Tech Ladies started as a small group of people that met at a coffee shop in 2015. Now, it’s a worldwide community with 50,000 members. It was founded by Allison Esposito Medina who wanted to build a community that would help build a more diverse culture in tech and bridge the gender gap. Allison Esposito graduated from Purchase College and obtained a master’s degree from CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Esposito started her career by working for Foursquare, before moving on to working as a Marketing Manager for a startup that was eventually acquired by Google. When she started Tech Ladies, Esposito was working as a content manager for Google. When the website began attracting members in large numbers, she quit her job so she focus on running Tech Ladies full-time.
The community is geared at helping women in tech expand their network, get jobs and learn negotiating skills. In addition to helping women build a network, Tech Ladies actively features organizations with company culture that women can grow and be successful in. This is important because Tech Ladies’ goals are influenced by real issues faced by women at their workplaces. Esposito once had to quit a job because of the sexual harassment she faced at her workplace. Esposito is not alone in facing such issues that can pose huge obstacles to women aspiring to build a successful career. As a result, one of Tech Ladies’ goals is to fight such issues at a grassroots level and to create supportive, unbiased and healthy work environments for women. She has been using her platform to act as an advocate for equal pay. As a part of this, she addressed a report that discussed gender disparity in tech to the United Nations in 2017.
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