Guest post by Amy Graff, TechWomen Mentor, Content Strategist and Solutions Architect, Chicago
In March 2024 I sat next to a Google technical program manager for breakfast at a hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Between bites of fluffy scrambled eggs and aromatic tomato choka, we reflected on our experience advising environmental nonprofits over the past week. “This is what I’ve been looking for my entire career – an opportunity to use my skills for good,” I mused.
My dining partner perked up, “Have you heard of TechWomen? You’d love it. And they’re expanding the program to Chicago.”
From San Francisco to my hometown of Chicago? I was surprised. The Bay Area and New York get a lot of hype, but the Windy City has had a formidable tech scene for years. America’s third largest metro, famed for its skyscrapers, sports, cold winters, and hearty food, is a powerhouse in transportation, logistics, finance, and consumer packaged goods. Culturally humble and tight knit, the Chicago tech scene leans more B2B than B2C and seeks to enable – and occasionally disrupt – its many Fortune 500 neighbors. Fledgling early-stage start-ups and our dozens of unicorns are fed by a steady stream of experienced industry insiders and recent grads flowing from stellar public and world-renowned private colleges and universities.
If you’re considering visiting Chicago, you’ll likely hear people call it “a city of neighborhoods.” The 77 community areas run the gamut from dense concrete jungle to leafy urbs in horto (city in a garden) and are wildly diverse in population too. On a single block on the northwest side you can eat tacos from Michoacan, Korean ox bone soup, and luscious Persian kashk-e bademjan. Accordingly, the city “…is a welcome counter to tech’s homogenous track record by empowering minority and female-led startups with an environment built for their success.” (TechCrunch) Tech in Chicago reports that 34% of Chicago startups are run by women, making it the highest concentration of women-owned startups in the world. And it’s also the top place in the US for Black and Latin founders to secure angel and seed-stage funding. Needless to say, I’m proud of the city that shaped so much of who I am personally and professionally.
This past autumn I served as a Cultural Mentor in the second Chicago TechWomen cohort. In this role, I was responsible for helping Emerging Leaders from Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East adapt to life in the United States. Reading the profiles of my group, I was floored by their professional accomplishments and a little intimidated; amid the ranks were C-suite executives, environmental activists, university administrators, and a lot of PhDs. Everyone seemed to speak at least three languages with ease. What could a digital marketer share that would enrich their month here and help take their careers to new heights? A lot, it turns out.
As a brand and content strategist, I’m accustomed to setting aside my biases and channeling the attitudes, needs, and desires of groups other than my own. From tipping to transit, I had plenty of wisdom to impart about navigating American cities… and also a lot to learn about how our Emerging Leaders get by day-to-day. Just like when I conduct marketing research, TechWomen is a crash course in building empathy by learning about how our global counterparts view and navigate the world. It also creates endless opportunities for inflection: What can we be more grateful for here in Chicago? How might we change to make our home more inclusive and create more access for all?
Naturally, during our month together in Chicago, there were splashy, glamorous events like opera, musical theater, an energizing pitch competition at accelerator 1871, rooftop happy hours, TEDx Talks, and photoshoots from the balcony of the new Salesforce Tower. But there were just as many casual and low-key opportunities to welcome the Emerging Leaders to the United States and learn more about their lives at home.
During the first week, Team Morocco took over a local restaurant and shared their culture through flaky pastillas, fragrant tagines, steaming pots of mint tea, dancing, and boisterous conversation. I spent a rainy morning bonding with an Emerging Leader while tasting local specialties and seasonal produce at a farmer’s market tucked on the south bank of the Chicago River.
A casual brunch at the Emerging Leaders’ residence – intended to be a chill reprieve from packing for their DC trip the following day – turned into an hours-long potluck and all-out dance party to Team Zimbabwe’s local hits. The intimidation I mentioned before? It melted away. Sure, the Emerging Leaders are some of the most brilliant and ambitious STEM professionals in the world. But they’re also humans with bouts of silliness, spells of homesickness, and even episodes of anxiety. Getting to see the parallels in both our triumphs and struggles enhanced my understanding of their nuanced journeys and expanded my ideas of what I might achieve in life.
Walking home from that final brunch, I was elated and a bit melancholy. I dashed off some DC recommendations to my group and was pinged back with photos from one of the Emerging Leaders enjoying my favorite space, the Ando Gallery, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Remotely I watched with pride as the Emerging Leaders crossed the stage at the US Department of State, where I interned over a decade ago, and graduated from the TechWomen program. And a few days later, I received confirmation that one of my Emerging Leaders had safely arrived back home to her family. She thanked me warmly for the professional connections I made in Chicago and I reassured her I’d keep the dialogue going as long as she’d like. After all, TechWomen isn’t just a five-week program; it’s a community that supports one another indefinitely.
Amy Graff is a Chicago-based Group Strategy Director and Senior Principal Solution Architect at Accenture Song. She is passionate about working at the intersection of creativity, customer insight, and technology to create seamless, inclusive experiences that captivate audiences and create value.
An agency alum and ex-brand manager, Amy has led global, cross-functional teams in marketing strategy, customer research, omnichannel campaign concepting through execution, and large-scale martech transformations in North America and Greater China. She is a certified Design Thinking practitioner and trained professional coach. She mentors women in STEM through the U.S. Department of State’s TechWomen initiative and advises nonprofits globally via Tech2Empower.
She holds dual degrees from The Ohio State University, a certificate in Disruptive Innovation from Harvard Business School Online, a Marketing Week Mini MBA, and an MBA from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
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