How it all began
Angie Chang started noticing Girl Geek Dinners popping up around the world, starting in London. They were happening in places all over the world, but none in the Bay Area — none yet. She kept hoping one would show up on the event calendar, but nothing did. Because Google sponsored a London Girl Geek Dinner in their London office, Angie asked a friend at the Mountain View headquarters of Google for a contact to ask about hosting a Girl Geek Dinner in the Bay Area. She drew up a plan, proposing a panel of women in tech, from entrepreneur to executive, from developer to designer, to be moderated by a venture capitalist — all women powerhouses in their respective careers. Google agreed to host and within 5 days of announcing the event, the list was full.
Google hosted the first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner in January 2008, inviting 400 girl geeks to enjoy sushi, an open bar, Google schwag, great conversation and even better networking at Charlie’s cafe on the Google Mountain View campus. Events sponsored by Facebook and Yahoo soon followed. Startups like LOLapps and Polyvore followed suit. Today, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners have been hosted by a diverse set of companies including Genentech, Palantir, Microsoft, Citrix Online, Electronic Arts…
The ask is simple — buy dinner and drinks for girl geeks, and give away a piece of co-branded schwag (to extend the lifetime of the event). Invite female speakers in areas of their expertise, from well-known names to the up-and-coming. Encourage networking amongst the girl geeks and recruiting by the sponsoring company. Everyone wins.
Meet the Team!
Angie is a product manager, web designer, new tech junkie and above all, an entrepreneur at heart. She has been managing the Bay Area Girl Geek dinners since 2008. In her free time, she studies the diaspora of tech-savvy and entrepreneurial women and designs cool stuff. In 2006, Angie co-founded Women2.0 and has been managing the brand, marketing, and strategy ever since. Angie holds a B.A. in English and Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. Follow her on Twitter at “@thisgirlangie“.
Sukrutha is a co-organizer of Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners. After getting her M.S. in Electric Engineering from USC, Sukrutha now works as a Senior QA Engineer at Citrix Online, where she is responsible for maintaining the high quality of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar . Sukrutha is involved in Girl Geek Dinners because she wants to change the world for girls, one geek dinner at a time.
