- “Congratulations! You have made it to the shortlist for the Unsung Hero award.”
A few months ago a strange email appeared in my inbox, that I almost skipped over along with those entitled “You’ve won an iPod”, “Make $$$ a day, working from home”….. I never win anything in raffles or even bingo and so my skepticism levels are usually high!
However it turns out to be real and that I really have been nominated for the East of England’s credible and established DevelopHER Awards for women working in IT. My name really is on the shortlist…. Blimey!
The awards are sponsored and judged by a huge range of government and commercial organisation both local and international including Google, Liftshare.com, Proxama, The Inspired Women network and lots of others…
So next week I’ll be off to the award ceremony on the 25th November 2015 in Norwich, UK…. How exciting! I’m just so incredibly flattered, I have no idea who nominated or why… but thank you! It’s such a lovely surprise and one of those things that helps banish those women in IT imposter syndrome feelings!
I’m still not certain what I’ve done to deserve being nominated, the award title is a bit baffling, the possibilities I can think of:
- I’ve been involved in a few women in IT projects, mainly helping find venues, helping run the occasional workshop/talk, introducing folk, attending National Women in Engineering events
- I’m one of not many women in my area of IT and visible, there aren’t enough women IT bloggers – so this blog mainly on IT has a high readership locally, I very occasionally blog about Women in STEM/IT but it’s mainly boring tech
- Something I actually did good in my job??? Racking brain on that one….
- There simply aren’t many women in IT and they could only find 3 in the east of England 😀
To be honest I can’t think of a good reason and fully expect not to win, having googled the other candidates they are far better ones! But………………….. I am soooooooooooooooo looking forward to the networking, the nominee lists are amazing and it’s so exciting that I’m going to meet so many people working in different tech areas, whereas I usually only get to meet folks working in graphics or virtualisation.
DevelopHER Awards are run by the SyncDevelopHER network who run an amazing program of talks, code clubs, workshops and outreach programs for women in IT and younger girls interested in technology. I highly recommend getting involved if you are in the East of England. I was introduced to them by Amazon’s amazing Catherine Breslin, who is as one of the world’s top speech recognition scientists typical of many speakers, somehow shaping the world and involved in designing major technologies all from this little corner of England.
So to whoever my fairy godmother was! THANK YOU! YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY! 😀
Virtually Visual 
Awesome and well-deserved, Rachel! Sometimes there is no reason to be overly modest about one’s accomplishments and this is one of those times. Best wishes and good luck to you! You’re a winner, no matter what the outcome is.
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Huge Congrats with the award 🙂 you also got nominated and awarded PM of the year at E2EVC last week 😉
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You most definitely deserve all the positive recognition that comes your way because you are incredible – congrats Rachel!
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