I’ve been involved in helping start a number of non-profits.  One of them – National Center for Women & Information Technology – has surpassed my wildest expectations.  Lucy Sanders and her team have done an awesome job of building a coalition of over 170 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and nonprofits working to improve U.S. innovation, competitiveness, and workforce sustainability by increasing women’s participation in IT.

I’ve been chairman of NCWIT since its early days.  As with most of the non-profits I’ve been involved in helping start, the board of directors evolves over time.  Unlike for-profit companies, each stage feels like a step function as you add new board members who bring a new set of capabilities, range, and diversity to the board.

Stage 1 for NCWIT’s board was a group of early board members who simply helped get things going.  There was a lot of evangelism for NCWIT, a lot of ad hoc help, and plenty of ambiguity about roles and responsibilities.  The board members were extremely enthusiastic and supportive – we wouldn’t have made much progress without them.

Stage 2 for NCWIT’s board was an effort to build some formality into the board.  We included several members from our larger investment partners, a handful of folks that played specific functional roles, and began to organize around a set of board committees.  Some of these committees were effective; some weren’t.  The consistency of board communication increased and while there was still plenty of ad hoc activity, in general things were more organized. 

Stage 3 for NCWIT’s board has just been launched.  We just announced the appointment of eight new board members.

• Thaddeus Arroyo, Chief Information Officer, AT&T Services, Inc.
• Phillip Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)
• Dr. Rodney Brooks, Founder, Heartland Robotics, Inc. and iRobot Corp., and the Panasonic Professor of Robotics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Lisa Brummel, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Microsoft
• Carol Mosely, Senior Vice President of Information Systems, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
• Nancy Phillips, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, ViaWest
• Merle Waterman, Chief Financial Officer, OneRiot
• Emily White, Senior Director, Asia Pacific and Latin America Online Sales and Operations, Google

It’s an incredible set of people that cross the boundaries between entrepreneurship, academia, and established technology companies.  They are joining a well established board that has a great working tempo.  I’m really psyched about the next stage of NCWIT.

A few weeks ago, my friend Alan Shimel connected me with Jennifer Leggio.  Jennifer is the Director of Strategic Communications at Fortinet and an active blogger in – among other things – security and communication.  Alan suggested to Jennifer that she might be interested in the work we have been doing at the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

I remember the conversation fondly because I was sitting on the floor upstairs at Oblong’s office in LA while a bunch of people ran around downstairs looking at some cool stuff that Oblong was presenting to one of their customers.  Oblong had recently moved in to their new office and there was a noticeable lack of comfortable surfaces or devices to sit on (or in) upstairs.  The floor had to make do.  It was actually pretty clean and comfortable.

Jennifer asked a bunch of hard questions.  We had a great conversation.  I connected her with Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, and they talked.  Jennifer got her mind around how to engage in the problem NCWIT is addressing and Women in IT – Be A Change Agent (Part One) is the post she wrote kicking off her thoughts and actions.

I appear to have said at least one memorable thing during our conversation:

“The most impactful people tend to be the doers in the organization. We can’t rely solely on entrepreneurs, who may have very little time, to make change happen. Anyone with a strong voice can be a role model. It’s easier to get started when you’re a leader but real change happens when you build momentum across a much broader spectrum.”

Jennifer riffed nicely on this and came up with a number of actionable things for doers to do which she enumerated in Women in IT – Be A Change Agent (Part One).

Jennifer – great stuff on many levels.

We all know this, but it’s useful to be reminded of it periodically.

I’m chairman of the board of the National Center for Women & Information Technology.  It’s a remarkable organization that has accomplished a great deal under the leadership of Lucy Sanders.  While it would be easy to categorize NCWIT as a "gender equality" organization, it’s not.  Instead, NCWIT is focused on helping the US be more competitive in the long term in the field of information technology and computer science. 

Simply put, the only way to satisfy the increasing demand for computer science / IT folks in the US over the next decade is to get more women involved.  There is a long list of other important reasons to get more women in the US engaged in computer science / IT, but the need to stay competitive in this arena is the one that seals the deal for me.

NCWIT periodically gets emails like the following:

Subject: Answer of why woman in IT is shrinking

IT is a very hard field in which you have to study all the time to keep up with technology.   Also, it involves incredible troubleshooting skills, which by nature woman lack.   What you need are more special laws, so that woman have special privilages, which is the only way their will be an increase of women in IT.   Until then just keep complaining as your gender is perfect at it.  Please post this on your wall at your Facist Woman in IT offices.   Or just delete as women hate the truth.

Someone should teach that guy how to spell fascist.

I’ve been chairman of the National Center for Women and Information Technology for the past two years.  The mission is straightforward – it is “to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing.” 

NCWIT programming is organized into “alliances” – we have an academic, workforce, K-12, and entrepreneurial alliance.  The academic and workforce alliance are the most mature; the entrepreneurial alliance is the youngest.

A year ago I sat down with Lucy Sanders – the NCWIT CEO – and a few other folks (including Heidi Roizen and Lee Kennedy) to discuss the most impactful thing we could do to raise the visibility of successful women entrepreneurs in the IT / computer science field.  While there are some very notable successful women, we wanted to shine a bright light on some of the younger ones and those who could be additional role models for young women interested in entrepreneurship in the IT arena.

We came up with the NCWIT Heroes program – a series of short podcast interviews.  These 15-minute interviews interviews are going to be released weekly with approximately 20 women IT entrepreneurs chosen from among more than 100 nominations. I’ve found the project fascinating – both identifying the women and helping set up the interviews. 

The first three interviews are with:

• Lucy Sanders: CEO and co-founder NCWIT; Bell/Lucent/Avaya Labs
• Helen Greiner: co-founder and Chairman of iRobot
• Elaine Wherry: co-founder of Meebo.com

Listen along or subscribe to the podcast for your weekly fix of NCWIT’s Heroes.  Thanks also to Larry Nelson of w3w3.com, Ben Casnocha, and Jay Habegger for helping out.

We had an NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) board meeting yesterday in advance of two days of NCWIT alliance meetings.  I’m delighted with the progress this organization has made in the past three years.  We held the meeting for the first time at the new CU Boulder ATLAS building.  Bobby Schnabel – a co-founder of NCWIT, the Director of ATLAS (“Alliance for Technology Learning and Society) and Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Technology – has a good podcast up describing ATLAS titled ATLAS – Is It Technology, Art or a Coffee Shop.  If you haven’t been there, it’s a cool, cool building.

Tonight’s reception is from 6pm to 8pm at the Folsom Stadium North Club Level.  We’ve got over 300 people attending – if you are part of the front range tech community and want to learn more about NCWIT – come join us.