Panel Discussion: Engaging underrepresented technologists, researchers, and educators in the NRP ecosystem

1. Panel Discussion: Engaging underrepresented technologists,
researchers, and educators in the NRP ecosystem
Moderator: Brenna Meade

2. Panel Participants
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Maria Kalyvaki Karen Lopez
Brenna Meade Jennifer Kim

3. Women in IT Networking
at SC (WINS)
•The Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) is a multi-year program
funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). *
•Was developed to address the prevalent gender gap in Information
Technology (IT), particularly in networking engineering and high-
performance computing (HPC).
•Collaborative project managed by:
• University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
• Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
• Keystone Initiative for Network-Based Education and
Research (KINBER)
•It was originally introduced as a pilot program** in November 2015 at the
SC15, and has supported volunteers for SC16 - SC22.
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4. Impact on SCinet
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2015
The percentage of women
participating in SCinet has increased
significantly since the program started
in 2015, both in the number of women
participating and the percentage of
women on SCinet in general.
2022
Since 2007, where 15 of the 105
(~15%) volunteers were women, in
2022, 41 of the 179 (~24%)
volunteers are women, with 17
(~41%)of them in the WINS program.

5. Impact on Scinet
Leadership
• The percentage of women in SCinet leadership has grown from
a low of 8% for SC08 to 15% for SC22.
• Women from the WINS program assumed SCinet leadership
roles starting in SC17, two years after the program began.
• For SC22, 6 WINS awardees have leadership roles.
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6. 6

7. What about your current role
initially attracted you to IT, and
what about it will likely persuade
you to stay?
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8. Based on your particular
organization and demographic,
are there any diversity efforts you
can describe and successes?
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9. What are the biggest challenges
and barriers to engaging your
underrepresented groups in IT?
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10. What is one thing we could do as
a community to make IT more
accessible/desirable to
underserved communities?
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11. What impact has the emergence
of remote or hybrid workplaces
and events had on engaging
underrepresented populations?
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12. Questions and discussion!
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