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Throw Back Thursday: January 12, 2022 "Go Be You Coach: To be, or Not to Be...out in your workplace"

We had a GREAT start to 2022 with our January 12th session “To be, or Not to Be...out in your workplace”, featuring “Go Be You” Business Coach and speaker Scott Kirkendall and Jyllian Spikes, of our Community Organization Black, Out & Proud !!

After the drink demo during our fabulous Cocktail/Mocktail hour, Jyll Spikes discussed how her organization Black, Out & Proud provides a safe space for the African American LGBTQ community through advocacy, educational and social opportunities.

Scott Kirkendall then gave an inspiring and thought-provoking talk on how being closeted in the workplace versus being out affects LGBTQ folx; how things have changed over time; and how being out affects and empowers LGBTQ people.

Wonderful event !!

June 9, 2022 — Pride Kick-off with Olive A.I.

Friends! This past Thursday, we (Zettabytes.Today) co-hosted with Olive AI and pulled off our most Epic networking event yet, held at Club Diversity Columbus!!

Olive AI, a tech company creating the "Internet of Healthcare" through automation using Artificial Intelligence. Event participants got to learn about Olive, current job opportunities, and to meet the "RainbOlivians", Olive's LGBTQ Employee group.

Registration !

photo credit ~ Dhruva Vyas

Our own Vinny Sanfillipo and Lisa Kagy later presented on ways to optimize networking skills.

We also had an interactive exercise where 3 lucky winners won Zetta Star Memberships!

Such a great time !

June 2022 — Lesbians Who Tech Pride Summit

We did it again!

We (Zettabytes.Today) attending another awesome Virtual Tech Summit presented by Lesbians Who Tech: Queer. Inclusive. BadAss !! The June Summit was perfectly timed to celebrate Pride Month. 🌈🌈

Lesbians Who Tech, the largest Tech group in the world, holds Virtual Tech Summits featuring lectures by world renown tech leaders, networking events, and career fairs held by the biggest tech companies in the world.

The group's goals are:

~ to bring more visibility to LGBTQ people in tech

~ to bring visibility to others

~ to get more women, POC and LGBTQ folks involved in tech

~ to connect our communities to organizations and companies doing great work !!

Straight allies are always welcome to present and participate.

photo ~ Lesbians Who Tech

April 21, 2022 — Cbus Tech Community Spring Fling

Zettabytes.Today, along with co-hosts Level D&I Solutions, Tech Elevator, and TechLife Columbus, hosted a BLOW-OUT meet and greet networking event at Land-grant Brewing Company in the Franklinton District.

Perfect Spring weather, plenty of folks to meet, and plenty of tech talk!

Our event partners:

Level D&I is a minority and women-owned organization dedicate to creating equitable and work places and providing resources for underrepresented groups in business.

Tech Elevator provides intensive training to students hoping to acquire in-demand technology skills for today’s workplace.

TechLife Columbus is dedicated to providing a cultural and educational climate which fosters growth in technological innovation and entrepreneurship.

March 30, 2022 — “Why is Your P.O. Crying??”

On March 30th, Zettabytes hosted a fabulous virtual event where we got the lowdown on Tech Product Ownership and on our Community Partner organization Equality Ohio!

Delaney Barr, Esq. of Equality Ohio

The evening began with Delaney Barr, Esq. of Equality Ohio laying out for us the history of her organization and the way it advocates for the legal rights of LGBTQ Ohioans in terms of:

~ non-discrimination protections in employment and housing

~ same-sex legal recognition and LGBTQ family law

~ hate crimes protection

Equality Ohio is also working to defeat the *unprecedented* wave of hateful legislation being introduced that would adversely affect our communities (Anti-gay/Anti-Trans Youth laws, censoring teachers so they can't talk about race and/or LGBTQ issues, etc.)

Later, our own Rachael Henderschott led a presentation on “Why Product Owner are like Toddlers”.

