Groundbreaker Talents, Opening Tech Opportunities for Young Women in Uganda

BobWP:
Hey, in today’s episode, this is part two actually in March when I was at CloudFest for the very first time at the Hackathon. During all this, I had the pleasure of meeting this wonderful organization and the people behind it, Groundbreaker. And you may have heard we had a very short interview with them at CloudFest, but of course there is so much more to what they do than that short interview. Just wanted to give you a little teaser. We’re gonna talk about mentoring, we’re gonna talk about what a wonderful resource they are. We’re gonna talk to sponsorship, all that good stuff. But first, I have to share that I have Birgit here, my co-host, you know, Birgit from the WordPress way here, DEIB, how are you doing Birgit?

Birgit:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was fun. I already looking forward to next year. So, so, and we have three other guests. we have Alain Schlesser, who is one of the mentors there. He’s, you’ve had, you’ve heard of him or actually heard him on the podcast before. He is come in and talked about a lot of different subject areas. Then we have Leoni and Claire from Groundbreaker. what I’m going to do is I’m going to have each one of them tell us just a little bit what you do.

Alain:
Hi Bob. And thanks for having me. I was I was also, was also helping doing CloudFest hackathon to manage projects where we tried to get as many interesting projects on there as possible. But also I have been for the last year mentoring Vanessa from the Groundbreaker Talents program, one of the mentees. And I I absolutely love the experience. So I was joining the mentor ship program. because of my background in in engineering, I have done quite a lot in the past, in, in different areas. Most of the folks on here will probably know me from my WordPress work where I maintain W-P-C-L-I. But the mentorship program was not just not just about the engineering, it was really about the entire career lifecycle of someone in the IT world. So I absolutely loved the experience. I’m looking forward to discuss more details here.

BobWP:
Alright, and Leoni, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Groundbreaker and your role there, and then we will have Claire introduce herself.

Leoni:
Hi everyone. Good to be here. My name is Leo. I am, my background is humanitarian aid, so I’ve always worked for nonprofits, worked in several different continents on this earth and got a bit frustrated at some point on how they whole NGO world is working and how little sustainable impact is generated, really. I came back to Germany and started Groundbreaker the organization together with my co-founder Jo Berger, who is an entrepreneur in the IT sector. And we’ve done a lot of things in the past. I think we founded that five years ago. But the deeper I dove into the whole tech industry, the more I’ve seen that there’s so much potential. There are so many talents needed, there are so many open job opportunities, and at the same time, it’s just really undiverse. Like, I was often speaking at events being presented as a woman in tech, which I literally am not, maybe by now a little bit, but I really wasn’t for and I just barely seen any black women at these events.

And so I thought, why are we always focusing on building high schools and all of the other projects if there’s really two dots we could just connect. And that is a need for talents and extremely big need for more diversity in the tech industry. And so we did a lot of research last year. we visited a lot of projects, universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, that basically trained young women. And so we collected everything we loved and out came the grand per car talents program which we started last year in June. So Vanessa, our talent who joined us at CloudFest this year was our first in our first talent pilot batch. And I’m very happy that Claire is here too today, who is also a talent in our first batch and they’re currently graduating. So last phase of the 12 months program. And I’m sure we’re gonna dive deeper into the whole program and the whole idea, but I first would love to hear from Claire.

Claire:
Thank you Leoni, thank you Bob. Hello, listeners. I’m glad to be here. I’ve mentioned before I’m Winfred Claire Nakamatte, I’m a Groundbreaker talent. a brief background about me, I have a little, my midwifery and this program Groundbreaker Talents been a channel for me to pursue something that I’ve always been passionate about, that is a career in tech and I believe it has opened so many avenues for me that I, I’ll share an event, family of this program. So yeah, I’m excited to be here.

BobWP:
Alright, well thank you both for coming on and I’m gonna hand it over to Birgit and have her kind of go into this mentorship part of this with all of you.

