Education startup General Assembly is offering to take women on a tour of San Francisco, with the company’s Australian offices strongly encouraging local founders and budding entrepreneurs to apply.
The Women on the Rise program will see four startup enthusiasts travel to the United States in September in order to meet women who work for some of the country’s leading technology companies.
The week-long trip will allow participants to hear from and chat to the likes of Jess Erickson, the director marketing for 500 Startups, Chris Kang from LinkedIn, and Mollie Vandor, a senior product manager at Twitter.
Guided tours of Facebook and Twitter’s headquarters in Menlo Park are also on the agenda.
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Emma Forster, audience development producer for General Assembly in Melbourne, told StartupSmart she would encourage budding entrepreneurs from Australia to apply.
“We want at least one of the four women chosen to be from Australia,” she says.
“The peer mentoring sessions will help our women with advice on achieving career goals, building blocks for business and encouraging participation in the tech space. Interacting with inspiring women in Silicon Valley is going to be a very empowering experience and to bring this back to Australia only helps broaden horizons and minds on this side of the globe.”
Zoe Nagara, the city director for General Assembly’s Sydney campus, says she is actively encouraging Australians to apply.
“I think when we were putting out this program, we were adamant it was open to Australian women and not just those in the US,” she says.
“I think Australia represents a huge talent pool of women either working in tech or starting their own company – or maybe just aspiring to do one of those two things. And I think that diversity can only be a good thing for the future of the local tech industry and local startup scene. Giving women in tech the opportunity to explore and learn from others who’ve maybe gone down a similar path is really, really important.”
General Assembly raised $US35 million last year in Series C funding. The company has since been the founding partner of Melbourne co-working space Queens Collective and considered expanding into Brisbane.
The Women on the Rise program will run from September 13-18.
Applications close on July 15.
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Broede Carmody is a former senior SmartCompany reporter. Before this, he was a co-editor of RMIT University’s student magazine Catalyst.
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