A few years ago, in the audience at a local tech conference in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia (the home of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia), I was joined by co-workers from the small app-development group where I was a partner and the only woman employee. The panel discussion was about how to attract tech talent to smaller communities, and was comprised of about five leaders from area tech companies. Not surprisingly, all men.

During the Q&A, a woman sitting behind me asked what specifically their companies were doing to attract female tech talent. The silence was awkward, and their attempted answers were not great. I tweeted my chagrin.

Immediately someone tweeted back to invite me to a women in technology happy hour that same evening. Turns out, it was the woman behind me who’d ask the great question, Kim Wilkens. She was starting Charlottesville’s Women in Tech (CWIT) group. I was all in.

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