Relaxing on the balcony
12

The main purpose of much of the content that is
posted on her blog is to reveal something new
that you might not yet know. I like the
controversial aspects as well – she doesn’t shy
away from big taboo topics, she approaches them
head on. For me, this is where the sweet spot lies -
creating current content, trendsetting and
challenging concepts. Bonus would be if she gives
her employees free products :)
2. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and
why? I would dedicate them to my grandmother.
She embodies many of the qualities I look up to.
She is incredibly up to date with the latest
technology, sending me text messages and writing
emails at age 84. She has been the driving force
behind a lot of my endeavors.
My daily work setup
chooses to connect with its audience on a much
deeper level.
The future for social media
I reckon social media will continue to grow. We
saw the importance of social media once the
pandemic hit. Now, a lot more companies are
understanding the significance of it. When it
comes to social media, things are constantly
changing. In terms of marketing strategies that
companies will be using, you can expect to see
more inclusive strategies, with a strong focus on
giving back to their communities. Right now,
brands are focused on coming up with
environmentally friendly solutions to elevate their
products and make them stand out from others.
Teams are changing and have a worldwide reach,
now more than ever before. Now that a lot of
people work from home anyway, teams and
business relationships are becoming even more
global. For example, one of my clients is a Dutch
journalist based in Africa, and on that project I
work with another content creator based in
North Macedonia.
When I look back at my life, she has constantly
been rooting for me, encouraging my creative
initiatives and pushing me to reach my full
potential. She is also the one that taught me
creative writing – we often wrote poems together
side-by-side. Moments I will never forget…
3. If your life or career had not been in technology,
what would you have pursued? I love this question. I
don’t believe that everyone is destined to have
one career their whole life. I believe that you can
have more than one. When I am not sitting in
front of my computer, you can find me in the
Namibian bush being involved in wildlife
conservation projects – I spent a few months
there researching for my master thesis.
I love the excitement and challenge of working
with clients from all over the world. I equally love
being in the field with temperatures roaring in the
high 40s talking to locals about human-wildlife
conflict in their area. I mean, how can I choose
between these two passions? Good thing I don’t
have to.
My work is 100% remote and I correspond with
people from all over the world on a wide range of
projects. Basically, without this mix of cultures I
would be out of a job right now. It’s a necessary
piece of many businesses.
Quick-fire questions for Adelina
1. If you could work with one famous person, past or
present, who would it be and why? I would love to
work with Gwyneth Paltrow at Goop. I love her
approach and what her brand stands for. The
experimental component of her brand has
revolutionized a lot of different marketing
approaches and content creation.
Preparing for a Zoom call!
13

FEATURE
Women in Technology
FAUSA Member Denise Woods looks at some of the women who
made significant contributions in the field of computer technology.
I worked in the field of computer technology for
30 years as a head of software development in
industry and then as a professor. When I first
started studying computer programming in the
1970s, I was one of the few females in any of my
classes. As I researched the history of computers
in my early courses, I realized how many women
there were. Here are the female pioneers who
helped make computers as ubiquitous as they
are today.
ENIAC Programmers
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator) was the first electronic computer used
for general purposes, such as solving numerical
problems. It was developed in 1946 by two men in
research sponsored by the US military. The
programmers of the ENIAC were six female
mathematicians. The technology that resulted
from the work of these six women included the
development of computer memory and storage.
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was considered to be
the first computer programmer. In fact, one of the
earliest programming languages, Ada, was named
after her. She was one of the few people who
recognized the possible uses for computers early
on. The second Tuesday in October is Ada
Lovelace Day, during which the contributions of
women to science, technology, engineering and
mathematics are honored.
Adele Goldberg
Had it not been for pioneer Adele Goldberg (born
1945), the Apple desktop would not look like it
does. She was the only woman, together with a
group of men, who developed the infrastructure
and design of GUI (Graphical User Interface) that
we use on computers today. She was told to show
this new technology to Steve Jobs, who said after
he viewed it he believed that GUI represented the
future of computing.
Karen Spärck Jones
The search engines that we utilize daily today
would not have become a reality without the
discovery of the concept of inverse document
frequency by Karen Spärck Jones (1935-2007). She
introduced the use of wordlists into language
processing, allowing a computer to recognize
similar words. This technology is used to assess
the importance of words contained in documents
when searching for information.
14

computer science and had always advocated for
women in the computer field.
Mary Allen Wilkes
Mary Wilkes (born 1937) was a computer
programmer who worked in the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. She
is most well known for working on the LINC
computer, which is now recognized as the world’s
first personal computer. She was considered to be
the first person who had used a personal
computer in a home.
Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper (1906-1992), a rear admiral in the
US Navy, was known as “the mother of
computing.” She helped develop a program that
converted instructions into a machine code (i.e.,
low-level code) that could be read and executed
by a computer. This led to a computer language
known as COBOL (Common Business Oriented
Language) that still runs many of the world's
largest data systems today, 60 years later.
Sister Mary Keller
Sister Mary Keller (1913-1985) was a Roman
Catholic nun who helped develop the BASIC
(Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
programming language. She believed strongly
that computers had the potential to increase
access to information and to promote education.
She was the first woman to receive a PhD in
Pioneers of Today
The women highlighted above are pioneers in the
field of computer technology who helped to make
all of the technologies that we rely on today
possible. Think what the world would be like
without computer programming languages,
search engines, graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
and personal computers. In addition to the
pioneers, I want to feature one of my former
colleagues at Purdue University who continues to
influence young women in the computer field, as
a pioneer of today.
Alka Harriger
I had the pleasure of working with Professor Alka
Harriger when I was a professor at Purdue, and
she was always inspiring to me. Professor
Harriger has been teaching software development
courses in the Purdue University Department of
Computer and Information Technology (CIT) since
1982. Early in her career, when she saw only one
woman in the freshman orientation for CIT, she
applied for and received a $1.2M grant for the
SPIRIT (Surprising Possibilities Imagined and
15

allows women to build solutions to enhance lives
in areas that they are the most passionate about.
Their perspectives on teams will allow companies
to produce better solutions for a larger segment
of the population. When/if their passions change,
computing skills will allow them to move to a
different career path/domain area.”
Denise Woods is an active member of FAUSA who grew
up in Hobart, Indiana. During her career in industry,
she traveled to Europe extensively overseeing the
installation of computer systems. Denise then moved
on to academia where she became a tenured
professor at Purdue University. She has written
hundreds of research papers and dozens of books on
computer technology and has spoken at conferences
around the world. Although Denise now enjoys
retirement, she is currently enrolled as an online
student at Purdue studying health and wellness.
Realized through Information Technology) project,
which allowed the faculty to administer summer
workshops for high school teachers, counselors
and students. The goal was to change
misperceptions about who does computing and
show them that computing can be fun, important
and rewarding. The teachers were expected to
incorporate lessons using Alice, a computing tool
that can be used to create interactive stories and
games. The counselors had more accurate
information to better advise their students. The
students saw first hand that computing could
offer them an excellent career option. Alka’s latest
project TECHFIT (Teaching Engineering Concepts
to Harness Future Innovators) is the recipient of a
$1.2M NSF (National Science Foundation) grant.
It targets middle schoolers instead of high
schoolers because one of the things she learned
during the SPIRIT project was that changing
misperceptions needs to start earlier. The goal is
to address obesity and physical inactivity by
combining technology and exercise, allowing
student teams to create their own exergames (i.e.,
technology-supported fitness games.) A second
grant that built on TECHFIT was funded at $2.5M
and allowed them to transform TECHFIT from an
afterschool program to include an in-school class
instead. I asked Alka what she would say to young
women considering careers in computer
technology. She said, “Computing or information
technology is a great career option for women
because it applies to all aspects of life, and that
16

Are You Ready For Life-changing Skincare Results?
Lauren Mescon, FAWCO member, is a Rodan + Fields Independent Consultant.
Without leaving your computer you can receive a dermatologist-designed regimen.
If you live in Europe, you can access Lauren directly, answer a few questions and she
will send you a Rodan+ Fields skincare recommendation. With Rodan + Fields
products you will have the best skin of your life and have ongoing support to keep it
that way.
If you live in the USA, click here to find your recommendation: The R+F Solution Tool
And there is a bonus!
For each skincare rec,
Lauren will donate $5 to
The FAWCO Foundation.
You will love your results,
Guaranteed!
If not, send the empty
containers back to R + F
and receive a full refund!
17

PROFILE
Developing
“Curious Mind
TV”
Irem Sunar, member of the AWO
Moscow, gives us the details
about her latest project to keep
kids engaged in learning during
the pandemic.
I grew up by the seaside in Izmir, a historic
Aegean city in Turkey. Spending most of my
childhood crossing the oceans on ships where my
dad worked helped me connect with different
cultures and see the world from a different
perspective. Even at a younger age, I was
concerned about environmental issues and social
inequalities. So when I grew up, I decided to work
for social change, and that’s what I did at the UN
and other international organizations for more
than 15 years.
I moved to Moscow, Russia when my husband got
a job offer five years ago and have been living
Irem Sunar-Ozat
here since then. Moving to Moscow was more
than a change of address for us; as many fellow
expat women would agree, it always is. I knew
that was the end of my hard-earned career, and I
quickly realized that I had to gain a different skill
set if I wanted to keep on working and making use
of the “free time” I had, which was also quite a
new concept for me.
Redesigning my life
After whining and complaining for a few months, I
decided to embrace this change and opened my
mind to different possibilities. I had degrees in
Psychology and Political Science. I had no
education in any tech-related subject. On the
other hand, digital media was becoming a bigger
part of my work life each year, and I was drawn
into the idea of learning everything online.
My first inspiration came from the hobby that I
learned a decade ago. Actually, it was not about
the hobby itself, but about how I learned that new
hobby. I was on my maternity leave; I decided to
learn sewing, but I couldn’t leave my baby alone.
Our family in 2005
So I started following sewing and craft blogs
online. It was quite a new thing back in the day,
unlike the COVID-19 period today, where you can
find an online course or a webinar about
anything! This experience had not only given me
some awesome sewing skills (yay!) but also
opened my mind to the possibility of gaining
completely different skills online. Then everything
else became easier. When I needed to learn
something new, I just looked for the right online
resource and learned it by doing.
With my family in Riga, Latvia
In addition to my new hobby, I was becoming
more interested in the design part of digital
18

