Inspiring Women February 2021
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<strong>February</strong> <strong>2021</strong>, Volume 5, Issue 1
2
profiles<br />
7<br />
CONTENTS<br />
Encouraging <strong>Women</strong> Worldwide:<br />
Bev Bachmayer tells us about lifting<br />
women up via tech.<br />
29<br />
Creating Websites: Debbie Hastings tells<br />
us about how she came to learn how to<br />
create webites.<br />
11<br />
Creating<br />
Impactful<br />
Social Media<br />
Posts: Adelina<br />
Matinca talks<br />
about finding a<br />
new career with<br />
social media.<br />
40<br />
Overcoming<br />
Obstacles One<br />
at a Time:<br />
Maria Barros<br />
Weiss talks<br />
about the many<br />
obstacles she’s<br />
had to<br />
overcome.<br />
18<br />
24<br />
Developing “Curious Mind TV”:<br />
Irem Sunar tells us about the new resource<br />
she has created for children.<br />
Keeping FAWCO<br />
Tech Savvy: Cat<br />
Conner talks about<br />
her life as a<br />
technology<br />
consultant.<br />
50<br />
Specializing in<br />
Web Security:<br />
Susan Spälti<br />
discusses her time<br />
dealing with web<br />
security.<br />
We appreciate the support of our advertisers!<br />
Advertisers Index<br />
The Short List p.2 The Short List assists students with the college admissions and application process.<br />
Ask your club to schedule a webinar to acquaint members on how to get started.<br />
London Realty Intl. p.4 London Realty Intl. is owned by AWC London member Lonnée Hamilton, a<br />
worldwide property consultant. Her firm works with the best agents across the globe to fulfill your<br />
property needs.<br />
London & Capital p.10 Whether you are a US Citizen living abroad, or a foreign entity with US<br />
reporting, their dedicated teams take care of your wealth, giving you time to concentrate on the things<br />
that matter to you. London & Capital has been supporting FAWCO since 2016.<br />
Lauren Mescon, Rodan + Fields p.17 Lauren, member of AWC Amsterdam, has been an independent<br />
skincare consultant for the past decade. Rodan+ Fields is world-renowned for their products.<br />
Ponte Travels p.23 Ponte Travel Operating Director and FAWCO member Mary Stange offer<br />
customized service and exclusive access to the world’s most fascinating places while working<br />
responsibly to give back to local economies.<br />
Janet Darrow Real Estate p.31 Around the corner or a world away, contact Janet Darrow, FAUSA<br />
member, to find the best properties.<br />
The Pajama Company p.46 The Pajama Company, founded by Ellie Badanes, member of FAUSA and<br />
AW Surrey, sells pajamas that are cozy, cheerful and online!<br />
3
features<br />
14<br />
<strong>Women</strong> in<br />
Technology: A<br />
historical<br />
perspective on<br />
influential<br />
women in<br />
technology.<br />
36<br />
Get Work<br />
Done and<br />
Have Fun<br />
Virtually: A<br />
step-by-step<br />
guide to how to<br />
collaborate<br />
virtually.<br />
21<br />
27<br />
What is Data Privacy?: What does it<br />
mean when people talk about this<br />
knotty topic?<br />
FAWCO and Tech in Times of<br />
COVID-19: What changes have<br />
happened for FAWCO in the last 12<br />
months?<br />
44<br />
47<br />
ThePajamaCompany.com and Me:<br />
Setting up an online business –<br />
challenges and rewards.<br />
Googling My<br />
Way From<br />
Journalism to<br />
Engineering<br />
and Back:<br />
using Google as<br />
a way of finding<br />
answers and<br />
help.<br />
32<br />
in every issue<br />
Introducing<br />
AWC Perth,<br />
Australia: Club<br />
President and<br />
FAWCO Rep<br />
tells us more<br />
about their<br />
club.<br />
53<br />
Why I Design for the AIWCD: Does<br />
giving your time, for free, to your club<br />
have any benefits for you personally?<br />
5<br />
6<br />
Letter from the Editor<br />
Rewiring the<br />
Power: Magazine<br />
founder Elsie<br />
Bose looks at how<br />
to find the gold<br />
ring.<br />
56<br />
57<br />
57<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> You<br />
The <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> Team<br />
Acknowledgements<br />
58 The Next Issue<br />
59 “That’s <strong>Inspiring</strong>!”<br />
60 Featured Photos<br />
4
Letter From The Editor<br />
From a technological point of view, I am very much on the user rather than<br />
creator side of the fence. Mathematically capable, certainly not gifted, I<br />
definitely did not take after my Mum in this field. She was a mathematical<br />
wizard who absolutely loved solving those complex mathematical equations<br />
that gave so many of us heartache at school! She did things like solving<br />
calculus problems for fun!<br />
Mum was a Mathematics professor at the local university throughout my childhood, so whilst I did not<br />
have her fascination for the field, I do think the fact that a woman could excel in this area was very<br />
obvious to me. It’s not the case for all girls, sadly.<br />
I also got first hand experience of her ability to teach this sometimes baffling subject to those less<br />
personally gifted at maths. I remember vividly her setting me maths puzzles over breakfast for many<br />
months in the lead up to an exam I was due to sit. Her relentless drilling got the desired result when,<br />
against the odds, I got the top grade in “O” level Mathematics.<br />
At the memorial service held to celebrate Mum’s achievements in an all too shortened life, we all loved<br />
the image a former student, who spoke at the service, painted of her up in heaven teaching the angels<br />
maths. Ever the teacher.<br />
Today I am fortunate not to need to do more complicated mathematical puzzles than those involved in<br />
household finances, grocery shopping and so on. But I am a big user of technology, although I<br />
understand the mechanics of it very poorly indeed. How on earth does a mobile phone work? How does<br />
Google tell me the answer to my latest query? How does Netflix get the latest episode of The Crown or<br />
Bridgerton straight to me?<br />
The women in this issue are so much more tech savvy than most of us. They have embraced tech and<br />
used it in so many different ways both academically and practically, all of which you can read about in<br />
the stories in this issue. As long as women like these understand tech for us, like the bumble bee,<br />
maybe we can continue to fly anyway.<br />
In the middle of a global pandemic, we have needed our tech, even more than we’d probably thought<br />
possible, to maintain contact with our families and loved ones. Sometimes endless meetings on Zoom<br />
can be exhausting, but I can not imagine how much harder this challenging time would be without tech<br />
savvy people having come up with ways for us to stay in touch. So I give thanks that, like my Mum, these<br />
tech savvy women have been using their skills and talents on our behalf. Thank you, ladies, and keep up<br />
the good work!<br />
I hope you enjoy this tech savvy issue. A request from me if I may: there is a short, five question survey<br />
about the magazine here (p. 56.) We really would appreciate it if you could find a few minutes to<br />
respond so we can keep improving the magazine for you, our readers.<br />
Please stay healthy, happy and safe.<br />
Best, Liz xx inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org<br />
“A<br />
erodynamically, the<br />
bumble bee shouldn't be<br />
able to fly, but the<br />
bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on<br />
flying anyway.” Mary Kay Ash<br />
5
Rewiring<br />
the Power<br />
Technology careers aren’t for everyone, but they<br />
are an option for all women. <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong><br />
Magazine founder Elsie Bose, FAUSA, has been<br />
thinking about power and women.<br />
I have been thinking a lot about power these days. Not just the power that<br />
the new technology requires – electrical power, bandwidth, speed etc. – but<br />
the power it exerts as it enters and pervades every corner of our lives.<br />
Capturing and controlling that power is the gold ring to the future.<br />
I think, like most, the introduction of tech into our lives was a combination<br />
of curiosity, amusement, frustration and eventually, acceptance. And while<br />
most of us were working out what was happening, the industries that are<br />
“technology” marched forward.<br />
Unfortunately, for the most part, women were not part of the parade.<br />
The women profiled in this issue are attempting to change that. A brief glance at their backgrounds and<br />
experience truly blows the mind. They are software engineers, web security experts, logistic specialists,<br />
web designers, graphic designers, social media mavens and more. What they “do” is incredibly<br />
interesting and, at times, unbelievably mind-boggling! But the significant and important piece in all of<br />
their stories is how they use technology and their skills to bring others along.<br />
Their desire to share, teach and to encourage other women or youth will help to demystify the aura that<br />
surrounds those who hold the power in the technology world. It will level the playing field. And like so<br />
many other fields before this one, women will march forward on it and make their grab for that gold<br />
ring for themselves.<br />
Elsie advertising@fawco.org<br />
6
PROFILE<br />
Encouraging<br />
<strong>Women</strong><br />
Worldwide<br />
Bev Bachmayer, member and<br />
current FAWCO Rep for AWA<br />
Vienna, tells us about her efforts<br />
to lift women up to a better life<br />
with tech.<br />
I was born in San Mateo, California, but moved to<br />
the Central Valley of California when I was four; I<br />
grew up in the rural community of Waterford. In<br />
order for me to start kindergarten early, my<br />
mother changed the birth date on my birth<br />
certificate, as I was reading and writing early in<br />
my fourth year. My parents built a house next to<br />
my paternal grandmother’s, so I always could<br />
walk next door and spend hours with her. As my<br />
mother worked most of the day, my grandmother<br />
was my sounding board for everything. Most of<br />
my days were spent either swimming in the<br />
canals in summer or sitting with my grandmother<br />
and learning to sew.<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
Bev Bachmayer<br />
My father believed I was his first son, my brother<br />
being younger than me. I was encouraged to help<br />
him in the heating and air conditioning business,<br />
troubleshooting air conditioning units that were<br />
not working. I remember crawling under houses<br />
to help with units and testing them in the shop. I<br />
was fascinated with finding out how to test<br />
something to make it work.<br />
High school and beyond<br />
At 16, I entered my senior year of high school. As I<br />
had completed all of the math and science classes<br />
offered at my high school, I began taking<br />
“computer classes” at the local community<br />
college. Mind you, this was in the late 60s, and the<br />
“computer” was a huge mainframe; plugging in<br />
the wires for the “program” board made perfect<br />
sense to me after working on AC units. I excelled<br />
in this class and at the typing of the data on the<br />
punched cards – as I had learned to type, like<br />
most women were encouraged to do.<br />
I am fascinated by technology and always have<br />
been; troubleshooting is my forte, which is a<br />
requirement for identifying issues. Whether it is<br />
learning how to sew a complicated sleeve or<br />
debugging a program, I easily identify the steps to<br />
get the ideal result.<br />
At 18, I married, quit college, and two years later,<br />
had my first daughter. The second followed two<br />
years after that. I moved to Oregon with my<br />
husband, but four years later, found myself a<br />
single mother with no real skills.<br />
With my older sister Karen when I was about four<br />
College was the first thought in my mind, so I<br />
signed up at the local community college and<br />
restarted my computer science degree,<br />
graduating in 1983 with my bachelor’s degree. (In<br />
7
Being in Europe gave me huge opportunities to<br />
really begin working on standards and<br />
optimization documents and algorithms.<br />
Additionally, I started doing optimization trainings<br />
for universities and discovered I really like<br />
teaching people. I loved to see eyes widen when<br />
someone understood the concepts.<br />
Appearing as part of an Intel campaign on diversity<br />
time, I went on to study for an MBA with a minor<br />
in modelling and simulation.)<br />
In those days studying computer science, I had to<br />
cope with fellow students not understanding that I<br />
knew what I was talking about. As the only woman<br />
in the class, I obviously was there to find a husband<br />
and couldn’t have a clue about computers.<br />
Within nine months of graduating, I lost both my<br />
beloved grandmothers... and achieved their dream<br />
for me. I was hired by Intel and started working on<br />
my career – with two young girls in tow.<br />
From Intel to Austria<br />
I worked for Intel for 34 years; about 12 years in,<br />
while on a business trip, I met the man who is now<br />
my husband. As both my daughters were adults, I<br />
picked up and moved to Austria and started a new<br />
project at Intel. These days I live just outside<br />
Vienna, Austria.<br />
At Intel, I worked deep in the processor, defining<br />
the functionality of performance and debugger<br />
counters in the processor. My patent, now<br />
expired, defined use of parts of the processor,<br />
proving the usability of performance counters for<br />
debugging. Most of my career was spent on<br />
performance analysis of programs, improving the<br />
speed of instructions through the processor, as<br />
well as teaching both professors and post docs<br />
how to make their programs that analyze data<br />
execute faster.<br />
More recent involvement in the field<br />
Since 2005, I have worked both through Intel and<br />
with the Association of Computing Machinery<br />
(ACM) to increase the number of women in<br />
computer science. After the Grace Hopper<br />
Conference in 2006, my goals changed, and I<br />
started working with ACM to improve<br />
opportunities for women studying computer<br />
science in Europe. In 2013, when I became vice<br />
chair of the ACM-W Europe committee, we<br />
founded womENcourage, an event providing a<br />
venue for women in computer science to network<br />
and meet like-minded women.<br />
AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning<br />
have huge potential, and I believe the entry of<br />
women into these fields will change the world. I<br />
spend my time encouraging up and coming<br />
women to strive to be the best they can be<br />
through membership in ACM and IEEE (Institute of<br />
Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and<br />
volunteering. I know that a greater number of<br />
With delegates at the womENcourage conference in 2015<br />
8
One of the biggest recent rewards came from a<br />
young woman who contacted me to know if I was<br />
the “Bev Bachmayer” who had mentored her as an<br />
undergraduate in CS 20 years ago. She is now an<br />
engineering manager and says that my<br />
encouragement and mentoring is why she is<br />
successful today.<br />
Just as Fran Allen encouraged me, I hope to have<br />
the same impact on young women I know.<br />
Educating children in electronics in Rwanda in 2015, we<br />
taught 120 girls from nine countries about electronics over 3<br />
-4 weeks at the Rwanda Steam Camp.<br />
smart young women studying computer science<br />
will have a greater impact on new technology as a<br />
tool for positive change.<br />
Working in a worldwide position means working in<br />
different cultures; I am amazed how, in some<br />
countries, women are encouraged to enter highly<br />
technical fields and how their proportion in these<br />
fields might drop from 30 to 40% in one country<br />
to 5-10% in another just a few borders away. As a<br />
data scientist, I love to understand the numbers<br />
and how different cultures work. In our group,<br />
having 50% of the members born outside of the<br />
country of work put another twist on the group<br />
culture, as you might imagine.<br />
Meeting a role model<br />
Fran Allen is not really a mentor, just a woman I<br />
look up to. A developer of computer language, in<br />
1993 she was developing compilers at IBM, and<br />
she was one of the few women in the industry<br />
that you could strive to be like. I met her in person<br />
at the Grace Hopper Conference in the fall of<br />
2006, after she won the Turing award. She sat and<br />
talked to me for almost an hour. She told me, “I<br />
had no idea that I would be so encouraging and<br />
that so many women would be inspired because I<br />
did my job.”<br />
Quick-fire questions for Bev<br />
1. If you could change one thing about your past,<br />
what would it be? I would have stayed in college<br />
after getting married, even against my exhusband’s<br />
wishes. I needed to be more persistent,<br />
but that was not how I was raised.<br />
2. What things about your career in technology do<br />
you apply to your daily life? Troubleshooting is used<br />
constantly in daily life. Just look at any goal and<br />
how do you get there: that is troubleshooting.<br />
3. If you could work with one famous person, past or<br />
present, who would it be and why? This is a funny<br />
question, because working with ACM, I am among<br />
the women who are making the most difference in<br />
this world. I cheered when ACM elected an allfemale<br />
board; I personally know all of them<br />
through my work encouraging women. It’s hard<br />
work, but all of us together have achieved one<br />
goal. Now we are working toward the goal of an<br />
equal number of women and men in our field.<br />
4. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and<br />
why? All the young women now entering the<br />
industry – they are our future, and it is for them<br />
that we work so hard to give them<br />
encouragement and hope.<br />
5. If your life or career had not been in technology,<br />
what would you have pursued? I think it would have<br />
been teaching, perhaps math or science. I love<br />
helping people succeed.<br />
My successes over the years<br />
My most significant award is the Intel<br />
Achievement award I received for my work<br />
optimizing the code for a customer in 2001. In<br />
fact, I have at least 30 Intel award plaques.<br />
My job is fun, and even to this day, I continue to<br />
work on technical topics. Learning new things is<br />
