WomenWiseData: how Kalina Tomova is raising female voices in the data community
Women have long been underrepresented in the world of data. But with tech advancing faster than organisations can keep up, it’s more important than ever that we tap into this hugely underutilised talent pool to help fill the digital skills gap.
Last year, Kalina Tomova, an associate consultant in our data and analytics team, founded WomenWiseData – a community that aims to support and increase the visibility of women in data. We caught up with her to find out more about the initiative, what she hopes to achieve and how communities like this can make a big difference in the tech industry.
Why did you start WomenWiseData?
As someone who’s worked in tech companies before, I’ve seen firsthand that the data and tech world can be pretty alienating without people that you can relate to. I’ve thought for some time that there aren’t enough networks and groups in place to support women in data, so I set up WomenWiseData to help change that. I’m so passionate about uplifting women and helping to increase their representation and I’m excited to be part of changing the landscape in the data world.
What do you want to achieve?
The goal is to implement actionable measures that empower and resonate with the women in data community, and provide a safe space for them to share their experiences and keep growing.
The initiative includes quarterly events focused on knowledge sharing, networking and technical learning, giving women the chance to discuss their experiences and solutions. There’s also a mentoring programme on the cards. We’re actively bringing men into the conversation as allies and partnering with different companies to help host our events and widen our community.
How are you going about connecting women in the data industry?
One word: conversation, conversation, conversation! We’re at over 400 people in our community, with over 200 actively involved in events, roundtables and conversations. We’re manually reaching out to women in data through LinkedIn, our internal system,recommendations, job boards and my wider network. Every connection we make opens up an entire new network to us.
Women still face a multitude of challenges in the world of data. Some are focused on more investment in data, some on gender equality in their teams, some on how to manage the need to have masculine traits to manage teams. It’s about understanding women’s pain points. We’re doing this by hosting roundtable and panel events to facilitate conversation, share knowledge and network, as well as individually meet as many women in data as possible and understand why people are invested in the community. It’s then about letting the conversation develop naturally.
What have been your biggest successes so far?
We’re in the process of forming a partnership with a global AI and data consultancy, to launch a mentoring programme. We’ve also had some brilliant C-suite engagement with people who are keen to be involved in this long term.
We were delighted to recently host a panel event with five senior data leaders, who took us through their journey as women in data. We got some amazing feedback from senior leaders that it was a stellar panel and we’re really excited to host some more events like this in the year ahead.
Following our WomenWiseData: DataDiversity Dialogues panel event in November, we were featured in an article in Medium by an attendee, Reyhaneh Esmaielbeiki, entitled Learnings from a Meet-up for Women Working in Data.
Events like these not only raise the profile of the women in data community but also increase the size of our network and give us access to more great female candidates, which in turn expands the talent pool in data. It’s all about maintaining a momentum of dialogue and engagement.
A lot of it is just legwork – reaching out to people, starting conversations and keeping those going. There’s been lots of interest from people wanting to be ambassadors, volunteers, coaches and speakers within WWD. I’ve also been heartened that nearly half of the senior data leaders I’ve spoken to have put themselves forwards as mentors and want to discuss how they can support the community.
How can people get involved moving forward?
I’m very conscious that although we’ve achieved so much already, the hard work’s far from done. We need to keep on growing and expanding the network to have the biggest possible impact on the tech community and the women within it, and there are plenty of opportunities for engagement in the pipeline.
We’re now looking at the ideal format for a members area for knowledge sharing. There will also be a newsletter on its way and of course, more engaging events featuring leading data professionals who want to share their insight with their peers. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s got involved in our community so far. They’re genuinely helping us make a huge difference not only to women in data, but to the data community as a whole, and I’m so excited about what we can achieve this year.
If you’re looking for your next role in data and analytics or you’re a hiring manager looking for the right talent to strengthen your team, get in touch with our data and analytics team.
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