Rachael Henderschott, Zettabytes.Today

Being a Product Owner herself, she discussed the responsibilities of her role; the day-to-day challenges of managing stakeholder interests and expectations, feature development and ROI, and understanding why product increments may or may NOT move forward (leaving P.O.s crying like toddlers who don’t get their way).

February 23, 2022 — Virtual Panel Discussion: "Leading Through Change

We were very proud to host the Virtual Panel Discussion "Leading through Change”, with panelists Karan Froom, a Transformation Change Management Leader at Clorox and Ann Beard, a Continuous Improvement and Organizational Expert at Alliance Data.

They discussed with our own Dhruva Vyas, the Importance of Change Management; facilitating and effectively implementing major Business Transformation projects; and fostering Enterprise Readiness.

Beforehand, we started the evening as usual with a Vinny Sanfillipo drink demo during our "cocktail/mocktail" hour.

Our Community Partner Kimberly Sue Griffiths, Executive Director of OCTOPUS (Organizing Communities Transgender Outreach Promoting United Support) then discussed their organization’s advocacy for trans well-being, and being an active member of Central Ohio’s LGBTQ Round Table. 🌈🌈

#lgbtq #pride #lgbtqcommunity

January 26, 2022 — Taking Action in DEI with Level D&I and Zettabytes.Today!

For our January 26, 2022 event, we were joined by Level D&I for an incredible panel on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion!

The incredible Khris Goins crafted a Ginger Smash for us, and gave a lovely demonstration around how to craft this refresher!

Immediately afterwards, our Vinny Sanfillipo crafted up a more floral version of a French 75, full of flavors of champagne, lemon and St. Germain.

Chelsea Akers, COO of Level D&I gave us a great presentation about what Level D&I does and their new product-line around helping companies take charge of their DEI strategies.

Following Chelsea's presentation, we had a fantastic discussion with our esteemed panelists! LinkedIn links and profiles below! :D

Katie Dascoli, Head of People at Physna (bottom right)

Doug McCollough, CEO of Color Coded Labs (top right)

Katie Moore, Pathway Program Director at Tech Elevator (bottom left)

Kristine Tsirigotis, CEO of Level D&I (top left)

It was an absolutely wonderful panel around DEI initiatives, how to be the changes you want to see at an organization, and strategies to get buy in from the larger organization and community.

Bummer you missed the panel? Want to see more like this and be a part of the conversation?

Become a Zetta Star and get access to our slack workspace, recording of the panel, and more!

See you at the next event!

December 2021, Zettabytes.Today attends Extraordinary Tech Summit hosted by Lesbians Who Tech

Zettabytes Today members Rini Das, Dhruva Vyas and Robbin Bowman attended the phenomenal “Debug Summit 2021”, a 4-day virtual tech summit held by Lesbians Who Tech & Allies.

The tech summit is one of the largest LGBTQ events worldwide ! 💥

~ credit: https://lesbianswhotech.org/debugsummit2021/

The summit provided the opportunity to learn from experts in engineering, UX design, product management, A.I. and cyber security; to network with other LGBTQ+ folks in tech; and to attend daily career fairs with tech-giant sponsors including Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Conference sessions included a range of important topics, like Diversity in AI:, ethical practices in software creation, bias within AI and ML.

We had a GREAT time!

You will NOT want to miss our next event, featuring Jyllian Spikes of Black out and Proud and Scott Kirkendall, “Go Be You” coach.

https://zettabytes.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/zettabytes/event.jsp?event=118&

December 1st, 2021 “Vinny-Rini-Martini” Happy Hour held at Land-Grant Brewing Company

Our Zettabytes.today Martini Happy Hour was a smashing success! We had a nice turn out at Land-Grant Brewing Company in the Franklinton District and got to mingle with a very interesting and diverse group - from tech professionals to tech students and everyone in-between!

While we’ve had several virtual events this year, this was our first live, in-person event since the Pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt.

After a few martinis and samplings of Land Grant’s best (the “Tinsel” Holiday brew was my favorite), we ventured across the way to Strongwater Food and Spirits for dinner.