The community beyond the conference

Kyra Mo was walking through the Science and Engineering Complex one day when she wandered into an event: the Women Engineers Code (WECode) Conference. As she began to peruse the schedule of events – and see how many female students were there – she was blown away.

“I found this crowd of people going to these incredible talks, and apparently my peers had organized it all over the last year,” said Mo, a fourth-year student dual-concentrating in computer science and English at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “I was really, really impressed by the gathering of people, and the energy of the conference. I thought it would be amazing to help be part of it in some little way.”

By “some little way,” Mo meant becoming Co-Chair of WECode 2025, which recently took place at the Science Center, Harvard Hall and Memorial Church in Cambridge. The two-day conference, now in its 11th year and organized mostly by computer science concentrators at SEAS, brought in over 800 attendees to its in-person and virtual events, representing more than 120 schools and 15 different countries.

“I’m totally overjoyed,” Mo said. "Reading the blog posts and feedback from women across the country and around the world reflecting on their WECode 2025 experiences has been absolutely overwhelming. I'm very happy that people took away something transformative and meaningful from our gathering, and I'm truly grateful that it forged strength, inspiration, and long-lasting friendships."

This year’s conference exposed attendees to a wide range of topics centered around working in technology and computer science. There were the traditional WECode panels on product management, software engineering and ethics in artificial intelligence, but also many new topics: using technology for social good; working at start-ups; finding internships and jobs; even the intersection of art and technology at studios such as Lucasfilm and Pixar. One keynote speaker, Claire Williams, is a former deputy team leader for the British F1 team Williams Racing. The other keynote speakers were Esther Wojcicki, who spoke about her late daughter, Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube; and Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit and founder of Project Include, a nonprofit that works to reduce online harassment and discrimination in tech.

“There’s a diversity of interests that we try to represent at WECode,” said Hannah Guan, Co-Director of Programming. “Something we really want to emphasize every year is that we have a diverse set of speakers, because we realize that our attendees all come from different backgrounds, all have different interests, and all want to do different things with their CS degrees. We really try to maximize the relatability of all our speakers.”

While Mo joined WECode last year, many board members like Sein Yun, Co-Chair of WECode 2025, get involved almost as soon as they get to campus. One of her biggest motivations to strengthen WECode was an experience at the 2023 Grace Hopper Celebration. While intended as a way to connect women in science and technology, a higher-than-average number of men attended that year. When she attended the career expo, she witnessed the kind of aggressive behavior that can make it difficult for women to thrive in a male-dominated field.

“At the career expo, I found myself helping other women up on their feet after they were aggressively shoved to the floor by men racing for a chance to speak with recruiters,” Yun said. “In that moment, the stark gender disparity in tech felt inescapable – and it cemented my resolve to stay with WECode. More than ever, I was driven to help create a space where women in tech could stand their ground, be heard, and be rightfully valued.”

Wanting to maintain the community of women in computer science for longer than the two-day conference, Mo and Yun created a new team: the Engagement team. Co-directed by Hannah Kim and Jacqui Schlesinger, who respectively study computer science and applied math, the team came up with a range of new features: a completely revamped virtual conference platform, allowing more interaction between virtual attendees; pre-conference events allowing in-person and virtual attendees to meet each other and prepare ahead of time; more digital content such as social media posts and a newsletter; a project showcase in which attendees could display their work and learn each other; and more opportunities to bond through activities such as mentorship circles and vision boarding.

“It really came down to a conversation about what we are as an organization, and how we can make sure we’re staying true to who we are as we scale,” said Kim. “Jacqui and I spent a lot of time combing through past conferences, understanding what the vision was, talking to past co-chairs about what they wished they could have done. “This year we really relied on the unique strengths, interests, and ideas of our team members. While Jacqui and I spent time creating a foundational set of ideas, our Associate Directors – Jennifer Nguyen, Kathryn Harper, Ha Le, and Diramu Kana Godana – really helped to shape and execute on the ideas. For me, I really wanted to have more initiatives highlighting the attendees.”

Planning WECode takes almost an entire year. Mo, Yun and the directors were elected last spring, then spent the summer planning the overall structure and approach to the conference. Once the associate directors, some of them first-year students new to campus, arrive in the fall, planning begins to ramp up.

“When I came on campus for college, I knew that this was something I wanted to pour my time into,” said second-year student Kitty Wang, who was an Associate Director of Logistics last year and became co-Director with Sunny Liu this year. “I’ve truly loved getting to know people and really being immersed in all the chaos and collaboration. Even if we’ve touched just one person’s life and further empowered them to pursue a career in tech, whether or not they were already pretty committed to it, then we’ve done our jobs”

While the team is still sorting through its official post-conference feedback surveys, posts on social media suggest another year of success. Ayesha Zakar, a computer science student at Brooklyn College, described it as “such an unforgettable experience” in which she “was able to meet and have meaningful discussions with ambitious, like-minded women.” Graciela Strand, from the University of Florida, wrote, “Beyond the encouragement and motivation I felt from listening to career professionals, I learned so much valuable insight and was able to reflect honestly about (my) future career path.” Sima Raha, an economics and data science student at Brown University, wrote she was “inspired by the diverse and powerful stories shared by students, panelists, and fellow attendees from around the world. The conversations, ideas, and experiences we exchanged reminded me of the strength and brilliance of women in STEM.”

"Tech, especially in the last few years, has made the digital world a way of life,” Mo said. “It’ll define the next few decades, if not centuries, of stories. Now that AI is being used to create content and inhabit agency, it will shape the storytelling that influences how we think and act. To have women participate equally, to represent ourselves in crafting and contributing to that frontier of humanity, is incredibly important.”