CELEBRATING FIVE YEARS OF WIN
from WIN Board Director, Lindsay Liu

Five years ago, Women in Innovation (WIN) hosted its first event. At the time, a small group of us had identified our own lived pain point—far too women leaders were represented in the field of innovation—and a hypothesis that more women would be interested in tackling this problem. My former colleagues and soon-to-be WIN Founders, Alfia Ilicheva and Maria Potoroczyn, sent out an email to a group of women they knew, asking: Would you join us for an evening to harness the power of the women across our industry to crack this problem? 

I’m not sure they were aware of exactly what this would spark—but I do remember joining over 100 women from a single email that were equally passionate about solving inequalities in innovation.

In classic innovator fashion, Alfia and Maria were not content to just bask in the success of that first event. It was an experiment that revealed two key insights: that the need to advance women in innovation ran deeper than our immediate network, and that there was a hunger for a community of women to support and elevate each other. It did not take long for this idea to blossom into an international nonprofit organization with a sophisticated volunteer operating model and thousands of members. 

What’s less discussed in the story of WIN is the tireless work behind the scenes to support hundreds of hours of training and programming and the development of a thriving global support network. As we’ve grown, so has the scope and depth of our commitment to closing the gender gap in innovation. This mission is as much about supporting the women in our community as it is about ensuring that society gets the best of diverse thinking to create the products, businesses, and workplaces that make a brighter future for everyone. This is the promise of having more diverse perspectives at the whiteboard. 

I take daily inspiration from the team at WIN—and the grit of our founders who continue to seek better. In five years, we’ve learned the power our community holds. So we ask you to join us.

This March we’ll share an action you can take to help close the gender gap in innovation every week. As we head into the next five years, we’ll be calling on everyone in innovation—venture capitalists, employers, practitioners, students, soon-to-be entrepreneurs—to create a habit of action to forge a more equitable future for us all.

FIVE WEEKS OF ACTION

March 1

March 8

March 15

March 22

March 29