How you present things is almost as
important as the content
When I open a new website, the first thing I notice
is how the information is presented, instead of the
information itself. Shallow, yes. But the way you
present something is also an important part of the
message you want to give. My academic
background in psychology helped me understand
how people perceive and learn new things, so I
tried improving my professional skills in
presenting information in the best way possible.
So now, I not only create unique content but also
present it with engaging designs. Hence, the
opening line of my personal website is “Let’s make
your information look pretty!” (iremsunar.com)
With my son Derin, planting trees as part of a campaign
media, as I had been working on the content part
for many years. Awareness-raising activities were
an important aspect of my projects, and I was
always looking for ways to improve methods of
presenting the information to our target audience.
It started with the need to design websites in a
more user-friendly way. Social media was also
raising the bar for better information presentation
every day. That’s when I started practicing basic
graphic design skills and website development.
When we moved to Moscow, I had at least some
idea about what I could do next if I wanted to keep
my professional life active. I became a member of
the American Women’s Organization soon after we
moved here and began working as the
publications editor. It was a great experience to
prepare all those newsletters, printed materials,
and the new logo for the Club. If you’re interested
in seeing what we’ve been up to, take a peek at
our magazine stand here:
https://issuu.com/awomoscow.
Back to working for social change: Curious
Mind TV
In mid-2020, when almost all the schools around
the world had to shut down, I decided to use all
my skills and experience to help children keep
engaged in learning as much as possilbe. So I
designed a new website, and then a YouTube
channel targeting elementary school children
called Curious Mind TV. Launching February 1,
2021, it is totally free and only aims to encourage
children to love learning and researching. I’ve
been super busy preparing high-quality and fun
educational videos for kids for the past few
months. I also started learning how to make
animated videos too. I love it! This project is very
near and dear to my heart, as it is a perfect
combination of my newly gained tech skills and my
love of writing, and at the same time contributes
to social development. If you want to help me out
to spread the word, please subscribe to
Curious Mind TV.
I’d love to get your feedback and comments!
Finishing the web design for a recent project : tired eyes, but proud of my work!
19

I can work anywhere: working on my blog in Red Square, Moscow
Technology makes change much easier, for
better or for worse
I’m from a generation who grew up without the
advantage of the internet, but I did my best to
make use of all the good things it has brought to
our lives. This puts me and my generation in quite
a unique position in human history, I guess. :)
When I develop educational content for children, I
try to keep both the traditional ways of learning
and playing as well as the new online approaches
in balance. I “learned” to become tech-savvy at a
relatively older age, but the new generation is
born right into technology. It changes the way
they look at the world completely. I wish I had had
that flexible approach when I was younger. If I
could change anything from my past, it would be
to give myself more credit and encourage myself
to diving into uncharted waters more freely,
because technology makes change much easier, if
you’re up for it.
A photo shoot for a crafts magazine
20

FEATURE
What is Data Privacy?
Fintan Viebahn received the Caroline Newton Humanities Award
from the FAWCO Foundation in 2018. She used the award to fund a
study trip to Moscow in which she learned more about data
practices. Here she explains the importance of data privacy for us all.
What Is Data Privacy?
Data privacy can be understood as the desired
absence of tracking of an individual’s activities in
the form of data. It can also be understood as the
degree of control that individuals have over the
extent and form of tracking.
Why Is Data Privacy Important?
Data privacy is often considered a fundamental
right. The idea behind this is that individuals
should be empowered to control all of the data
about themselves.
From an economic perspective, privacy is a
feature of products exchanged on markets. ¹
Some people might be willing to pay more for
more privacy. For example, there are fee-based
email services and search engines whose selling
points are that they offer relatively high security
standards or anonymity. Others might not be
willing to pay. Or they might even prefer
personalized advertising, for example on
Facebook or Google, or other personalized
settings, such as curated newsfeeds, Netflix
recommendations or Spotify playlists.
Five sisters playing a game involving data
Put more simply, data privacy is the control of
individuals over how their personal information is
collected and used. Examples include how easy it
is for an individual to find out which data
Instagram has about her, to store her medical
records digitally, to donate her personal data to
research, to search anonymously on the web, to
research government spending online or to delete
her data from Amazon’s servers.
Data privacy is also known as information privacy
or data protection.
Data in the making
¹Acquisti, A., C. Taylor and L. Wagman (2016), “The Economics of Privacy”, Journal of Economic Literature 54 (2), 442–492.
21

What Problems Currently Exist in Regard
to Data Privacy?
One issue is that information about oneself can
be indirectly disclosed through others’ data.²
Correlation in datasets means that, for example,
data about the everyday life of young women as
captured by their internet activity is likely to
provide information about a young woman who
may not wish to share her data.
Another concern are privacy policies. Nearly all
devices and activities generate data with a
personal dimension. Consumers cannot
reasonably be expected to engage with the
privacy policies and terms of use that govern that
data. Reading the privacy policies one
encounters in a year would take 76 work days –
and that was in 2012. ³
Why Is Privacy Not the Only Important
Aspect in Regard to Data?
Sharing data potentially has many benefits for
individuals. Sharing data with researchers can
improve the quality of studies, thereby increasing
the value of research for individuals.
Regarding energy, for example, researchers
could analyze data on energy use in homes by
type of device, time of day and year and other
Exploring “Meitu” filters popular in China
factors that affect energy consumption, such as
weather conditions. This information would allow
an assessment of how energy consumption could
be shifted to better match energy production.
For example, heating in winter, when a person is
at home, is unlikely to be flexible, but running a
washing machine or dishwasher may well be.
Energy production and costs could be reduced.
Data on health can help us identify problems
(e.g., early detection of strokes ⁴, detection of
influenza outbreaks through search queries ⁵)
and new solutions (e.g., personalized cancer
drugs ⁶, models to calculate healing processes ⁷).
Greater amounts of data on the use of public
spaces and political process ⁸ would amount to
more transparency and accountability.
From a business point of view, sharing data can
open up new and better products and services.
Contemplating all the data being processed in this
photograph of the Chicago Board of Trade
² Mantelero, A., “Personal Data For Decisional Purposes in the Age of Analytics: From an Individual to a Collective Dimension of Data Protection”,
Computer Law & Security Review, 32(2), 2016, 238-255; Bergemann, D., Alessandro B., and T. Gan, “The Economics of Social Data”,
Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 2203, 25 September 2019; Choi, J. P., D. S. Jeon, and B. C. Kim, “Privacy and Personal Data Collection
With Information Externalities”, Journal of Public Economics, 173, 2019, 113-124.
³ Madrigal, A. C. (2012), “Reading the privacy policies you encounter in a year would take 76 work days”, The Atlantic, 1 March. Available
at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/reading-the-privacy-policies-you-encounter-in-a-year-would-take-76-workdays/253851/
(accessed 22 April 2016).
⁴ https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/machine-learning-app-scans-faces-and-listens-speech-quickly-spot-strokes
⁵ Ginsberg, J., Mohebbi, M., Patel, R. et al. (2009), “Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data”, Nature 457, 1012–1014.
⁶ https://healthitanalytics.com/news/deep-learning-model-could-enhance-cancer-precision-medicine
⁷ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2733183
⁸ https://kleineanfragen.de/
22

How Did My 2018 Education Award Enable
Me to Learn About Data Privacy?
My 2018 Education Award enabled me to study
abroad at the Higher School of Economics in
Moscow, Russia, for one semester. I was able to
take classes on statistics, econometrics and
philosophy of data. Through this time abroad, I
was able to acquire a solid understanding of this
field. I was even able to take part in a research trip
to Hong Kong and China to study data practices
there. I am very grateful to the FAWCO
Foundation and every one of the wonderful
women who provided me with this once in a
lifetime learning opportunity.
Fintan Viebahn is a research assistant with Stiftung
Neue Verantwortung and the economics department
of Humboldt University Berlin. She supports the
think tank’s work on data economics and the
university’s work on behavioral economics. In 2018,
she was honored to receive the Caroline Newton
Humanities Award from the FAWCO Foundation.
Prior to her current positions, Fintan held
internships in strategy consulting and at the District
Court of Berlin. She holds a fellowship with the
German Academic Scholarship Foundation. In her
free time, she is an avid debater and loves playing
piano with others.
Fintan studied for a B.A. in economics and
philosophy at Humboldt University and an LL.B. at
Potsdam University. She spent semesters at
Columbia University and the Higher School of
Economics in Moscow.
23

PROFILE
Keeping FAWCO
Tech Savvy
Cat Conner, member of the AWC
Hamburg, Germany and FAWCO’s
Web Manager, reveals how she
got involved in internet
technology consultancy.
I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas.
Although overall it was a lovely place to spend a
childhood, I grew up in a relatively conservative
society where I didn’t always feel I belonged. Girls
in that time and place were generally discouraged
from being too academic. Even though my family
valued education, and sent me to a very
academically-oriented school, I was unhappy that
many girls there had already internalized the idea
that they just weren’t “suited” to math or science.
I’ve always had an interest in technology. When I
was six or seven, I used to take apart the
telephones in our house to see how they worked.
Luckily for me my father loved gadgets and new
technologies so our house always had new tech
toys for me to play with. I first learned to program
BASIC on a TRS-80 computer, and enjoyed
tinkering with Commodore 64 and Apple IIs to see
what I could make them do.
Our family in 2005
Cat Conner
Leaving Texas
I left Texas to go to Princeton University in New
Jersey, USA. My plan was that after I took my
bachelor’s degree (in History, with a specialty in
Medieval/Renaissance European history) I would
continue on the academic track through a
doctorate and a career as university faculty.
But when graduation came, I wanted some
professional experience before focusing on that
career, and worked variously in public relations,
human resources, and project management for
government-funded research projects. All of
those jobs required using my computer skills
which I had acquired using my first Unix computer
network while at university.
Once I entered the professional world, my interest
in learning everything I could about all the
technology systems around me meant that I often
became the go-to staff member responsible for
tech support and system maintenance, regardless
of what my official tasks were. Eventually that
turned into a (unexpected!) career as by the time I
was working with the research projects, I was
building databases and websites to analyze and
disseminate data.
From there I made a lateral move to being a fulltime
consultant, working for software consulting
companies, and later went independent as a
freelance internet technology consultant.
Me a few years ago!
Getting to Hamburg
During my time working as a consultant for
software companies, I travelled full-time. I
enjoyed that immensely, and volunteered for
every international project I could – including one
in London. While there, I met a German man who
24

Learning about computers
I am mostly self-educated. I studied quite a lot of
science in school (my first professional ambition
was to become a chemist!), and I have done quite
a lot of technical training and professional
development over the years, but my university
degree is in History. Lucky for me that in the
computer world, especially twenty-five years ago,
having a formal computer science degree isn’t
always as important as having real-world
implementation experience. But I do think my
biggest obstacle has been proving my expertise
and value despite my lack of formal technical
degrees – especially to myself.
Making punch cards
was also working in my company’s London tech
support office. We had a loooooong distance
relationship (BostonLondon) for a year before
we decided we wanted to be together on at least
the same continent. My tech qualifications made it
very much easier for me to get a work permit in
Germany than his did to get one in the USA, so we
decided on living together in Europe. I took a
consultant position with a German tech firm and
moved to Hamburg. Eighteen years later, my
husband and I are still living together here in
Hamburg where I am now working from home
as a freelancer.
Being a woman in the Tech world
It’s been challenging being a woman in the
computer tech world which does have a bit of a
“bro” culture. I can remember in my early days of
consulting often being the only woman in project
meetings full of male developers and managers. In
one instance, a planned “team-building” exercise
concluded with a visit to a (heterosexual-maleoriented)
strip club. They were very surprised
when I opted to attend; I was not going to miss the
professional networking opportunity, and I was
pleased to make them all uncomfortable with their
exclusionary choices. This situation is continually
improving and is much better now than 25 years
ago, but there’s still a ways to go.
Driving practice!
25