Birgit:
Thank you, Bob. yeah, it is really amazing when I got introduced to the Groundbreaker Talents initiative on last year’s addition at the CloudFest Hackathon I was blown away from this idea. And as someone who cares a lot about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, I was fully committed to going into that. And I’m really happy that Alain and his wonderful wife Carole introduced me to the Groundbreaker Talents initiative. So yeah, I am more on the mentorship side, but I wonder Alain, can you tell about us can you tell us about your journey to becoming a mentor with a Groundbreaker and what is this role has meant to you from your perspective and your ambition and your motivation behind it?

Alain:
Yes, absolutely. so I learned about the Groundbreaker Talent program the first time I think two years ago at CloudFest Hackathon where this was one of the so this project was actually being supported through sponsorship money that was gathered by the awards that we were handing out for the for the hackathon projects. So we decided that year to include a bit of friendly competition and hand out awards for, for each of the projects and the prices for those awards were sponsored. And that sponsorship money was collected to sponsor one person through the mentorship program for that year. And that was the first time I learned about the Groundbreaker Talents program, specifically I think Groundbreaker initiative I’ve already known about before, but Groundbreaker talents is this more really direct approach where it’s not about some a more general attempt at changing something, but it, it’s really, you take one person’s life and turn it around directly.

And I loved that approach because we, we while we do need systemic change it’s also systemic change takes a long, long time. And having this combined approach that, that Groundbreaker does, where they do those systemic changes for the long term betterment, but also right away, they help people in immediate distress that I, I found it very, very interesting, that approach. And so a bit later I was in, in discussions, I think with Leoni and Tabir about the possibility of mentoring. And that’s how I then got into that. And I have been mentoring for about a year now. And the, this year’s hackathon CloudFest Hackathon was a bit of a milestone event because the person that was being sponsored directly by last year’s cloud first hackathon was then able to join as an actual participant in the hackathon this year. So that was really great.

Birgit:
Yeah, I love that, especially to meet Vanessa in person and to see that uplifting mind after almost a year of, of mentorship, but also the, the bootcamp of the Groundbreaker Talents initiative. And I’m really happy to, to see that the, the mentors put into so much effort also. And so we, we met some mentors online, and we, we met on several occasions and get some, some feedback and reflected on how is the mentorship going but also I wonder how much time commitment did you put into this for mentoring Vanessa?

Alain:
Yeah, so the general expectation was to do the mentorship for one hour per week. And I, for, for myself personally, I tried to be as strict as possible with that to make sure that this is the absolute minimum I get in. So, for example, when there was a week in between where I couldn’t actually join a mentorship session where we had to postpone or cancel, I made sure that we had two sessions the next week spread out, things like that. So I want to make sure that Vanessa gets at least what she is basically owed as I saw it, to get to give her the opportunity and, and the access that, that she deserves. but apart from that, I also tried when it makes sense to to be also more proactive in between mentorship sessions.

And that’s certainly something that, that is up to the individual mentors. For example, when I learned that she was attending an event in Kampala, I had some, some contacts in in that specific space, and I’m made sure that I could hook her up and help her with the networking part so that when she attended that event, she already had a handful of people to get immediately in touch with that, got her included in all the discussions and things like that. So that is up to the individual mentor based on their availability and also what they can provide. but I the the general expectation is that you would do at least one hour per week, and that, that one hour sometimes it required a bit of preparation, but most of the times it was really I and I tend to be really good at improvising. So even if Vanessa came with very complex questions, I could always come up with proper solutions right away. That is also more of an individual thing. but now that she’s now that she’s in the stage where she’s looking for work I also try to do a bit of so helping her helping her with discussing some opportunities, writing a recommendation letter, things like that. So that will of course go beyond that one article

Birgit:
Wow. Yeah. Again, thank you for your commitment. Leoni, do you mind sharing from your perspective, you were setting up the the, the, the guidelines and rules, you vetted the mentors and matched them with the mentees, you know, on location. How did you feel or what are were your criteria for the matching process? Do you mind sharing that and how you approach to get mentors on board?

