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Lesbians Who Tech, From Silicon Valley To The White House

This article is more than 9 years old.

As I'm reaching for my morning coffee, I see this email: "You’re invited to Lesbians Who Tech, a global community of over 4,000 queer women in and around tech (and the people who love them). Whether you work at a tech company, have a technical job or you’re just obsessed with every new app that comes out, we want you to join Lesbians Who Tech. Get geeky with techy folk just like you, enjoy tasty adult beverages, land gigs, make new friends and connections." Leanne Pittsford is an entrepreneur, technology strategist, UX designer, tech investor and the founder of Lesbians Who Tech. Why is there an organization for lesbians in tech? That's what I asked Leanne:

Leanne: I saw that LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning) women in tech were under-represented in all of the communities in which they were a part – women, tech and LGBTQ. I wanted to connect and elevate the lesbian community in a way that brought value to individuals and made our community stronger.

I spent the last decade involved in various ways with the gay and lesbian community – from a staff position for Equality California to a nonprofit board member to running a mentoring program for lesbian entrepreneurs. Over and over I saw LGBTQ communities and organizations miss the mark with queer women. After spending three years in Silicon Valley, I saw an even more specific underserved market -- LGBTQ women in tech. There were women events and LGBTQ events, but nothing tailored specifically for LGBTQ women in tech. I wasn’t able to fix this problem within a larger structure so I decided to go out on my own and try to fix it.

Denise: What did you do?

Leanne: I’m a big believer in starting small, running experiments to continually test the market – we needed to make sure there were lesbians in tech who wanted to connect and then figure out the best ways to support them.

It’s not as easy as you’d imagine to find other lesbians --there’s no secret handshake. We started in San Francisco with happy hours. Our first event in December of 2012 had 30 people and quickly grew to over 200 people. After three months, women in other cities were asking me to host events in their cities. By the end of 2013, we launched in New York, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, London, Berlin and Toronto. In October 2013 we launched the Lesbians Who Tech website and by the end of that year (a year after our first gathering) we had nearly 4,000 people in our community.

I interviewed people who attended our events to see what types of value they were looking for. It turns out they wanted happy hours, but they also wanted more tech-related content, more value from the community, more meaningful interactions, and more visible and notable role models. In fact, when I asked most people who they'd like to see on stage, most of the women - some of whom held high level positions in tech -- couldn't name one lesbian in technology.

That’s how I discovered the value I could provide – a professional event for lesbians in tech, an amazing experience to connect in a meaningful way, and hear from successful lesbians in tech and share stories. And that’s how the first-ever summit in San Francisco came to be in February 2014. We had over 800 queer women in tech (and allies) including 30 queer women speakers and 30% women of color. People were blown away - most people had never been among that many lesbians at a professional event.  Our friends on the East Coast were a little jealous and asked us if we could host a summit closer to home for them. As a test to see if there was enough interest for a New York summit, we ran an Indiegogo campaign to pre-sale tickets. It was successful -- we raised $20,000 in five days and brought together 400 queer women in tech (and allies) this past June.

Then the White House called. They asked if we’d help them organize  the first-ever LGBT Tech and Innovation Summit at the White House. Of course we said YES. We brought together organizations and people in our community from across the country to talk about how technology could help support some of the crucial work that’s happening in the LGBTQ community and work that is still left to do. I co-chaired it and we were very intentional about making sure the event represented our entire community -- we had a 50/50 split among women/men, with lots of representation among men and women of color, and the trans community.

Denise: You have pitches at the summits. What are your top five startups by lesbians in tech?

Leanne:  Dattch (Robin Exton, Founder), the lesbian dating app and lesbian social network, launched their US app at our San Francisco Summit. I love this app because so many companies have tried to build dating apps for lesbians, but the truth is you can’t just copy the same experience for lesbians. We’re different than gay men and straight people, and Dattch is building a dating app for women that thinks the way we do.

Reductress (founded by Sarah Pappalardo and Beth Newell) is the one and only satirical women's magazine. In a world of more online content than we can keep up with, this one totally nails funny for women. I call it the Onion for women, but better.

Nestio (Caren Maio, CEO & Co-Founder). I love this company because the New York rental process is broken and I think Nestio is NYC’s most accurate residential listings database that can help renters, management companies and brokers find the best deals.