what keeps me going in these COVID times. I am<br />
building a robot, learning to sew complicated<br />
quilts and volunteering – for ACM and as the<br />
FAWCO Rep for AWA Vienna. My goal is to<br />
promote women worldwide, lifting them all up to<br />
a better life.<br />
Teaching kids about electronics in 2016<br />
9
10
PROFILE<br />
Creating<br />
Impactful Social<br />
Media Posts<br />
Adelina Matinca, member of the<br />
AIWC of Cologne, Germany,<br />
describes learning her way<br />
around social media as a career.<br />
I was born in Constanta, a small town by the Black<br />
Sea in Romania. I had an extremely memorable<br />
childhood, and I count myself lucky in many ways.<br />
Due to my grandmother’s career, she took me<br />
along when I was still a small child to quite a few<br />
official functions with people from all over the<br />
world. After the Revolution, a time of turmoil, I<br />
spent most of my summers in the south of<br />
Germany, where my family had been running a<br />
business. We later emigrated to Canada.<br />
As I look back, this is where I began to build<br />
resilience and where I started to understand how<br />
quickly things can change. The full impact these<br />
events had on me is probably lost, because I was<br />
simply too young to process and analyze my<br />
surroundings. But what they did leave me with is<br />
compassion, flexibility and never taking anything<br />
for granted.<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
Adelina Matinca<br />
After leaving home<br />
I grew up in Toronto, where I lived all the way<br />
through finishing my BA at University of Toronto. I<br />
loved the multicultural aspect and had friends<br />
from all corners of the world. If you look at a city<br />
map of Toronto, you can literally sketch out Greek<br />
town, Chinatown, Little Italy – there is even a<br />
“Little Mogadishu.” Aside from this wonderful<br />
aspect, I always thought the city was too big with<br />
way too much concrete. So I did something<br />
about it…<br />
As soon as I finished my BA degree and with a job<br />
locked in, I decided to drive across Canada to<br />
Vancouver. For me, this was a ritual experience. I<br />
felt like I was shedding youthful layers and settling<br />
into an adult job. Working in a law firm in the<br />
trademarks department gave me a lot of<br />
independence. Every weekend I would be<br />
outdoors in nature, hiking, swimming, skiing,<br />
biking, surfing, sailing – taking in all the beauty of<br />
the Pacific Northwest. It was also at this job that I<br />
met a lot of fantastic people and had a great<br />
number of mentors. They all became my work<br />
family and it was the best working environment I<br />
could possibly have as a young adult.<br />
I fell in love with Vancouver, created a tribe and<br />
remained there for seven years.<br />
As a young girl with my grandmother<br />
From Vancouver to Cologne<br />
While living in Vancouver I met my now husband.<br />
He was doing an internship at the same law firm.<br />
Chances would have it that we met during his last<br />
week on the job. We continued to date long<br />
distance, which, take it from me, is not easy. After<br />
about a year, we decided that it might make more<br />
sense for us to be under one roof and see what<br />
11
was learning about content creation, content<br />
moderation, the power of algorithms, ads, and<br />
managing analytics, metrics and growing traffic. I<br />
was able to successfully use a lot of my learning in<br />
my own business.<br />
The arrival of COVID-19!<br />
When COVID-19 hit, I was forced to close down my<br />
catering business – there simply were no more<br />
events. This is when I knew I had to take it to the<br />
next level. I took a step back and I pivoted towards<br />
the tech skills I had spent so long developing in my<br />
previous roles.<br />
Kayaking in Haida Gwaii, B.C., Canada<br />
happens. After living together in Canada, we knew<br />
this was more than a one-time fling, so we were<br />
faced with the decision of whether to stay or go<br />
to Germany.<br />
We decided to give Germany a try and, fast<br />
forward to almost eight years later, here we are,<br />
living in Cologne, a city that’s grown to be my third<br />
home. At the beginning, Cologne made me use a<br />
lot of my resilient powers I developed early on in<br />
my childhood. I was in a new environment, with<br />
(very) limited language skills and nobody I knew.<br />
But my experience of moving around helped a lot<br />
– I knew things would improve, and I had the tools<br />
to shape that development. I took German classes<br />
and joined associations, and soon the language<br />
was no longer a barrier. I even went back to school<br />
at the University of Cologne and got an MA<br />
degree! New acquaintances started to transform<br />
into strong connections and partnerships.<br />
Blogging and cookery<br />
When I moved to Germany, I started a blog, so I<br />
could talk about traveling around Europe, my<br />
experience as an expat and the food culture here<br />
in Germany. I self-taught myself the ins and outs<br />
of creating a website from scratch, making sure<br />
my posts were search engine optimized, and all<br />
about Google Analytics. I loved the technical side<br />
of creating posts as well as the aesthetic side.<br />
The desire to create content and graphics, design<br />
PR kits, and manage social media platforms<br />
blossomed naturally from there. Now, I work with<br />
companies and brands all over the world to help<br />
them with branding and managing their social<br />
media accounts, while providing effective and<br />
unique marketing strategies. I love my work!<br />
Common misconceptions I face<br />
I meet a lot of people who believe that social<br />
media is just uploading selfies as you go along. In<br />
a business context this couldn’t be further from<br />
the truth. I often explain all the work that goes into<br />
creating a post with an impact and a message. The<br />
process can be described as more like an art form.<br />
There are two components: word art and the<br />
image art. There is also the technical component<br />
such as key words, hashtags, tags etc. You want<br />
the post to be discoverable and discovered by as<br />
many people in your target audience as you can,<br />
so you have to think about what words will<br />
resonate with them. I think it’s important to<br />
distinguish between a personal account, which can<br />
of course showcase a selfie with you and your dog,<br />
and a professional account, which purposefully<br />
I have always had a passion for cooking, so I<br />
started up a catering and events business in<br />
Cologne. Again extremely hands on, I learned<br />
about marketing and creating presences on<br />
different social media platforms. At the same time,<br />
I was also freelancing for a major social media<br />
platform doing content review, and for a<br />
marketing company as a social media manager.<br />
These two positions taught me the ins and outs of<br />
social media. From one side, I was working with<br />
brands and companies, which gave me an insider<br />
perspective on different strategies and marketing<br />
niches. I basically started to understand what<br />
companies are looking for. From the other side, I<br />
Relaxing on the balcony<br />
12
The main purpose of much of the content that is<br />
posted on her blog is to reveal something new<br />
that you might not yet know. I like the<br />
controversial aspects as well – she doesn’t shy<br />
away from big taboo topics, she approaches them<br />
head on. For me, this is where the sweet spot lies -<br />
creating current content, trendsetting and<br />
challenging concepts. Bonus would be if she gives<br />
her employees free products :)<br />
2. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and<br />
why? I would dedicate them to my grandmother.<br />
She embodies many of the qualities I look up to.<br />
She is incredibly up to date with the latest<br />
technology, sending me text messages and writing<br />
emails at age 84. She has been the driving force<br />
behind a lot of my endeavors.<br />
My daily work setup<br />
chooses to connect with its audience on a much<br />
deeper level.<br />
The future for social media<br />
I reckon social media will continue to grow. We<br />
saw the importance of social media once the<br />
pandemic hit. Now, a lot more companies are<br />
understanding the significance of it. When it<br />
comes to social media, things are constantly<br />
changing. In terms of marketing strategies that<br />
companies will be using, you can expect to see<br />
more inclusive strategies, with a strong focus on<br />
giving back to their communities. Right now,<br />
brands are focused on coming up with<br />
environmentally friendly solutions to elevate their<br />
products and make them stand out from others.<br />
Teams are changing and have a worldwide reach,<br />
now more than ever before. Now that a lot of<br />
people work from home anyway, teams and<br />
business relationships are becoming even more<br />
global. For example, one of my clients is a Dutch<br />
journalist based in Africa, and on that project I<br />
work with another content creator based in<br />
North Macedonia.<br />
When I look back at my life, she has constantly<br />
been rooting for me, encouraging my creative<br />
initiatives and pushing me to reach my full<br />
potential. She is also the one that taught me<br />
creative writing – we often wrote poems together<br />
side-by-side. Moments I will never forget…<br />
3. If your life or career had not been in technology,<br />
what would you have pursued? I love this question. I<br />
don’t believe that everyone is destined to have<br />
one career their whole life. I believe that you can<br />
have more than one. When I am not sitting in<br />
front of my computer, you can find me in the<br />
Namibian bush being involved in wildlife<br />
conservation projects – I spent a few months<br />
there researching for my master thesis.<br />
I love the excitement and challenge of working<br />
with clients from all over the world. I equally love<br />
being in the field with temperatures roaring in the<br />
high 40s talking to locals about human-wildlife<br />
conflict in their area. I mean, how can I choose<br />
between these two passions? Good thing I don’t<br />
have to.<br />
My work is 100% remote and I correspond with<br />
people from all over the world on a wide range of<br />
projects. Basically, without this mix of cultures I<br />
would be out of a job right now. It’s a necessary<br />
piece of many businesses.<br />
Quick-fire questions for Adelina<br />
1. If you could work with one famous person, past or<br />
present, who would it be and why? I would love to<br />
work with Gwyneth Paltrow at Goop. I love her<br />
approach and what her brand stands for. The<br />
experimental component of her brand has<br />
revolutionized a lot of different marketing<br />
approaches and content creation.<br />
Preparing for a Zoom call!<br />
13
FEATURE<br />
<strong>Women</strong> in Technology<br />
FAUSA Member Denise Woods looks at some of the women who<br />
made significant contributions in the field of computer technology.<br />
I worked in the field of computer technology for<br />
30 years as a head of software development in<br />
industry and then as a professor. When I first<br />
started studying computer programming in the<br />
1970s, I was one of the few females in any of my<br />
classes. As I researched the history of computers<br />
in my early courses, I realized how many women<br />
there were. Here are the female pioneers who<br />
helped make computers as ubiquitous as they<br />
are today.<br />
ENIAC Programmers<br />
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and<br />
Calculator) was the first electronic computer used<br />
for general purposes, such as solving numerical<br />
problems. It was developed in 1946 by two men in<br />
research sponsored by the US military. The<br />
programmers of the ENIAC were six female<br />
mathematicians. The technology that resulted<br />
from the work of these six women included the<br />
development of computer memory and storage.<br />
Ada Lovelace<br />
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was considered to be<br />
the first computer programmer. In fact, one of the<br />
earliest programming languages, Ada, was named<br />
after her. She was one of the few people who<br />
recognized the possible uses for computers early<br />
on. The second Tuesday in October is Ada<br />
Lovelace Day, during which the contributions of<br />
women to science, technology, engineering and<br />
mathematics are honored.<br />
Adele Goldberg<br />
Had it not been for pioneer Adele Goldberg (born<br />
1945), the Apple desktop would not look like it<br />
does. She was the only woman, together with a<br />
group of men, who developed the infrastructure<br />
and design of GUI (Graphical User Interface) that<br />
we use on computers today. She was told to show<br />
this new technology to Steve Jobs, who said after<br />
he viewed it he believed that GUI represented the<br />
future of computing.<br />
Karen Spärck Jones<br />
The search engines that we utilize daily today<br />
would not have become a reality without the<br />
discovery of the concept of inverse document<br />
frequency by Karen Spärck Jones (1935-2007). She<br />
introduced the use of wordlists into language<br />
processing, allowing a computer to recognize<br />
similar words. This technology is used to assess<br />
the importance of words contained in documents<br />
when searching for information.<br />
14
computer science and had always advocated for<br />
women in the computer field.<br />
Mary Allen Wilkes<br />
Mary Wilkes (born 1937) was a computer<br />
programmer who worked in the Massachusetts<br />
Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. She<br />
is most well known for working on the LINC<br />
computer, which is now recognized as the world’s<br />
first personal computer. She was considered to be<br />
the first person who had used a personal<br />
computer in a home.<br />
Grace Hopper<br />
Grace Hopper (1906-1992), a rear admiral in the<br />
US Navy, was known as “the mother of<br />
computing.” She helped develop a program that<br />
converted instructions into a machine code (i.e.,<br />
low-level code) that could be read and executed<br />
by a computer. This led to a computer language<br />
known as COBOL (Common Business Oriented<br />
Language) that still runs many of the world's<br />
largest data systems today, 60 years later.<br />
Sister Mary Keller<br />
Sister Mary Keller (1913-1985) was a Roman<br />
Catholic nun who helped develop the BASIC<br />
(Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)<br />
programming language. She believed strongly<br />
that computers had the potential to increase<br />
access to information and to promote education.<br />
She was the first woman to receive a PhD in<br />
Pioneers of Today<br />
The women highlighted above are pioneers in the<br />
field of computer technology who helped to make<br />
all of the technologies that we rely on today<br />
possible. Think what the world would be like<br />
without computer programming languages,<br />
search engines, graphical user interfaces (GUIs)<br />
and personal computers. In addition to the<br />
pioneers, I want to feature one of my former<br />
colleagues at Purdue University who continues to<br />
influence young women in the computer field, as<br />
a pioneer of today.<br />
Alka Harriger<br />
I had the pleasure of working with Professor Alka<br />
Harriger when I was a professor at Purdue, and<br />
she was always inspiring to me. Professor<br />
Harriger has been teaching software development<br />
courses in the Purdue University Department of<br />
Computer and Information Technology (CIT) since<br />
1982. Early in her career, when she saw only one<br />
woman in the freshman orientation for CIT, she<br />
applied for and received a $1.2M grant for the<br />
SPIRIT (Surprising Possibilities Imagined and<br />
15
allows women to build solutions to enhance lives<br />
in areas that they are the most passionate about.<br />
Their perspectives on teams will allow companies<br />
to produce better solutions for a larger segment<br />
of the population. When/if their passions change,<br />
computing skills will allow them to move to a<br />
different career path/domain area.”<br />
Denise Woods is an active member of FAUSA who grew<br />
up in Hobart, Indiana. During her career in industry,<br />
she traveled to Europe extensively overseeing the<br />
installation of computer systems. Denise then moved<br />
on to academia where she became a tenured<br />
professor at Purdue University. She has written<br />
hundreds of research papers and dozens of books on<br />
computer technology and has spoken at conferences<br />
around the world. Although Denise now enjoys<br />
retirement, she is currently enrolled as an online<br />
student at Purdue studying health and wellness.<br />
Realized through Information Technology) project,<br />
which allowed the faculty to administer summer<br />
workshops for high school teachers, counselors<br />
and students. The goal was to change<br />
misperceptions about who does computing and<br />
show them that computing can be fun, important<br />
and rewarding. The teachers were expected to<br />
incorporate lessons using Alice, a computing tool<br />
that can be used to create interactive stories and<br />
games. The counselors had more accurate<br />
information to better advise their students. The<br />
students saw first hand that computing could<br />
offer them an excellent career option. Alka’s latest<br />
project TECHFIT (Teaching Engineering Concepts<br />
to Harness Future Innovators) is the recipient of a<br />
$1.2M NSF (National Science Foundation) grant.<br />
It targets middle schoolers instead of high<br />
schoolers because one of the things she learned<br />
during the SPIRIT project was that changing<br />
misperceptions needs to start earlier. The goal is<br />
to address obesity and physical inactivity by<br />
combining technology and exercise, allowing<br />
student teams to create their own exergames (i.e.,<br />
technology-supported fitness games.) A second<br />
grant that built on TECHFIT was funded at $2.5M<br />
and allowed them to transform TECHFIT from an<br />
afterschool program to include an in-school class<br />
instead. I asked Alka what she would say to young<br />
women considering careers in computer<br />
technology. She said, “Computing or information<br />
technology is a great career option for women<br />
because it applies to all aspects of life, and that<br />
