A tech girls occasion despatched this U.S immigrant on a lifetime quest

In September 2017, Gabriella Uwadiegwu stepped into the Orange County Conference Centre in Orlando, Florida, and noticed the longer term. The corridor, full of 25,000 girls attending that 12 months’s Grace Hopper Celebration, pulsed with life. The Grace Hopper Celebration, launched in June 1994, is likely one of the world’s largest gatherings of girls technologists. 

The air buzzed with chance: Melinda Gates, amongst different outstanding girls, took to the stage to champion the transformative affect of girls in innovation. Recruiters from huge tech firms like Google and Amazon flashed polished smiles and interview kinds. And a gaggle of girls from She++ spoke of a world the place tech belonged to everybody. It was thrilling and overwhelming. “Think about going to a Beyoncé live performance and also you’ve by no means attended a live performance earlier than,” Uwadiegwu mentioned. 

She’d grown up in Lagos, a metropolis the place desires had been huge however typically out of attain. At 18, she immigrated to the U.S., touchdown at a Manhattan neighborhood faculty, the place she studied laptop science. She recollects feeling like an outsider at first. “We had been 4 or 5 girls, perhaps two or three Black,” she recalled. 

Her classroom was a microcosm of the STEM world. Ladies occupy solely 25% of tech roles, in line with a 2023 Forbes report. Black girls maintain solely 2% of tech roles within the U.S.. Notably for immigrants, language hurdles, cultural disconnects, lack of a community, and monetary pressure complicate entry even additional. Uwadiegwu was adapting to a world the place the chances had been stacked in opposition to her, till that serendipitous attendance on the Grace Hopper Convention modified every little thing.

On the occasion, the 20-something Nigerian immigrant was amongst a couple of Black girls within the crowd —greater than she’d ever seen in her Manhattan lecture rooms. Earlier than she knew it, she was interviewing with Sq., chatting with Google and Amazon recruiters, and accepting invites to tour tech amenities of prestigious universities like Stanford. The dimensions of all of it was dizzying—alternative wasn’t simply an summary concept right here; it was tangible, a forex handed from hand at hand. But, as she stood in that corridor, a realisation sank in: again in Nigeria, girls like her had been locked out of this orbit, not for lack of expertise, however for lack of entry.

The Grace Hopper epiphany: Entry ranges the enjoying floor

Uwadiegwu didn’t safe an internship at her first Grace Hopper convention. However she acquired a possibility to tour Stanford College, the place she noticed disorienting ambition among the many college students. “I’m assembly a Stanford freshman, and he or she’s programming electrical leggings, and it feels so unreal.”

She recollects feeling a pang of remorse for not taking her SATs significantly—resulting from an absence of preparation, she tells me, she had failed the examination thrice earlier than scoring simply sufficient to attend her neighborhood faculty. “However simply being round [the Stanford students], I may really feel the ambition too.”

But, amidst the dizzying shows of privilege and cutting-edge analysis, she started to note one thing elementary. “They weren’t a lot completely different from me,” she mused.

The chasm, she realised, wasn’t in innate means however in “placement of alternative.” Stanford, she noticed, merely supplied “entry to an unlimited quantity of issues.” It’s a crucible the place the air itself appears to crackle with intelligence, compelling everybody to rise to the event. “You’re round very sensible, formidable folks. So you’ll be able to’t slack,” she defined. 

With the load of her newfound understanding, Uwadiegwu determined to attend Grace Hopper a second time in 2018. As a substitute of awe on the room and the folks in it, she was decided to depart with one thing, an internship on the very least. She crammed out as many kinds for interviews as she may. And interviews with a number of firms adopted, culminating in a proposal from Twitch, the streaming platform Amazon had acquired for about $970 million. Uwadiegwu instructed me that she solely knew the corporate because the “purple emblem” firm, however she aced all her interviews and acquired a job that paid her 75% greater than she’d hoped.

This deepened her conviction that lack of entry was the actual barrier—not expertise. “What if I had by no means studied within the US? How completely different would my life be?” Somebody wanted to carry comparable alternatives to Nigeria, and that day, she determined it could be her.

In August 2019, she launched WeTech, a non-profit that has cultivated a vibrant digital neighborhood of 5,000 girls and organised 10 well-attended occasions which have related girls to work alternatives in tech.

Elevating the bar at Twitch

Earlier than WeTech, Uwadiegwu knew that the entry she needed to offer girls technologists in Nigeria required vital monetary sources. Her internship at Twitch promised simply that. However to thrive at Twitch, she needed to deal with the sensation that the chances had been stacked excessive in opposition to her: a Black immigrant lady from Nigeria, with a foundational schooling from a neighborhood faculty, breaking into the hallowed halls of Silicon Valley. At Twitch, she discovered herself amongst a cohort of interns from the nation’s most prestigious establishments—Cornell, MIT, and others. 

