Native American Women in Computing (NAWiC)

Roundhouse

Native American Women in Computing (NAWiC)

By Andrea Delgado-Olson 

Native American Women in Computing is a community that brings support and inspiration to indigenous women in technical fields across North and South America.  The NAWiC community was inspired by the women leading other communities of Underrepresented Women in Computing of Anita Borg Institute during the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2014.  Native women need a safe space to share their work, ideas, experiences, and accomplishments and get recognition for them.  There are native women currently in the tech industry, learning to code, or just haven’t figured out that tech is the place for them…yet!  NAWiC is a community to bridge that gap between a new coder and a tech executive, and everything in between.   

 NAWiC is working on reaching out to native/indigenous communities to host workshops, meetups, and hackathons within the next calendar year.  We are on Twitter and you can follow the community @NativeAmerWiC and we would love to say hi!  There is a NAWiC Facebook group as well. You can send a request to join and we would love to have you as a member.  As founder and member of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians, NAWiC is attending their first annual Chaw'se Indian Big Time at Chaw’se State Park in Volcano, CA this Saturday and Sunday, September 26^th & 27^th.  You can also visit the Anita Borg Institute website and join NAWiC as an official member of the community.  We hope to be announcing more events in the future as they are confirmed!  Also, if you would like to host an event, or know an event we can promote to the community, please let us know!

For the official debut of Native American Women in Computing, we will be in the ABI Communities Booths!  There will be t-shirts that sport the new NAWiC logo, just drafted and printed for this occasion.  The shirts will be sold at our community booth to help support and fund groups of native women attending the conference, and to provide financial assistance to women in the future.  NAWiC provided funds for a group of young women from Salinas, California to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration in Houston, TX and we hope to meet them there.  Every year we grow, we can inspire others to do the same!  We look forward to meeting everyone at Grace Hopper, come by and say hello!