Leoni:
Yes, so the mentorship program is one of the components of this whole 12 year training. And I must say it’s one of my favorite ones. I think it’s actually really special. the idea behind it was really to say, we can train amazing talents here, but if the tech industry doesn’t know about them, there’s no chance, like they won’t get hired. Because, and I always say that unfortunately, the eight industry, the so-called eight industry gave us a thousand pictures of Africa, which are starving children or famine, like our perception and the reputation of the African continent is so destroyed by this industry trying to fundraise money. and so we could train this amazing women, but if there’s no interaction, nobody would believe us. Like, I can already see it now after 12 months, how underestimated our talents are, which is good for us because they’re always surprised.

Like once you see them on work, they, they really put like such a surprising face on people’s heads. so it’s, it goes a bit two ways. But, so we said we need the mentorship because we want people to see that these women are really amazing. Talent is equally distributed over the world. So obviously Africa has so much talent is such a young population. And the one thing, and Alain already said is this key thing was access, like access to opportunity. That’s the missing link. And if you give this, if you give a proper training, I mean we get young women within two weeks, just to give an example, we had a couple of women coming in. They never touched a computer before, and after two weeks, 14 days, they managed to put up their first WordPress website. And that is the amount of skills if you can learn in a space which is only about skills and upskilling.

And so that’s beautiful. So mentorship program was extremely important for us to actually give access. ’cause access to mentorship is one of the key factors to actually get a career in tech and access to networking, like get exposure to the real tech industry. What Alain said, like it’s not just about technical mentorship, it’s also about exposure to how do you find a job, how is it to work for an international tech company? And so usually the idea was that our sponsoring companies get an employee engagement program. ’cause I did a lot of projects before, and the main question of tech companies were always, you know, how can I involve my employees? Like, everybody wants something with purpose. And with the other projects we had, that would mean that somebody would fly to Tanzania and build a school with a . But what’s really the point of that, right?
Like, why not just paying professional people from Tanzania to actually build a school? Like why do we need a software developer traveling? But what the software developer really has the skills and how do we get this together? And because all of the training we do is remote, so also the mentorship basically means an hour per week you hop on a call and you share your knowledge, this crazy expertise all of you people have acquired in the last decades or years, however old you are. so I really love this mentorship program through the exposure we get and this exchange. And I think it’s never one way street. And that has been also the feedback from you as mentors, how much it also gives you, because you really get a personal connection to a person you might have never interacted before. And the funniest bit for me now, we matched our second chord with mentors, and again, we get this feedback like, how do you do that?

Like, it’s such a good match, this person really fits to me, like it reminds me of a younger version of me, or I really get along with her so well. And that’s so nice because we look at the interest, like if somebody’s really interested in cybersecurity, we are trying to get a match in the cybersecurity space, but that’s basically it. We have no data on character, but it somehow always works out. Like I think everybody really had a very nice experience with our mentors and mentees. And so for me that’s really special because as Alain said, it’s not just technical mentorship, it’s really about building exposure and a relationship which goes beyond main measure. Yeah, so I’m, I’m, I really love this component of the program.

And Birgit, just to add like what do we look for? Technical expertise is definitely needed. because our training is of, obviously in software engineering, so the technical bit is helpful. It doesn’t need to be at the exact same coding language, so we can’t match like the perfect technical skills. But I think everybody has exposure and technical skills. as all said, it’s more like people that can commit an hour per week. It’s flexible. You organize yourself with a mentee, so we don’t say every Thursday at four, but whatever fits to your schedules. So we are completely out of the, it’s you and the mentee organizing your schedules, and that makes it flexible for people who are, and I know how busy everybody is, so even an hour is a huge commitment, and we are extremely grateful for that too. and then it’s, it’s just an we look for people who have a basic interest and kind of commitment because it is super sad for, you didn’t have the case yet, but if a mentee has a mentor who then kind of drops out or gets too busy, it’s kind of sad to see all your colleagues have this really nice mentorship and you don’t have it.