information they need to make good decisions for
themselves, either personally or professionally.
And vice versa, to communicate business
concerns back to technical staff, so they can
implement solutions that actually solve problems
the users have. I have often found myself in
meetings “translating” between technical staff and
business staff – even though we’re all actually
speaking English!
Quick-fire questions for Cat
1. If you could change one thing about your past,
what would it be? If I’d known earlier where my life
would take me, I would have started learning
German much earlier :-D
On vacation at Falling Water
Looking at web pages
When a lay person first visits a website they see
words and pictures on a screen, but I just see the
things I see as mistakes, especially from a usability
standpoint. These are mainly in three categories:
1. Functionality -- maybe a menu whose usage
isn’t intuitive or a section where color contrast
makes something hard to read.
2. Design -- objects that aren’t 100% aligned, off
by a few pixels, or not arranged well for the
current screen size I’m using.
3. Structure -- if I can’t immediately find content
or a feature that I’m looking for, or if a process to
achieve something isn’t logical.
Misconceptions about web design
Probably the biggest misconception about the
internet is that it is one big well-ordered,
quantifiable, coherent system, when in fact it’s just
a ginormous number of machines around the
world talking to and through each other using
mutually-agreed-upon standards.
It’s a wonderfully complex and chaotic system that
only works because hardware and software
makers have voluntarily agreed to follow those
standards (some more than others, I’m looking at
you Internet Explorer!). The more I learn about
how the internet REALLY works under the covers,
the more surprised I am that it can do everything
it does!
2. What things about your career in technology do
you apply to your daily life? Almost everything,
really. There aren’t many aspects of modern life
that aren’t touched by the need to use technology.
Basic knowledge about how email works, how
smartphones work, how computers work, and
how internet connections work are things most of
us need every day. Some of these things can be
quite complicated; I’m very sympathetic to nontech
people who might struggle with this. Because
tech is everywhere, but it’s not always easy!
3. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and
why? To my mother, father, and sister. They have
had the longest-standing impact on determining
what kind of woman I have become.
4. If your life or career had not been in technology,
what would you have pursued? Being a history
professor is my one big “what-if” path. I’m happy
with the patchwork career I’ve had, and think it
has given me a wider variety of skills than I might
have developed as an academic. But sometimes
it’s nice to fantasize….
The future for the industry
I work with people all over the world, from many
different cultures, but one skill I’ve found to be
incredibly important no matter what cultures are
involved: the ability to present complex tech
concepts for less technically-knowledgeable
people in a way that provides them the
At a FAWCO Conference with my husband
26

FEATURE
FAWCO and Tech in Times of COVID-19
Emily van Eerten, President of FAWCO, explains how the organization
had to adapt its online presence to cope with the pandemic.
One week before the 2020 Interim Meeting in
Luxembourg, the FAWCO Board took the
excruciating and difficult decision to cancel the
gathering because of the increasing health
concerns and travel advisories as a result of the
COVID-19 virus. Without the ability to gather in
person, we had to get creative. FAWCO and the
board were already in the process of learning and
using G Suite Applications. This Google
environment was working extremely well
together. All of our volunteers with @fawco.org
email addresses had access to Google Drive,
Calendar, Docs, Numbers, Slides, Forms -- and
Google Meet (among others) and all of these apps
allow collaborative work and excellent interaction
with each other. At that moment, however, it only
allowed meetings for up to 25 people. We needed
a way to host online virtual sessions for
considerably more.
Using Zoom
We signed up for our first FAWCO Zoom
account. At that moment, Zoom wasn’t considered
a very secure platform. We learned how to set up
meetings using particular protocols that ensured
that random streakers could not disrupt our
online meetings and we started scheduling Zoom
sessions to replace the in-person sessions we had
prepared for Luxembourg. Onboarding for this
platform presented a few challenges, but we
mostly managed to work through them. We all
learned how to navigate and get beyond the initial
audio and video challenges, even as “we can’t hear
you, you’re on mute,” became a common Zoom
lament. We learned to share screens for
presentations, and then moved on to how to
share screens with sound. We all progressed and
regressed with our home lighting and Zoom
blouses. Most of us
took care to wear
makeup and a nice
Zoom top, but then we
learned that we didn’t
HAVE to have the video
turned on. Sometimes we ate on camera,
sometimes we forgot to turn off our mic when
there were other noises in the room. But even
though Zoom solved some of our sadness from
not being able to gather together, it also was
frustrating. We could have dozens on camera, but
interaction still needed to be one person at a
time, meaning that it was still a passive program
for most tuning in. We thought that we could
handle that, but then we had to cancel our Fall
Open Regional, again not being able to travel and
meet in person. We started to look for more
interactive platforms we could use.
Finding Hopin
Initial research led us to companies that wouldn’t
talk to us unless we committed to plans in the
tens of thousands of dollars. These weren’t
options. But we kept looking and we found Hopin,
a company that was offering plans in the tens of
thousands, but importantly, they were also
offering relatively affordable DIY plans. We could
have access to the same Stages, Sessions,
Networking and Expo Booths on their expensive
plans, but we’d have to do it without access to
special branding or support. And we accepted.
A FAWO first, a virtual Regional Meeting
When we cancelled the in-person meeting in
November 2020, we were able to announce that
we would host a Virtual Open Regional instead on
the same weekend. We scheduled our speakers
for time slots on the Main Stage or in Sessions
and FAWCO volunteers went to work, learning
how they could each set up a virtual Expo Booth
using a Google Slide Presentation or YouTube
videos as on-demand content. The Hopin platform
was evolving with new features even as we were
27

e planning virtual workshops and speakers
throughout the year highlighting the work of our
teams. But our Biennial Conference March 18-21,
2021, will be a Hopin event featuring the reports
and news of FAWCO, our Diversity & Inclusion
Task Force, our Target Program and The FAWCO
Foundation. We will also be hosting sessions to
bring together our clubs in regional groups to
network, and an online version of our Face2Face
fair with our volunteers -- all of our Teams and
Committees will be hosting Expo Booths and will
be live at set times to engage with our clubs. Club
FAWCO Reps, Presidents and all FAWCO Members
are welcome to attend to learn more about the
extensive work of FAWCO! We look forward to
seeing you throughout 2021 and can’t wait to see
you again in person. We will get through this
together!
learning. The time for our inaugural Virtual Open
Regional arrived. The onboarding process had
some glitches. Hopin was designed to work on the
Chrome browser and several people had internet
bandwidth issues. But the response from those
for whom everything worked were extremely
enthusiastic. We ended up reaching far more
people than would have been able to travel to
Luxembourg to join us in person.
What next?
This involuntary experiment into virtual
conferencing has shown us that even once a
vaccine has been administered and the world is
safe to travel again, FAWCO will continue to
embrace digital opportunities.
Virtual conferencing is not simply replacing all of
the plenary sessions and workshops. As we are
still under the thumb of COVID-19 in 2021, we will
Conference booths from FAWCO’s first online meeting
A native Oklahoman, Emily van Eerten's marriage
to a Dutchman has taken her from Curaçao to
England, Canada and The Netherlands. She has
been a member of four FAWCO clubs, a veteran of
16 FAWCO conferences and has served the
organization since 2000 in many capacities,
including President, Vice President,
Parliamentarian, Chair of Archives, Membership,
Nominating, R&Rs, Website and as Counselors'
Coordinator. A National Merit Scholar, she got
her bachelor's degree from Rice University and
law degree from the University of Tulsa, where
she practiced as a civil defense/insurance
litigation attorney. Emily has four children, one
in Germany, one in France and two starting
university in 2021.
28

PROFILE
Creating
Websites
Debbie Hastings, member of
FAUSA and formerly of the
Chilterns AWC in England,
explains how she came to be a
self-taught expert in creating
websites.
I was born and raised (for the most part) just
outside of Portland, Maine. Most of my family still
lives in that area. Our family (my parents, my
sister, and myself) lived throughout New England,
moving every 3-5 years depending on my dad’s
job location. Maine was always the constant,
though, as grandparents, cousins, aunts and
uncles all lived there. That has always been, and
always will be, “HOME.”
One of my fondest memories was growing up
around the farm. My mother’s parents owned a
chicken and dairy farm and I always loved visiting!
I’d help my uncle milk the cows and I’d help my
grandfather gather eggs (there were thousands of
chickens). To this day, I still shake the milk carton
to mix the cream into the milk, even though I
know it doesn’t really matter anymore.
Debbie Hastings
Leaving home
I worked for many years as a typesetter, pre-press
graphic designer, and print buyer throughout
New England. While working, I completed school
at the New England School of Photography in
Boston, after which I did part-time work as a
photojournalist. I realized soon after that I loved
photography more as a hobby than a job and
over the years, taught myself anything “techy” I
could get my hands on.
A love for travel
I am a huge Grateful Dead fan (aka “deadhead”)
and spent a fair amount of my 20s following the
band up and down the east coast. I had a lot of
fun and made lifelong friends during my travels.
During that time I also took a cross-country road
trip – camping and visiting interesting places in
Canada and the US for two months. I think that is
what started my love for travel!
The Hasting family begins
My husband, Bill, and I met in late 1995 (we are an
original “You’ve Got Mail” couple). He lived in
Houston and I lived in Maine with my 2-year-old
daughter. We dated long distance for two years
and were married in late 1997. My items arrived
in Houston in early December 1997 and within a
year, we were on our way to England! We arrived
in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, just after
January 1, and two weeks later were told we were
pregnant! And that’s how the story of “The
Hastings Family” began.
Still a Deadhead, 2015
29

My first tech equipment
My first piece of “technological” equipment was a
Wang Word Processor. Knowing how to type got
me a job learning the Wang in 1984. That job
landed me a position as a typesetter using a
program called “Informatics” and then a Penta and
Mergenthaler. I taught myself to create programs
within the platforms to do some of the tedious
chores. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have
multiple machines running at one time. That was
just the beginning of where the “Wang” would
take me!
Word processing in 1983
Back to Maine
After almost six years in England, we were sadly
sent back to Houston, where we stayed for three
years. At that time, our kids were 7 and 13 and we
made the decision to “retire” from Marathon Oil
and move back to Maine. We’ve been in Maine
ever since, only now it’s only for the best months
of the year. Just a year ago we sold our home of 12
years to rebuild a 100-year-old family
“camp” (Maine term for house on a lake), for
summers and move to Arizona to be closer to Bill’s
family in the Southwest.
Creating a website
Although my tech background started early, my
passion for coding and website development
actually started with the need of a website for
some of the clubs I was involved in during our
expat stay in England. It just happened that the
international school my children attended taught
several of us how to use Dreamweaver back in
2000. That got me going on building the first
online auction for the FAWCO Foundation and
then an entire website for my club – CAWC.
So today when I visit a website, what I see is the
CODE. I look to find out what platform it was built
on and what theme or plugins were used, etc. I
actually flip it backwards within a few minutes of
seeing it.
When I moved back to the States, I continued my
“self-education” by volunteering for small local
organizations and PTOs and eventually building a
business around website development for small
businesses. Many people think that it’s
complicated or expensive to get a custom website
that works well and looks great. It doesn’t need
to be!
Hastings Family Christmas 2020
30

Quick-fire questions for Debbie
1. If you could change one thing about your past,
what would it be? Get more formal training at a
younger age. I didn’t know what I wanted to do
when I “grew up” until I was over 40. Otherwise, I
would have soaked up all the education around
tech and design that I would have gotten.
2. What things about your career in technology do
you apply to your daily life? I am the household IT
person (and for many of my friends, too).
3. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and
why? My husband, for all his love and support
during my journey.
4. If your life or career had not been in technology,
what would you have pursued? I would have done
something creative, but I’m not sure what. I see
coding as a type of “creative outlet,” almost like
solving a puzzle and then looking at what you
created when it’s complete.
In my home office in 2020
31