16
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If you live in the USA, click here to find your recommendation: The R+F Solution Tool<br />
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For each skincare rec,<br />
Lauren will donate $5 to<br />
The FAWCO Foundation.<br />
You will love your results,<br />
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If not, send the empty<br />
containers back to R + F<br />
and receive a full refund!<br />
17
PROFILE<br />
Developing<br />
“Curious Mind<br />
TV”<br />
Irem Sunar, member of the AWO<br />
Moscow, gives us the details<br />
about her latest project to keep<br />
kids engaged in learning during<br />
the pandemic.<br />
I grew up by the seaside in Izmir, a historic<br />
Aegean city in Turkey. Spending most of my<br />
childhood crossing the oceans on ships where my<br />
dad worked helped me connect with different<br />
cultures and see the world from a different<br />
perspective. Even at a younger age, I was<br />
concerned about environmental issues and social<br />
inequalities. So when I grew up, I decided to work<br />
for social change, and that’s what I did at the UN<br />
and other international organizations for more<br />
than 15 years.<br />
I moved to Moscow, Russia when my husband got<br />
a job offer five years ago and have been living<br />
Irem Sunar-Ozat<br />
here since then. Moving to Moscow was more<br />
than a change of address for us; as many fellow<br />
expat women would agree, it always is. I knew<br />
that was the end of my hard-earned career, and I<br />
quickly realized that I had to gain a different skill<br />
set if I wanted to keep on working and making use<br />
of the “free time” I had, which was also quite a<br />
new concept for me.<br />
Redesigning my life<br />
After whining and complaining for a few months, I<br />
decided to embrace this change and opened my<br />
mind to different possibilities. I had degrees in<br />
Psychology and Political Science. I had no<br />
education in any tech-related subject. On the<br />
other hand, digital media was becoming a bigger<br />
part of my work life each year, and I was drawn<br />
into the idea of learning everything online.<br />
My first inspiration came from the hobby that I<br />
learned a decade ago. Actually, it was not about<br />
the hobby itself, but about how I learned that new<br />
hobby. I was on my maternity leave; I decided to<br />
learn sewing, but I couldn’t leave my baby alone.<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
So I started following sewing and craft blogs<br />
online. It was quite a new thing back in the day,<br />
unlike the COVID-19 period today, where you can<br />
find an online course or a webinar about<br />
anything! This experience had not only given me<br />
some awesome sewing skills (yay!) but also<br />
opened my mind to the possibility of gaining<br />
completely different skills online. Then everything<br />
else became easier. When I needed to learn<br />
something new, I just looked for the right online<br />
resource and learned it by doing.<br />
With my family in Riga, Latvia<br />
In addition to my new hobby, I was becoming<br />
more interested in the design part of digital<br />
18
How you present things is almost as<br />
important as the content<br />
When I open a new website, the first thing I notice<br />
is how the information is presented, instead of the<br />
information itself. Shallow, yes. But the way you<br />
present something is also an important part of the<br />
message you want to give. My academic<br />
background in psychology helped me understand<br />
how people perceive and learn new things, so I<br />
tried improving my professional skills in<br />
presenting information in the best way possible.<br />
So now, I not only create unique content but also<br />
present it with engaging designs. Hence, the<br />
opening line of my personal website is “Let’s make<br />
your information look pretty!” (iremsunar.com)<br />
With my son Derin, planting trees as part of a campaign<br />
media, as I had been working on the content part<br />
for many years. Awareness-raising activities were<br />
an important aspect of my projects, and I was<br />
always looking for ways to improve methods of<br />
presenting the information to our target audience.<br />
It started with the need to design websites in a<br />
more user-friendly way. Social media was also<br />
raising the bar for better information presentation<br />
every day. That’s when I started practicing basic<br />
graphic design skills and website development.<br />
When we moved to Moscow, I had at least some<br />
idea about what I could do next if I wanted to keep<br />
my professional life active. I became a member of<br />
the American <strong>Women</strong>’s Organization soon after we<br />
moved here and began working as the<br />
publications editor. It was a great experience to<br />
prepare all those newsletters, printed materials,<br />
and the new logo for the Club. If you’re interested<br />
in seeing what we’ve been up to, take a peek at<br />
our magazine stand here:<br />
https://issuu.com/awomoscow.<br />
Back to working for social change: Curious<br />
Mind TV<br />
In mid-2020, when almost all the schools around<br />
the world had to shut down, I decided to use all<br />
my skills and experience to help children keep<br />
engaged in learning as much as possilbe. So I<br />
designed a new website, and then a YouTube<br />
channel targeting elementary school children<br />
called Curious Mind TV. Launching <strong>February</strong> 1,<br />
<strong>2021</strong>, it is totally free and only aims to encourage<br />
children to love learning and researching. I’ve<br />
been super busy preparing high-quality and fun<br />
educational videos for kids for the past few<br />
months. I also started learning how to make<br />
animated videos too. I love it! This project is very<br />
near and dear to my heart, as it is a perfect<br />
combination of my newly gained tech skills and my<br />
love of writing, and at the same time contributes<br />
to social development. If you want to help me out<br />
to spread the word, please subscribe to<br />
Curious Mind TV.<br />
I’d love to get your feedback and comments!<br />
Finishing the web design for a recent project : tired eyes, but proud of my work!<br />
19
I can work anywhere: working on my blog in Red Square, Moscow<br />
Technology makes change much easier, for<br />
better or for worse<br />
I’m from a generation who grew up without the<br />
advantage of the internet, but I did my best to<br />
make use of all the good things it has brought to<br />
our lives. This puts me and my generation in quite<br />
a unique position in human history, I guess. :)<br />
When I develop educational content for children, I<br />
try to keep both the traditional ways of learning<br />
and playing as well as the new online approaches<br />
in balance. I “learned” to become tech-savvy at a<br />
relatively older age, but the new generation is<br />
born right into technology. It changes the way<br />
they look at the world completely. I wish I had had<br />
that flexible approach when I was younger. If I<br />
could change anything from my past, it would be<br />
to give myself more credit and encourage myself<br />
to diving into uncharted waters more freely,<br />
because technology makes change much easier, if<br />
you’re up for it.<br />
A photo shoot for a crafts magazine<br />
20
FEATURE<br />
What is Data Privacy?<br />
Fintan Viebahn received the Caroline Newton Humanities Award<br />
from the FAWCO Foundation in 2018. She used the award to fund a<br />
study trip to Moscow in which she learned more about data<br />
practices. Here she explains the importance of data privacy for us all.<br />
What Is Data Privacy?<br />
Data privacy can be understood as the desired<br />
absence of tracking of an individual’s activities in<br />
the form of data. It can also be understood as the<br />
degree of control that individuals have over the<br />
extent and form of tracking.<br />
Why Is Data Privacy Important?<br />
Data privacy is often considered a fundamental<br />
right. The idea behind this is that individuals<br />
should be empowered to control all of the data<br />
about themselves.<br />
From an economic perspective, privacy is a<br />
feature of products exchanged on markets. ¹<br />
Some people might be willing to pay more for<br />
more privacy. For example, there are fee-based<br />
email services and search engines whose selling<br />
points are that they offer relatively high security<br />
standards or anonymity. Others might not be<br />
willing to pay. Or they might even prefer<br />
personalized advertising, for example on<br />
Facebook or Google, or other personalized<br />
settings, such as curated newsfeeds, Netflix<br />
recommendations or Spotify playlists.<br />
Five sisters playing a game involving data<br />
Put more simply, data privacy is the control of<br />
individuals over how their personal information is<br />
collected and used. Examples include how easy it<br />
is for an individual to find out which data<br />
Instagram has about her, to store her medical<br />
records digitally, to donate her personal data to<br />
research, to search anonymously on the web, to<br />
research government spending online or to delete<br />
her data from Amazon’s servers.<br />
Data privacy is also known as information privacy<br />
or data protection.<br />
Data in the making<br />
¹Acquisti, A., C. Taylor and L. Wagman (2016), “The Economics of Privacy”, Journal of Economic Literature 54 (2), 442–492.<br />
21
What Problems Currently Exist in Regard<br />
to Data Privacy?<br />
One issue is that information about oneself can<br />
be indirectly disclosed through others’ data.²<br />
Correlation in datasets means that, for example,<br />
data about the everyday life of young women as<br />
captured by their internet activity is likely to<br />
provide information about a young woman who<br />
may not wish to share her data.<br />
Another concern are privacy policies. Nearly all<br />
devices and activities generate data with a<br />
personal dimension. Consumers cannot<br />
reasonably be expected to engage with the<br />
privacy policies and terms of use that govern that<br />
data. Reading the privacy policies one<br />
encounters in a year would take 76 work days –<br />
and that was in 2012. ³<br />
Why Is Privacy Not the Only Important<br />
Aspect in Regard to Data?<br />
Sharing data potentially has many benefits for<br />
individuals. Sharing data with researchers can<br />
improve the quality of studies, thereby increasing<br />
the value of research for individuals.<br />
Regarding energy, for example, researchers<br />
could analyze data on energy use in homes by<br />
type of device, time of day and year and other<br />
Exploring “Meitu” filters popular in China<br />
factors that affect energy consumption, such as<br />
weather conditions. This information would allow<br />
an assessment of how energy consumption could<br />
be shifted to better match energy production.<br />
For example, heating in winter, when a person is<br />
at home, is unlikely to be flexible, but running a<br />
washing machine or dishwasher may well be.<br />
Energy production and costs could be reduced.<br />
Data on health can help us identify problems<br />
(e.g., early detection of strokes ⁴, detection of<br />
influenza outbreaks through search queries ⁵)<br />
and new solutions (e.g., personalized cancer<br />
drugs ⁶, models to calculate healing processes ⁷).<br />
Greater amounts of data on the use of public<br />
spaces and political process ⁸ would amount to<br />
more transparency and accountability.<br />
From a business point of view, sharing data can<br />
open up new and better products and services.<br />
Contemplating all the data being processed in this<br />
photograph of the Chicago Board of Trade<br />
² Mantelero, A., “Personal Data For Decisional Purposes in the Age of Analytics: From an Individual to a Collective Dimension of Data Protection”,<br />
Computer Law & Security Review, 32(2), 2016, 238-255; Bergemann, D., Alessandro B., and T. Gan, “The Economics of Social Data”,<br />
Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 2203, 25 September 2019; Choi, J. P., D. S. Jeon, and B. C. Kim, “Privacy and Personal Data Collection<br />
With Information Externalities”, Journal of Public Economics, 173, 2019, 113-124.<br />
³ Madrigal, A. C. (2012), “Reading the privacy policies you encounter in a year would take 76 work days”, The Atlantic, 1 March. Available<br />
at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/reading-the-privacy-policies-you-encounter-in-a-year-would-take-76-workdays/253851/<br />
(accessed 22 April 2016).<br />
⁴ https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/machine-learning-app-scans-faces-and-listens-speech-quickly-spot-strokes<br />
⁵ Ginsberg, J., Mohebbi, M., Patel, R. et al. (2009), “Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data”, Nature 457, 1012–1014.<br />
⁶ https://healthitanalytics.com/news/deep-learning-model-could-enhance-cancer-precision-medicine<br />
⁷ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2733183<br />
⁸ https://kleineanfragen.de/<br />
22
How Did My 2018 Education Award Enable<br />
Me to Learn About Data Privacy?<br />
My 2018 Education Award enabled me to study<br />
abroad at the Higher School of Economics in<br />
Moscow, Russia, for one semester. I was able to<br />
take classes on statistics, econometrics and<br />
philosophy of data. Through this time abroad, I<br />
was able to acquire a solid understanding of this<br />
field. I was even able to take part in a research trip<br />
to Hong Kong and China to study data practices<br />
there. I am very grateful to the FAWCO<br />
Foundation and every one of the wonderful<br />
women who provided me with this once in a<br />
lifetime learning opportunity.<br />
Fintan Viebahn is a research assistant with Stiftung<br />
Neue Verantwortung and the economics department<br />
of Humboldt University Berlin. She supports the<br />
think tank’s work on data economics and the<br />
university’s work on behavioral economics. In 2018,<br />
she was honored to receive the Caroline Newton<br />
Humanities Award from the FAWCO Foundation.<br />
Prior to her current positions, Fintan held<br />
internships in strategy consulting and at the District<br />
Court of Berlin. She holds a fellowship with the<br />
German Academic Scholarship Foundation. In her<br />
free time, she is an avid debater and loves playing<br />
piano with others.<br />
Fintan studied for a B.A. in economics and<br />
philosophy at Humboldt University and an LL.B. at<br />
Potsdam University. She spent semesters at<br />
Columbia University and the Higher School of<br />
Economics in Moscow.<br />
23
PROFILE<br />
Keeping FAWCO<br />
Tech Savvy<br />
Cat Conner, member of the AWC<br />
Hamburg, Germany and FAWCO’s<br />
Web Manager, reveals how she<br />
got involved in internet<br />
technology consultancy.<br />
I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas.<br />
Although overall it was a lovely place to spend a<br />
childhood, I grew up in a relatively conservative<br />
society where I didn’t always feel I belonged. Girls<br />
in that time and place were generally discouraged<br />
from being too academic. Even though my family<br />
valued education, and sent me to a very<br />
academically-oriented school, I was unhappy that<br />
many girls there had already internalized the idea<br />
that they just weren’t “suited” to math or science.<br />
I’ve always had an interest in technology. When I<br />
was six or seven, I used to take apart the<br />
telephones in our house to see how they worked.<br />
Luckily for me my father loved gadgets and new<br />
technologies so our house always had new tech<br />
toys for me to play with. I first learned to program<br />
BASIC on a TRS-80 computer, and enjoyed<br />
tinkering with Commodore 64 and Apple IIs to see<br />
what I could make them do.<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
Cat Conner<br />
Leaving Texas<br />
I left Texas to go to Princeton University in New<br />
Jersey, USA. My plan was that after I took my<br />
bachelor’s degree (in History, with a specialty in<br />
Medieval/Renaissance European history) I would<br />
continue on the academic track through a<br />
doctorate and a career as university faculty.<br />
But when graduation came, I wanted some<br />
professional experience before focusing on that<br />
career, and worked variously in public relations,<br />
human resources, and project management for<br />
government-funded research projects. All of<br />
those jobs required using my computer skills<br />
which I had acquired using my first Unix computer<br />
network while at university.<br />
Once I entered the professional world, my interest<br />
in learning everything I could about all the<br />
technology systems around me meant that I often<br />
became the go-to staff member responsible for<br />
tech support and system maintenance, regardless<br />
of what my official tasks were. Eventually that<br />
turned into a (unexpected!) career as by the time I<br />
was working with the research projects, I was<br />
building databases and websites to analyze and<br />
disseminate data.<br />
From there I made a lateral move to being a fulltime<br />
consultant, working for software consulting<br />
companies, and later went independent as a<br />
freelance internet technology consultant.<br />
Me a few years ago!<br />
Getting to Hamburg<br />
During my time working as a consultant for<br />
software companies, I travelled full-time. I<br />
enjoyed that immensely, and volunteered for<br />
every international project I could – including one<br />
in London. While there, I met a German man who<br />
24
Learning about computers<br />
I am mostly self-educated. I studied quite a lot of<br />
science in school (my first professional ambition<br />
was to become a chemist!), and I have done quite<br />
a lot of technical training and professional<br />
development over the years, but my university<br />
degree is in History. Lucky for me that in the<br />
computer world, especially twenty-five years ago,<br />
having a formal computer science degree isn’t<br />
always as important as having real-world<br />
implementation experience. But I do think my<br />
biggest obstacle has been proving my expertise<br />
and value despite my lack of formal technical<br />
degrees – especially to myself.<br />
Making punch cards<br />
was also working in my company’s London tech<br />
support office. We had a loooooong distance<br />
relationship (BostonLondon) for a year before<br />
we decided we wanted to be together on at least<br />
