Computerworld's Thomas Hoffman spoke to Fucci Thursday about the goals that she and other founding members envision for the new chapter.
How did this all come about? Once I found out about Women in Technology last summer, I contacted David Leighton, the president of WITI. As it turns out, he had travel plans to Las Vegas, so I had the first of several conversations with him and Carolyn [Leighton]. We formed a temporary leadership council. What we really want to do is have WITI Las Vegas be representative of all of the different industries in the area. Las Vegas is more than just gaming and hotels, there are a lot of industries here, such as utilities and construction companies.
Who are some of the people on the temporary leadership council? Carol Pride, CIO for Pinnacle Entertainment; Tracy Austin, former CIO at Mandalay Resort Group, who is currently a consultant; Jamie Chambers, a sales executive for Dell; Sharon Brooks, a professor at Southern Nevada Community College; and Norbert J. Kubilus, CIO at Sunterra Corp.
What do you hope to achieve as a chapter? We're hoping to create a network within Las Vegas where we can help each other achieve common goals, help people learn how to grow and develop, change perceptions of women in Las Vegas, educate through scholarships, internships, mentoring and act as role models. And [we want to] show that you can get into this business without being geeky. What I hear is that by the time girls hit high school, it's already too late to change those perceptions.
That's one of the challenges I face, finding women who are moving into this field. I just don't get enough resumes from women.
Research indicates that fewer young women are entering the IT profession. What are some things that your chapter can do to help turn this around? Those are some of the things that our chapter will be exploring. The first meeting is the celebratory launch and to share our vision of what we want to get out of the network. For our June 7 meeting, that will be a brainstorming discussion about what we can do to help girls understand what opportunities await them in IT. We're holding that at the Cheyenne campus of Southern Nevada Community College.
Have women broken the glass ceiling in IT? I think that's probably a company-by-company experience. I'm not sure how much of this is about the company and how much of it is about the women and how they've been brought up, how they express themselves, whether they have been taught to hold themselves back, etc.