Some of our top talent as part of Women Advancing Grid Edge GTM is serious about making sure the top women across the clean energy industry have a strong voice. We’re not perfect. Cleantech is more diverse than other energy sectors, but women are still largely underrepresented. We’ve had our share of conferences in the past that were dominated by men. And we’ve been rightly called out for it. As part of our Women Advancing Grid Edge (W.A.G.E.) initiative, we’ve been working hard to increase representation of women at all our conferences. In fact, our next event — the Blockchain in Energy Forum coming up in San Francisco on September 11 — is comprised of 48 percent women speakers. While we’ve always tried to avoid #manels, we think this gender balance is particularly important for a male-dominated sector likeblockchain .

In the light of the #nevermanel world, we’d like to share some brief insights about how to increase diversity. We understand there can be challenges when organizing an event, but here are some tips for addressing them. The challenges: Scheduling for events is hard: In the case of three of our speakers, we first approached women in the company. None of the senior leaders were available for the event, so we went with one of their equally qualified male colleagues. Women not reaching out: Among the 20+ people that reached out to be a speaker, only two were women. I encourage women to reach out more to speak on panels. If you are a male, you can encourage female coworkers to do the same. Lack of female leadership in companies: Some relevant startups had zero female leaders. Timing of events: Events have a deadline and at some point speakers need to be scheduled. Sometimes speakers drop out last minute […]