FEATURE
Introducing AWC
Perth, Australia
Club President Karen Slavinsky, from
San Diego, and FAWCO Rep Kari
Young, from Houston, introduce their
club to us. AWC Perth is one of four
clubs in FAWCO’s Region 11.
hold true 53 years later, but with one addition: to
give back to the community we live in through
volunteerism and donations.
How many members do you have and what is
their nationality? In its prime, when the mining
and oil and gas industries brought many expats
into Western Australia, the AWC of Perth boasted
265 members. However, with the downturn in
both trades, many families were repatriated back
to the US. Currently, our club membership count
stands at 46, but it is climbing.
Karen Slavinsky
Kari Young
When and why was your club started, and by
whom? The American Women’s Club of Perth was
formed in 1968 by a group of women seeking
fellowship with other American women. The first
president and founder was Addie Munsell. The
club’s purpose was to provide social opportunities
for American women to come together for
cultural and recreational activities, to celebrate
missed US traditions and holidays, and to provide
help and guidance to American women newly
entering Western Australia. These objectives still
We attribute this incremental growth to COVID-19.
Yes, you read right. Australia’s early adoption of
lockdowns and mandated sequestering elevated
homesickness to the forefront for many American
women living in Perth. What better way to
experience a taste of home than to share a cuppa
with women who talk, think and act like you?
As a club, we decided to become more inclusive to
help increase our numbers. So, at the beginning
of 2020, we opened membership up to anyone,
American or not. As a result, eight of our 46
Coffee Morning at Mama Mahoney’s June 2020
32

members are not American! In addition, we’ve
been gently promoting the club on Facebook and
on our new website at https://awcperth.com.au/
How does the club run? The AWC of Perth is a
not for profit, non-political association. Club
activities fall within the guidelines outlined by our
Constitution and By-Laws, which are in
accordance with the Associations Incorporation
Act 2015 of Western Australia. Currently, we hold
monthly General Meetings (GMs), though we are
seriously considering the merits of moving to
quarterly GMs in 2021.
Our Annual General Meeting in February is where
we hold our board election. Trying to fill the slate
for a new board has become difficult. A number of
our current club members have held one or two
of these positions in the past and are not
interested in stepping up again. Another
presumed deterrent for signing up is the time
commitment that comes with the job. People are
busy. Life is busy.
We are also struggling to fill vacant Activity
Director positions. Members are being repatriated
to the States. Not to mention, some members are
coordinating two activities to keep club activities
running. Burnout is a real by-product of
overworking the 20% of key members who
participate in the club on a regular basis.
Hopefully, as we gain new members, we will have
a new group to recruit for open positions.
What kind of events do you have in your club?
We host our annual Founder’s Day luncheon in
September, which draws in a few former
members of years gone by in addition to the
current members. A tablecloth with
monogrammed names of each year’s board
members is always on display, along with photo
albums and memorabilia to entertain the group.
This past September, we were honored to have
David Gainer, the US Consul General to Perth, as
our guest speaker!
The club used to host a huge 4 th of July event in
Kings Park when we had the member base to pull
off such a HUGE feat. The celebration would draw
in thousands of expats and Aussies to partake in
the fun. Though we didn’t have the woman-power
to celebrate in such a big way in 2020, we were
able to hold a combined Independence Day event
at a local American BBQ restaurant with the
Facebook Group members from Americans Living
in Perth. Red, white and blue dominated the
scene with the scent of smoked brisket filling the
air as people mingled, played games and chowed
down on American food!
One favored annual event that hasn’t missed a
beat is our Thanksgiving Dinner, which is held on
Thanksgiving evening. The turkey and fixings are
catered, but the desserts are provided by the
attendees. It’s a day to feast on traditional dishes
while gathering with fellow Americans to give
thanks for the blessings bestowed upon us!
And finally, our club holds an annual Christmas
Party. It has taken many forms over the years,
from cookie exchanges to fancy sit-down dinners.
This year the gals held an ornament exchange
while celebrating over a potluck luncheon at a
member’s beautiful home.
In addition to these annual events, our club offers
many monthly and bi-monthly activities to meet
the varied interests of our membership. We have
a Book Club, a Quilting Group, Coffee Mix’n
Mingle, Walkers & Talkers, LaW (Lunch and Wine),
Longtimers Group, Cinematics Club, Bible Study
Group and our Volunteer Group. The Book Club is
consistently well-attended, with a great discussion
followed by lunch. The Longtimers Group was
reactivated in 2020 to bring former members
together for a catch-up with the ultimate goal of
encouraging them to sign up again! It’s working!
Do you raise money for any particular cause?
The AWC has been a member of FAWCO for many
years and has supported several worthy causes.
Although we are a small club compared to other
member club groups, in the past we
enthusiastically supported the "Bra Collection," for
which our FAWCO representative Kath Balfour
rallied our efforts. Sadly, Kath has passed away,
but she leaves a legacy of an unflagging ability to
Christmas Book Club December 2020
33

turn working for worthy causes into a way of
developing friendships and promoting women's
causes as well.
For the past couple of years, we have been putting
together Christmas Care Packages containing
toiletries and other necessities wrapped in shoe
boxes with a message from our club. They are
then distributed to local organizations and
shelters that provide services to those who are
struggling. We just started participating in the
Ronald McDonald House Lovin’ from the Oven
Community Outreach Program. We bring in all
the necessary ingredients to their facility to
prepare lunch and snacks for the families who are
living there and the many volunteers who help
them. It is a blast! The smiles, thanks and mmm’s
we receive when the food is laid out are so very
heart-warming. We stumbled at our first attempt
to participate in the Dress for Success Initiative
due to holiday conflicts. We will attempt it again
in 2021 with better planning! This organization
collects gently used business attire that is made
available to struggling women who are entering
into the workforce.
What was your own favorite event last year? I
can’t choose just one event, but I’ve narrowed it
down to three! Coffee mornings are a club
favorite, and my personal favorite coffee morning
last year was at an American diner called Mama
Mahoney’s. 38 of our 46 members are Americans,
and Tammy Mahoney caters to our sweet tooth.
Cinnamon rolls, cheesecakes, cupcakes, thick
American shakes, diner hamburgers, American
pancakes – delectable treats just like home! Even
better, over half of our membership attended.
Luncheons are also quite popular in this group,
and my favorite one this year was the Book Club
Christmas Luncheon at Sitella Winery. Perth is so
casual, so it was a nice chance to dress up and
enjoy a more formal meal in a beautiful setting
surrounded by good friends. Cultural events also
find favor with cub members, and my personal
favorite was the annual July 4 th Celebration, which
we shared with the Facebook Group called
Americans Living in Perth at a genuine Texas BBQ
place called Frank’s here in Perth. Other members
mentioned wine dinners, monthly club meetings,
annual shared events like Thanksgiving,
Independence Day, and the club Christmas party
as their favorites for this year. It’s a great group of
ladies, and to be honest, I enjoy every event that
brings us all together.
What else would you like us to know about
your club? Our club is undergoing a bit of a
reboot. We redesigned our website, created a new
logo, and described our group with three words:
Friendship, Fellowship, and Community. We come
together to find our friends, to spend time in
fellowship with each other, and to give back to our
community. That’s a pretty accurate description of
our group, and we hope we can increase our
membership. If other FAWCO member groups
have had successful membership drives, we
would love to hear from them!
Tell us a little about your city and country in
general Perth is the capital of and largest city in
Western Australia. It was named after the city of
Perth, Scotland, and is Australia’s fourth most
populous city, with a population of just over 2
million in the metro area. The whole state is about
five times the land area of Texas, with only 2.5
million people in total. Perth is geographically
closer to Bali, Indonesia than it is to the other
major Australian cities. Very near to Perth are the
Swan Valley and Margaret River, both of which are
home to award-winning wine producers. One
might think that Western Australia would feel a lot
like any American suburb based on how it looks,
but the culture and language (English, but very
different language usage) are very different.
People are friendly, but not super eager to get to
know expats because we are “blow-ins” who will
only be here a short while. The AWC is really
helpful in that regard because it is probably the
first opportunity most of us have to form genuine
friendships despite our temporary status.
July 4, 2020 at Frank’s BBQ
The natural beauty of Western Australia is its best
kept secret. It is a biodiversity hotspot, filled with
an utterly unique array of plants and animals. The
locals like to scare everyone else away from their
personal paradise by keeping up the myth that
everything here wants to kill you. And, while the
spiders and snakes and sharks are the stuff of
nightmares, and the plants legendarily toxic, the
climate is similar to Southern California or the
Mediterranean. As one member said, “It’s
beautiful one day and perfect the next.” The
sunsets are breath-taking, the food is all fresh and
locally grown, and the air is clean and refreshing.
If you love the outdoors, there is no better place
on Earth! All of this, and it is naturally isolated –
even from the other Australian states, so West
Aussies don’t have to share this Garden of Eden
with too many expats and/or tourists. Did I
34

might say “Hey, Mate, grab a stubby (beer) from
the esky (ice chest).” There is a distinctive
Australian sense of humor that permeates the
language itself – like calling children swimming in
the ocean sharky biccys (shark biscuits/cookies)
and calling speedos budgie smugglers (a budgie is
a small bird).
Perth as viewed from Kings Park
mention that there has not been a single case
here of community transmission of the
coronavirus in 10 months?
There are 97 national parks in Western Australia
and so many more local and regional parks, like
Kings Park in Perth, not to mention islands that
are reachable by ferry, like Penguin Island (yes,
there are penguins there) and Rottnest Island
(best place to see quokkas in the wild, though
they are quite tame). Margaret River and the Swan
Valley are easily reachable by car from Perth,
should you want to drink amazing locally
produced wine paired with delicious locally grown
meals. You can visit the rest of Australia’s
marsupials at Caversham Wildlife Park in the
Swan Valley, and if you love birds, you needn’t
venture outside Perth to see some unique
Australian birds, from magpies and ravens to
kookaburras and cockatoos, honeyeaters,
ringnecks, lorakeets, wattle birds and splendid
fairy wrens. And, of course, the Swan River is
beautiful to look at and has dolphins and black
swans dotting the surface, and Western Australia
has no shortage of westward facing beaches with
beautiful sunsets, crystal clear blue water, and
sugar white sand. All of these fabulous natural
vistas are connected by a phenomenal network of
hiking and biking paths that are protected from
automobile traffic.
Any unusual/interesting traditions or traits of
the locals? One interesting thing about
Australians is that they love to give people and
things nicknames, which can be humorous or
affectionate or both. If your name is Julie, people
probably call you Juls. If your name is Barry, you
are Baz. My name is Kari, so people often call me
Kezza. One soccer player was called Jigsaw
because he always fell to pieces inside the penalty
box. You might eat smashed avo (avocado) on
toast for your brekky (breakfast). Or you might
work as a tradie (tradesman) – perhaps you are a
sparkie (electrician) or a firey (fireman). If you’re at
a barbecue in the arvo (afternoon), someone
Aussies have different traditions around most
holidays, too. For starters, everything is closed on
holidays, and if restaurants decide to stay open
on a public holiday, they add a 15% holiday
surcharge to the bill. The most popular thing to do
on Valentine’s Day is to pack a picnic and head to
Kings Park with your partner. ANZAC Day is a very
important holiday which commemorates all
Australians and New Zealanders who served and/
or died in any foreign war or peacekeeping
operation. Finally, Aussies go to the beach on
Christmas Day because it is the height of summer,
and no one would want to stay home and cook a
turkey in a hot kitchen. In addition, Perth
celebrates itself with an entire month of social
and arts activities for Perth Festival. The Fringe
Festival is also a month long and has more quirky
acts and comedians in the mix. A recent event
that was very popular with our members was the
Highway to Hell AC/DC Tribute Concert, which had
bands on parade floats playing AC/DC (called Acca
Dacca here in their hometown) hits as they slowly
drove down a highway lined with fans. If you think
of how far Perth is from the next big city, it is quite
amazing to have so much public entertainment.
Perth’s unofficial mascot, a quokka
35