the same continent. My tech qualifications made it<br />
very much easier for me to get a work permit in<br />
Germany than his did to get one in the USA, so we<br />
decided on living together in Europe. I took a<br />
consultant position with a German tech firm and<br />
moved to Hamburg. Eighteen years later, my<br />
husband and I are still living together here in<br />
Hamburg where I am now working from home<br />
as a freelancer.<br />
Being a woman in the Tech world<br />
It’s been challenging being a woman in the<br />
computer tech world which does have a bit of a<br />
“bro” culture. I can remember in my early days of<br />
consulting often being the only woman in project<br />
meetings full of male developers and managers. In<br />
one instance, a planned “team-building” exercise<br />
concluded with a visit to a (heterosexual-maleoriented)<br />
strip club. They were very surprised<br />
when I opted to attend; I was not going to miss the<br />
professional networking opportunity, and I was<br />
pleased to make them all uncomfortable with their<br />
exclusionary choices. This situation is continually<br />
improving and is much better now than 25 years<br />
ago, but there’s still a ways to go.<br />
Driving practice!<br />
25
information they need to make good decisions for<br />
themselves, either personally or professionally.<br />
And vice versa, to communicate business<br />
concerns back to technical staff, so they can<br />
implement solutions that actually solve problems<br />
the users have. I have often found myself in<br />
meetings “translating” between technical staff and<br />
business staff – even though we’re all actually<br />
speaking English!<br />
Quick-fire questions for Cat<br />
1. If you could change one thing about your past,<br />
what would it be? If I’d known earlier where my life<br />
would take me, I would have started learning<br />
German much earlier :-D<br />
On vacation at Falling Water<br />
Looking at web pages<br />
When a lay person first visits a website they see<br />
words and pictures on a screen, but I just see the<br />
things I see as mistakes, especially from a usability<br />
standpoint. These are mainly in three categories:<br />
1. Functionality -- maybe a menu whose usage<br />
isn’t intuitive or a section where color contrast<br />
makes something hard to read.<br />
2. Design -- objects that aren’t 100% aligned, off<br />
by a few pixels, or not arranged well for the<br />
current screen size I’m using.<br />
3. Structure -- if I can’t immediately find content<br />
or a feature that I’m looking for, or if a process to<br />
achieve something isn’t logical.<br />
Misconceptions about web design<br />
Probably the biggest misconception about the<br />
internet is that it is one big well-ordered,<br />
quantifiable, coherent system, when in fact it’s just<br />
a ginormous number of machines around the<br />
world talking to and through each other using<br />
mutually-agreed-upon standards.<br />
It’s a wonderfully complex and chaotic system that<br />
only works because hardware and software<br />
makers have voluntarily agreed to follow those<br />
standards (some more than others, I’m looking at<br />
you Internet Explorer!). The more I learn about<br />
how the internet REALLY works under the covers,<br />
the more surprised I am that it can do everything<br />
it does!<br />
2. What things about your career in technology do<br />
you apply to your daily life? Almost everything,<br />
really. There aren’t many aspects of modern life<br />
that aren’t touched by the need to use technology.<br />
Basic knowledge about how email works, how<br />
smartphones work, how computers work, and<br />
how internet connections work are things most of<br />
us need every day. Some of these things can be<br />
quite complicated; I’m very sympathetic to nontech<br />
people who might struggle with this. Because<br />
tech is everywhere, but it’s not always easy!<br />
3. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and<br />
why? To my mother, father, and sister. They have<br />
had the longest-standing impact on determining<br />
what kind of woman I have become.<br />
4. If your life or career had not been in technology,<br />
what would you have pursued? Being a history<br />
professor is my one big “what-if” path. I’m happy<br />
with the patchwork career I’ve had, and think it<br />
has given me a wider variety of skills than I might<br />
have developed as an academic. But sometimes<br />
it’s nice to fantasize….<br />
The future for the industry<br />
I work with people all over the world, from many<br />
different cultures, but one skill I’ve found to be<br />
incredibly important no matter what cultures are<br />
involved: the ability to present complex tech<br />
concepts for less technically-knowledgeable<br />
people in a way that provides them the<br />
At a FAWCO Conference with my husband<br />
26
FEATURE<br />
FAWCO and Tech in Times of COVID-19<br />
Emily van Eerten, President of FAWCO, explains how the organization<br />
had to adapt its online presence to cope with the pandemic.<br />
One week before the 2020 Interim Meeting in<br />
Luxembourg, the FAWCO Board took the<br />
excruciating and difficult decision to cancel the<br />
gathering because of the increasing health<br />
concerns and travel advisories as a result of the<br />
COVID-19 virus. Without the ability to gather in<br />
person, we had to get creative. FAWCO and the<br />
board were already in the process of learning and<br />
using G Suite Applications. This Google<br />
environment was working extremely well<br />
together. All of our volunteers with @fawco.org<br />
email addresses had access to Google Drive,<br />
Calendar, Docs, Numbers, Slides, Forms -- and<br />
Google Meet (among others) and all of these apps<br />
allow collaborative work and excellent interaction<br />
with each other. At that moment, however, it only<br />
allowed meetings for up to 25 people. We needed<br />
a way to host online virtual sessions for<br />
considerably more.<br />
Using Zoom<br />
We signed up for our first FAWCO Zoom<br />
account. At that moment, Zoom wasn’t considered<br />
a very secure platform. We learned how to set up<br />
meetings using particular protocols that ensured<br />
that random streakers could not disrupt our<br />
online meetings and we started scheduling Zoom<br />
sessions to replace the in-person sessions we had<br />
prepared for Luxembourg. Onboarding for this<br />
platform presented a few challenges, but we<br />
mostly managed to work through them. We all<br />
learned how to navigate and get beyond the initial<br />
audio and video challenges, even as “we can’t hear<br />
you, you’re on mute,” became a common Zoom<br />
lament. We learned to share screens for<br />
presentations, and then moved on to how to<br />
share screens with sound. We all progressed and<br />
regressed with our home lighting and Zoom<br />
blouses. Most of us<br />
took care to wear<br />
makeup and a nice<br />
Zoom top, but then we<br />
learned that we didn’t<br />
HAVE to have the video<br />
turned on. Sometimes we ate on camera,<br />
sometimes we forgot to turn off our mic when<br />
there were other noises in the room. But even<br />
though Zoom solved some of our sadness from<br />
not being able to gather together, it also was<br />
frustrating. We could have dozens on camera, but<br />
interaction still needed to be one person at a<br />
time, meaning that it was still a passive program<br />
for most tuning in. We thought that we could<br />
handle that, but then we had to cancel our Fall<br />
Open Regional, again not being able to travel and<br />
meet in person. We started to look for more<br />
interactive platforms we could use.<br />
Finding Hopin<br />
Initial research led us to companies that wouldn’t<br />
talk to us unless we committed to plans in the<br />
tens of thousands of dollars. These weren’t<br />
options. But we kept looking and we found Hopin,<br />
a company that was offering plans in the tens of<br />
thousands, but importantly, they were also<br />
offering relatively affordable DIY plans. We could<br />
have access to the same Stages, Sessions,<br />
Networking and Expo Booths on their expensive<br />
plans, but we’d have to do it without access to<br />
special branding or support. And we accepted.<br />
A FAWO first, a virtual Regional Meeting<br />
When we cancelled the in-person meeting in<br />
November 2020, we were able to announce that<br />
we would host a Virtual Open Regional instead on<br />
the same weekend. We scheduled our speakers<br />
for time slots on the Main Stage or in Sessions<br />
and FAWCO volunteers went to work, learning<br />
how they could each set up a virtual Expo Booth<br />
using a Google Slide Presentation or YouTube<br />
videos as on-demand content. The Hopin platform<br />
was evolving with new features even as we were<br />
27
e planning virtual workshops and speakers<br />
throughout the year highlighting the work of our<br />
teams. But our Biennial Conference March 18-21,<br />
<strong>2021</strong>, will be a Hopin event featuring the reports<br />
and news of FAWCO, our Diversity & Inclusion<br />
Task Force, our Target Program and The FAWCO<br />
Foundation. We will also be hosting sessions to<br />
bring together our clubs in regional groups to<br />
network, and an online version of our Face2Face<br />
fair with our volunteers -- all of our Teams and<br />
Committees will be hosting Expo Booths and will<br />
be live at set times to engage with our clubs. Club<br />
FAWCO Reps, Presidents and all FAWCO Members<br />
are welcome to attend to learn more about the<br />
extensive work of FAWCO! We look forward to<br />
seeing you throughout <strong>2021</strong> and can’t wait to see<br />
you again in person. We will get through this<br />
together!<br />
learning. The time for our inaugural Virtual Open<br />
Regional arrived. The onboarding process had<br />
some glitches. Hopin was designed to work on the<br />
Chrome browser and several people had internet<br />
bandwidth issues. But the response from those<br />
for whom everything worked were extremely<br />
enthusiastic. We ended up reaching far more<br />
people than would have been able to travel to<br />
Luxembourg to join us in person.<br />
What next?<br />
This involuntary experiment into virtual<br />
conferencing has shown us that even once a<br />
vaccine has been administered and the world is<br />
safe to travel again, FAWCO will continue to<br />
embrace digital opportunities.<br />
Virtual conferencing is not simply replacing all of<br />
the plenary sessions and workshops. As we are<br />
still under the thumb of COVID-19 in <strong>2021</strong>, we will<br />
Conference booths from FAWCO’s first online meeting<br />
A native Oklahoman, Emily van Eerten's marriage<br />
to a Dutchman has taken her from Curaçao to<br />
England, Canada and The Netherlands. She has<br />
been a member of four FAWCO clubs, a veteran of<br />
16 FAWCO conferences and has served the<br />
organization since 2000 in many capacities,<br />
including President, Vice President,<br />
Parliamentarian, Chair of Archives, Membership,<br />
Nominating, R&Rs, Website and as Counselors'<br />
Coordinator. A National Merit Scholar, she got<br />
her bachelor's degree from Rice University and<br />
law degree from the University of Tulsa, where<br />
she practiced as a civil defense/insurance<br />
litigation attorney. Emily has four children, one<br />
in Germany, one in France and two starting<br />
university in <strong>2021</strong>.<br />
28
PROFILE<br />
Creating<br />
Websites<br />
Debbie Hastings, member of<br />
FAUSA and formerly of the<br />
Chilterns AWC in England,<br />
explains how she came to be a<br />
self-taught expert in creating<br />
websites.<br />
I was born and raised (for the most part) just<br />
outside of Portland, Maine. Most of my family still<br />
lives in that area. Our family (my parents, my<br />
sister, and myself) lived throughout New England,<br />
moving every 3-5 years depending on my dad’s<br />
job location. Maine was always the constant,<br />
though, as grandparents, cousins, aunts and<br />
uncles all lived there. That has always been, and<br />
always will be, “HOME.”<br />
One of my fondest memories was growing up<br />
around the farm. My mother’s parents owned a<br />
chicken and dairy farm and I always loved visiting!<br />
I’d help my uncle milk the cows and I’d help my<br />
grandfather gather eggs (there were thousands of<br />
chickens). To this day, I still shake the milk carton<br />
to mix the cream into the milk, even though I<br />
know it doesn’t really matter anymore.<br />
Debbie Hastings<br />
Leaving home<br />
I worked for many years as a typesetter, pre-press<br />
graphic designer, and print buyer throughout<br />
New England. While working, I completed school<br />
at the New England School of Photography in<br />
Boston, after which I did part-time work as a<br />
photojournalist. I realized soon after that I loved<br />
photography more as a hobby than a job and<br />
over the years, taught myself anything “techy” I<br />
could get my hands on.<br />
A love for travel<br />
I am a huge Grateful Dead fan (aka “deadhead”)<br />
and spent a fair amount of my 20s following the<br />
band up and down the east coast. I had a lot of<br />
fun and made lifelong friends during my travels.<br />
During that time I also took a cross-country road<br />
trip – camping and visiting interesting places in<br />
Canada and the US for two months. I think that is<br />
what started my love for travel!<br />
The Hasting family begins<br />
My husband, Bill, and I met in late 1995 (we are an<br />
original “You’ve Got Mail” couple). He lived in<br />
Houston and I lived in Maine with my 2-year-old<br />
daughter. We dated long distance for two years<br />
and were married in late 1997. My items arrived<br />
in Houston in early December 1997 and within a<br />
year, we were on our way to England! We arrived<br />
in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, just after<br />
January 1, and two weeks later were told we were<br />
pregnant! And that’s how the story of “The<br />
Hastings Family” began.<br />
Still a Deadhead, 2015<br />
29
My first tech equipment<br />
My first piece of “technological” equipment was a<br />
Wang Word Processor. Knowing how to type got<br />
me a job learning the Wang in 1984. That job<br />
landed me a position as a typesetter using a<br />
program called “Informatics” and then a Penta and<br />
Mergenthaler. I taught myself to create programs<br />
within the platforms to do some of the tedious<br />
chores. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have<br />
multiple machines running at one time. That was<br />
just the beginning of where the “Wang” would<br />
take me!<br />
Word processing in 1983<br />
Back to Maine<br />
After almost six years in England, we were sadly<br />
sent back to Houston, where we stayed for three<br />
years. At that time, our kids were 7 and 13 and we<br />
made the decision to “retire” from Marathon Oil<br />
and move back to Maine. We’ve been in Maine<br />
ever since, only now it’s only for the best months<br />
of the year. Just a year ago we sold our home of 12<br />
years to rebuild a 100-year-old family<br />
“camp” (Maine term for house on a lake), for<br />
summers and move to Arizona to be closer to Bill’s<br />
family in the Southwest.<br />
Creating a website<br />
Although my tech background started early, my<br />
passion for coding and website development<br />
actually started with the need of a website for<br />
some of the clubs I was involved in during our<br />
expat stay in England. It just happened that the<br />
international school my children attended taught<br />
several of us how to use Dreamweaver back in<br />
2000. That got me going on building the first<br />
online auction for the FAWCO Foundation and<br />
then an entire website for my club – CAWC.<br />
So today when I visit a website, what I see is the<br />
CODE. I look to find out what platform it was built<br />
on and what theme or plugins were used, etc. I<br />
actually flip it backwards within a few minutes of<br />
seeing it.<br />
When I moved back to the States, I continued my<br />
“self-education” by volunteering for small local<br />
organizations and PTOs and eventually building a<br />
business around website development for small<br />
businesses. Many people think that it’s<br />
complicated or expensive to get a custom website<br />
that works well and looks great. It doesn’t need<br />
to be!<br />
Hastings Family Christmas 2020<br />
30
Quick-fire questions for Debbie<br />
1. If you could change one thing about your past,<br />
what would it be? Get more formal training at a<br />
younger age. I didn’t know what I wanted to do<br />
when I “grew up” until I was over 40. Otherwise, I<br />
would have soaked up all the education around<br />
tech and design that I would have gotten.<br />
2. What things about your career in technology do<br />
you apply to your daily life? I am the household IT<br />
person (and for many of my friends, too).<br />
3. To whom would you dedicate your memoirs and<br />
why? My husband, for all his love and support<br />
during my journey.<br />
4. If your life or career had not been in technology,<br />
what would you have pursued? I would have done<br />
something creative, but I’m not sure what. I see<br />
coding as a type of “creative outlet,” almost like<br />
solving a puzzle and then looking at what you<br />
created when it’s complete.<br />
In my home office in 2020<br />
31
FEATURE<br />
Introducing AWC<br />
Perth, Australia<br />
Club President Karen Slavinsky, from<br />
San Diego, and FAWCO Rep Kari<br />
Young, from Houston, introduce their<br />
club to us. AWC Perth is one of four<br />
clubs in FAWCO’s Region 11.<br />
hold true 53 years later, but with one addition: to<br />
give back to the community we live in through<br />
volunteerism and donations.<br />
How many members do you have and what is<br />
their nationality? In its prime, when the mining<br />
and oil and gas industries brought many expats<br />
into Western Australia, the AWC of Perth boasted<br />
265 members. However, with the downturn in<br />
both trades, many families were repatriated back<br />
to the US. Currently, our club membership count<br />
stands at 46, but it is climbing.<br />
Karen Slavinsky<br />
Kari Young<br />
When and why was your club started, and by<br />
whom? The American <strong>Women</strong>’s Club of Perth was<br />
formed in 1968 by a group of women seeking<br />
fellowship with other American women. The first<br />
president and founder was Addie Munsell. The<br />
club’s purpose was to provide social opportunities<br />
for American women to come together for<br />
