Only a few more weeks until GHC 18! More than 20,000 people from around the world will be joining us in Houston, including GHC Scholars, Abie Award winners, and of course, our keynote and featured speakers. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers this year, and are honored to provide a platform for them to share their stories, provide key insights and advice, and inspire thousands of women technologists.
Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion is critical to the mission of AnitaB.org, and as such, we work hard to ensure that our speaker lineup at GHC reflects the diversity of our community. As they selected technical speakers, we asked our Committee co-chairs to consider ways to make GHC a diverse and broadly representative celebration. During our Call for Participation period, we also asked potential speakers to explain how their panels would add diversity to GHC. We also set a target to fill no less than 30% of our keynote and featured session speaker slots with women of color; and we are pleased to say that we achieved that goal.
To help us better understand the diversity of our speaker lineup, many of our speakers voluntarily identified their race and/or ethnicity. Check out the diversity breakdown of our speakers in the chart below.
Grace Hopper Celebration Speaker Diversity: Keynotes, Featured Speakers, and Sessions
| Race/Ethnicity | 2017 Percentage of Speakers* | 2018 Percentage of Speakers* |
| African American/Black | 5.90% | 5.02% |
| Alaska Native or American Indian/Native American | 1.40% | 0.72% |
| Asian | 39.0% | 33.0% |
| European or Euro-American/White | 46.70% | 45.48% |
| Hispanic or Latinx | 3.70% | 4.45% |
| Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander | 1.00% | 0.29% |
*Percentages do not add up to 100 — 14% of speakers declined to state their race/ethnicity this year; 6% declined to state in 2017. Speakers were also able to select more than one category.
We are pleased with our results, and will continue our efforts to bring diverse speakers to GHC.
We are also hosting a number of programs at GHC to promote diversity. These events include our community socials for our Systers affinity groups, which allow women in tech to identify themselves culturally and to offer support to one another, as well as a range of panels and talks on diversity-related issues. Find information about these sessions in our online schedule.
We can’t wait to see you in Houston!
Learn more about all of our keynote and featured speakers.
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