AWS Training and Certification Blog

AWS Skills Center Event: Empowering Women in the Workplace

We’re celebrating Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day with a special event at our Seattle AWS Skills Center. On March 22, we’ll host an in-person and virtual event featuring a main stage panel of successful Amazon Web Services (AWS) women sharing their personal stories about the career challenges they’ve overcome and the successes they’ve achieved.

Women in tech

As we celebrate, it’s important to recognize that women still remain underrepresented in the tech industry. That underrepresentation includes both executive leadership roles as well as technical positions, such as software engineers, data scientists, and computer programmers. In fact, research from the Northwest Center for Women in IT shows that women in the US make up only 26% of computing roles.

This illustrates the challenges still ahead of us. At AWS, we’re proactively working to change the gender disparity by empowering women to have careers in technology while creating workplace environments around the globe where they can thrive.

Creating tech career opportunities through access to education

In particular, AWS Training and Certification is helping to promote science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educational programs and provide unique career opportunities for women in one of the fastest-growing technology sectors.

We’re continually striving to create even more ways to help women advance their careers in the tech industry and beyond. Access to training and certification plays an important role in this endeavor. In fact, Amazon has made a commitment to train 29 million people around the world with free cloud skills training by 2025.

Access is also one of the primary reasons we created the AWS Skills Center. This new Seattle-based learning center is a place where anyone in the community can access free cloud training and interactive exhibits that showcase the AWS Cloud in real-word environments. It’s a great place for anyone to build their cloud skills, get free training, and participate in job placement and other community events.

Take the cloud certification challenge

In conjunction with the March 22 celebratory event, AWS Training and Certification is sponsoring a certification challenge to motivate women to build cloud skills and earn an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification. Prepare for the exam while working among a community of like-minded peers to gain an industry-recognized credential. Break the bias and get AWS Certified—join the challenge.

Join us for the event

What: International Women’s Day 2022: Empowering Women in the Workplace
When: March 22, 2022, at 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. PT
Where: AWS Skills Center | 1915 Terry Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101
Who: Panel Moderator: Kirsten Dupart, Lead Technical Curriculum Developer for Machine Learning and Panelists: Elizabeth Davis, Solutions Architect; Angel Duncan, Global Learner Engagement Leader; Michelle Metzger, Senior Technical Curriculum Architect; and Oceann Hai, Integration Specialist

Attendees will have the opportunity to:

  • Network with like-minded peers and make valuable new industry connections
  • Explore the different ways to build a career in technology
  • Discover how to break gender bias
  • Get insights on successful career strategies
  • Learn how to start your own cloud journey at AWS Skills Center

We hope you’ll join us either in person or virtually for this special event, and make sure you sign up for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner challenge.