So we are very happy about people that can commit nine months if you’re sick, if it doesn’t work for a couple of weeks, very fine. But just that there’s a general commitment also in communication, like to let your mentee know, Hey, at the moment I’m a bit too busy, let’s reschedule. yeah, these are basically the requirements for the mentorship.

Birgit:
Yeah, thank you very much for this. And I personally enjoyed really my mentoring session. And it was really interesting from, from my perspective I am more coming from the field of personal coaching and, and, and in training but also I’m doing project management. And during our sessions we discussed how to manage your time on the daily basis, how to prioritize. And from, from my perspective, it as you mentioned it, this is a not a one way. It’s, it’s a really and, and, and pathway for where both parties benefit from. And also as you mentioned at this to, to, as a mentor, I grew a lot during this past deck cohort. And it brought myself into some form of self reflection on how did I approach certain ideas, tasks project management, because I tend to, I just do . I don’t think about, I just do where I see a need and to reflect on that, why did I, how did I approach this? And what’s really interesting and yeah. Claire, do your mind sharing from your perspective as the, the mentee during the, the last cohort, what make, what was your experience with your mentor and how did you feel about getting someone who you can get in contact on a weekly basis to discuss your progress? What is your experience on that?

Claire:
Yeah, thank you Birgit, on my end, the mentorship program was a unique opportunity to interact. First of all besides, you know, Leoni, you’re interacting with a professional, right? So you’re interacting with a professional who is overseas and they have all these exposure. Just to give you a brief, my mentor is Martin Highland, and he works at Open Exchange. It’s an open to kind of setting company. I’ll not really dive deep into that. However, Martin came on board with expertise, advice, technical knowledge, you know, he’s, he was sharing resources day in, day out. we had a really open communication. I think one of my major takeaways from mentorship was, one, you have to be a really good communicator if you are to advance yourself technically, because it’s not just about technical skills, you know, your coding and everything I can, conversations that we shared with during our mentorship calls, you know, because every week we have a call, but we had about three sessions were recorded.

So he was generally there to provide me with, you know, courage and, you know, telling me to push and sharing all these various resources. I come in and I tell him, oh, my team, I’m looking at career advancement and I’m probably looking at DevOps. And he’ll be like, okay, that, that I would take. So how, how are you planning on getting back? He’s not just giving me what to do, but he is guiding me in what I feel comfortable in doing so that I can advance. Because they say, you know, when, when you’re at work and you’re doing something that, that you love to do, there is no day in your life that you’ll be working. You’ll just be enjoying each and everything that is coming in. So that was mentorship for me. Then for the, for the past couple of weeks for mentorship, it’s been how to prepare for technical interview, how to answer questions.

You know, there are all these challenges. We sat, we sat on a call at a time and you know, he was being a panelist, I imagine him as someone I had never met, you know, I was envisioning him as a panelist and he was giving me all these questions and, you know, you are experiencing what would ideally happen when you went for your interview. So that has been a very strong suit for my mentorship. probably I should highlight that going in. I was, you know, just curious and interested in seeing what would come to light with this program. But hey, mentorship has been everything I could have hoped for. Yeah, where you have someone sharing, like I said, take point, but it was wholesome, right? There was lifestyle, you know, how to balance life and work, how to prioritize your mental health when you’re doing work and how best you can produce results.

You know, Martin would text me and be like, Hey, you mentioned you had graduated, but please remember to update something on LinkedIn. You know, build in public. That’s another thing. He used to, he’s, he’s been telling me over time, building public, you know, you’ve achieved this certificate share. If you’ve not managed, let me know and we’ll come up with a world, you know, doing it, bringing it on board. So yeah, that’s, that’s like a major, I wouldn’t say like, I shared communication, very open communication and then building in public because people are out there looking for people to help. So when you present your progress, people are in tuned. Oh, she, she shared that she was doing this, we could come in with that, you know, and usually when you are updating your feed, opportunities come through. So that was mentorship for me.

