Elevate Your Career in 2025: Join, Learn, and Connect!
Dear WCEC Community,
The engineering landscape continues to evolve, bringing both opportunities and challenges for women of color in our field. Yet in these shifting times, we see countless examples of innovation, resilience, and breakthrough leadership from our community.
We're starting 2025 with renewed energy and practical tools to support your success!
In February, we're launching our Inspiring Leaders Profiles Database – a platform to showcase your talents and connect you with organizations seeking exceptional engineering talent. Below, you'll find details about being featured in the database and how to submit your application.
In this newsletter, we also highlight upcoming events where we can connect with WCEC team members in person, and tips for making the most of professional networking.
At WCEC, we believe that innovation thrives when diverse voices lead. We're committed to standing beside you, creating spaces where you can shine, and building networks that amplify your impact. Let's make 2025 a year of growth and possibility, together.
With optimism for what's ahead,
The WCEC Team
Join the Inspiring Leaders Profiles Database
Are you a woman of color in engineering looking to empower and support women of color in the field?
Help us connect and empower others by submitting a 2025 Inspiring Leaders profile! We’re building a database that documents the experiences, credentials, and accomplishments of women of color engineers. We’re curating a list of allies, resources and opportunities too.
This unique recognition connects you to a growing community of women of color engineers and provides evidence of your commitment to professional belonging and growth. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis with notifications throughout the year.
Maximizing Your Conference Experience
As we step into 2025, it's the perfect time to focus on building connections that can elevate your career impact. Networking plays a vital role in creating opportunities for growth, visibility, and professional advancement, especially for women of color engineers navigating unique challenges in the workplace. The article, "Strategies to Enhance Career Networking for Women of Color in the Workplace" from Management Leadership for Tomorrow, is a must-read for those preparing to attend conferences and events this year. It provides actionable advice on fostering intentional relationships, leveraging affinity groups, and finding allies who can help amplify your voice.
Whether you’re attending conferences, adding your profile in our database, or seeking new opportunities, this resource is a great reminder to build networks that support your goals for connection and growth in 2025.
📖 Read the full article: Strategies to Enhance Career Networking for Women of Color in the Workplace
Let’s make 2025 a year of professional growth and impactful connections!
Upcoming WCEC Member Events
The WCEC shares numerous professional activities offered by our member organizations. Member organizations are committed to creating a supportive, encouraging, and inclusive environment for WOC in engineering. Find out more about their events and register to attend!
CoNECD
San Antonio, TX, February 9 - 11, 2025
The only conference dedicated to all the diverse groups that comprise our engineering and computing workforce. The vision of the CoNECD (pronounced, “connected”) Conference is to provide a forum for exploring current research and practices to enhance diversity and inclusion of all underrepresented populations in the engineering and computing professions including gender identity and expression, race and ethnicity, disability, veterans, LGBTQ+, 1st generation and socio-economic status.
The WCEC will be presenting at CoNECD! We look forward to connecting with you!
NSBE 2025 Annual Convention
Chicago, IL, March 5 - 9, 2025
The 2025 Annual Convention is a four-day event with an anticipated 15,000 attendees, 400-plus Career Fair exhibitors and 5,000-plus NSBE members and others at the Opening, General and Closing Sessions. During the Annual Convention, the Society conducts organizational business, elects national and regional leaders, holds competitions and provides professional and personal development, networking and celebratory activities.
Members of the WCEC team will be present and look forward to connecting!
WEPAN Synergiiize Summit
Chapel Hill, NC, April 3 - 5, 2025
The Synergiiize Summit is a two-day intensive professional development summit for STEM innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, federal and private funders, entrepreneurship support organizations, and intellectual property and technology transfer professionals. The 2025 Synergiiize Summit is supported by funding from the Small Business Administration and Qualcomm and is hosted in partnership with the American Association of Colleges and Universities, AISES: Advancing Indigenous People in STEM, and Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity.
ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening
San Juan, PR, June 1 - 4, 2025
Since 2019, the NSF-funded ADVANCE Equity in STEM Community Convening, hosted by WEPAN, has served as the convening for NSF ADVANCE grantees in a format that facilitates engagement with change agents within and beyond the NSF ADVANCE community. The ADVANCE EiSCC brings together a variety of change makers from higher education, professional societies, industry, government, and non-profits in an engaged exchange of knowledge, resources, and support to drive systemic change in STEM.
Attendees have an opportunity to share new research findings and exchange resources; brainstorm strategies; collaborate in novel ways; learn about avenues for funding; and demonstrate effective programs and interventions for greater collective impact.
Members of the WCEC team will be present and look forward to connecting!
What is the Women of Color in Engineering Collaborative?
The Women of Color in Engineering Collaborative (WCEC) was created in 2021 as a partnership network of professional engineering societies and STEM-based companies. The WCEC is working to address systemic barriers that prohibit equitable work environments for women engineers of color.
Since its inception, the WCEC has grown to 29 organizations, created a shared vision and mission, and developed a strategic plan that will guide our efforts over the next few years. Thank you for your interest and support of our work. We hope that you will engage with the WCEC as we begin implementing the strategies aimed at tackling the major challenges facing women of color (WOC) in the engineering workplace.
Want to Get Involved?
Are you interested in having your organization become a member of the WCEC? Read our membership guidelines and fill out an application. Learn more.
While we don’t offer membership to individuals, we do want to grow the WCEC community! Soon we will begin collecting profiles of amazing WOC engineers for our Inspiring Leaders database. We are also collecting resources from our member organizations to place in our online Resource Center. We will be using this newsletter to get the word out as these activities get underway. Please share the WCEC with your network and invite others to sign up for our newsletter through the Contact Us form on the WCEC website.