cultural and recreational activities, to celebrate<br />
missed US traditions and holidays, and to provide<br />
help and guidance to American women newly<br />
entering Western Australia. These objectives still<br />
We attribute this incremental growth to COVID-19.<br />
Yes, you read right. Australia’s early adoption of<br />
lockdowns and mandated sequestering elevated<br />
homesickness to the forefront for many American<br />
women living in Perth. What better way to<br />
experience a taste of home than to share a cuppa<br />
with women who talk, think and act like you?<br />
As a club, we decided to become more inclusive to<br />
help increase our numbers. So, at the beginning<br />
of 2020, we opened membership up to anyone,<br />
American or not. As a result, eight of our 46<br />
Coffee Morning at Mama Mahoney’s June 2020<br />
32
members are not American! In addition, we’ve<br />
been gently promoting the club on Facebook and<br />
on our new website at https://awcperth.com.au/<br />
How does the club run? The AWC of Perth is a<br />
not for profit, non-political association. Club<br />
activities fall within the guidelines outlined by our<br />
Constitution and By-Laws, which are in<br />
accordance with the Associations Incorporation<br />
Act 2015 of Western Australia. Currently, we hold<br />
monthly General Meetings (GMs), though we are<br />
seriously considering the merits of moving to<br />
quarterly GMs in <strong>2021</strong>.<br />
Our Annual General Meeting in <strong>February</strong> is where<br />
we hold our board election. Trying to fill the slate<br />
for a new board has become difficult. A number of<br />
our current club members have held one or two<br />
of these positions in the past and are not<br />
interested in stepping up again. Another<br />
presumed deterrent for signing up is the time<br />
commitment that comes with the job. People are<br />
busy. Life is busy.<br />
We are also struggling to fill vacant Activity<br />
Director positions. Members are being repatriated<br />
to the States. Not to mention, some members are<br />
coordinating two activities to keep club activities<br />
running. Burnout is a real by-product of<br />
overworking the 20% of key members who<br />
participate in the club on a regular basis.<br />
Hopefully, as we gain new members, we will have<br />
a new group to recruit for open positions.<br />
What kind of events do you have in your club?<br />
We host our annual Founder’s Day luncheon in<br />
September, which draws in a few former<br />
members of years gone by in addition to the<br />
current members. A tablecloth with<br />
monogrammed names of each year’s board<br />
members is always on display, along with photo<br />
albums and memorabilia to entertain the group.<br />
This past September, we were honored to have<br />
David Gainer, the US Consul General to Perth, as<br />
our guest speaker!<br />
The club used to host a huge 4 th of July event in<br />
Kings Park when we had the member base to pull<br />
off such a HUGE feat. The celebration would draw<br />
in thousands of expats and Aussies to partake in<br />
the fun. Though we didn’t have the woman-power<br />
to celebrate in such a big way in 2020, we were<br />
able to hold a combined Independence Day event<br />
at a local American BBQ restaurant with the<br />
Facebook Group members from Americans Living<br />
in Perth. Red, white and blue dominated the<br />
scene with the scent of smoked brisket filling the<br />
air as people mingled, played games and chowed<br />
down on American food!<br />
One favored annual event that hasn’t missed a<br />
beat is our Thanksgiving Dinner, which is held on<br />
Thanksgiving evening. The turkey and fixings are<br />
catered, but the desserts are provided by the<br />
attendees. It’s a day to feast on traditional dishes<br />
while gathering with fellow Americans to give<br />
thanks for the blessings bestowed upon us!<br />
And finally, our club holds an annual Christmas<br />
Party. It has taken many forms over the years,<br />
from cookie exchanges to fancy sit-down dinners.<br />
This year the gals held an ornament exchange<br />
while celebrating over a potluck luncheon at a<br />
member’s beautiful home.<br />
In addition to these annual events, our club offers<br />
many monthly and bi-monthly activities to meet<br />
the varied interests of our membership. We have<br />
a Book Club, a Quilting Group, Coffee Mix’n<br />
Mingle, Walkers & Talkers, LaW (Lunch and Wine),<br />
Longtimers Group, Cinematics Club, Bible Study<br />
Group and our Volunteer Group. The Book Club is<br />
consistently well-attended, with a great discussion<br />
followed by lunch. The Longtimers Group was<br />
reactivated in 2020 to bring former members<br />
together for a catch-up with the ultimate goal of<br />
encouraging them to sign up again! It’s working!<br />
Do you raise money for any particular cause?<br />
The AWC has been a member of FAWCO for many<br />
years and has supported several worthy causes.<br />
Although we are a small club compared to other<br />
member club groups, in the past we<br />
enthusiastically supported the "Bra Collection," for<br />
which our FAWCO representative Kath Balfour<br />
rallied our efforts. Sadly, Kath has passed away,<br />
but she leaves a legacy of an unflagging ability to<br />
Christmas Book Club December 2020<br />
33
turn working for worthy causes into a way of<br />
developing friendships and promoting women's<br />
causes as well.<br />
For the past couple of years, we have been putting<br />
together Christmas Care Packages containing<br />
toiletries and other necessities wrapped in shoe<br />
boxes with a message from our club. They are<br />
then distributed to local organizations and<br />
shelters that provide services to those who are<br />
struggling. We just started participating in the<br />
Ronald McDonald House Lovin’ from the Oven<br />
Community Outreach Program. We bring in all<br />
the necessary ingredients to their facility to<br />
prepare lunch and snacks for the families who are<br />
living there and the many volunteers who help<br />
them. It is a blast! The smiles, thanks and mmm’s<br />
we receive when the food is laid out are so very<br />
heart-warming. We stumbled at our first attempt<br />
to participate in the Dress for Success Initiative<br />
due to holiday conflicts. We will attempt it again<br />
in <strong>2021</strong> with better planning! This organization<br />
collects gently used business attire that is made<br />
available to struggling women who are entering<br />
into the workforce.<br />
What was your own favorite event last year? I<br />
can’t choose just one event, but I’ve narrowed it<br />
down to three! Coffee mornings are a club<br />
favorite, and my personal favorite coffee morning<br />
last year was at an American diner called Mama<br />
Mahoney’s. 38 of our 46 members are Americans,<br />
and Tammy Mahoney caters to our sweet tooth.<br />
Cinnamon rolls, cheesecakes, cupcakes, thick<br />
American shakes, diner hamburgers, American<br />
pancakes – delectable treats just like home! Even<br />
better, over half of our membership attended.<br />
Luncheons are also quite popular in this group,<br />
and my favorite one this year was the Book Club<br />
Christmas Luncheon at Sitella Winery. Perth is so<br />
casual, so it was a nice chance to dress up and<br />
enjoy a more formal meal in a beautiful setting<br />
surrounded by good friends. Cultural events also<br />
find favor with cub members, and my personal<br />
favorite was the annual July 4 th Celebration, which<br />
we shared with the Facebook Group called<br />
Americans Living in Perth at a genuine Texas BBQ<br />
place called Frank’s here in Perth. Other members<br />
mentioned wine dinners, monthly club meetings,<br />
annual shared events like Thanksgiving,<br />
Independence Day, and the club Christmas party<br />
as their favorites for this year. It’s a great group of<br />
ladies, and to be honest, I enjoy every event that<br />
brings us all together.<br />
What else would you like us to know about<br />
your club? Our club is undergoing a bit of a<br />
reboot. We redesigned our website, created a new<br />
logo, and described our group with three words:<br />
Friendship, Fellowship, and Community. We come<br />
together to find our friends, to spend time in<br />
fellowship with each other, and to give back to our<br />
community. That’s a pretty accurate description of<br />
our group, and we hope we can increase our<br />
membership. If other FAWCO member groups<br />
have had successful membership drives, we<br />
would love to hear from them!<br />
Tell us a little about your city and country in<br />
general Perth is the capital of and largest city in<br />
Western Australia. It was named after the city of<br />
Perth, Scotland, and is Australia’s fourth most<br />
populous city, with a population of just over 2<br />
million in the metro area. The whole state is about<br />
five times the land area of Texas, with only 2.5<br />
million people in total. Perth is geographically<br />
closer to Bali, Indonesia than it is to the other<br />
major Australian cities. Very near to Perth are the<br />
Swan Valley and Margaret River, both of which are<br />
home to award-winning wine producers. One<br />
might think that Western Australia would feel a lot<br />
like any American suburb based on how it looks,<br />
but the culture and language (English, but very<br />
different language usage) are very different.<br />
People are friendly, but not super eager to get to<br />
know expats because we are “blow-ins” who will<br />
only be here a short while. The AWC is really<br />
helpful in that regard because it is probably the<br />
first opportunity most of us have to form genuine<br />
friendships despite our temporary status.<br />
July 4, 2020 at Frank’s BBQ<br />
The natural beauty of Western Australia is its best<br />
kept secret. It is a biodiversity hotspot, filled with<br />
an utterly unique array of plants and animals. The<br />
locals like to scare everyone else away from their<br />
personal paradise by keeping up the myth that<br />
everything here wants to kill you. And, while the<br />
spiders and snakes and sharks are the stuff of<br />
nightmares, and the plants legendarily toxic, the<br />
climate is similar to Southern California or the<br />
Mediterranean. As one member said, “It’s<br />
beautiful one day and perfect the next.” The<br />
sunsets are breath-taking, the food is all fresh and<br />
locally grown, and the air is clean and refreshing.<br />
If you love the outdoors, there is no better place<br />
on Earth! All of this, and it is naturally isolated –<br />
even from the other Australian states, so West<br />
Aussies don’t have to share this Garden of Eden<br />
with too many expats and/or tourists. Did I<br />
34
might say “Hey, Mate, grab a stubby (beer) from<br />
the esky (ice chest).” There is a distinctive<br />
Australian sense of humor that permeates the<br />
language itself – like calling children swimming in<br />
the ocean sharky biccys (shark biscuits/cookies)<br />
and calling speedos budgie smugglers (a budgie is<br />
a small bird).<br />
Perth as viewed from Kings Park<br />
mention that there has not been a single case<br />
here of community transmission of the<br />
coronavirus in 10 months?<br />
There are 97 national parks in Western Australia<br />
and so many more local and regional parks, like<br />
Kings Park in Perth, not to mention islands that<br />
are reachable by ferry, like Penguin Island (yes,<br />
there are penguins there) and Rottnest Island<br />
(best place to see quokkas in the wild, though<br />
they are quite tame). Margaret River and the Swan<br />
Valley are easily reachable by car from Perth,<br />
should you want to drink amazing locally<br />
produced wine paired with delicious locally grown<br />
meals. You can visit the rest of Australia’s<br />
marsupials at Caversham Wildlife Park in the<br />
Swan Valley, and if you love birds, you needn’t<br />
venture outside Perth to see some unique<br />
Australian birds, from magpies and ravens to<br />
kookaburras and cockatoos, honeyeaters,<br />
ringnecks, lorakeets, wattle birds and splendid<br />
fairy wrens. And, of course, the Swan River is<br />
beautiful to look at and has dolphins and black<br />
swans dotting the surface, and Western Australia<br />
has no shortage of westward facing beaches with<br />
beautiful sunsets, crystal clear blue water, and<br />
sugar white sand. All of these fabulous natural<br />
vistas are connected by a phenomenal network of<br />
hiking and biking paths that are protected from<br />
automobile traffic.<br />
Any unusual/interesting traditions or traits of<br />
the locals? One interesting thing about<br />
Australians is that they love to give people and<br />
things nicknames, which can be humorous or<br />
affectionate or both. If your name is Julie, people<br />
probably call you Juls. If your name is Barry, you<br />
are Baz. My name is Kari, so people often call me<br />
Kezza. One soccer player was called Jigsaw<br />
because he always fell to pieces inside the penalty<br />
box. You might eat smashed avo (avocado) on<br />
toast for your brekky (breakfast). Or you might<br />
work as a tradie (tradesman) – perhaps you are a<br />
sparkie (electrician) or a firey (fireman). If you’re at<br />
a barbecue in the arvo (afternoon), someone<br />
Aussies have different traditions around most<br />
holidays, too. For starters, everything is closed on<br />
holidays, and if restaurants decide to stay open<br />
on a public holiday, they add a 15% holiday<br />
surcharge to the bill. The most popular thing to do<br />
on Valentine’s Day is to pack a picnic and head to<br />
Kings Park with your partner. ANZAC Day is a very<br />
important holiday which commemorates all<br />
Australians and New Zealanders who served and/<br />
or died in any foreign war or peacekeeping<br />
operation. Finally, Aussies go to the beach on<br />
Christmas Day because it is the height of summer,<br />
and no one would want to stay home and cook a<br />
turkey in a hot kitchen. In addition, Perth<br />
celebrates itself with an entire month of social<br />
and arts activities for Perth Festival. The Fringe<br />
Festival is also a month long and has more quirky<br />
acts and comedians in the mix. A recent event<br />
that was very popular with our members was the<br />
Highway to Hell AC/DC Tribute Concert, which had<br />
bands on parade floats playing AC/DC (called Acca<br />
Dacca here in their hometown) hits as they slowly<br />
drove down a highway lined with fans. If you think<br />
of how far Perth is from the next big city, it is quite<br />
amazing to have so much public entertainment.<br />
Perth’s unofficial mascot, a quokka<br />
35
FEATURE<br />
Get Work Done and Have Fun Virtually<br />
A step-by-step guide on how to collaborate virtually.<br />
President of the Heidelberg IWC in Germany, Christine Funke,<br />
explains how FAWCO clubs can use the Miro platform.<br />
When the coronavirus pandemic sent most office workers home to work in 2020, companies and teams<br />
turned to online programs to replicate collaborative work, like meetings and brainstorming sessions.<br />
Miro is an online whiteboard for visual collaboration, and I use it daily at my job to work remotely with<br />
my colleagues, and starting this year I’ll be using it for my club’s board meetings. In this article, I’ll walk<br />
you through setting up a successful virtual collaboration session for your club using Miro.<br />
Session Prep<br />
First you have to decide what kind of session to plan. To keep it simple, let’s consider a brainstorming<br />
session that will generate a lot of ideas that your team can put into action. Some relevant topics for<br />
FAWCO clubs include:<br />
• activities or events<br />
• creative ways to take care of your members<br />
• channels for recruiting new members<br />
• social media content<br />
• charity fundraising ideas<br />
For this how-to I’ll use the example of coming up with ways to keep members connected when we can’t<br />
meet in person.<br />
Miro Board Prep<br />
1. Create a free account at miro.com. Invite the attendees with the “Invite” button (on the dashboard in<br />
the top right corner). They are part of your team and can access all 3 of your free boards.<br />
36
2. Create a new board (blue box on the dashboard). After it opens, name it and then set it up.<br />
3. Add in 2 frames (frame icon on the left side toolbar) next to each other.<br />
4. Next to frame 1, add a sticky note on the left (sticky note icon on the left side toolbar).<br />
5. In between the frames, add sets of 5 dots; 1 set per attendee. To add in dots, add a template<br />
(templates icon on the left side toolbar), search for “Dot Voting” and add in the template. Then delete the<br />
part with the names and add or delete dots as needed. To change their color, select them all then<br />
choose a new color.<br />
6. Add a template to frame 2 (templates icon on the left side toolbar), search for “Impact/Effort Matrix”<br />
and add in the template. Adjust the size so it will fit in the frame.<br />
7. Add in text directions above frame 1 (text icon on the left side toolbar): “How might we keep members<br />
connected while we can’t meet in person? Use 1 sticky note for 1 idea.”<br />
8. Add in text directions above frame 2: “Move the sticky notes with the most votes and place them in<br />
one of the four quadrants that correspond to these categories: Quick Wins (top left), Major Projects (top<br />
right), Fill-Ins (bottom left), and Time Wasters (bottom right).”<br />
Now you’re ready to start your session!<br />
Part 1<br />
Join a Zoom or Google Meet call, but turn your cameras off. Open up Miro (in a browser or on the<br />
computer), then open up your session board.<br />
Start the session by having everyone try to move around, duplicate (copy/paste), and type text onto a<br />
sticky note. This helps attendees get comfortable on the board. Next, give directions: “We’re here today<br />
to come up with some new and creative ways for our members to connect while we can’t meet in<br />
person. Use 1 sticky note for 1 idea and place it inside the frame. There are no wrong or silly answers,<br />
just put down as many ideas as you can think of in 5 minutes.”<br />
37
Set a timer for 5<br />
minutes, and say go.<br />
This part creates a fun<br />
energy with a lot of<br />
simultaneous activity<br />
on the board!<br />
Part 2<br />
After the 5 minutes are over, ask your attendees<br />
to immediately pick their favorite ideas by placing<br />
a dot on that sticky note. Each attendee has 5<br />
votes for 5 different ideas.<br />
Part 3<br />
Once all attendees have voted with all of their<br />