FEATURE
Get Work Done and Have Fun Virtually
A step-by-step guide on how to collaborate virtually.
President of the Heidelberg IWC in Germany, Christine Funke,
explains how FAWCO clubs can use the Miro platform.
When the coronavirus pandemic sent most office workers home to work in 2020, companies and teams
turned to online programs to replicate collaborative work, like meetings and brainstorming sessions.
Miro is an online whiteboard for visual collaboration, and I use it daily at my job to work remotely with
my colleagues, and starting this year I’ll be using it for my club’s board meetings. In this article, I’ll walk
you through setting up a successful virtual collaboration session for your club using Miro.
Session Prep
First you have to decide what kind of session to plan. To keep it simple, let’s consider a brainstorming
session that will generate a lot of ideas that your team can put into action. Some relevant topics for
FAWCO clubs include:
• activities or events
• creative ways to take care of your members
• channels for recruiting new members
• social media content
• charity fundraising ideas
For this how-to I’ll use the example of coming up with ways to keep members connected when we can’t
meet in person.
Miro Board Prep
1. Create a free account at miro.com. Invite the attendees with the “Invite” button (on the dashboard in
the top right corner). They are part of your team and can access all 3 of your free boards.
36

2. Create a new board (blue box on the dashboard). After it opens, name it and then set it up.
3. Add in 2 frames (frame icon on the left side toolbar) next to each other.
4. Next to frame 1, add a sticky note on the left (sticky note icon on the left side toolbar).
5. In between the frames, add sets of 5 dots; 1 set per attendee. To add in dots, add a template
(templates icon on the left side toolbar), search for “Dot Voting” and add in the template. Then delete the
part with the names and add or delete dots as needed. To change their color, select them all then
choose a new color.
6. Add a template to frame 2 (templates icon on the left side toolbar), search for “Impact/Effort Matrix”
and add in the template. Adjust the size so it will fit in the frame.
7. Add in text directions above frame 1 (text icon on the left side toolbar): “How might we keep members
connected while we can’t meet in person? Use 1 sticky note for 1 idea.”
8. Add in text directions above frame 2: “Move the sticky notes with the most votes and place them in
one of the four quadrants that correspond to these categories: Quick Wins (top left), Major Projects (top
right), Fill-Ins (bottom left), and Time Wasters (bottom right).”
Now you’re ready to start your session!
Part 1
Join a Zoom or Google Meet call, but turn your cameras off. Open up Miro (in a browser or on the
computer), then open up your session board.
Start the session by having everyone try to move around, duplicate (copy/paste), and type text onto a
sticky note. This helps attendees get comfortable on the board. Next, give directions: “We’re here today
to come up with some new and creative ways for our members to connect while we can’t meet in
person. Use 1 sticky note for 1 idea and place it inside the frame. There are no wrong or silly answers,
just put down as many ideas as you can think of in 5 minutes.”
37

Set a timer for 5
minutes, and say go.
This part creates a fun
energy with a lot of
simultaneous activity
on the board!
Part 2
After the 5 minutes are over, ask your attendees
to immediately pick their favorite ideas by placing
a dot on that sticky note. Each attendee has 5
votes for 5 different ideas.
Part 3
Once all attendees have voted with all of their
dots, ask your attendees to take a look at frame
2 and explain each of the quadrants. Then as a
group take a look at the ideas with the most
dots and move each sticky note to the best
quadrant on the grid. If there are duplicates,
you can remove one of them. You can
categorize or group ideas as needed.
38

Part 4
To wrap up this session, take a look at the categories and decide how to move forward. Who’s
responsible for each idea? Will you focus on Quick Wins first, then move on to Major Projects? Which
ideas have priority overall?
Use Miro’s tools to figure out what works for you and your attendees: change the sticky notes’ colors to
assign them to a team, or based on priority or timing. You can add a comment on the sticky note and
tag a person’s name. Try duplicating the sticky notes and organizing them within a new frame.
This is just the start for all the many ways Miro can be a fun and effective virtual collaboration tool
for your club!
Christine Funke is an immigrant, feminist, reader,
traveler and communicator. She is the Founder and
President of the Heidelberg IWC and has been involved
with FAWCO behind the scenes since 2013, including
doing communications at the Brussels and Frankfurt
conferences, chairing the U40 Task Force in 2019, and
leading the redesign of the FAWCO website in 2017. She
works full time as the Product Content Strategist at
HeidelbergCement. She has 2 young sons and a
husband. She is trying her best to say no to new
projects and work in 2021 (she’s busy enough!)
Questions about Miro? Email her at
president@heidelbergiwc.org.
39

PROFILE
Overcoming
Obstacles One at
a Time
Maria Barros Weiss, member of
the Heidelberg IWC, Germany,
describes her pivot as a systems
engineer in academia to industry.
I was born in Luanda, Angola, during my father’s
military service. This was in 1974, the year of
Portugal’s Civil Revolution, when the country
became a democracy and returned its colonies to
their owners. This allowed my parents to return to
Portugal, where I grew up.
This would be not the last time my parents would
move, and after coming back to Lisbon, they
decided to move close to Braga in the north,
where most of my extended family lives.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before we moved
again, to Porto. It was difficult for me to make
new friends, feel at home and find my place in
this new life! I was always looking out the window
thinking about Braga, counting the days until the
holidays so I could spend time with family and
friends. I do remember my mother telling me that
life is made of phases, each of them full of people
who are important and who, in times of difficultly,
Our family in 2005
Maria Barros Weiss
will all walk alongside us for the rest of our lives!
The friends from each phase are always in our
memories, and then sometimes we meet up again
and have the opportunity of revisiting the past.
But life goes on.
Today I am still friends with my best friend from
those early days, even though we haven’t ever
lived in the same city again. Instead, we have
made sure we spend as much time together as
possible, on weekends and in the summer. One
year we went to England together to do an English
language course; later we ended up collaborating
on some international projects, which have
allowed us to meet frequently even though I
moved to Germany. I have two other very close
friends from two other phases of my life, who, for
professional reasons, moved here to Germany
as well.
But this hasn’t been the same with all my friends.
As my mother told me when I was 9, sometimes
we find one of these old friends, and in the
moment it feels like we can still talk about
anything like it was yesterday, but at the end of
the day each person goes back to their own
separate lives!
Me with my parents
Leaving home
I left home to go to university in the south of
Portugal, to study Systems Engineering. My father
helped me move and later said this was one of
the most difficult moments of his life! Now that I
have kids of my own I understand the worries, but
I believe he was feeling the end of a phase in his
life, too, seeing the daughter “flying away” on her
own! And I have flown a lot since that day, ending
up moving even more often than my parents.
40

Being a technologist allows me to be part of
research, with influence on its applications to the
industry and society, and to be part of the
progress in innovative ICT-enabled solutions,
which are part of the digital transformation taking
place in economy and society!
As a woman, being a doctorate engineer in ICT
certainly puts me in a minority. Coordinating
mainly male teams is not always easy, but I’ve
never had a problem there – although there have
been some situations where I felt that a man
would not have had to prove himself in the
same way!
Receiving recognition from the Canon Foundation in
Europe
Today I still travel a lot, for work and personally,
but I try to give my sons the chance to grow
together with their friends by living in one place.
Curiously, I have always moved for academic and
professional reasons, not out of need but to
embrace new challenges! And in any place I have
been working, and in every city I’ve been living, I
feel I’ll never leave, but then it comes a new
challenge I cannot resist!
Getting from Portugal to Germany
While working on my doctoral thesis, I spent some
time at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan –
once with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, and for another period with a grant
from the Canon Foundation in Europe. It was while
working in Nagoya, at the Tokuda & Kitamura
Laboratory, that I met my husband, a German
researcher working in the same laboratory.
After our return from Japan, my husband (still my
boyfriend then), moved to Lisbon, Portugal where I
was lecturing. I was a lecturer for six years, first at
the Superior Technology and Management School
of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, and at
that time I was lecturing for four years at the
Superior Engineering Institute of Lisbon.
An early interest in computing
My interest in computing technologies started at
an early age, with the consoles and computer
games that we used to play with all day, closing
the shades until our parents would force us to go
outside to play. When I was a teenager, we already
had two computers at home, besides the console,
which was unusual at the time. My school projects
were already typed in the computer and then they
were printed.
In high school I studied economics, only becoming
a STEM student at university, where I took my
licentiate diploma in Computers and Systems
Engineering at the University of Algarve, in
Portugal. We were a class of 80 students, but only
three of us were girls!
In the final year of my licentiate degree, during my
final project in ionospheric communications, I
started collaborating internationally in a pan-
European group, and had the opportunity to
spend a short period of time in a communications
center in Huelva, Spain.
After the licentiate degree I decided to go back to
Porto and started working as scientific researcher
in signal speech processing at the Faculty of
Engineering, where I concluded my Master’s in
I loved the contact with the students and the
possibility of focusing on my research, but I always
had the feeling that I needed get experience in the
industrial world, with experience outside of
academia. Therefore, when my husband got a job
offer in Germany I told him to go for it and I
would follow.
Entering a new phase
During my maternity leave for my first child, I got a
job as a program manager in information and
communication technology (ICT), which I am still
doing today.
With my family
41

