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AnitaB.org Recognizes Bank of America, Blackbaud and ThoughtWorks as 2018 Top Companies for Women Technologists
Globe Newswire 26-Sep-2018 11:00 AM
HOUSTON, Sept. 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Grace Hopper Celebration 2018. Today, AnitaB.org announced Bank of America, Blackbaud and ThoughtWorks as the winners of the 2018 Top Companies for Women Technologists at its annual Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC).
Top Companies for Women Technologistsis a national program that measures the representation of women in technology. This year, the program evaluated 80 companies accounting for more than 150,000 women technologists across a variety of fields. New this year, AnitaB.org looked at data on race from more than 70 companies of different sizes. A detailed report outlining insights from the program was released last week.
"The participants in the Top Companies for Women Technologists program continue to show an extreme commitment to improve diversity, inclusion and equality within their organizations," said Michelle Russell, vice president of programs at AnitaB.org. "We are thrilled to recognize Bank of America, Blackbaud and ThoughtWorks this year, as these companies have ignited real change and demonstrated success across the representation, recruitment, retention, and advancement of their women technologists."
AnitaB.org recognized three companies with the highest overall score, categorized by size of their technical workforce. The following award winners were announced from the main stage at the AnitaB.org annual Grace Hopper Celebration today:
2018 Top Companies for Women Technologists Winner – Bank of America (Category: >10,000 technical employees)
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions and has a long tradition of supporting women's economic empowerment and leadership. Bank of America believes being a diverse and inclusive company makes it strong and is key to their ability to meet the needs of clients, communities and employees. The bank's ongoing work to invest in women as they make meaningful contributions within the company and in communities includes a focus on being a great place to work for female employees, making the financial lives of female clients and customers better and advancing the economic empowerment of women in communities around the world. The company is committed to attract and retain top diverse women technologists through partnerships that support girls and young women to build a pipeline of future female talent, career development programs that provide mentoring and sponsorship for career advancement and through its industry-leading benefits and programs.
"Women like Grace Hopper, Anita Borg and Katherine Johnson have shown us from the beginning of computing that women are great technologists," said Catherine Bessant, chief operations and technology officer at Bank of America. "And yet, across every industry, we still need to improve the representation of women in the STEM disciplines. At Bank of America, we work every day, and have been for a long time, to move the needle on hiring and advancing women technologists. This award shows that our efforts are paying off, but more importantly inspires us to do even more. Greater diversity makes our team stronger and better able to serve our clients in every way."
2018 Top Companies for Women Technologists Winner - Blackbaud (Category: Between 1,000-10,000 technical employees)
Blackbaud (NASDAQ:BLKB) is the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. When Mike Gianoni joined Blackbaud as president and CEO in 2014, he championed a formalized diversity and inclusion program for the company, including an Executive Women's Community program. Today, the company has an equal gender balance in its workforce, and employee-led affinity groups like Women in Technology, Women in Sales, Black Employees Encouraging Diversity (BLEND), Pride@Blackbaud (LGBTQ) and Employees with Disabilities play a strong role in advancing an inclusive culture. Blackbaud also conducts regular unconscious bias workshops and gender-pay equity audits.
"On behalf of my 3,400 colleagues around the world, we are honored to be named one of the Top Companies for Women Technologists by AnitaB.org," said Mary Beth Westmoreland, chief technology officer at Blackbaud. "Diversity of thought and experience always leads to better performance for our company and, most importantly, better solutions for our customers. We are proud to be recognized alongside other companies and leaders who are committed to helping women in technology succeed, and are also committed to continuing in the work we know we must do in every category of diversity."
2018 Top Companies for Women Technologists Winner – ThoughtWorks (Category: < 10,000 technical employees)
ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, has been named a Top Company for women technologists for the 3rd consecutive year. ThoughtWorks' philosophy of attracting enthusiastic learners that are intellectually curious and hiring based on attitude, aptitude and integrity have been core to the company's talent strategy since its founding 25 years ago. The creation of the Chief Talent Officer role, and appointment of Joanna Parke, marks an investment and commitment to talent development, building upon foundational programs such as ThoughtWorks University and First Year Experience. Always evolving, the company continues to explore unique ways to enhance efforts to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities in the workplace.
"ThoughtWorks is honored to be named a Top Companies for Women Technologists Winner for the third consecutive year," said Dr. Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at ThoughtWorks. "The pace of innovation is accelerating, and the time for the tech industry to diversify its talent pool is now. For technologists, all that should matter is knowledge of technology. I look forward to a future when we are all valued for our expertise and not defined by our gender."
Interested in participating in the 2019 Top Companies for Women Technologists Awards? Pre-register here to receive all important updates for next year's program.
About Top Companies AnitaB.org Top Companies for Women Technologists is a national program that recognizes companies committed to building workplaces where women in technology roles can thrive. The program uses rigorous methodology to analyze data from participating organizations and produce insights across three key areas: representation, employee workplace experience, and programs and policies.
The Top Companies program began collecting race and ethnicity breakdowns of women technologists at participating organizations for the 2018 cycle. Because this is the first year we have access to this critical benchmarking data, we are not analyzing data from these findings at this time. We acknowledge that gender-diversity gains in the industry primarily benefit White and Asian women; Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Native American women continue to be significantly underrepresented. AnitaB.org encourages all employers to carefully track the representation of these groups to ensure equitable hiring and advancement opportunities.
About AnitaB.org AnitaB.org is a nonprofit social enterprise committed to increasing the representation of women technologists in the global workforce. AnitaB.org engages with tens of thousands of women and leading organizations around the world to build diverse and inclusive workplace cultures. Founded in 1997 by our namesake, computer science visionary Anita Borg, our organization works toward a future where the teams that create technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it.