Section ii (Allie Esslinge, Founder) is the the first lesbian-focused online content network to deliver pro-lesbian entertainment and progress the distribution of high-quality films across the world. I love this startup because it's bringing impactful LGBTQ content to the world.

Zana.io (Shea Tate-Di Donna, Founder). I see so many entrepreneurs who are brilliant in one area of their business, but don’t have the other skills to get their idea off the ground or the support to scale. Shea spent time in Silicon Valley as a VC building the tools and support for the companies they invested in and she’s an expert in supporting entrepreneurs and helping them scale. Now she’s scaling that knowledge through a platform that provides free access to the resources, experts and community entrepreneurs need to grow—no matter where or who you are.

Denise: There’s a lot of attention on girls and women in tech. What are you doing to make tech education and careers more accessible for lesbians?

Leanne: Lesbians are women first and our community is very focused on making sure not only women in tech are visible, but lesbian and queer women in tech are more visible. We are highlighting stories through speaking and we’re connecting lesbians with resources to learn coding. We also have some very talented queer women in our community (including Shannon TurnerLeah Bannon and Aliya Rahman) who are teaching software developing to underrepresented communities. Later this year, we'll launch a series of classes  for the Lesbians Who Tech community.

Denise: What needs to happen to make lesbians in tech more visible?

Leanne: There are very few women in tech that have been very visible from a mainstream media perspective. Part of the issue is that women are focused on doing the work more than telling their stories. Part of it is the people who are making the decisions about the stories being told in the media. For example, did you know the original Macintosh team had two women, Johanna Hoffman and Susan Kerr? Yet, Hollywood cut them out of “JOBS.” We have to hold the media more accountable and we have to work harder to bring to life the incredible stories in our communities.

I’m constantly looking for stories of queer women in tech, so I can bring them to light at our meetups and summits. I search Twitter for #queer, #Lesbian, #gay, #LGBT and look for people I haven’t heard of yet. I’m also looking for queer women everywhere I go. I constantly ask people if they know anyone who would be a good speaker. I often look at conferences, scan the website for women and then google them to see if they are queer. Then I invite them to speak or participate in the community. There are more lesbians in tech than I ever realized and I’m so excited to share their incredible stories with the rest of the world.

Denise: Who are the top five women on your wish list to join you for the next summit?

Leanne:Rachel Maddow. There’s no other human that lesbians look up to and admire more than Rachel Maddow. She’s driven, smart and one of the most thought provoking political commentators of our time. And she’s a lesbian! She’s been a role model to so many lesbians and lesbians in tech that I know it would mean the world to them to see her on stage.

Gina Trapani is the founder of Lifehacker, one of my favorite personal blogs and one of the most influential tech blogs. She’s been in the tech world for a long time and I know our audience would love to hear her story. Though she’s out privately, not many people know she’s a lesbian and I think our community would be extremely impacted to her such a tech success story is also a lesbian. These are the stories that make our community feel like anything is possible.

Lynn Conway  is one of the preeminent women in high tech today. She's an american computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community. Her story needs to told.

Robin Roberts is the anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America and a role model. She beat cancer and she talks about doing so because of the help of her partner. She’s a media icon and her story would be so moving for our audience to experience first hand.

Hillary Clinton is one of the most influential women in the world, ever. She’s worked tirelessly for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights worldwide. She’s also doing a lot of work focusing on technology and women at her foundation, the Clinton Global Foundation. And we’d love to hear about it and find a way to help support their work. Hillary, what are you waiting for? Do it!

Denise: What’s next, what will you be working on?

Leanne: Keep on helping women in our community become more well know, through speaking and press coverage.

Raise money to help send queer women to learn how to code and possibly create a ‘Day in the Life’ so women in tech can shadow people in tech like Kara Swisher for the day.

Create a new type of mentor program. I’ve seen a lot of other mentor programs fail, so we have to be creative about how to structure interactions that have real value in a different way.

Partner with groups like the LGBT Tech Partnership on projects like Connect 4 Life that help queer homeless youth find access to smartphones, which directly increases their chances of staying alive and finding the services they need.

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