Women’s History Month: Celebrating the Achievements of Women Around the World

We’re excited to announce that Carbon Five has been amplifying and celebrating women’s voices throughout the month of March. Each week, we brought our team together through a series of events designed to facilitate discussion and promote learning around the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, with a focus on how they have influenced the tech industry.

In November 2020, there were 41 women leading companies on the Fortune 500 (around 8 percent of the total), three of whom were women of color (making up less than 1 percent). Statistics like these remind us that there is much more work to be done, and we plan to continue these important conversations throughout the year and beyond.

Here’s a quick look at how we celebrated Women’s History Month (WHM), highlighting some of the topics we explored.

Museum Tours — The de Young Museum and the National Women’s History Museum

We took virtual tours of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the National Women’s History Museum.

At the de Young Museum — located just a few miles from our office in San Francisco — we explored an online exhibit called “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” which featured items that belonged to Kahlo, a Mexican painter known for her portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico.

We also checked out a few different exhibits at the National Women’s History Museum, including “The Women of NASA” and “Breaking In: Women in STEM.”

Virtual Movie Night — Suffragette

On March 17, we hosted a team viewing of the 2015 film Suffragette.

The movie is set in 1912 London and follows a young working mother who is galvanized into radical political activism supporting the right for women to vote. We thought it was a perfect fit for our WHM celebration as the movie is focused on women’s history and was easily accessible for our team!

Instagram Stories — Supporting Women Leaders in Tech

We encouraged our followers on social media to join us in celebrating WHM on Instagram. Throughout the month of March, we featured influential women leaders in tech from the past and present in our Instagram stories. We highlighted the personal journeys and awesome achievements of three women:

• Mwende Window Snyder, an American computer security expert currently working as the Chief Security Officer at Square;

• Hedwig “Hedy” Lamarr, an actress, inventor, and film producer who co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication; and

• Evelyn Miralles, a Venezuelan engineer who served as Chief Principal Engineer with CACI International at NASA Johnson Space Center Houston Texas.

Check out our Women’s History Month 2021 Highlights on Instagram to see the complete Stories.

Virtual Pub Quiz Night  — Women’s Achievements in Tech and Leadership

To wrap up WHM, we hosted a team pub quiz night on March 30 that featured questions about women’s achievements in tech, leadership, and entertainment. A few of the interesting tidbits that came up during the discussion include:

• Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern is only the second elected female leader to give birth while in office. She is also the youngest female leader in the world.

• Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox, was the first African-American woman to lead a S&P 500 company. She turned a company once only known for paper copies into a viable and profitable business.

• Ginni Rometty held all three leadership titles IBM and led the transformation from its omnipresence in hardware to a world leader in AI and cloud computing for businesses.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our WHM celebration! For more resources and recommendations, follow us on Instagram @carbonfive.

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