Electrical and Computer Engineering. We were
only eight students following the
telecommunications specialization, and I was the
only woman in that group.
At the Faculty of Engineering of the University of
Porto I also started my doctoral thesis in text-tospeech
synthesis, in collaboration with the Nagoya
Institute of Technology, Japan, where I spent
several months. After moving to Germany, I
decided to transfer my doctoral thesis work to the
University of Bonn, where I was already
collaborating via a European research group on
speech processing. I have now completed my
doctorate work and got my PhD degree in
Bonn, Germany.
Overcoming obstacles
Interesting enough – in part due to a society
where men and women are given different roles,
but not only that – my biggest obstacles have
been in making choices that prioritize my career.
It is not simple to explain it without generalizing to
statements that could be misunderstood, but in
different moments of my life, I felt that I was
expected to quit my studies or my profession in
order to live up to the expectations, even if I was
more successful than many of my male peers!
participating in meetings, speaking publicly even
when I was pregnant. I remember speaking in
China in at a European Commission event when I
was five months pregnant, already with a
considerable belly.
Possibly my biggest obstacle
When I was 42, I was diagnosed with invasive
breast cancer and I found myself in a situation of
fighting for survival! The pressure from everyone –
from family, friends, colleagues to doctors – to
quit everything and accept that being a patient
should be my priority was tough! I had to fight for
my life in terms of health, but I also had to fight
for my life as I built it, that I worked hard for, and
to make everyone believe that this was my way to
get cured.
This was the case when I wanted to study
informatics in high school, which was seen as a
path for office assistants, while for men it was
seen as the path to a tech career. This view was
definitely gender biased!
Then after finding my way to an informatics
university, I had a boyfriend who wanted to start a
family before I would have finished my degree. He
was wealthy, so he imagined that I would only
have a low-paid job anyway, so there was no need
to rush finishing my studies!
Next obstacle: after university I was seen as
immature for refusing to use my family’s social
connections to help me find a first job that would
give me the proper pillars for a solid career.
Later, when I became a mother, I found out that
even if German women are more emancipated
than many others in the world, I was seen as a
“raven mother” – someone who prioritizes her
career rather than enjoying her children’s
childhood and supporting their development at
home and giving my husband the stability to build
on his career!
In Germany we are entitled to three years of
leave, paid for 12 to 14 months, when it is shared.
I took six months of maternity leave for my
second child. For the first child I was still working
in Portugal, and I took the four months leave we
were entitled to. I kept working full time and
At work in my office in 2017
Many people find out what they really want when
they are diagnosed with cancer, I found out that I
had what I really wanted, and I wanted to keep it!
By doing my job while I was receiving treatment I
felt I was still part of the normal world!
This was my way to survive and be cured! My light
bulb moment came when my boss reminded me
that resilience was one of my strengths! Even one
of my oncologists said the best thing to do was to
be positive, however you might achieve that.
Although I was entitled to paid long-term leave
during treatment like this, I preferred to make a
schedule that worked for me around my work.
Even though I had two surgeries, six months of
chemotherapy and more than 30 sessions of
radiotherapy, many of my work colleagues didn’t
even know I was ill! I never hid my illness from
those working close to me, but by using clever
tricks with a scarf that I learned from my Muslim
cleaning lady (who was a scarf expert having worn
one for years of course) or by wearing a wig, many
people didn’t seem to notice my hair loss. I made
public presentations, had international meetings
42

Quick-fire questions for Maria
1. If you could change one thing about your past,
what would it be? If I could one thing from the past,
I would have learned the German language as
soon as I decided I would move to Germany! It is
very important for integration, but also for the ties
you want to create!
I’ve been in Germany for 13 years, and it is very
difficult to have time to invest in the language, but
it is even more difficult to make friends imposing
a language that is not your own. I started learning
Japanese before I went to Japan, and even if it was
just at a basic level, it helped with my integration
into the country!
Relaxing while on vacation
and even concluded an international project with
outstanding results, and got funding for another
one during this period of treatment. Today I have
been cancer free for over three years.
The future for IT
The future of the ICT industry is connected with
the future of most of the vertical industries. I’m a
technologist in communications networks,
artificial intelligence, the internet of things,
digitalization, and cloud and data innovation. The
digital transformation we are living and
experiencing is the most fascinating thing, and it is
enabled by many of these technologies. New
digital services are changing most of the vertical
industries as we know them and disrupting most
of the societal sectors. They will have a great
impact not only on the economy but also in a
more sustainable society and a greener world,
with a smarter use of resources.
Today I’m a manager for international projects
with geographically distributed teams,
participating in 16+ international and national
projects and evaluation and follow up of 50+
projects. In these roles we need to travel a lot, but
we also use media technologies a lot – like video
conferencing, messaging, collaborative
management and software development, or realtime
document collaboration tools and other
collaborative technologies that are already
transforming the culture at the workplace.
When I came to Germany it was such a busy time
in my life: finishing my PhD, becoming a mother,
changing from an academic career to one in the
industry, in another country and yet another
language, that I allowed myself not to learn the
language right away! After all, I could speak
English everywhere! I even joined an English
women’s group! But later it didn’t get easier! I
know I would have had a much easier integration
here if I had spoken better German.
2. What things about your career in technology do
you apply to your daily life? New digital services will
change most of the vertical industries as we know
them and disrupt most of the societal sectors. ICT
technologies, like artificial intelligence and 5G
mobile communications are recognized as
enablers of these future services, contributing to a
digital economy and society.
These enabling technologies will affect not only
our way of working and doing business, but our
daily life as well, bringing a whole new range of
innovative services into our lives. The industry and
governmental authorities worldwide are
prioritizing and putting money towards this digital
transformation because they recognize its need.
These and other digital tools will affect not only
our way of working and doing business, but our
daily life as well. This will bring a whole new range
of innovative services into our lives. Industry and
governmental authorities worldwide are already
giving priorities and funding to digital
transformation initiatives.
At the EC ICT 2018 event in Austria
43

FEATURE
ThePajamaCompany.com and Me
Ellie Badanes, member of FAUSA and FAWCO’s Twitter expert, tells us
all about setting up and running an online business in 2021.
Starting with new tech
I don’t know how to code, but I do love new shiny
things. I remember being thrilled with my word
processor, my fax machine and my first computer.
I loved the crinkling sound of that first Netscape
dial-up internet connection. What a thrill to be
connected to the world right at my desk. I
remember trying to think of a clever email
address for that first CompuServe and AOL email
account. What a communication game changer
that turned out to be.
I joined Twitter in 2008 and a church organist
from Oregon was the first person to follow me. I
thought that was amazing.
Working on my business
I started my career back in the late 70s in the
fashion business. I was a retail buyer for a
department store group working in the dress
market. I would answer my phone by saying,
“Dress Office.” My daily life was consumed by
runways, vendor showrooms, fashion trends and
retail merchandising.
Loving pajamas
I have always loved pajamas. Pajamas just make
me happy. You know when you plop into that
comfy chair, that cozy couch, that scrumptious
bed? You know what it’s like to just sigh that
happy sigh? Pajamas do just that for
me. Whether it’s a new fresh pair or an old
favorite, the soft cotton always feels fabulous. I’ve
found the pajama style that’s just right for me. I
love to lounge in pajamas, but I also love to work
in pajamas. I’ve been my most creative in
pajamas. I was likely wearing pajamas when I
thought about starting an online pajama store
one summer day in 2003.
I was ready for a new journey.
When I was 27, my life totally changed, as my
husband was transferred from New York to
Copenhagen. At that moment, a new journey
began and what a journey it was. I could never
have imagined that the promised 3-to-5-year
assignment would turn into a life abroad that
would encompass the next 20 years. It was a
journey that would lead me to a full fledged
@fawco career as well.
My overseas life encompassed another most
exciting journey of a lifetime which was to become
the mom of Jilly, Alex and Steffi, each born in a
different country. The greatest gift of all.
In 2003 we left England and returned to America.
We moved to Connecticut and a new journey
began for us.
Some of The Pajama Company pajamas
44

were returned with a note that his wife didn’t like
them. That first order was memorable for me at
least. He never knew that he was my first
customer. I still have those pajamas hanging in
my office.
The first holiday season
My first holiday season turned out to be wild. I
had bought an assortment of adult footed
pajamas from a fellow entrepreneur who had just
started her business at the same time as mine. My
brother-in-law, a photographer, agreed to find
some models among his friends and neighbors in
Colorado Springs, and do a footie photoshoot for
me. With his images and boxes of footies in my
basement I added these new pajamas to my
website. Within minutes I started getting orders
and phone calls.
More of our pajamas
Setting up the business
Online shopping was still pretty new, so my first
task was to find a domain name. I jumped on
register.com and searched for
thepajamacompany.com and, yes, it was available.
I paid $7.99 to buy it for a year and with a click I
had my domain name. I was on my way. I created
a logo and hired a company to create a website
with a shopping cart.
Although it had been 20 years since my days as a
buyer, it was pretty easy to jump right back in. I
had a vision of what kind of store I wanted to
create and the items I wanted to sell. Soon I was
back in NYC and LA showrooms, looking not at
dresses this time around but at pajamas. I wasn’t
sure if these vendors would sell to me as an
online store. I was thrilled when they all said yes. I
wanted www.ThePajamaCompany.com to be
cheerful. I promoted the mantra “Life is better in
pajamas” because I believed it. I was building my
store not with bricks but with my computer.
It was exciting.
Launching the website
With the help of a tech assistant in Atlanta who I
found online, I launched my site in April of 2004.
My first order came in a matter of days. It was a
man in Texas who bought my “Las Vegas” themed
pajamas and told me in the customer note that he
was giving them to his wife for their one-year
anniversary and surprising her with a trip to Las
Vegas. All my inventory was in my basement, so I
picked and packed them and out the door they
went. That gave me chills. A few weeks later they
I had a cleaner a couple of days a week and I
asked her if she would mind filling pajama orders
instead of cleaning. I printed the orders, handed
them to her and she came back with the products
for me to ship. My phone rang and rang with
footie requests. It was so frantic that I even asked
some 9 th graders hanging out at our house with
my son to help me answer the phone. A mom
called saying her son was a police officer and
really wanted some footies. When my oldest
daughter arrived home from her freshman year of
college, within moments of taking off her coat and
dropping her bags on the floor, she had provided
a Texas pastor with a red footie for his Christmas
Eve service while also advising another man on
the delicate subject of determining the correct
size to buy for his wife.
The business today
Looking back, I admire my early enthusiasm and
hope I still have much of it intact today. I did
outsource fulfilment to a warehouse team and
customer service to a call center. The journey as
an online retailer has been exciting and stressful,
energizing and exhausting, happy and pensive.
The economic highs have been thrilling and some
lows have been challenging. Through it all, the
opportunity to be creative, to sell something I
love, to expand the brand across social media
networks has been a dream. What a treat to
interact with customers from around the world
and to see our pajamas truly making people
happy season after season. Pajamas proved to be
a great niche business for e-commerce. I’ve come
to realize that people who love pajamas really
love pajamas and will search high and low for the
perfect pair.
The future for pajamas
From my launch back in 2004, I’ve promoted the
fun and comfort of living and working in pajamas.
I’ve heard from customers over the years how
they love spending weekends in pajamas, but this
era of COVID is a unique moment. This is a time
45

when pajamas really are bringing some calm,
some happiness and comfort, and likely increased
productivity. I’ve been here year in and year out
working in pajamas, but now I know I’m not the
only one. Owning the “way you work” might be the
new thing now and the new thing for the future.
Ellie Badanes is originally from Bloomington, Indiana
but today lives in New Canaan, Connecticut. She has
been involved with FAWCO for about 30 years
including being President of the American Women’s
Club in Denmark, President of the American Women of
Surrey and President of The FAWCO Foundation. She
says “@fawco helped me grow and provided amazing
mentors and friends to cherish year after year.
@fawco showed me the power of women, the power of
passion and activism, the power of being a global
citizen and the power of giving. Today I have the fun
of managing our @fawco presence on twitter. For all
of this, I will be forever grateful.”
Ellie Badanes
“Confetti” Dot Pajamas are the Cat’s
Pajamas
Start with hand-pulled Peruvian Pima cotton,
which is known for its silky luster and
unbelievably soft feel. We combined this Pima
cotton with Modal to get the perfect drape
and added Elastane to give it stretch and
recovery. These PJs are so luxuriously soft you'll
never want to change out of them.
Available online now
46