dots, ask your attendees to take a look at frame<br />
2 and explain each of the quadrants. Then as a<br />
group take a look at the ideas with the most<br />
dots and move each sticky note to the best<br />
quadrant on the grid. If there are duplicates,<br />
you can remove one of them. You can<br />
categorize or group ideas as needed.<br />
38
Part 4<br />
To wrap up this session, take a look at the categories and decide how to move forward. Who’s<br />
responsible for each idea? Will you focus on Quick Wins first, then move on to Major Projects? Which<br />
ideas have priority overall?<br />
Use Miro’s tools to figure out what works for you and your attendees: change the sticky notes’ colors to<br />
assign them to a team, or based on priority or timing. You can add a comment on the sticky note and<br />
tag a person’s name. Try duplicating the sticky notes and organizing them within a new frame.<br />
This is just the start for all the many ways Miro can be a fun and effective virtual collaboration tool<br />
for your club!<br />
Christine Funke is an immigrant, feminist, reader,<br />
traveler and communicator. She is the Founder and<br />
President of the Heidelberg IWC and has been involved<br />
with FAWCO behind the scenes since 2013, including<br />
doing communications at the Brussels and Frankfurt<br />
conferences, chairing the U40 Task Force in 2019, and<br />
leading the redesign of the FAWCO website in 2017. She<br />
works full time as the Product Content Strategist at<br />
HeidelbergCement. She has 2 young sons and a<br />
husband. She is trying her best to say no to new<br />
projects and work in <strong>2021</strong> (she’s busy enough!)<br />
Questions about Miro? Email her at<br />
president@heidelbergiwc.org.<br />
39
PROFILE<br />
Overcoming<br />
Obstacles One at<br />
a Time<br />
Maria Barros Weiss, member of<br />
the Heidelberg IWC, Germany,<br />
describes her pivot as a systems<br />
engineer in academia to industry.<br />
I was born in Luanda, Angola, during my father’s<br />
military service. This was in 1974, the year of<br />
Portugal’s Civil Revolution, when the country<br />
became a democracy and returned its colonies to<br />
their owners. This allowed my parents to return to<br />
Portugal, where I grew up.<br />
This would be not the last time my parents would<br />
move, and after coming back to Lisbon, they<br />
decided to move close to Braga in the north,<br />
where most of my extended family lives.<br />
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before we moved<br />
again, to Porto. It was difficult for me to make<br />
new friends, feel at home and find my place in<br />
this new life! I was always looking out the window<br />
thinking about Braga, counting the days until the<br />
holidays so I could spend time with family and<br />
friends. I do remember my mother telling me that<br />
life is made of phases, each of them full of people<br />
who are important and who, in times of difficultly,<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
Maria Barros Weiss<br />
will all walk alongside us for the rest of our lives!<br />
The friends from each phase are always in our<br />
memories, and then sometimes we meet up again<br />
and have the opportunity of revisiting the past.<br />
But life goes on.<br />
Today I am still friends with my best friend from<br />
those early days, even though we haven’t ever<br />
lived in the same city again. Instead, we have<br />
made sure we spend as much time together as<br />
possible, on weekends and in the summer. One<br />
year we went to England together to do an English<br />
language course; later we ended up collaborating<br />
on some international projects, which have<br />
allowed us to meet frequently even though I<br />
moved to Germany. I have two other very close<br />
friends from two other phases of my life, who, for<br />
professional reasons, moved here to Germany<br />
as well.<br />
But this hasn’t been the same with all my friends.<br />
As my mother told me when I was 9, sometimes<br />
we find one of these old friends, and in the<br />
moment it feels like we can still talk about<br />
anything like it was yesterday, but at the end of<br />
the day each person goes back to their own<br />
separate lives!<br />
Me with my parents<br />
Leaving home<br />
I left home to go to university in the south of<br />
Portugal, to study Systems Engineering. My father<br />
helped me move and later said this was one of<br />
the most difficult moments of his life! Now that I<br />
have kids of my own I understand the worries, but<br />
I believe he was feeling the end of a phase in his<br />
life, too, seeing the daughter “flying away” on her<br />
own! And I have flown a lot since that day, ending<br />
up moving even more often than my parents.<br />
40
Being a technologist allows me to be part of<br />
research, with influence on its applications to the<br />
industry and society, and to be part of the<br />
progress in innovative ICT-enabled solutions,<br />
which are part of the digital transformation taking<br />
place in economy and society!<br />
As a woman, being a doctorate engineer in ICT<br />
certainly puts me in a minority. Coordinating<br />
mainly male teams is not always easy, but I’ve<br />
never had a problem there – although there have<br />
been some situations where I felt that a man<br />
would not have had to prove himself in the<br />
same way!<br />
Receiving recognition from the Canon Foundation in<br />
Europe<br />
Today I still travel a lot, for work and personally,<br />
but I try to give my sons the chance to grow<br />
together with their friends by living in one place.<br />
Curiously, I have always moved for academic and<br />
professional reasons, not out of need but to<br />
embrace new challenges! And in any place I have<br />
been working, and in every city I’ve been living, I<br />
feel I’ll never leave, but then it comes a new<br />
challenge I cannot resist!<br />
Getting from Portugal to Germany<br />
While working on my doctoral thesis, I spent some<br />
time at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan –<br />
once with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian<br />
Foundation, and for another period with a grant<br />
from the Canon Foundation in Europe. It was while<br />
working in Nagoya, at the Tokuda & Kitamura<br />
Laboratory, that I met my husband, a German<br />
researcher working in the same laboratory.<br />
After our return from Japan, my husband (still my<br />
boyfriend then), moved to Lisbon, Portugal where I<br />
was lecturing. I was a lecturer for six years, first at<br />
the Superior Technology and Management School<br />
of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, and at<br />
that time I was lecturing for four years at the<br />
Superior Engineering Institute of Lisbon.<br />
An early interest in computing<br />
My interest in computing technologies started at<br />
an early age, with the consoles and computer<br />
games that we used to play with all day, closing<br />
the shades until our parents would force us to go<br />
outside to play. When I was a teenager, we already<br />
had two computers at home, besides the console,<br />
which was unusual at the time. My school projects<br />
were already typed in the computer and then they<br />
were printed.<br />
In high school I studied economics, only becoming<br />
a STEM student at university, where I took my<br />
licentiate diploma in Computers and Systems<br />
Engineering at the University of Algarve, in<br />
Portugal. We were a class of 80 students, but only<br />
three of us were girls!<br />
In the final year of my licentiate degree, during my<br />
final project in ionospheric communications, I<br />
started collaborating internationally in a pan-<br />
European group, and had the opportunity to<br />
spend a short period of time in a communications<br />
center in Huelva, Spain.<br />
After the licentiate degree I decided to go back to<br />
Porto and started working as scientific researcher<br />
in signal speech processing at the Faculty of<br />
Engineering, where I concluded my Master’s in<br />
I loved the contact with the students and the<br />
possibility of focusing on my research, but I always<br />
had the feeling that I needed get experience in the<br />
industrial world, with experience outside of<br />
academia. Therefore, when my husband got a job<br />
offer in Germany I told him to go for it and I<br />
would follow.<br />
Entering a new phase<br />
During my maternity leave for my first child, I got a<br />
job as a program manager in information and<br />
communication technology (ICT), which I am still<br />
doing today.<br />
With my family<br />
41
Electrical and Computer Engineering. We were<br />
only eight students following the<br />
telecommunications specialization, and I was the<br />
only woman in that group.<br />
At the Faculty of Engineering of the University of<br />
Porto I also started my doctoral thesis in text-tospeech<br />
synthesis, in collaboration with the Nagoya<br />
Institute of Technology, Japan, where I spent<br />
several months. After moving to Germany, I<br />
decided to transfer my doctoral thesis work to the<br />
University of Bonn, where I was already<br />
collaborating via a European research group on<br />
speech processing. I have now completed my<br />
doctorate work and got my PhD degree in<br />
Bonn, Germany.<br />
Overcoming obstacles<br />
Interesting enough – in part due to a society<br />
where men and women are given different roles,<br />
but not only that – my biggest obstacles have<br />
been in making choices that prioritize my career.<br />
It is not simple to explain it without generalizing to<br />
statements that could be misunderstood, but in<br />
different moments of my life, I felt that I was<br />
expected to quit my studies or my profession in<br />
order to live up to the expectations, even if I was<br />
more successful than many of my male peers!<br />
participating in meetings, speaking publicly even<br />
when I was pregnant. I remember speaking in<br />
China in at a European Commission event when I<br />
was five months pregnant, already with a<br />
considerable belly.<br />
Possibly my biggest obstacle<br />
When I was 42, I was diagnosed with invasive<br />
breast cancer and I found myself in a situation of<br />
fighting for survival! The pressure from everyone –<br />
from family, friends, colleagues to doctors – to<br />
quit everything and accept that being a patient<br />
should be my priority was tough! I had to fight for<br />
my life in terms of health, but I also had to fight<br />
for my life as I built it, that I worked hard for, and<br />
to make everyone believe that this was my way to<br />
get cured.<br />
This was the case when I wanted to study<br />
informatics in high school, which was seen as a<br />
path for office assistants, while for men it was<br />
seen as the path to a tech career. This view was<br />
definitely gender biased!<br />
Then after finding my way to an informatics<br />
university, I had a boyfriend who wanted to start a<br />
family before I would have finished my degree. He<br />
was wealthy, so he imagined that I would only<br />
have a low-paid job anyway, so there was no need<br />
to rush finishing my studies!<br />
Next obstacle: after university I was seen as<br />
immature for refusing to use my family’s social<br />
connections to help me find a first job that would<br />
give me the proper pillars for a solid career.<br />
Later, when I became a mother, I found out that<br />
even if German women are more emancipated<br />
than many others in the world, I was seen as a<br />
“raven mother” – someone who prioritizes her<br />
career rather than enjoying her children’s<br />
childhood and supporting their development at<br />
home and giving my husband the stability to build<br />
on his career!<br />
In Germany we are entitled to three years of<br />
leave, paid for 12 to 14 months, when it is shared.<br />
I took six months of maternity leave for my<br />
second child. For the first child I was still working<br />
in Portugal, and I took the four months leave we<br />
were entitled to. I kept working full time and<br />
At work in my office in 2017<br />
Many people find out what they really want when<br />
they are diagnosed with cancer, I found out that I<br />
had what I really wanted, and I wanted to keep it!<br />
By doing my job while I was receiving treatment I<br />
felt I was still part of the normal world!<br />
This was my way to survive and be cured! My light<br />
bulb moment came when my boss reminded me<br />
that resilience was one of my strengths! Even one<br />
of my oncologists said the best thing to do was to<br />
be positive, however you might achieve that.<br />
Although I was entitled to paid long-term leave<br />
during treatment like this, I preferred to make a<br />
schedule that worked for me around my work.<br />
Even though I had two surgeries, six months of<br />
chemotherapy and more than 30 sessions of<br />
radiotherapy, many of my work colleagues didn’t<br />
even know I was ill! I never hid my illness from<br />
those working close to me, but by using clever<br />
tricks with a scarf that I learned from my Muslim<br />
cleaning lady (who was a scarf expert having worn<br />
one for years of course) or by wearing a wig, many<br />
people didn’t seem to notice my hair loss. I made<br />
public presentations, had international meetings<br />
42
Quick-fire questions for Maria<br />
1. If you could change one thing about your past,<br />
what would it be? If I could one thing from the past,<br />
I would have learned the German language as<br />
soon as I decided I would move to Germany! It is<br />
very important for integration, but also for the ties<br />
you want to create!<br />
I’ve been in Germany for 13 years, and it is very<br />
difficult to have time to invest in the language, but<br />
it is even more difficult to make friends imposing<br />
a language that is not your own. I started learning<br />
Japanese before I went to Japan, and even if it was<br />
just at a basic level, it helped with my integration<br />
into the country!<br />
Relaxing while on vacation<br />
and even concluded an international project with<br />
outstanding results, and got funding for another<br />
one during this period of treatment. Today I have<br />
been cancer free for over three years.<br />
The future for IT<br />
The future of the ICT industry is connected with<br />
the future of most of the vertical industries. I’m a<br />
technologist in communications networks,<br />
artificial intelligence, the internet of things,<br />
digitalization, and cloud and data innovation. The<br />
digital transformation we are living and<br />
experiencing is the most fascinating thing, and it is<br />
enabled by many of these technologies. New<br />
digital services are changing most of the vertical<br />
industries as we know them and disrupting most<br />
of the societal sectors. They will have a great<br />
impact not only on the economy but also in a<br />
more sustainable society and a greener world,<br />
with a smarter use of resources.<br />
Today I’m a manager for international projects<br />
with geographically distributed teams,<br />
participating in 16+ international and national<br />
projects and evaluation and follow up of 50+<br />
projects. In these roles we need to travel a lot, but<br />
we also use media technologies a lot – like video<br />
conferencing, messaging, collaborative<br />
management and software development, or realtime<br />
document collaboration tools and other<br />
collaborative technologies that are already<br />
transforming the culture at the workplace.<br />
When I came to Germany it was such a busy time<br />
in my life: finishing my PhD, becoming a mother,<br />
changing from an academic career to one in the<br />
industry, in another country and yet another<br />
language, that I allowed myself not to learn the<br />
language right away! After all, I could speak<br />
English everywhere! I even joined an English<br />
women’s group! But later it didn’t get easier! I<br />
know I would have had a much easier integration<br />
here if I had spoken better German.<br />
2. What things about your career in technology do<br />
you apply to your daily life? New digital services will<br />
change most of the vertical industries as we know<br />
them and disrupt most of the societal sectors. ICT<br />
technologies, like artificial intelligence and 5G<br />
mobile communications are recognized as<br />
enablers of these future services, contributing to a<br />
digital economy and society.<br />
These enabling technologies will affect not only<br />
our way of working and doing business, but our<br />
daily life as well, bringing a whole new range of<br />
innovative services into our lives. The industry and<br />
governmental authorities worldwide are<br />
prioritizing and putting money towards this digital<br />
transformation because they recognize its need.<br />
These and other digital tools will affect not only<br />
our way of working and doing business, but our<br />
daily life as well. This will bring a whole new range<br />
of innovative services into our lives. Industry and<br />
governmental authorities worldwide are already<br />
giving priorities and funding to digital<br />
transformation initiatives.<br />
At the EC ICT 2018 event in Austria<br />
43
FEATURE<br />
ThePajamaCompany.com and Me<br />
Ellie Badanes, member of FAUSA and FAWCO’s Twitter expert, tells us<br />
all about setting up and running an online business in <strong>2021</strong>.<br />
Starting with new tech<br />
I don’t know how to code, but I do love new shiny<br />
things. I remember being thrilled with my word<br />
processor, my fax machine and my first computer.<br />
I loved the crinkling sound of that first Netscape<br />
dial-up internet connection. What a thrill to be<br />
connected to the world right at my desk. I<br />
remember trying to think of a clever email<br />
address for that first CompuServe and AOL email<br />
account. What a communication game changer<br />
that turned out to be.<br />
I joined Twitter in 2008 and a church organist<br />
from Oregon was the first person to follow me. I<br />
thought that was amazing.<br />
Working on my business<br />
I started my career back in the late 70s in the<br />
fashion business. I was a retail buyer for a<br />
department store group working in the dress<br />
market. I would answer my phone by saying,<br />
“Dress Office.” My daily life was consumed by<br />
runways, vendor showrooms, fashion trends and<br />
retail merchandising.<br />
Loving pajamas<br />
I have always loved pajamas. Pajamas just make<br />
me happy. You know when you plop into that<br />
comfy chair, that cozy couch, that scrumptious<br />