Birgit:
Wow. Very impressive. And I’m really glad for you that you had such a great bond with Martine about this, this course of time. And as you mentioned some guidance not to say you like the micromanagement, do this, do that, but more getting you on to think about how would you approach this to do that. And yeah, it was really interesting. Leoni, do you mind sharing this struggles the mentees and mentorship relations may have faced during the course of time? I remember we had a lot of struggle when with the power outages or the, the network wasn’t working and you were also building a new place to stay and you grew out your current location. do you mind sharing that with us?

Leoni:
So when we started last year on the pilot phase we really just wanted to get on it. So we rented like an old hostel recruited our first 15 young women and then started the mentorship. And it was great because we had learning throughout. one thing you mentioned was definitely difficult and that was the, our energy power outages in our old place interconnection finding space so you can basically talk without being interrupted by all the other students. finding good headphones in Uganda wasn’t very easy. obviously because we are also donation based finances are also a bit restricted, so we also have to really see how we get everything to work. Luckily in December we found our new home. So we bought an old school, which is a little bit outside Kampala, and renovated it in December and then moved in January.

And I think that has improved a lot. we got better internet connection and actually today is the day we get fiber, so I hope in the afternoon we’re gonna have the fast internet in whole Uganda. we got a generator which switches on of the power is off, and we have just way more space. I can only encourage everybody to come because it’s such a wholesome or ACEs, I would say. It’s really nice if you get in here, the whole space is whole of people focusing concentrating and in nice nature so people can distribute now. So I hope the technical issues are a bit resolved for the batch that is now going into mentorship. I think other issues were really little, like obviously for us it was a trial phase. I think some of the mentors were a little bit afraid that is it gonna be awkward?

Like, do we have enough stuff to talk about? is there like just awkward silence? Do I need to ask a thousand question and my mentee might not answer? obviously the cultures are quite different, but all of this didn’t turn out to be true. I said it from the beginning, our ladies here, the talents are extremely bubbly. So I mean, not all of them, some are a little bit more introvert, but even them, I think they took so much out of the mentorship program and I asked all of them here at campus and they all loved it. So there was not a single person that said, I’m disappointed I see other people having this great relationship, and I don’t, I think everybody got out what they wanted out of this mentorship program. so that worked out really well. Obviously now in the current batch, we had a mentor that falls sick, which obviously happens live. so that had to be handled a bit because there wasn’t quite sure if we can move forward. But if that happens, there’s always a way. And we have other mentors also as backups. and obviously we have two s per year, so this is an ongoing process. We have always new people joining in January and in June. so even if a mentor says, okay, this time now is a bit too stressful, let me start in June, we can accommodate to that.

Birgit:
Well, thank you. So speaking of the struggles, I would love to hand over the mic again to Bob as he has some further questions and to the s sponsoring and financial part, but also getting the great talents under the hood to get them employed.

BobWP:
Yeah, I think the, one of the two things I want to do before we close out is this is important to get this information out. There’s a lot of businesses in the WordPress ecosystem, a lot of large businesses, and you have incredible talent there, and they need to be aware of that, especially with as many that are hiring all the time. So if you can just share what is a process or what is the best way for them to not only keep up on who you have coming into the workforce, how do they connect with you? How do they if they’re interested in learning more, what are the best steps for them?

Leoni:
Thank you, Bob. so the hiring process has started, has started now. So it’s interesting to see ’cause that’s the last phase we haven’t seen before, how that works out. And I must say once again, I’m extremely positively surprised. So we started two weeks ago with a whole work readiness pace starting to send out applications out of the 13 talents which graduated now. already four have been hired after two weeks already. So I was actually really positively surprised on how fast that went. we have one company now from Canada who wants to hire all of them. So we are currently in discussions. I have more requests on the hiring than we have talent at the moment which is nice and we appreciate that. I think one thing we really figured out, and what I saw a couple of months back is remote work only works if there’s a coworking space where the talents can then actually continue learning.