Throughout her 12-week internship, Uwadiegwu was positioned within the Android crew. They had been, she recounted, predominantly male, typically Asian or white, with a “dorky” and “dweeb” vibe typical of anime and gaming tradition, which she was deeply concerned in on the time. But, beneath the floor of their tutorial pedigree and cultural quirks, she recognised a shared drive. 

“Being round very sensible folks,” she defined, “there may be this strain to execute and all the time showcase and toot your individual horn.” It was an setting that demanded confidence and adaptableness, a relentless push to proactively take in and apply complicated data.

Interns are required to construct a mission earlier than the top of their internship. Uwadiegwu vaguely recollects the precise particulars of her mission. “I believe I had a capstone mission the place I constructed the primary model of a leaderboard for “gifting subscriptions” and “cheering” on reside streamers.”  

By the top of her tenure, Uwadiegwu had not solely met expectations however had, within the phrases of her supervisor, “raised the bar for what interns had performed,” she tells me on our name. Her work at Twitch not solely left her with immense satisfaction however with sufficient stipend to start planning WeTech’s inaugural convention in Nigeria. 

The primary WeTech Convention

 “I had already began planning in March 2019, earlier than Twitch,” she mentioned. For eight months, she canvassed for attendees and audio system, chilly emailed professionals for assist in money or partnerships, and lots of of them mentioned no. 

Every rejection stung. “[But] I discovered how one can make a case,” she mentioned. Finally, a last-minute sponsorship from fintech firm, Paga, got here.

When November arrived, 50 out of the 80 girls who signed up for the occasion turned up at 4 Factors Resort in Lagos. Audio system on the occasion included the top of the Laptop Science division on the College of Lagos, Odunayo Eweniyi, co-founder of fintech firm PiggyTech, in addition to engineers and product managers who shared their profession journeys with the attendees. 

“That first occasion was about advocacy,” Uwadiegwu mentioned. It paled compared to the Grace Hopper occasion, however Uwadiegwu was certain this was simply the beginning of one thing huge. Her sister, Flora Uwadiegwu, believed this too and joined her to plan the subsequent occasion.

However earlier than the subsequent huge convention, Uwadiegwu thought it could be helpful to roll out an ambassadorial program that will incentivise girls to create “mini WeTech teams” throughout campuses and small neighborhood clusters. The pandemic, nevertheless, threw a wrench in these plans. WeTech, her formidable initiative to assist girls in tech, discovered itself in a quagmire. Her imaginative and prescient for a campus ambassador program, full with stipends and budgets for student-led teams, was now unfeasible in a distant world. “I pressed a bit little bit of the brake pedal on WeTech,” she admits. Deliberate in-person programming for WeTech was postponed, and he or she pivoted to organising a digital convention for 2020 alongside her sister who was now absolutely at WeTech as a co-founder. 

One other awakening: Archangel Fund

Although WeTech’s progress stalled, Uwadiegwu’s tech profession was accelerating. After a profitable internship, she returned to Twitch full-time, relocating to the Bay Space. She had additionally been immersing herself in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem, notably by way of Y Combinator (YC), an elite accelerator. 

Her connection to Twitch co-founder Michael Seibel, a outstanding YC determine, opened doorways to varied YC occasions, which fueled her entrepreneurial drive. By 2019, she and her brother had partnered to launch and develop a startup. Looking for recommendation on scaling the startup and non-profit, Uwadiegwu reached out to Seibel. Their 90-minute dialog made it clear they wanted to pivot their enterprise mannequin in direction of product verification and on-demand supply. This meant abandoning vital prior funding, a tricky choice contemplating they’d bootstrapped to date.

In 2020, regardless of a surge in enterprise capital, Uwadiegwu struggled to boost funds for the startup. Observing {that a} mere 2% of worldwide VC funding goes to girls, and fewer than 0.5% to Black girls founders, she grew incensed and resolved to “begin investing in girls.”

Utilizing $30,000 of her financial savings, Uwadiegwu launched Archangel Fund, a private mission to bridge this funding hole. Early investments included Nigerian firms like Termii, RiseVest, Taeillo, and HelliCarrier. After additional coaching with Enterprise Companions, she’s now invested $200,000-$300,000 by way of Archangel Fund, backing 5 firms like Texture Science Labs, Penny, Jetstream Africa, and Goa (Kenya). “No person ordained me,” she mentioned, “I simply determined I might do it, and that funding has gone into the fingers of girls constructing.”

WeTech’s inflexion level: Scaling affect

By 2021, Uwadiegwu was sporting a number of hats: software program engineer, tech investor, and convener of WeTech—all demanding tasks, however she didn’t enable herself to decelerate.

