Our Story
In 2013,Women LEAD Nepal jointly with Karkhana hosted a workshop series with the name 'Women Leaders in Technology' which was supported by CAN, and GDG Kathmandu. In this workshop Kharakhana led all the technical workshops on Arduino and coding whereas WLEAD led all the leadership workshops such as public speaking, teamwork, CV writing. This seven day workshop ended with a NASA space app challenge held by Young Innovations.
During those seven days a bond had formed between the participants and five participants out of the original participants took the initiative and started an informal group for women in tech. The formed group usually participated in tech events such as Hackathons and to their surprise they usually were the only girls in the events most of the time. They started to ponder upon this observation and came to a conclusion that it wasn't the lack of skills that made girls participate less in such events. But it was due to the lack of effective mentorship and guidance and the stereotypical belief that boys are better at science,maths and technology.
As fellow women in tech they decided to focus their attention on equality. In June 2015 they decided to formalize an organization called Women Leaders in Technology with 4 other more members who were also fellow women in STEM. All the members held a firm belief that women can and should hold key leadership positions. In June 2015, WLiT held its first bootcamp with 7 participants. Later in 2017, the bootcamp which consists of both technical and leadership sessions became the annual program. At present WLiT runs its fellowship program in Kathmandu and Pokhara and it has over 100 alumni working in different areas of technology.