bed? You know what it’s like to just sigh that<br />
happy sigh? Pajamas do just that for<br />
me. Whether it’s a new fresh pair or an old<br />
favorite, the soft cotton always feels fabulous. I’ve<br />
found the pajama style that’s just right for me. I<br />
love to lounge in pajamas, but I also love to work<br />
in pajamas. I’ve been my most creative in<br />
pajamas. I was likely wearing pajamas when I<br />
thought about starting an online pajama store<br />
one summer day in 2003.<br />
I was ready for a new journey.<br />
When I was 27, my life totally changed, as my<br />
husband was transferred from New York to<br />
Copenhagen. At that moment, a new journey<br />
began and what a journey it was. I could never<br />
have imagined that the promised 3-to-5-year<br />
assignment would turn into a life abroad that<br />
would encompass the next 20 years. It was a<br />
journey that would lead me to a full fledged<br />
@fawco career as well.<br />
My overseas life encompassed another most<br />
exciting journey of a lifetime which was to become<br />
the mom of Jilly, Alex and Steffi, each born in a<br />
different country. The greatest gift of all.<br />
In 2003 we left England and returned to America.<br />
We moved to Connecticut and a new journey<br />
began for us.<br />
Some of The Pajama Company pajamas<br />
44
were returned with a note that his wife didn’t like<br />
them. That first order was memorable for me at<br />
least. He never knew that he was my first<br />
customer. I still have those pajamas hanging in<br />
my office.<br />
The first holiday season<br />
My first holiday season turned out to be wild. I<br />
had bought an assortment of adult footed<br />
pajamas from a fellow entrepreneur who had just<br />
started her business at the same time as mine. My<br />
brother-in-law, a photographer, agreed to find<br />
some models among his friends and neighbors in<br />
Colorado Springs, and do a footie photoshoot for<br />
me. With his images and boxes of footies in my<br />
basement I added these new pajamas to my<br />
website. Within minutes I started getting orders<br />
and phone calls.<br />
More of our pajamas<br />
Setting up the business<br />
Online shopping was still pretty new, so my first<br />
task was to find a domain name. I jumped on<br />
register.com and searched for<br />
thepajamacompany.com and, yes, it was available.<br />
I paid $7.99 to buy it for a year and with a click I<br />
had my domain name. I was on my way. I created<br />
a logo and hired a company to create a website<br />
with a shopping cart.<br />
Although it had been 20 years since my days as a<br />
buyer, it was pretty easy to jump right back in. I<br />
had a vision of what kind of store I wanted to<br />
create and the items I wanted to sell. Soon I was<br />
back in NYC and LA showrooms, looking not at<br />
dresses this time around but at pajamas. I wasn’t<br />
sure if these vendors would sell to me as an<br />
online store. I was thrilled when they all said yes. I<br />
wanted www.ThePajamaCompany.com to be<br />
cheerful. I promoted the mantra “Life is better in<br />
pajamas” because I believed it. I was building my<br />
store not with bricks but with my computer.<br />
It was exciting.<br />
Launching the website<br />
With the help of a tech assistant in Atlanta who I<br />
found online, I launched my site in April of 2004.<br />
My first order came in a matter of days. It was a<br />
man in Texas who bought my “Las Vegas” themed<br />
pajamas and told me in the customer note that he<br />
was giving them to his wife for their one-year<br />
anniversary and surprising her with a trip to Las<br />
Vegas. All my inventory was in my basement, so I<br />
picked and packed them and out the door they<br />
went. That gave me chills. A few weeks later they<br />
I had a cleaner a couple of days a week and I<br />
asked her if she would mind filling pajama orders<br />
instead of cleaning. I printed the orders, handed<br />
them to her and she came back with the products<br />
for me to ship. My phone rang and rang with<br />
footie requests. It was so frantic that I even asked<br />
some 9 th graders hanging out at our house with<br />
my son to help me answer the phone. A mom<br />
called saying her son was a police officer and<br />
really wanted some footies. When my oldest<br />
daughter arrived home from her freshman year of<br />
college, within moments of taking off her coat and<br />
dropping her bags on the floor, she had provided<br />
a Texas pastor with a red footie for his Christmas<br />
Eve service while also advising another man on<br />
the delicate subject of determining the correct<br />
size to buy for his wife.<br />
The business today<br />
Looking back, I admire my early enthusiasm and<br />
hope I still have much of it intact today. I did<br />
outsource fulfilment to a warehouse team and<br />
customer service to a call center. The journey as<br />
an online retailer has been exciting and stressful,<br />
energizing and exhausting, happy and pensive.<br />
The economic highs have been thrilling and some<br />
lows have been challenging. Through it all, the<br />
opportunity to be creative, to sell something I<br />
love, to expand the brand across social media<br />
networks has been a dream. What a treat to<br />
interact with customers from around the world<br />
and to see our pajamas truly making people<br />
happy season after season. Pajamas proved to be<br />
a great niche business for e-commerce. I’ve come<br />
to realize that people who love pajamas really<br />
love pajamas and will search high and low for the<br />
perfect pair.<br />
The future for pajamas<br />
From my launch back in 2004, I’ve promoted the<br />
fun and comfort of living and working in pajamas.<br />
I’ve heard from customers over the years how<br />
they love spending weekends in pajamas, but this<br />
era of COVID is a unique moment. This is a time<br />
45
when pajamas really are bringing some calm,<br />
some happiness and comfort, and likely increased<br />
productivity. I’ve been here year in and year out<br />
working in pajamas, but now I know I’m not the<br />
only one. Owning the “way you work” might be the<br />
new thing now and the new thing for the future.<br />
Ellie Badanes is originally from Bloomington, Indiana<br />
but today lives in New Canaan, Connecticut. She has<br />
been involved with FAWCO for about 30 years<br />
including being President of the American <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
Club in Denmark, President of the American <strong>Women</strong> of<br />
Surrey and President of The FAWCO Foundation. She<br />
says “@fawco helped me grow and provided amazing<br />
mentors and friends to cherish year after year.<br />
@fawco showed me the power of women, the power of<br />
passion and activism, the power of being a global<br />
citizen and the power of giving. Today I have the fun<br />
of managing our @fawco presence on twitter. For all<br />
of this, I will be forever grateful.”<br />
Ellie Badanes<br />
“Confetti” Dot Pajamas are the Cat’s<br />
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46
FEATURE<br />
Googling My Way<br />
from Journalism to<br />
Engineering and<br />
Back<br />
Carolyn Stransky, member of AWC Berlin, Germany, on using<br />
Google’s search engine to find a job.<br />
If living in Berlin has taught me anything, it's the<br />
importance of search engines.<br />
My first life-altering Google search happened<br />
shortly after moving to Germany from the United<br />
States. It had been days since I had had a<br />
conversation with another human besides my<br />
German partner. I was lonely. So I apprehensively<br />
typed six words into the box on my screen: "how<br />
to make friends adult berlin". When those results<br />
were useless because Freund was out of my<br />
vocabulary, I added "expat". That's how I found<br />
the American <strong>Women</strong>'s Club of Berlin.<br />
The second significant search led me to a career in<br />
technology. And the third, software engineering.<br />
Before I get into that, some context.<br />
Arriving in Berlin<br />
I arrived in Berlin with only a journalism degree<br />
and a whole lot of unfounded confidence. I was an<br />
idealist, planning to “change the world with my<br />
words.” Turns out, being a journalist in a country<br />
where you don't speak the language is hard. A<br />
byline here and there didn't pay enough to cover<br />
my rent or qualify for a visa. I realized that I<br />
needed something more sustainable.<br />
After weeks of uncertainty and growing concern<br />
that my tourist visa would expire, I did another<br />
search: "how to work in Berlin as expat". I learned<br />
that this city has a growing technology and startup<br />
scene. And the best part? The primary<br />
language in most offices is English. The next day, I<br />
submitted my CV for any role on<br />
BerlinStartupJobs.com that listed “native English<br />
speaker” as a qualification.<br />
Back to the beginning<br />
Two years and a couple miscellaneous marketing<br />
jobs later, I found myself back where I started<br />
after the start-up sponsoring my working visa filed<br />
for bankruptcy. Judging by my empty inbox,<br />
prospects for another full-time communications<br />
role were grim. My colleagues in engineering,<br />
however, were thriving. Most were already<br />
snatched up by a competitor and the rest were<br />
"weighing their options" (a foreign concept to me<br />
at the time).<br />
I always had a hunch that software engineers were<br />
better off. Upper management never questioned if<br />
their work was important. Not to mention that<br />
many of their salaries were double mine.<br />
Engineers also possessed an in-demand skill.<br />
Comparing their post-insolvency job hunt to mine<br />
made this strikingly clear.<br />
Enjoying life in Berlin<br />
There were downsides to engineering, I was sure.<br />
For instance, being hunched over a screen all day<br />
surely destroys your back, and their office was<br />
vaguely sweaty and pungent like a locker room.<br />
47
But the promise of stability kept creeping into my<br />
thoughts. If I wanted to build a life with my<br />
partner in Germany, I would need a visa and a<br />
reliable income. Job security and the ability to pay<br />
off my lingering student debt wouldn't hurt. I<br />
didn't have any of that, but the software<br />
engineers did.<br />
Learning from Google<br />
Illuminated again by the glow of Google's home<br />
screen, I hesitantly typed: "how to become a<br />
software engineer". It felt ridiculous to ask a<br />
search engine for such major career guidance.<br />
The results yielded three options: go back to<br />
university; teach yourself online; or attend a<br />
coding bootcamp. University would require either<br />
money or a better command of the German<br />
language, so that was out. I wasn't disciplined<br />
enough to be self-taught. The remaining option<br />
was a coding bootcamp. The only problem was<br />
that I had no idea what a coding bootcamp was.<br />
According to edX, coding bootcamps are defined<br />
as "short-term, intense training sessions designed<br />
to prepare students for the practical reality of<br />
development". This is accurate.. but it fails to<br />
articulate how grueling the experience can be.<br />
Coding bootcamp<br />
In 2017, I attended Spiced Academy's twelve-week<br />
web development program in Berlin. It was<br />
immersive – a minimum of eight hours per day at<br />
the school, plus review every night and project<br />
work over the weekend. Writing code also<br />
required rewiring my brain and taking a new,<br />
more logical approach to problem-solving. It was<br />
Enjoying life in Berlin<br />
difficult. I cried frequently. I almost quit three<br />
times. But I made it.<br />
My job today<br />
Today, I'm working as a software engineer at a<br />
different start-up. Most of my assumptions were<br />
true, although sometimes that stability is<br />
overshadowed by sexism and other systemic<br />
problems in the industry. It’s hard to complain,<br />
though. Building websites is interesting enough<br />
and even more so when the paycheck comes in<br />
every month.<br />
My background in journalism has also proved<br />
useful. I’ve written presentations about the<br />
technical concepts I’ve learned and traveled to<br />
conferences in Iceland, India and Singapore as a<br />
result. Now I’m actively trying to combine<br />
journalism and engineering by writing for outlets<br />
like Future of Sex, a publication focused on the<br />
intersection of tech and human sexuality.<br />
It’s impossible to say where this new career will<br />
take me, especially given how quickly technology<br />
evolves. But I’m confident I'll be able to figure<br />
it out.<br />
Or, worst case, I'll Google it.<br />
Learning new skills<br />
48
At the Spiced Academy<br />
Carolyn Stransky (she/her) is a software engineer and<br />
freelance journalist based in Germany. Originally from<br />
Seattle, Carolyn moved to Berlin nearly six years ago<br />
and has been a member of the American <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
Club of Berlin ever since. During the day, she builds<br />
web products with a focus on design and accessibility<br />
for early-stage start-ups. Out of the office, Carolyn<br />
writes about technology and identity for outlets like<br />
Future of Sex and Curve Magazine. You can find her<br />
most places on the Internet @carolstran or through<br />
her website: workwithcarolyn.com<br />
49
PROFILE<br />
Specializing in<br />
Web Security<br />
Susan Spälti, member of the AWC<br />
Bern, Switzerland, describes her<br />
roles in operations research and<br />
internet security.<br />
Although I was born in Pittsburgh PA, my family<br />
moved every five years between Pittsburgh and<br />
New Jersey. I am one of eight siblings – five girls<br />
and three boys – and my father jokingly referred<br />
to me as “number three child, number two<br />
daughter.” Since we moved so often, we quickly<br />
learned that that home was not a house or place,<br />
but where the family was.<br />
I am a child of the 60s and 70s. Very turbulent<br />
times to be sure, but gender roles really had not<br />
evolved. Commercials told women to “bring home<br />
the bacon” but they still had to “fry it up in a pan.”<br />
Men got the Marlboro man. True, my father went<br />
to work and my mother stayed at home, but both<br />
had bachelor degrees and my mother worked for<br />
four years in her field until the children came.<br />
They expected their children, regardless of sex, to<br />
help with the housework, take care of the younger<br />
Susan Spälti<br />
siblings, earn their own pocket money and apply<br />
themselves to schoolwork to the best of their<br />
abilities. We were encouraged to read, explore<br />
new things, go outside to play, and have lots of<br />
fun. It was understood by us all that we would go<br />
to college if we wanted and were able to. My<br />
mother said, “you raise children to leave home”<br />
and my parents were determined to provide us<br />
with the necessary tools.<br />
Our family in 2005<br />
With my family in about 1972<br />
50
degree and then we would move back to the<br />
States.<br />
I was granted my degree in June 1990, but still<br />
have not moved back to the States. While I was<br />
finishing, I was completing another project. In<br />
September 1990 I gave birth to our daughter,<br />
Nina. Fifteen months later, in December 1991, we<br />
welcomed our son Jacques.<br />
The first desktop computer I used<br />
Leaving home<br />
I left home when I was 17 to attend Allegheny<br />
College, a small liberal arts school in north<br />
western Pennsylvania. I thought I wanted to be a<br />
medical doctor and Allegheny had a good premed<br />
program. As part of premed, I had to take a lot of<br />
science courses, including mathematics. After one<br />
college level course, I was hooked and majored in<br />
math. I loved its beauty and logic. I enrolled at<br />
Ohio State as a graduate student in pure<br />
mathematics as soon as I graduated. OSU was<br />
quite a shock. I went from attending a school with<br />
three departments in one building to one with<br />
three buildings per department. Plus, pure<br />
mathematics was a little too esoteric for me. I quit<br />
after two semesters and got a summer internship<br />
in Washington DC.<br />
Discovering OR<br />
I loved DC and decided to look for a fulltime job<br />
there. This was in 1979, the Cold War was still<br />
“hot,” – and the Department of Defense and its<br />
contractors were offering many jobs for people<br />
with my skill set. I accepted a job with a defense<br />
contractor, devising algorithms to solve logistics<br />
problems and “discovered” Operations Research<br />
(OR), a type of applied mathematics. I loved OR<br />
and decided to go back to graduate school parttime.<br />
I got my masters in OR from George<br />
Washington University in DC and then decided to<br />
go full-time for my PhD. I got a fellowship for the<br />
PhD program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)<br />
in Pittsburgh and moved there in 1984.<br />
Moving to Switzerland<br />
At CMU I met my Swiss husband, Karl, a visiting<br />
research fellow from the University of Bern. He<br />
specialized in OR and we “clicked” on more than a<br />
professional level. As he only had a one-year<br />
fellowship, one of us had to relocate. Since he had<br />
a job and I was just starting out, I applied to and<br />
was accepted at the École Polytechnique Fédérale<br />
de Lausanne. We married in July 1985 and I moved<br />
to Bern in September. The plan was to finish my<br />
My mentors<br />
My earliest mentors were my parents. They<br />
encouraged me to explore many fields and always<br />
be curious. My doctoral advisor, Prof. Thomas<br />
Liebling, was a wonderful mentor who provided<br />
guidance on how to thoroughly analyze problems<br />
and present my results in a comprehensible<br />
fashion. Finally, my husband Karl. Perhaps not a<br />
mentor, but he and I worked as a team, both<br />
professionally and privately, so that we could give<br />
our customers quality solutions while<br />
simultaneously raising a family.<br />
Consulting from home<br />
While caring for two small children, my husband<br />
and I started a small consulting firm which<br />
With my father, husband and Professor Liebling at my PhD<br />
Defense.<br />
developed algorithms, database models, etc. for<br />
the Swiss version of Social Security. Our office was<br />
at home so we could be with the children. After<br />
almost 20 years of working at home, I took a new<br />
job. I enjoyed going to an office outside of my<br />
