Speaker: Laura Morillo-Velarde Rodríguez, Tech Lead, Seedtag
Why is International Women’s Day important to you? How are you celebrating?
Laura Morillo-Velarde Rodríguez: I think that International Women's Day is really important because we need to celebrate everything that we have accomplished so far. But I think that we also need to keep in mind everything that still remains to be done. That's why I would like to celebrate it by providing more visibility to all the women that we are working in tech.
2022's International Women's Day theme is #BreakTheBias. Can you speak to biases we can work to break in our communities and/or workplaces?
Laura Morillo-Velarde Rodríguez: One of the bias that we definitely need to break is assuming someone role based on her gender. It happened to me at one event were we were a mix of people from management that was trying to hire developers and a group of developers. And we were discussing in a small circle and then someone said, hey I would like to hire some more female developers for my team because I only have males. And I think that it would be good, but I know that I cannot because there are no women working in tech. And I was there and I was like hey, what about me, what happened with me? And then he said something like and now you are going to tell me that you are a developer. And I was like, yes, why do you have to question that? I'm here, I'm saying that I work as that. So I think that we should stop doing that because we women in tech, we can work in any part that we want. We can be front end developers, we can be back end developers, we can work with infrastructure, we can be CEOs, we can be CTOs, we can be anything. So just stop assuming.
What advice would you give to the next generation of women as they begin their careers?
Laura Morillo-Velarde Rodríguez: I would recommend that they believe in themselves and not let anyone decide for them what they should be or how far they can go. Because they will surely still find many obstacles in the way, but they shouldn't give up on their goals easily.
