NYCEDC Aims to Connect Women in Tech and the Green Economy
New York City Economic Development Corporation is rolling out the next phase of its Women.NYC initiative with “The Network.”
As its name suggests, the platform is designed to connect women in the city’s five boroughs to help them advance and pinpoint opportunities in emerging fields like technology, the green economy, life sciences and offshore wind. Participants can choose from three types of program, such as virtual one-on-one office hours, small group discussions, or shadowing more seasoned executives. They will also have the chance to get involved through quarterly events.
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The goal is to connect more than 1,000 women across all of The Network’s channels in the first year. A NYCEDC spokesperson said via email Monday that The Platform broadly ties into fashion and its work in manufacturing and technology. “We are keeping the program broad across industry sectors with a focus on sustainability, tech and the green economy.”
Despite comprising more than half of the population [in New York City] and one-third of the workforce, women “remain underrepresented in the high-wage, high-growth sectors of technology, life sciences, the green economy and offshore wind,” said NYCEDC president and chief executive officer Andrew Kimball in a statement.
With digital advancements such as AI and cybersecurity top-of-mind across all sectors, the new platform has authorities to help participants get a better grasp on how technology can play into their businesses — for better or for worse. For the debut, The Network, NYCEDC and Women.NYC will host a panel discussion and meet-and-greet Tuesday that is open to the public at no cost. The event at the New York Genome Center will highlight how The Network offers women access to career mentors, business executives, and industry leaders to help them find their way. How to break through in these emerging fields, connect with key contacts and share career targets, dilemmas and challenges are a few of the initiative’s prime aims.
FINTECH.TV anchor Alicia Nieves will moderate the discussion. BCPartners Tech’s chief executive officer and cofounder Rosario Casas will share her insights with Tinia Pina, CEO of Re-Nuble, an agricultural tech company that converts unrecoverable vegetative food into a platform of sustainable technologies, and Joan Fallon, founder and CEO of Curemark, a biopharmaceutical company.
Along with the aforementioned panelists, the first round of advisers for The Network will include Miho Shoji, CEO and cofounder of the AI-powered employment engagement technology company Moodbit; Fatima Brown, founder and CEO of Reclassify AI; Fabianna Rodriguez-Mercado, cofounder of Latinas in Tech and chief of staff for cyber security at Citi; Regina Gwynn, cofounder of Black Women Talk Tech, and Ingrid Busson, head of global regulatory investigations at Paypal. There will also be other advisers including Gayle Hennings, CEO of the WocStar Fund; Cathleen Trigg-Jones, founder and CEO of iWomanTV, and Sonam Velani, founder and CEO of StreetLife Ventures, among others.
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