ASUG Women Con­nect recent­ly con­vened to dis­cuss col­lab­o­ra­tion and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for the year ahead at the ASUG Vol­un­teer Meet­ing, held Jan. 26 – 28 at the Fair­mont Chica­go, Mil­len­ni­um Park.

The strong­ly attend­ed ses­sion served to relaunch the ASUG Women Con­nect pro­gram, which exists to help women in SAP tech­nol­o­gy visu­al­ize and inspire suc­cess by orga­niz­ing events and con­tent pro­gram­ming that fall with­in four pil­lars of Edu­ca­tion, Resources, Com­mu­ni­ty, and Opportunities. 

ASUG Women Con­nect, a com­mu­ni­ty space that has grown steadi­ly since its debut in 2017, exists to:

• Fos­ter diver­si­ty and inclusivity
• Facil­i­tate pro­fes­sion­al growth
• Empow­er the devel­op­ment of lead­er­ship skills
• Mod­el effec­tive ally­ship among SAP tech­nol­o­gy professionals

For many pro­fes­sion­als in the SAP ecosys­tem, ASUG Women Con­nect has been a way to con­nect with a close-knit, sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty. For ASUG Mem­ber Kim­ber­ly Sharp, Man­ag­ing Part­ner, EverBlue Part­ners, the group has been sup­port­ive in a ​“dif­fer­ent, more spe­cial” way than most pro­fes­sion­al groups, she said. 

“Even in the 2020s, there are still not a lot of peo­ple who look like me in the rooms I sit in every day,” she added. ​“Women Con­nect has giv­en me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit in a room and not be ​‘the oth­er,’ and there’s real pow­er in that.”

ASUG Women Con­nect will have a con­sis­tent pres­ence across the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty in 2024. On the dock­et are ses­sions at in-per­son con­fer­ences, vir­tu­al dis­cus­sions with guest speak­ers, and top­ic-dri­ven thought-lead­er­ship con­ver­sa­tions, focused on diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion and shared through ASUG’s flag­ship First Five newsletter.

Shar­ing Unique Stories

In the ses­sion’s first activ­i­ty, par­tic­i­pants divid­ed up into groups and dis­cussed ques­tions aligned with the ASUG Vol­un­teer Meet­ing’s themes of suc­cess, inspi­ra­tion, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Asked how one might mea­sure per­son­al suc­cess, one group’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive answered that although the mod­el may vary for each indi­vid­ual, ​“achiev­ing bal­ance, feel­ing val­ued, and being rec­og­nized” were com­mon­ly shared met­rics for pro­fes­sion­al achievement. 

Added Sharp: ​“From the begin­ning, Women Con­nect allowed us, regard­less of title, role, job, tenure, or age, to share our unique sto­ries with one anoth­er. We may not always see each oth­er [in per­son,] but we always advo­cate for each oth­er in what we’re doing on social media or at ASUG Chapters.”

Sharp pro­posed that ASUG Women Con­nect should serve as a ​“brave space,” estab­lish­ing a plat­form for thought-pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion of sub­jects such as elim­i­nat­ing mar­gin­al­iza­tion based on self-iden­ti­ty, rec­og­niz­ing and ele­vat­ing the voic­es of indi­vid­u­als who have not his­tor­i­cal­ly felt heard or seen in pro­fes­sion­al set­tings, and achiev­ing equi­ty in resources, edu­ca­tion, and opportunities.

“If we don’t encour­age the com­mu­ni­ty to talk about the tough stuff, how can we advo­cate for each oth­er?” Sharp asked the group, encour­ag­ing atten­dees to equip their orga­ni­za­tions with these ​“brave spaces” where com­plex con­ver­sa­tions can occur organically. 

Rich Huhn, Senior Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Advo­ca­cy, SAP, com­ment­ed dur­ing the ses­sion that this type of for­ward and inclu­sive think­ing is an increas­ing­ly impor­tant mod­el to emu­late as the SAP com­mu­ni­ty moves toward a future that advo­cates equi­ty for all and con­sid­ers the many dif­fer­ent forms diver­si­ty can take. 

A Col­lec­tive Shift

As the ses­sion con­clud­ed, one audi­ence mem­ber stood up to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments of Dr. Staci Bak­er, Ph.D., an ASUG mem­ber, who recent­ly com­plet­ed her dis­ser­ta­tion on gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion among women in top posi­tions with­in tech con­sult­ing. Dr. Bak­er shared her research find­ings, reveal­ing an uplift­ing com­mon­al­i­ty between men and women in the tech indus­try, which may be indica­tive of a col­lec­tive shift towards a more equi­table perspective. 

“I can say a lot of my research was try­ing to fig­ure out what was going to keep women in a tech role to make it to the top lev­els,” Bak­er said, adding that her find­ings revealed ​“the things that were impor­tant for women to get them to stay were also sim­i­lar things that were impor­tant to men to also get them to stay. There wasn’t a huge dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. That’s very encouraging.”

The relaunch of ASUG Women Con­nect exem­pli­fied the pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion, net­work­ing, accep­tance, and com­mu­nal sup­port among ASUG mem­bers who attend­ed. ASUG looks for­ward to har­ness­ing the full poten­tial of ASUG Women Con­nect and invites those who are inter­est­ed in being part of this inclu­sive group to join. 

To learn more about Women Con­nect, and its future events, please join our LinkedIn group and reach out to us at WomenConnect@​asug.​com.