Women in Tech to observe International Women’s Day

The next instalment of the Women in Tech Conversations virtual forum hosted by legal technology firm, LexisNexis South Africa, and IT vendor, Dell Technologies, will see three formidable tech pioneers share their stories to mark International Women’s Day (IWD 2021), on Monday, 8 March 2021.

The session – on Zoom between 2pm and 3:15pm – will build on the IWD 2021 campaign theme, #ChooseToChallenge, in celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year’s global theme calls on the international community to address gender bias and inequality by choosing to seek out and celebrate women's achievements in order to help create an inclusive world.

The three tech industry game changers who will share their experiences and insights are Noluvuyo Mpekelana, Kim Palmer and Pebble Hlubi. The session will be facilitated by Videsha Proothveerajh, CEO and Chairperson of the Board of LexisNexis South Africa, and will include contributions from Mellony Ramalho, Sales and Marketing Director at LexisNexis South Africa, and Sabine Dedering, Regional Sales Director at Dell Technologies.

Interested parties can register to attend here.

Throughout their careers, these three thought leaders have taken steps to challenge stereotypes in the tech workplace and society, to create companies that are fighting biases, and to push for a society where women celebrate other women. Hear from them as they outline how and why they each #ChooseToChallenge the system as women in an otherwise male-dominated industry.

About the speakers:

Noluvuyo Mpekelana is the Founder and Managing Director of Codengwana, a coding initiative that teaches young kids how to code with the aim of helping African kids go digital. She is passionate about solving social problems through technology. Her entry into the ICT sector was at a call centre for one of the largest telecommunications companies in South Africa, before moving into various roles within the higher education sector and the financial services space, fulfilling technical and managerial responsibilities. When she was 25 years old, she started a mentorship programme for young disadvantaged girls in Khayelitsha called Inside Out Mentors to help them with social issues and provide them with a solid academic background. In 2018, she also Co-Founded ICT on Heels, a network empowerment platform for women in ICT that is focused on mentoring and empowering women within ICT. She has partnered with NGO Streetlight Schools to offer coding at their schools. Her initiatives to foster digital inclusion also include the TechNgwana Foundation, which extends the coding initiative to disadvantaged communities and focuses on reskilling unemployed youth with ICT skills in partnership with DataNet Solutions. Her qualifications include a BCom Information Systems honour's degree from University of Cape Town (UCT), a management development programme qualification from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a Master of Commerce (specialising in Information Systems) from UCT, and other IT-related qualifications.

Kim Palmer is an award-winning founder of On The Ball College and sub-brand WeTrainICT, as well as the newly launched Learn2Boom online training portal. A South African woman in ICT and business for 20 years, she works with ICT industry partners to teach, create awareness, build practical experience and grow South Africa youth by offering accredited, industry-related training which leads to job creation. On The Ball College is accredited through MICT Seta and a training partner of Microsoft, Oracle Academy, AWS, CompTIA, CertiPort and Pearson VUE Prometric, to give teenagers and young adults from underprivileged backgrounds the opportunity to study critical IT skills that lead to employment through her work placement programme. Palmer is also the chairman of On the Ball Foundation and founder of the well-known and fast-growing Women in ICT annual conference.

Pebble Hlubi is Managing Director and Board Member of Kaleidocode Pivot (KCP), which was founded to develop young skills in concert with delivery of great software projects.​
KCP develops bootcamp programmes, curricula and offers coaching talent and partnerships. Pebble and team believe in "local sourcing", or bringing back software projects to SA, as well as gender and equity transformation. She is an entrepreneur, project manager and motivational speaker, boasting more than a decade in the ICT industry in both the network infrastructure and software development space. ​She has a passion for, and is an activist in, various youth and women empowerment organisations.

Register to attend here as these inspiring women share their stories of how they #ChooseToChallenge.

Also look out for future Women in Tech Conversations events from LexisNexis and Dell Technologies, which will interrogate topics including: Importance of Self Love; Recruitment of Women in Tech; University Mentorship; Creating your own Board; and Reintegrating Women into the Workplace.