The leading knowledge exchange for Data Center, IT and Mission Critical professionals.
By Denman Wall
On December 1, the 7×24 Exchange International Women In Mission Critical Operations Committee held its first virtual event to expand the WiMCO® communities within chapters and continue its effort to increase engagement and participation of women in the mission critical industry.
7×24 Exchange International Vice President and Chair of the WiMCO Committee, Juli Ierulli, set the stage by introducing the program, the history of WiMCO, and goals. National committee members Aheli Purkayastha of Purkay Labs, Deepa Mehrotra of Amazon, and Lillian Rivera of Bureau Veritas Primary Integration introduced the committee’s goals including developing future topics for conferences, getting young women to participate in International Data Center Day and increasing communities within existing chapters. WiMCO Chapter community leaders from Arizona & Ohio provided success stories on the types of meetings recently hosted.
7×24 Exchange International Chairman & CEO, Bob Cassiliano, provided some additional context around the formation of the WiMCO initiative. He shared his experience presenting to an afterschool program and the challenges of raising awareness of engineering and scientific careers to elementary and middle school girls.
Randomly divided concurrent breakout sessions set the stage for brainstorming and formation of ideas for increasing the number of women in the industry. Among the collective findings and feedback:
Participants remained engaged in the discussion and the WiMCO® National Committee plans to continue the dialogue at spring and fall conferences.
For more information on WiMCO, be sure to visit 7×24 Exchange’s WiMCO web page where you can find upcoming events, a photo gallery and other resources.