So at campus now, we are building one space where our alumnis, if they get hired, they can stay and actually work from here. Because what I said, we have the fastest internet and that is obviously the most important component, but if you work remotely so that’s what we are currently doing just to make it also more attractive for people to hire talent from here. Also for the talents to not just be pushed out and then they have to maybe move back to a more village setting or and they lose this, this momentum of what’s next on my career path. so we have this coworking space now. We have the people that are being hired remotely have the chance to use this coworking space together. We ask them to move out because we need the residential approach, which means all the beds we need it for the next cohort.

But then obviously they earn money so they just get housing around the campus and can come here and commute to the office space. we are, we are figuring out as Groundbreaker how we can support in the hiring process, which means that most of them will be hired through our entity in Uganda. Obviously all the tax compliance issues are there, but through that it should be easy. So we have a service contract with the companies. The talents are being hired by Groundbreaker, the salaries are coming to our account and then being distributed to them, which makes it more attractive for international companies. So they don’t have to set up any legal entities here. yeah, I think these are the main things. A couple of them are also staying in Uganda, and that is all like staying in Ugandan companies. And that is also important for me because one of the reasons we started this program was not to just support the so-called brain drain, which means that all talents are being sucked up by big companies who can pay good salaries. And then the economy here in Uganda is kind of a second place. and we work also a lot with tech startups here, and they also need talent. So at the end it’s the decision of, of the talents themselves, where do I wanna work? whatever they prefer. But we are also trying to push for people to also work for Ugandan companies here.

BobWP:
Well, of course you have the hiring or the interest in hiring, but as you said, I think probably the biggest thing is that you need money to get from sponsors to be able to even get more wonderful women in there to do go through this program. So I am gonna give you the opportunity right now before we close out to actually give your sponsor pitch and what, what you’re looking for, maybe who’s the, the right companies, what they can expect, or, you know, as much as you want to give, but I want to give you the platform for that.

Leoni:
Yeah, thank you Bob. So I think this program is really Groundbreakerbecause not only because of the training, but especially because of the residential approach. So the idea is really to take a person out of their ecosystem, out of their own environment and give them a chance to fully concentrate on upskilling for 12 months. and I think that makes it special because through that we have this rapid learning curve that we wouldn’t have if you would just give a laptop and wifi and a remote training, but really giving them a space, a safe space where they can learn together, where they get everything they need so they don’t have to think about what am I gonna eat tomorrow? Where do I get money for medical? where do I get anything to sustain myself? But they, they are being provided for 12 months and then afterwards as we see now, we get them into jobs and we support them in finding jobs themselves, and then they earn a living.

And if every salary we’ve seen now, what they’re gonna earn in an entry level for Uganda is really, really, really good. Giving their age also. And so that is really amazing because it takes 12 months and then these women can actually cater for themselves, can support their own families with school fees, whatever is needed. So they’re completely independent. There’s no much dependency on us as a nonprofit, and therefore I can only pledge what this kind of support because it is so sustainable on the long term. And it is a win-win situation because not only do these women get out of their financially constrained background, but also international tech companies need the talents get the talents that they actually need. And that makes it really special in a true impact kind of way, double path. And so the sponsoring is currently our biggest need.

So our vision is really big. We want to reach 500 young women from all over Africa in the future. instead of building our campus in different countries, we decided to get visa opportunities and not get women on our campus. As I said before, this program is not working if we would only get funding from individuals or only funding from grants because we need to involve the tech industry. ’cause training, all these amazing talents here doesn’t work if nobody knows about them. we had so many visitors coming in the last month as well. And I can see that they are positively surprised by the kind of profound talent we have here. And the training is intense. so we as Groundbreaker can only do so much, but the talents put in all the work themselves. And the third stakeholder are the tech companies in the industry and per person we currently need 6,800 euros to get them through the whole program, including a laptop, all the recommendation, all the infrastructure we have here, plus the training program.