WeTech had grown greater and grow to be a family title amongst feminine tech professionals and fans in Nigeria. 

In  2024, its annual convention introduced collectively 1,500 girls, a far cry from WeTech’s 50-attendee debut in 2019. Over 3,000 girls had utilized to attend, she mentioned, and a rigorous vetting course of whittled down the quantity to 1,500, the variety of folks the Landmark Centre venue may accommodate.

Sufficient funding was additionally rolling in to allow the crew supply perks like free transportation, meals, and daycare for not less than 5 moms who had been attending. Strategic partnerships had been additionally delivering outcomes: HerTech, a platform that provides tech expertise coaching for ladies, signed up 600 girls without cost.  Ladies-founded startups landed funding and placements at hubs and fellowships by way of the convention. The occasion additionally supplied free LinkedIn headshots, resume evaluations, and on-site job interviews, with recruiters actively in search of to rent. Some attendees even secured funding immediately from traders current on the occasion, Uwadiegwu mentioned.

Its conferences within the two years prior had launched girls founders into accelerator packages, remodeling the organisation’s occasions right into a launchpad for Nigerian girls in tech. 

However this scale didn’t come on a platter.

Navigating logistics from the U.S. in the course of a profession change was tough. As was making certain that the occasion remained free to attend for ladies in a rustic the place 63% of the inhabitants is multidimensionally poor. “It didn’t make sense for us to cost, given the acute scenario of Nigeria,” she mentioned. 

To date, Uwadiegwu has bootstrapped WeTech along with her sister, Flora, supported by funding from tech establishments that see the worth of their mission. Nevertheless, she believes over-reliance on donor funding will not be a sustainable path for the organisation. With a vibrant neighborhood that has grown to 10,000 girls and a crew of 10, WeTech is now embarking on its subsequent main frontier: creating and monetising a tech product.  

Uwadiegwu says the product remains to be in stealth, however the platform goals to match girls of their community with tech jobs in ways in which guarantee bias-free hiring. This formidable mission, coupled with ongoing scholarship packages (like the present one for 500 girls in partnership with Develop with Google, an initiative that gives licensed digital expertise coaching), mentorship initiatives, and a strategic two-year convention planning cycle, alerts WeTech’s deepening affect and its long-term plans.

“The long run right here is superb,” Uwadiegwu says.  

WeTech, she believes, is at the moment within the midst of its “inflexion level,” a transformative interval that can cement its function as a strong catalyst for financial and societal change throughout Africa. 

The private toll: Balancing ardour and strain

Uwadiegwu’s ambition for gender inclusion has continued with vital private and monetary sacrifice. To maintain up, she has navigated a demanding tech profession, typically fraught with its pressures. After her preliminary profitable stint at Twitch, she launched into a brand new chapter with Spade, an early-stage startup backed by prestigious enterprise companies like Andreessen Horowitz.

Whereas the chance was thrilling, it demanded an intense dedication, with Uwadiegwu routinely clocking 60-hour workweeks. 

Her expertise there supplied a stark lesson on the calls for of the albeit profitable jobs at venture-backed startups: “It signifies that your life is that factor that you’ve taken cash for. That’s what it means. It means your life.”

Her profession path additionally introduced the cruel realities of the tech business into sharp focus. After practically two years at Carta, an organization specialising in cap desk administration for startups, she confronted the upheaval of a tech layoff in December 2023. Now, she works at Headspace, the place she is a backend engineer constructing an AI product for a psychological well being companion, a job that provides the flexibleness of distant work and an organization tradition she deeply appreciates for its mindfulness and respect for private time.

By means of all these skilled twists and turns, WeTech has remained a steadfast anchor. 

Uwadiegwu says WeTech’s imaginative and prescient is imbued with a powerful feminist ethos, citing the affect of figures like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose work on feminist values resonates deeply inside the WeTech neighborhood. Past profession networks, girls come to seek out lasting friendships and invaluable assist that transcend their careers. She sees it within the profound ardour of her crew, lots of whom are younger girls who volunteer their time with out pay.

 “Typically I really feel like I may cry,” she admitted. 

The way forward for WeTech and Africa’s GDP

Uwadiegwu stands on the precipice of WeTech’s most formidable chapter but. Her gaze is firmly set on the 2026 convention, an occasion already in meticulous planning over a 12 months upfront, designed to surpass the affect of its predecessors, in addition to the launch of its expertise matching software.

Her conviction stays in “overcorrecting” gender imbalance in tech by aggressively investing in girls throughout all sectors can basically rework Africa’s financial system. That is what fuels her relentless drive: that she and her crew are constructing a extra equitable and affluent future for ladies and Africa.

“My aim proper now—perhaps it’s very formidable— is to shift Africa’s GDP with the work that we’re doing.” 

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