house and honing my skills in Identity and Access<br />
Management, an internet security field. I worked<br />
in this field until I retired in 2020. My husband<br />
continued with our consulting firm until he retired<br />
a few years ago. After my retirement, we had<br />
planned to travel, play golf and enjoy life.<br />
Although the traveling and golf plans are now on<br />
hold, we enjoy walks to see the llamas in our<br />
51
In an enterprise, PAM deals with user accounts<br />
which have special access above that of a<br />
standard user, for instance system administration<br />
accounts. Many famous security breaches<br />
involved these special access accounts. PAM is<br />
used to control, monitor and audit such accounts.<br />
Quick-fire questions for Susan<br />
1. What things about your career in technology do<br />
you apply to your daily life? Being in IT Security, I<br />
find myself very cautious when dealing with all<br />
things involving the internet. I have learned not to<br />
“click” on something just because I can, I keep the<br />
software and operating systems on my computer<br />
and all devices up to date. I also believe in<br />
reading the manual. In my career I have spent a<br />
lot of time cleaning up “issues” that could have<br />
been avoided if someone had just bothered to<br />
read the manual.<br />
village (yes, we’ve got llamas, or are they alpacas?),<br />
talking with each other, our friends and our<br />
relatives (albeit remotely) and just being together.<br />
The future for the industry<br />
Although I started out as a mathematician and<br />
was formally trained as a STEM (Science,<br />
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)<br />
student before that became an acronym, I ended<br />
my career as an IT specialist in Identity and Access<br />
Management (IAM). Most understand the concept<br />
of authentication. When you try to log onto an<br />
application, you are asked your username and<br />
password to “authenticate” who you are. IAM asks<br />
the following questions: Are you allowed to do<br />
what you want? What resources can you “access”?<br />
In today’s world of increasing data breaches and<br />
more rigorous compliance requirements, IAM, a<br />
relatively new field, is constantly evolving and will<br />
continue to do so. Privileged Access Management<br />
(PAM), a subcategory of IAM, is the new hot topic.<br />
With my husband Karl in Cape Elizabeth, Maine<br />
2. If you could work with one famous person, past or<br />
present, who would it be and why? I would have<br />
loved to work with Grace Hopper (1906-1992), an<br />
admiral in the US Navy, mathematician, and<br />
computer scientist who, amongst other things,<br />
invented the compiler, an intermediate program<br />
that translates English language instructions into<br />
”computer” language. And better yet, she coined<br />
the term “bug” for an error in your program after<br />
a moth got into the circuits of the Mark I, a<br />
precursor of electronic computers, which she<br />
helped design. I spent a lot of time “debugging”<br />
my code.<br />
Enjoying Swiss Glüwey with my daughter Nina in 2019<br />
52
FEATURE<br />
Why I Design For The AIWCD<br />
Jessica Nicholson tells us what she feels are the benefits of donating<br />
her skill set to her local club, AIWC Düsseldorf.<br />
politicians. The American International <strong>Women</strong>’s<br />
Club of Düsseldorf (AIWCD) participates every<br />
year and 2017 was no different. It was at this<br />
event, dressed as Wonder Woman, that I met<br />
Alisa Cook-Röhs, then President of the Club and<br />
was recruited as the Graphic Designer for the<br />
AIWCD. My accepting of this position would<br />
greatly impact the AIWCD, but it would affect my<br />
life far more.<br />
Sense of Purpose<br />
When I moved to Germany, I took some time off –<br />
I had not been without a job since I was 15. I<br />
spent a couple months exploring my new country<br />
and getting settled. This adjustment period was<br />
lovely, but I soon realized that I was bored. I didn’t<br />
have kids or pets to keep me occupied and it was<br />
obvious that I was not suited to a life of leisure.<br />
Jessica with Alisa Cook-Röhs at the “Storming of the<br />
Rathaus” in 2017<br />
There is a tradition in Düsseldorf called “Storming<br />
the Rathaus.” The women of the city, donning<br />
their Karneval finest, crash through the doors of<br />
City Hall (“Rathaus”) and cut off the ties of the<br />
My first project for the AIWCD was redesigning<br />
the Club magazine, the Radschläger. It was so<br />
much fun to work with the Rad Team to<br />
modernize the look and feel of the quarterly<br />
publication. The magazine gave me something to<br />
do; I had meetings to attend and calls to take.<br />
One nice thing about volunteer work is that you<br />
are in charge – you can put as much or as little<br />
into the job as you want. I only had four issues to<br />
do each year, so it didn’t take over my life but<br />
made me feel productive.<br />
53
I often use these skills when working with paid<br />
clients, but the extra practice and freedom to take<br />
risks has made me a better designer.<br />
Expanding My Network<br />
When I first joined the AIWCD, I did not think of it<br />
as a place to meet professional contacts. My<br />
perspective has since shifted. As an English<br />
speaking designer in a German speaking country,<br />
the expat community is an excellent place to meet<br />
new clients.<br />
Even today, I feel a sense of accomplishment<br />
when my Radschläger arrives. The feedback from<br />
Club members is welcome as well. It’s always nice<br />
when someone praises your work.<br />
Staying Tech-Savvy<br />
Today, I’m back to designing as a freelancer. I<br />
wouldn’t have it any other way, but the gig<br />
economy comes with benefits and drawbacks.<br />
Technology is quickly and constantly changing; I<br />
must stay up-to-date to stay relevant. So, I<br />
continue to volunteer.<br />
While the AIWCD has not facilitated all the<br />
learning I have done in the past four years, it has<br />
given me many occasions to polish my skills<br />
without the pressures of a paying client. Working<br />
on the magazine and marketing materials helped<br />
me learn about the German printing industry and<br />
how it differs from the US. Redesigning the Club<br />
website gave me a crash course in membership<br />
platforms and taught me how to use Wild Apricot.<br />
I have had opportunities to practice and improve<br />
upon my existing skills as well, like illustration,<br />
logo design and photo editing.<br />
The Club is filled with remarkable women, many<br />
of whom are small business owners and<br />
executives – just the type of people I want to work<br />
with. As a Club member, I may have met these<br />
women at events and had a moment or two to<br />
win their business. My position gives me an<br />
advantage, however. As the AIWCD’s Graphic<br />
Designer, I can showcase my services on an<br />
ongoing basis. Every member of the AIWCD sees<br />
my work when they receive a magazine in the mail<br />
or sign up for an event on the website.<br />
If members have design work that needs to be<br />
done, it takes very little effort to find out who I<br />
am. My volunteer position helps me to win clients<br />
by letting my work speak for itself.<br />
Paying it Forward<br />
The AIWCD is my community and, had I not taken<br />
this position, I would never have found my feet in<br />
Germany. Most Americans live under the false<br />
pretense that everyone speaks English and<br />
therefore, as an English speaker, you can easily fit<br />
in anywhere.<br />
This is not the case in Düsseldorf. Most Germans<br />
speak a bit of English – enough to go to the<br />
grocery store or ask for directions – but that<br />
doesn’t mean they can easily form friendships<br />
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with English speakers. As an expat – especially if,<br />
like me, you are linguistically challenged – it is<br />
imperative that you find an English speaking<br />
community wherever you live. That was the AIWCD<br />
for me.<br />
The main reason I continue to volunteer is because<br />
I want this community to be here for the next<br />
person. I want them to find their home in Germany<br />
and have the life-changing experiences that come<br />
with living abroad.<br />
Today<br />
I have volunteered with the Club for four years<br />
now. In my position, I have revamped the AIWCD’s<br />
branding, magazine and website. When I show<br />
people the work I have done, they ask me, “You do<br />
this for free?” And the answer is yes. But I get more<br />
out of this deal than the Club does.<br />
Originally from Woodstock, NY, Jessica Nicholson grew<br />
up in Richmond, VA. She studied Art and Visual<br />
Technology at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.<br />
After university, Jessica began her career by working as<br />
an in-house designer, then founded Medulla, a graphic<br />
design firm, with her business partner, Jessica Fleenor.<br />
In 2016, Nicholson and her husband chose to relocate<br />
to Germany. Since moving overseas, Nicholson has<br />
continued her design work on a freelance basis. She<br />
spends her free time cooking, taking photos and<br />
exploring Europe. To get in touch with Jessica, or to see<br />
her work, visit www.jessicanicholson.com.<br />
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INSPIRING YOU<br />
Founded in 1931, FAWCO is a global women’s NGO (non-governmental organization), an<br />
international network of independent volunteer clubs and associations comprising 60<br />
member clubs in 31 countries worldwide, with a total membership of around 10,000 women<br />
and men. FAWCO serves as a resource and a voice for its members; seeks to improve the lives<br />
of women and girls worldwide, especially in the areas of human rights, health, education<br />
and the environment; advocates for the rights of US citizens overseas; and contributes to the<br />
global community through its Global Issues Teams and The FAWCO Foundation, which<br />
provides development grants and education awards. Since 1997, FAWCO has held special<br />
consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.<br />
OUR MISSION STATEMENT<br />
FAWCO is an international federation of independent organizations whose<br />
mission is:<br />
• to build strong support networks for its American and international<br />
membership;<br />
• to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide;<br />
• to advocate for the rights of US citizens overseas; and<br />
• to mobilize the skills of its membership in support of global initiatives<br />
for education, the environment, health and human rights.<br />
MAGAZINE FEEDBACK<br />
We want this magazine to be interesting for all FAWCO members. In an effort to<br />
provide articles of interest to all of our readers, we have created an online<br />
feedback questionnaire. It should only take a few minutes of your time to<br />
complete and will be a great help to us!<br />
Please click on the link or paste it into your browser<br />
to complete our short five question survey.<br />
SURVEY<br />
THANK YOU!<br />
ADVERTISING DISCLAIMER<br />
FAWCO receives financial remuneration for page space from advertisers. Views expressed or benefits<br />
described in any display advertisement, advertorial or in any webpage visited online directly from these<br />
adverts are not endorsed by FAWCO.<br />
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MORE ABOUT THIS ISSUE<br />
The <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> Team<br />
Liz Elsie Karen Berit Michele<br />
For more information about this magazine, please contact a member of the<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> team:<br />
Editor in Chief, Liz MacNiven, inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org.<br />
Advertising and Sponsorship Manager, Elsie Bose, advertising@fawco.org.<br />
Distribution Manager, Karen Boeker, iwdistribution@fawco.org<br />
Social Media Manager, Berit Torkildsen, iwsocialmedia@fawco.org<br />
Features Coordinator, Michele Hendrikse Du Bois,<br />
inspiringwomenfeatures@fawco.org<br />
Acknowledgements:<br />
Thanks to our profilees: Adelina, Bev, Cat, Debbie, Irem, Maria and Susan, with<br />
thanks also for the use of their photos and those of their friends and families.<br />
Additional thanks to Carolyn, Christine, Denise, Ellie, Emily, Fintan, Jessica, Karen<br />
and Kari for their articles.<br />
Special thanks to the proofreading team of Laurie Brooks (AWC Amsterdam/<br />
AWC The Hague), Sallie Chaballier (AAWE Paris), Mary Dobrian (AIWC Cologne),<br />
Tamar Hudson (AIWC Cologne), Janis Kaas (AAWE Paris/FAUSA), Carol-Lyn<br />
McKelvey (AIWC Cologne/FAUSA), Lauren Mescon (AWC Amsterdam), Mary<br />
Stewart Burgher (AWC Denmark) and Jenny Taylor (AIWC Cologne and<br />
Düsseldorf).<br />
Please note: images used in this publication are either sourced from the authors themselves or<br />
through unsplash.com<br />
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THE NEXT ISSUE<br />
Coming in May:<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> wants you<br />
to live your best life.<br />
Welcome to our<br />
“<strong>Women</strong> and Wellness” Issue.<br />
Take a deep breath. Self-care is okay.<br />
Our team is looking to profile women from your club who promote<br />
the significance of wellness in daily life and offer the means to<br />
achieve it.<br />
The journey to wellness takes many paths. We want to profile<br />
women who work in traditional or naturopathic medicine, exercise<br />
or meditation. Or they may work in mental health or the arts,<br />
nutrition or diet. They might offer a means to restore personal order or to seek adventure. The<br />
search for wellness spans many disciplines! But they are all have one thing in common: they are<br />
offering an opportunity for others to find the key to personal peace and calmness.<br />
We want this issue to be informative. We are also looking for features to help our readers understand<br />
what “wellness” is. Do you have instructive articles on how to achieve mindfulness. How does one<br />
start their journey to wellness? Readers are curious as to the advantages of working with a life/career<br />
coach. If diet or fitness is your method of wellness, how did that start and how is working for you?<br />
And what methods are you employing? Share your story by writing an article (700-800 words) for our<br />
next issue.<br />
To nominate candidates for profiles, please send the candidate’s name, candidate’s email address<br />
and a brief description (50-100 words) of why you think they are inspiring and fit the theme for the<br />
issue. Send the information to: inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org<br />
To contribute an article or feature, either on the suggested topics or one that you think fits with<br />
the theme “<strong>Women</strong> in Wellness”, contact: inspiringwomenfeatures@fawco.org<br />
NEW!<br />
Introducing our latest feature, “That’s Inspired!”<br />
The <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> team feels that photographs are integral to our magazine. We thought it<br />
would be interesting to end each issue with a page of a photograph that offers a unique perspective<br />
on its theme. The photos can be provocative, amusing, entertaining, artistic. The photos should lend<br />
themselves to a portrait orientation and able to fit an A4 page.<br />
To submit a photo that you think says “That’s Inspired!” for our Wellness issue please contact<br />
inspiringwomen.editor@fawco.org<br />
The deadline for submissions of profile candidates, feature ideas or<br />
“That’s Inspired!” photos is March 25, <strong>2021</strong>.<br />
Copyright <strong>2021</strong> FAWCO<br />
<strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong>© Magazine is owned and published electronically by FAWCO.<br />
All rights reserved. All bylined articles are copyright of their respective authors as indicated herein and are<br />
reproduced with their permission. The magazine or portions of it may not be reproduced in any form, stored in<br />
any retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy or otherwise –<br />
without written consent of the publisher.<br />
58
That’s Inspired!<br />
A Unique User Experience!<br />
Kristina Soleymanlou, member of AWG Paris, is known for the<br />
special treatment she gives her clients. The pandemic has made it<br />
impossible to offer personal service, but Kristina is undaunted,<br />
shown here offering an online class demonstrating to participants<br />
how to give themselves their own facials!<br />
“That’s Inspired!” is <strong>Inspiring</strong> <strong>Women</strong> magazine’s newest feature. For more<br />
information about this feature, please see the opposite page (p. 58).<br />
59
FEATURED PHOTOS<br />
The Cover Photo<br />
“A Day at the Academy” (2017)<br />
By Paul Fowler<br />
The cover photo is of Carolyn Stransky<br />
(AWC Berlin, on left) and Ingrid Majdalani at<br />
Spiced Academy in Berlin, Germany. Spiced<br />
Academy provides immersive training for<br />
people hoping to get into the fields of<br />
software engineering and data science. On<br />
this day, Carolyn and Ingrid were writing<br />
pseudo code (plain language descriptions<br />
for what you’ll try to accomplish with code)<br />
for their final projects.<br />
Both women attended Spiced Academy’s<br />
12-week web development program in<br />
2017 and have been working as software<br />
engineers ever since. You can read more<br />
about Carolyn’s story and career transition<br />
in the feature on p.47 “Googling my way<br />
from journalism to engineering and back”.<br />
The Back Page Photo<br />
“Working anytime and anywhere!” (2020)<br />
By Tugba Asmazoglu<br />
"One of the perks of freelance work for me is to be able to work anytime and anywhere, as<br />
long as I have access to coffee and internet. Having been working as a freelance writer/<br />
content creator for over a decade, I feel like if I go to a library to work, I won't be able to<br />
concentrate due to an excess amount of silence!<br />
This photo was recently taken by Tugba Asmazoglu, an expat friend who had just moved to<br />
Moscow. We wanted to meet at GUM, the historical market site in Red Square, but I also had<br />
to meet a deadline that day. So I went to a coffee shop earlier to work on my latest animation<br />
before we met and when she came, she found me working on cave people’s eyebrows. It was<br />
a part of a new animation for my educational video channel, Curious Mind TV. “<br />
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