Plus some of the money is withhold to give further training once they finish, like once they graduated. If we see there’s a further need for whatever it is, we can provide further workshops. all the donations are going down to Uganda, so Groundbreaker, Germany, all our salaries are completely covered, all the admin costs are covered. So every euro we receive goes directly to Uganda and supports the program here. I think it’s an amazing CR program because it’s not far from your own need for talent. And we are talking about adults so we have clear, we have so many young women that can just speak for ourselves. So in terms of whatever you need, like, so-called course marketing. This is very easy ’cause you have a lot of amazing young people that can just have their own voice and you kept, have them joining you at town halls or joining you on social media or whatever is possible.
Everything is easy because we’re not talking about underage children here. We are talking about adults and people use support to actually enter the tech world. And I think when it comes to diversity in tech, this is a super important program because we need a bigger talent pipeline, and this program tries to provide everything that people need to actually enter the tech industry. So we would be very happy to have you on board. as I said, the vision is big, so we need a lot of sponsorship. We need a lot of mentorship to reach as many young women as possible on the continent.

BobWP:
Well, this has just been amazing and I, I don’t even know what we can put in for last words after all that. So I, I wish there was some profound thing I could say, but what I’d like to do is go around for contact information. So first, let’s start with the Alain I know a lot of people know where to connect with you, but coming back to you, where can people, you know, if they, they have questions about it from the mentor side of things, where can they reach out to you?

Alain:
Yeah, if you want to talk about mentorship with me best place to reach me is probably over LinkedIn or the, or Twitter. That’s the two social media channels I’m active. it’s Ash lesser on LinkedIn and lesser a on Twitter or X as it is called now. Also for people that know me from WordPress space, I’m always available on the WordPress official Slack as well. And I would really I’ll take this opportunity to let people know that it is absolutely a gratifying experience to do the mentorship through the Groundbreaker talents program. So of course, if you can please sponsor, but also if you can find the time the mentorship is something that is mutually beneficial. You will not only help one person in a profound way, but it’ll also help you get a different lens on the reality of the tech landscape and the reality of how opportunity and access are distributed. And it’ll hopefully also help you do a better job at not being part of the problem, but about the solution.

BobWP:
Alright, right, Claire, where, where can people find you on the web if they wanna just see the, you know, what you’re up to. Is there any particular social channels you’re on like LinkedIn.

Claire:
Thanks both for professional purposes, really. I’m on LinkedIn as when aka. I don’t really use any other particular social media platforms besides Twitter, where I’m inference C-N-K-M-T, where I know keep updated on new technologies, companies that are hiring developments in the tech space and generally for news. So yeah.

BobWP:
All right. Well do find her. I’ll have that in the, she show notes, all the links and Leoni, where is the best place to connect with you and to connect with Groundbreaker?

Leoni:
So I would check out the website because the website has most of the information. So that is Groundbreaker.org, same as my email address, it’s leo at.org. So also very easy very active on LinkedIn as well, which is the full name, which we will put in the show notes because it’s very German, Leoni Rossberg in case you can spell that. And yeah, we also have a newsletter if you just wanna watch our next steps, you can just subscribe on our website and follow our ground back on LinkedIn. So LinkedIns really the platform where we put out most news and we can also find all the talents and just keep updated about the exciting next month and years.

BobWP:
Excellent. And Birgit I’ve gotta at least have you say one final word from your side of the mentorship thing before we close out.

Birgit:
Well, Bob having been a mentor myself, I really can attest to the transformative, transformative power of this great initiative. not just for the mentees, but also as a mentor as well. And it’s been an honor to contribute to such a meaningful chaos and or to see how this project evolves and thrives in the future on the long term. And I really hope that the talents find a place to stay, but also the companies are getting interested into supporting that. so yeah, thank you again. And if you have any questions I will be also available on a LinkedIn or Twitter like on LinkedIn, ood Awesome. Or on Twitter slash x as CoachBirgit. So shoot me a message on, I will give you as much as input as I have so available and thanks to all our guests for being here.

BobWP:
Very cool. Well, I am so glad I was able to get you on for part two. like I said, enjoyed meeting you in real life and I’m hope to be able to do that again in the future. And just wanna thank Alain, Claire and Leoni, thank you very much for coming on and sharing all this great stuff about Groundbreaker. Visit them at Groundbreaker.org and yes, thank you again.