A thank you from the team at WiTCH as we look back over our amazing first year.
It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since we embarked on this exciting journey of empowerment, support, and inspiration. Since we announced the creation of the Women in Tech Cheltenham (WiTCh) during Ada Lovelace Day last year and held our first event a month later in November, we have aimed to create a welcome space for women and their allies in tech and cyber to connect, learn, and thrive. We have worked hard to create a community where knowledge is shared, challenges are conquered, and accomplishments are celebrated together.
We have gone through a few changes, the most obvious being our name change to Women in Tech and Cyber Hub (still known as WiTCH, imagine that) as we quickly figured out that we were a bit bigger than just one town, several logos (we honestly lost count), and several changes to the website (which still aren’t done). However, as we stand at this one-year milestone we are taking time to reflect on how far we have come:
We have held 12 events, with over 300 attendees.
Hosted our first headline event for International Women’s Day. We have already started planning next years, along with 3 other headline events for 2024.
Launched our mentorship program and more recently our group mentorship program.
Launched in our second location – been great to get involved in Bristol
Created our first VLoG – WiTCH to Watch which in now turning into a podcast as well.
Grown from one person to a team of three, plus two new ambassadors on the way already to help make this the most it can be.
Finally launched our Instagram after months of trying, make sure to give it a follow.
And most importantly met and spoken to so many amazing people during this journey.
Looking back on this year, we can confidently say that we have started to achieve what we set out to do when this first started a year ago. We have had a few bumps along the way, both personally and professionally, but together, we've shown that we are a force to be reckoned.
We are also excited to look forward, despite how far we have come we know there is a long way to go. We are looking forward to launching two new locations the first few months of 2024 (Birmingham and Manchester watch out), we will be launching 3 more group mentorship programs in January, and soon after be launching our second podcast WiTCHes Talk Tech. But before we got lost planning the next steps, we wanted to pause and take this time to thank each and every one of our members for your unwavering commitment, passion, and dedication. You are the heart and soul of this community, and the driving force behind doing what we do. We can't wait to see what we'll achieve not only next year, but in the years to come.
Here's to many more years of breaking barriers, empowering women, and changing the face of tech!