Spotlight on Chelsea Slater
Welcome to the Spotlight Series: a series of posts shining a light on those that are driving change for gender equality, to raise awareness of their brilliant work, share useful resources and inspire with practical ways to take action. This week the spotlight is on Chelsea Slater, founder of InnovateHer.
Chelsea has dedicated her work to achieving gender equality within the tech sector. Her direct experiences of inequality within previous roles inspired her and co-founder Jo to start InnovateHer, a social enterprise on a mission to get girls ready for the tech industry and the tech industry ready for girls. InnovateHer educate and inspire young people to have careers in tech, whilst helping companies to be more inclusive. With her team, Chelsea plans to become a leading tech education provider across the UK and beyond.
We asked Chelsea what motivates her to fight for gender equality: “I never set out to run a social enterprise or a purpose-led business. I got a job in tech after university where I realised that I was one of few women, which shocked me as for me technology is such a creative, innovative and exciting industry to be in. I thought "Why don't women want to work here? It's amazing!" It was this curiosity that drove me to do some research and there I found out that only 17% of the UK tech workforce were female and a fraction of that was taken by ethnic minority groups. Over the years I went on to witness and experience sexism, bias and discrimination in the workplace, whether this was because of age or gender and it made me angry.
When I started working with and speaking to young people, one girl told me that her teacher had told her not to pick a GCSE in Computer Science as she'd be the only girl in the classroom. Another had to go and study at the all boys’ school because her girls’ school didn't offer Computer Science. I want to support and empower young people no matter their background or identity to have tech/digital skills and also feel like they belong in the industry. Tech skills are mandatory in every single job role. If people are excluded from learning these skills or told they shouldn't study it further because of their gender, then they are doing them more than a disservice, they are excluding them from something that will disadvantage them in any career.”
Corporate partners: Find out more about partnering with InnovateHer, and see how you can support their mission to get girls ready for the tech industry and the tech industry ready for girls.
Educators: InnovateHer’s e-learning platform offers free curriculum-mapped classroom activities for your classroom, designed to elevate the facilitation of computer-based lessons and get more girls into STEM.
Ambassador network: If you work in tech, you can join their ambassador network. They are always on the lookout for tech role models to create engaging content for the learning platform.
You can also sign up for their mailing list. Follow them on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and follow Chelsea on LinkedIn here.
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