FEATURE
Googling My Way
from Journalism to
Engineering and
Back
Carolyn Stransky, member of AWC Berlin, Germany, on using
Google’s search engine to find a job.
If living in Berlin has taught me anything, it's the
importance of search engines.
My first life-altering Google search happened
shortly after moving to Germany from the United
States. It had been days since I had had a
conversation with another human besides my
German partner. I was lonely. So I apprehensively
typed six words into the box on my screen: "how
to make friends adult berlin". When those results
were useless because Freund was out of my
vocabulary, I added "expat". That's how I found
the American Women's Club of Berlin.
The second significant search led me to a career in
technology. And the third, software engineering.
Before I get into that, some context.
Arriving in Berlin
I arrived in Berlin with only a journalism degree
and a whole lot of unfounded confidence. I was an
idealist, planning to “change the world with my
words.” Turns out, being a journalist in a country
where you don't speak the language is hard. A
byline here and there didn't pay enough to cover
my rent or qualify for a visa. I realized that I
needed something more sustainable.
After weeks of uncertainty and growing concern
that my tourist visa would expire, I did another
search: "how to work in Berlin as expat". I learned
that this city has a growing technology and startup
scene. And the best part? The primary
language in most offices is English. The next day, I
submitted my CV for any role on
BerlinStartupJobs.com that listed “native English
speaker” as a qualification.
Back to the beginning
Two years and a couple miscellaneous marketing
jobs later, I found myself back where I started
after the start-up sponsoring my working visa filed
for bankruptcy. Judging by my empty inbox,
prospects for another full-time communications
role were grim. My colleagues in engineering,
however, were thriving. Most were already
snatched up by a competitor and the rest were
"weighing their options" (a foreign concept to me
at the time).
I always had a hunch that software engineers were
better off. Upper management never questioned if
their work was important. Not to mention that
many of their salaries were double mine.
Engineers also possessed an in-demand skill.
Comparing their post-insolvency job hunt to mine
made this strikingly clear.
Enjoying life in Berlin
There were downsides to engineering, I was sure.
For instance, being hunched over a screen all day
surely destroys your back, and their office was
vaguely sweaty and pungent like a locker room.
47

But the promise of stability kept creeping into my
thoughts. If I wanted to build a life with my
partner in Germany, I would need a visa and a
reliable income. Job security and the ability to pay
off my lingering student debt wouldn't hurt. I
didn't have any of that, but the software
engineers did.
Learning from Google
Illuminated again by the glow of Google's home
screen, I hesitantly typed: "how to become a
software engineer". It felt ridiculous to ask a
search engine for such major career guidance.
The results yielded three options: go back to
university; teach yourself online; or attend a
coding bootcamp. University would require either
money or a better command of the German
language, so that was out. I wasn't disciplined
enough to be self-taught. The remaining option
was a coding bootcamp. The only problem was
that I had no idea what a coding bootcamp was.
According to edX, coding bootcamps are defined
as "short-term, intense training sessions designed
to prepare students for the practical reality of
development". This is accurate.. but it fails to
articulate how grueling the experience can be.
Coding bootcamp
In 2017, I attended Spiced Academy's twelve-week
web development program in Berlin. It was
immersive – a minimum of eight hours per day at
the school, plus review every night and project
work over the weekend. Writing code also
required rewiring my brain and taking a new,
more logical approach to problem-solving. It was
Enjoying life in Berlin
difficult. I cried frequently. I almost quit three
times. But I made it.
My job today
Today, I'm working as a software engineer at a
different start-up. Most of my assumptions were
true, although sometimes that stability is
overshadowed by sexism and other systemic
problems in the industry. It’s hard to complain,
though. Building websites is interesting enough
and even more so when the paycheck comes in
every month.
My background in journalism has also proved
useful. I’ve written presentations about the
technical concepts I’ve learned and traveled to
conferences in Iceland, India and Singapore as a
result. Now I’m actively trying to combine
journalism and engineering by writing for outlets
like Future of Sex, a publication focused on the
intersection of tech and human sexuality.
It’s impossible to say where this new career will
take me, especially given how quickly technology
evolves. But I’m confident I'll be able to figure
it out.
Or, worst case, I'll Google it.
Learning new skills
48

At the Spiced Academy
Carolyn Stransky (she/her) is a software engineer and
freelance journalist based in Germany. Originally from
Seattle, Carolyn moved to Berlin nearly six years ago
and has been a member of the American Women’s
Club of Berlin ever since. During the day, she builds
web products with a focus on design and accessibility
for early-stage start-ups. Out of the office, Carolyn
writes about technology and identity for outlets like
Future of Sex and Curve Magazine. You can find her
most places on the Internet @carolstran or through
her website: workwithcarolyn.com
49

PROFILE
Specializing in
Web Security
Susan Spälti, member of the AWC
Bern, Switzerland, describes her
roles in operations research and
internet security.
Although I was born in Pittsburgh PA, my family
moved every five years between Pittsburgh and
New Jersey. I am one of eight siblings – five girls
and three boys – and my father jokingly referred
to me as “number three child, number two
daughter.” Since we moved so often, we quickly
learned that that home was not a house or place,
but where the family was.
I am a child of the 60s and 70s. Very turbulent
times to be sure, but gender roles really had not
evolved. Commercials told women to “bring home
the bacon” but they still had to “fry it up in a pan.”
Men got the Marlboro man. True, my father went
to work and my mother stayed at home, but both
had bachelor degrees and my mother worked for
four years in her field until the children came.
They expected their children, regardless of sex, to
help with the housework, take care of the younger
Susan Spälti
siblings, earn their own pocket money and apply
themselves to schoolwork to the best of their
abilities. We were encouraged to read, explore
new things, go outside to play, and have lots of
fun. It was understood by us all that we would go
to college if we wanted and were able to. My
mother said, “you raise children to leave home”
and my parents were determined to provide us
with the necessary tools.
Our family in 2005
With my family in about 1972
50

degree and then we would move back to the
States.
I was granted my degree in June 1990, but still
have not moved back to the States. While I was
finishing, I was completing another project. In
September 1990 I gave birth to our daughter,
Nina. Fifteen months later, in December 1991, we
welcomed our son Jacques.
The first desktop computer I used
Leaving home
I left home when I was 17 to attend Allegheny
College, a small liberal arts school in north
western Pennsylvania. I thought I wanted to be a
medical doctor and Allegheny had a good premed
program. As part of premed, I had to take a lot of
science courses, including mathematics. After one
college level course, I was hooked and majored in
math. I loved its beauty and logic. I enrolled at
Ohio State as a graduate student in pure
mathematics as soon as I graduated. OSU was
quite a shock. I went from attending a school with
three departments in one building to one with
three buildings per department. Plus, pure
mathematics was a little too esoteric for me. I quit
after two semesters and got a summer internship
in Washington DC.
Discovering OR
I loved DC and decided to look for a fulltime job
there. This was in 1979, the Cold War was still
“hot,” – and the Department of Defense and its
contractors were offering many jobs for people
with my skill set. I accepted a job with a defense
contractor, devising algorithms to solve logistics
problems and “discovered” Operations Research
(OR), a type of applied mathematics. I loved OR
and decided to go back to graduate school parttime.
I got my masters in OR from George
Washington University in DC and then decided to
go full-time for my PhD. I got a fellowship for the
PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
in Pittsburgh and moved there in 1984.
Moving to Switzerland
At CMU I met my Swiss husband, Karl, a visiting
research fellow from the University of Bern. He
specialized in OR and we “clicked” on more than a
professional level. As he only had a one-year
fellowship, one of us had to relocate. Since he had
a job and I was just starting out, I applied to and
was accepted at the École Polytechnique Fédérale
de Lausanne. We married in July 1985 and I moved
to Bern in September. The plan was to finish my
My mentors
My earliest mentors were my parents. They
encouraged me to explore many fields and always
be curious. My doctoral advisor, Prof. Thomas
Liebling, was a wonderful mentor who provided
guidance on how to thoroughly analyze problems
and present my results in a comprehensible
fashion. Finally, my husband Karl. Perhaps not a
mentor, but he and I worked as a team, both
professionally and privately, so that we could give
our customers quality solutions while
simultaneously raising a family.
Consulting from home
While caring for two small children, my husband
and I started a small consulting firm which
With my father, husband and Professor Liebling at my PhD
Defense.
developed algorithms, database models, etc. for
the Swiss version of Social Security. Our office was
at home so we could be with the children. After
almost 20 years of working at home, I took a new
job. I enjoyed going to an office outside of my
house and honing my skills in Identity and Access
Management, an internet security field. I worked
in this field until I retired in 2020. My husband
continued with our consulting firm until he retired
a few years ago. After my retirement, we had
planned to travel, play golf and enjoy life.
Although the traveling and golf plans are now on
hold, we enjoy walks to see the llamas in our
51

In an enterprise, PAM deals with user accounts
which have special access above that of a
standard user, for instance system administration
accounts. Many famous security breaches
involved these special access accounts. PAM is
used to control, monitor and audit such accounts.
Quick-fire questions for Susan
1. What things about your career in technology do
you apply to your daily life? Being in IT Security, I
find myself very cautious when dealing with all
things involving the internet. I have learned not to
“click” on something just because I can, I keep the
software and operating systems on my computer
and all devices up to date. I also believe in
reading the manual. In my career I have spent a
lot of time cleaning up “issues” that could have
been avoided if someone had just bothered to
read the manual.
village (yes, we’ve got llamas, or are they alpacas?),
talking with each other, our friends and our
relatives (albeit remotely) and just being together.
The future for the industry
Although I started out as a mathematician and
was formally trained as a STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
student before that became an acronym, I ended
my career as an IT specialist in Identity and Access
Management (IAM). Most understand the concept
of authentication. When you try to log onto an
application, you are asked your username and
password to “authenticate” who you are. IAM asks
the following questions: Are you allowed to do
what you want? What resources can you “access”?
In today’s world of increasing data breaches and
more rigorous compliance requirements, IAM, a
relatively new field, is constantly evolving and will
continue to do so. Privileged Access Management
(PAM), a subcategory of IAM, is the new hot topic.
With my husband Karl in Cape Elizabeth, Maine
2. If you could work with one famous person, past or
present, who would it be and why? I would have
loved to work with Grace Hopper (1906-1992), an
admiral in the US Navy, mathematician, and
computer scientist who, amongst other things,
invented the compiler, an intermediate program
that translates English language instructions into
”computer” language. And better yet, she coined
the term “bug” for an error in your program after
a moth got into the circuits of the Mark I, a
precursor of electronic computers, which she
helped design. I spent a lot of time “debugging”
my code.
Enjoying Swiss Glüwey with my daughter Nina in 2019
52

