Testimonials

Juliette Link:

Grace Hopper was an awesome opportunity to bond with other women in CS at UBC, meet people from other schools and companies, and learn about what women in technology are doing today and what we hope to accomplish in the future. The talks were inspirational, the career fair was hoppin', and the everyone was really friendly. I'd definitely recommend it to all UBC CS women!

Daria Bondareva:

This year was my first time attending Grace Hopper Conference and I’m very thankful for such a great opportunity. The conference is special in so many ways! All three days of conference are filled with meeting passionate and dedicated to their work women from all parts of the world. Their stories of failures and success are very inspiring. Moreover the selection of speakers is just amazing! All talks are interesting and motivating! You get the feeling that you are capable of doing great things. And this effect doesn’t fade away with weeks.

If you are in doubts about choosing your career path, this is definitely the place to get advice and learn about existing benefits and challenges. I was able to talk to professionals from cool companies like Google and Facebook as well as to faculty members from leading schools and personally I find these chats one of the best experiences of the conference.

As a bonus to the conference this year apart from workshops and lectures we had OpenSource day where everyone could join to commit to one of popular opensource projects.

All the above flavoured with countless opportunities for networking, huge 3-days tech Career Fair and super-friendly and welcoming atmosphere make this Conference unique and awesome experience for all women in IT.

Sandy Fang:

I was able to attend Grace Hopper Conference this year for the first time thanks to the support from FoWCS and sponsors. Not only did the fantastic talks provide new perspectives in computer science industry, but also I was inspired to do more learning in this field being surrounded by people who dedicated their entire lives in this field. Making friends from all over the world was definitely one of the highlights of this trip!

This is the conference you shouldn't miss!

Irene Fung:

Thanks to your support, I left the conference feeling more empowered and confident. Even though the conference was only three days long, the memories will follow me for a lifetime. I enjoyed everything from the seminars, to the career fair and the dance party on the last day of the conference!

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the keynote speech by Nora Denzel, an inspiring woman who has over twenty-five years of experience in high technology. During her speech, she talked about the advantages and difficulties of being a woman in computing and describes some ways to 'tough it out' in the industry. Her speech was inspiring and motivational, which encourages me to have confidence in myself and my abilities. It's reassuring to know that I have a supportive network of women outside of UBC and it was definitely something I had to experience for myself! I would definitely recommend every female Computer Science student to go to the Grace Hopper Celebration.

Kathy Ye:

It was great seeing so many different females in computing science all together and being able to share stories and advise. There was particularly one workshop that really caught my attention: From Engineering to Executive. The speaker talked about her life as a student and how she slowly worked her way up to being a VP at Oracle. She said one of the key to her success was to actually get to know your own strengths and weaknesses, accept and work on them. I really enjoyed this talk but it was something that I can start working on now and can so for many years to come. Also, just reading some of the names of different workshops gave me a sense of what type of fields I can look into and else is out there other than the materials taught in class. Additionally, I spent a long time at the Career Fair and got to interact with representatives of many companies. It helped me broaden my interest as well as narrow down on specific companies I particularly wish to work towards to being a part of.

I had such a marvelous time at Grace Hoppers and cannot express my gratitude for your generous donation. I hope that one day in the future, I can do the same for someone else.

Leemor Yuralivker:

Thank you so much for funding me to go to the Grace Hopper Conference. It was an amazing experience and huge success. Not only did I get to see inspirational keynote speakers like Nora Denzel, but I also did a ton of networking at their humongous career fair. I ended up having interviews with Expedia and Deutche Bank just from being able to attend.

It's great knowing how much support there is for women in comp sci. At the end of the conference, Google and Microsoft threw a celebration at the science center. Google had a photo booth, so I attached the photo that I got to take with another UBC student that got to go too :).