FEATURE
Why I Design For The AIWCD
Jessica Nicholson tells us what she feels are the benefits of donating
her skill set to her local club, AIWC Düsseldorf.
politicians. The American International Women’s
Club of Düsseldorf (AIWCD) participates every
year and 2017 was no different. It was at this
event, dressed as Wonder Woman, that I met
Alisa Cook-Röhs, then President of the Club and
was recruited as the Graphic Designer for the
AIWCD. My accepting of this position would
greatly impact the AIWCD, but it would affect my
life far more.
Sense of Purpose
When I moved to Germany, I took some time off –
I had not been without a job since I was 15. I
spent a couple months exploring my new country
and getting settled. This adjustment period was
lovely, but I soon realized that I was bored. I didn’t
have kids or pets to keep me occupied and it was
obvious that I was not suited to a life of leisure.
Jessica with Alisa Cook-Röhs at the “Storming of the
Rathaus” in 2017
There is a tradition in Düsseldorf called “Storming
the Rathaus.” The women of the city, donning
their Karneval finest, crash through the doors of
City Hall (“Rathaus”) and cut off the ties of the
My first project for the AIWCD was redesigning
the Club magazine, the Radschläger. It was so
much fun to work with the Rad Team to
modernize the look and feel of the quarterly
publication. The magazine gave me something to
do; I had meetings to attend and calls to take.
One nice thing about volunteer work is that you
are in charge – you can put as much or as little
into the job as you want. I only had four issues to
do each year, so it didn’t take over my life but
made me feel productive.
53

I often use these skills when working with paid
clients, but the extra practice and freedom to take
risks has made me a better designer.
Expanding My Network
When I first joined the AIWCD, I did not think of it
as a place to meet professional contacts. My
perspective has since shifted. As an English
speaking designer in a German speaking country,
the expat community is an excellent place to meet
new clients.
Even today, I feel a sense of accomplishment
when my Radschläger arrives. The feedback from
Club members is welcome as well. It’s always nice
when someone praises your work.
Staying Tech-Savvy
Today, I’m back to designing as a freelancer. I
wouldn’t have it any other way, but the gig
economy comes with benefits and drawbacks.
Technology is quickly and constantly changing; I
must stay up-to-date to stay relevant. So, I
continue to volunteer.
While the AIWCD has not facilitated all the
learning I have done in the past four years, it has
given me many occasions to polish my skills
without the pressures of a paying client. Working
on the magazine and marketing materials helped
me learn about the German printing industry and
how it differs from the US. Redesigning the Club
website gave me a crash course in membership
platforms and taught me how to use Wild Apricot.
I have had opportunities to practice and improve
upon my existing skills as well, like illustration,
logo design and photo editing.
The Club is filled with remarkable women, many
of whom are small business owners and
executives – just the type of people I want to work
with. As a Club member, I may have met these
women at events and had a moment or two to
win their business. My position gives me an
advantage, however. As the AIWCD’s Graphic
Designer, I can showcase my services on an
ongoing basis. Every member of the AIWCD sees
my work when they receive a magazine in the mail
or sign up for an event on the website.
If members have design work that needs to be
done, it takes very little effort to find out who I
am. My volunteer position helps me to win clients
by letting my work speak for itself.
Paying it Forward
The AIWCD is my community and, had I not taken
this position, I would never have found my feet in
Germany. Most Americans live under the false
pretense that everyone speaks English and
therefore, as an English speaker, you can easily fit
in anywhere.
This is not the case in Düsseldorf. Most Germans
speak a bit of English – enough to go to the
grocery store or ask for directions – but that
doesn’t mean they can easily form friendships
54

with English speakers. As an expat – especially if,
like me, you are linguistically challenged – it is
imperative that you find an English speaking
community wherever you live. That was the AIWCD
for me.
The main reason I continue to volunteer is because
I want this community to be here for the next
person. I want them to find their home in Germany
and have the life-changing experiences that come
with living abroad.
Today
I have volunteered with the Club for four years
now. In my position, I have revamped the AIWCD’s
branding, magazine and website. When I show
people the work I have done, they ask me, “You do
this for free?” And the answer is yes. But I get more
out of this deal than the Club does.
Originally from Woodstock, NY, Jessica Nicholson grew
up in Richmond, VA. She studied Art and Visual
Technology at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
After university, Jessica began her career by working as
an in-house designer, then founded Medulla, a graphic
design firm, with her business partner, Jessica Fleenor.
In 2016, Nicholson and her husband chose to relocate
to Germany. Since moving overseas, Nicholson has
continued her design work on a freelance basis. She
spends her free time cooking, taking photos and
exploring Europe. To get in touch with Jessica, or to see
her work, visit www.jessicanicholson.com.
55

INSPIRING YOU
Founded in 1931, FAWCO is a global women’s NGO (non-governmental organization), an
international network of independent volunteer clubs and associations comprising 60
member clubs in 31 countries worldwide, with a total membership of around 10,000 women
and men. FAWCO serves as a resource and a voice for its members; seeks to improve the lives
of women and girls worldwide, especially in the areas of human rights, health, education
and the environment; advocates for the rights of US citizens overseas; and contributes to the
global community through its Global Issues Teams and The FAWCO Foundation, which
provides development grants and education awards. Since 1997, FAWCO has held special
consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.
OUR MISSION STATEMENT
FAWCO is an international federation of independent organizations whose
mission is:
• to build strong support networks for its American and international
membership;
• to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide;
• to advocate for the rights of US citizens overseas; and
• to mobilize the skills of its membership in support of global initiatives
for education, the environment, health and human rights.
MAGAZINE FEEDBACK
We want this magazine to be interesting for all FAWCO members. In an effort to
provide articles of interest to all of our readers, we have created an online
feedback questionnaire. It should only take a few minutes of your time to
complete and will be a great help to us!
Please click on the link or paste it into your browser
to complete our short five question survey.
SURVEY
THANK YOU!
ADVERTISING DISCLAIMER
FAWCO receives financial remuneration for page space from advertisers. Views expressed or benefits
described in any display advertisement, advertorial or in any webpage visited online directly from these
adverts are not endorsed by FAWCO.
56

MORE ABOUT THIS ISSUE
The Inspiring Women Team
Liz Elsie Karen Berit Michele
For more information about this magazine, please contact a member of the
Inspiring Women team:
Editor in Chief, Liz MacNiven, inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org.
Advertising and Sponsorship Manager, Elsie Bose, advertising@fawco.org.
Distribution Manager, Karen Boeker, iwdistribution@fawco.org
Social Media Manager, Berit Torkildsen, iwsocialmedia@fawco.org
Features Coordinator, Michele Hendrikse Du Bois,
inspiringwomenfeatures@fawco.org
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to our profilees: Adelina, Bev, Cat, Debbie, Irem, Maria and Susan, with
thanks also for the use of their photos and those of their friends and families.
Additional thanks to Carolyn, Christine, Denise, Ellie, Emily, Fintan, Jessica, Karen
and Kari for their articles.
Special thanks to the proofreading team of Laurie Brooks (AWC Amsterdam/
AWC The Hague), Sallie Chaballier (AAWE Paris), Mary Dobrian (AIWC Cologne),
Tamar Hudson (AIWC Cologne), Janis Kaas (AAWE Paris/FAUSA), Carol-Lyn
McKelvey (AIWC Cologne/FAUSA), Lauren Mescon (AWC Amsterdam), Mary
Stewart Burgher (AWC Denmark) and Jenny Taylor (AIWC Cologne and
Düsseldorf).
Please note: images used in this publication are either sourced from the authors themselves or
through unsplash.com
57

THE NEXT ISSUE
Coming in May:
Inspiring Women wants you
to live your best life.
Welcome to our
“Women and Wellness” Issue.
Take a deep breath. Self-care is okay.
Our team is looking to profile women from your club who promote
the significance of wellness in daily life and offer the means to
achieve it.
The journey to wellness takes many paths. We want to profile
women who work in traditional or naturopathic medicine, exercise
or meditation. Or they may work in mental health or the arts,
nutrition or diet. They might offer a means to restore personal order or to seek adventure. The
search for wellness spans many disciplines! But they are all have one thing in common: they are
offering an opportunity for others to find the key to personal peace and calmness.
We want this issue to be informative. We are also looking for features to help our readers understand
what “wellness” is. Do you have instructive articles on how to achieve mindfulness. How does one
start their journey to wellness? Readers are curious as to the advantages of working with a life/career
coach. If diet or fitness is your method of wellness, how did that start and how is working for you?
And what methods are you employing? Share your story by writing an article (700-800 words) for our
next issue.
To nominate candidates for profiles, please send the candidate’s name, candidate’s email address
and a brief description (50-100 words) of why you think they are inspiring and fit the theme for the
issue. Send the information to: inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org
To contribute an article or feature, either on the suggested topics or one that you think fits with
the theme “Women in Wellness”, contact: inspiringwomenfeatures@fawco.org
NEW!
Introducing our latest feature, “That’s Inspired!”
The Inspiring Women team feels that photographs are integral to our magazine. We thought it
would be interesting to end each issue with a page of a photograph that offers a unique perspective
on its theme. The photos can be provocative, amusing, entertaining, artistic. The photos should lend
themselves to a portrait orientation and able to fit an A4 page.
To submit a photo that you think says “That’s Inspired!” for our Wellness issue please contact
inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org
The deadline for submissions of profile candidates, feature ideas or
“That’s Inspired!” photos is March 25, 2021.
Copyright 2021 FAWCO
Inspiring Women© Magazine is owned and published electronically by FAWCO.
All rights reserved. All bylined articles are copyright of their respective authors as indicated herein and are
reproduced with their permission. The magazine or portions of it may not be reproduced in any form, stored in
any retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy or otherwise –
without written consent of the publisher.
58

That’s Inspired!
A Unique User Experience!
Kristina Soleymanlou, member of AWG Paris, is known for the
special treatment she gives her clients. The pandemic has made it
impossible to offer personal service, but Kristina is undaunted,
shown here offering an online class demonstrating to participants
how to give themselves their own facials!
“That’s Inspired!” is Inspiring Women magazine’s newest feature. For more
information about this feature, please see the opposite page (p. 58).
59

FEATURED PHOTOS
The Cover Photo
“A Day at the Academy” (2017)
By Paul Fowler
The cover photo is of Carolyn Stransky
(AWC Berlin, on left) and Ingrid Majdalani at
Spiced Academy in Berlin, Germany. Spiced
Academy provides immersive training for
people hoping to get into the fields of
software engineering and data science. On
this day, Carolyn and Ingrid were writing
pseudo code (plain language descriptions
for what you’ll try to accomplish with code)
for their final projects.
Both women attended Spiced Academy’s
12-week web development program in
2017 and have been working as software
engineers ever since. You can read more
about Carolyn’s story and career transition
in the feature on p.47 “Googling my way
from journalism to engineering and back”.
The Back Page Photo
“Working anytime and anywhere!” (2020)
By Tugba Asmazoglu
"One of the perks of freelance work for me is to be able to work anytime and anywhere, as
long as I have access to coffee and internet. Having been working as a freelance writer/
content creator for over a decade, I feel like if I go to a library to work, I won't be able to
concentrate due to an excess amount of silence!
This photo was recently taken by Tugba Asmazoglu, an expat friend who had just moved to
Moscow. We wanted to meet at GUM, the historical market site in Red Square, but I also had
to meet a deadline that day. So I went to a coffee shop earlier to work on my latest animation
before we met and when she came, she found me working on cave people’s eyebrows. It was
a part of a new animation for my educational video channel, Curious Mind TV. “
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