As the month of March approached, some of us at Mozilla formed a planning committee to assess how we might best support and celebrate women, both within Mozilla and around the world. Starting with the women here, we soon learned that many are looking for some kind of structure to help them better connect with their women peers. Though we had established a few groups in the past, they were either not active, or too niche to address the interests of our women more broadly. We also learned (and frankly, weren’t surprised) that women want activities that allow connection without requiring a lot of preparation to participate.
So our goal for the month was to build a foundation for women to both celebrate and connect, to create a more robust community of women at Mozilla. First up was creating a space (virtual for now) for all women to convene, and we established the #womoz Mozilla Resource Group (starting in Slack); the group’s goal is to ”Promote the opportunity to interact with one another and share cultural and career inspirations for all women employees, of every background and lived experience.”
We enjoyed exploring our personal values with Jean Oplinger
We then went on to create a number of different opportunities for us to connect and learn throughout the month:
- Woman-To-Women small group sessions with leaders, including Amy Keating, Lindsey “Shep” Shepard, and Selena Deckelmann, and moderated by Amy Tsay, Erica Terry-Derryck and Mika Shah.
- A Fireside Chat about coaching and personal values with Jean Oplinger, founder of Visions in Action, LLC
- Weekly get-the-energy-out sessions with Vitamin D(ance)® workouts
- An intranet page rich with learning resources including books, films, podcasts, newsletters, social media influencers and offerings via our Learning & Development team
And we lived through it all with the help of very good coffee (thanks to a Vietnamese coffee making class with Phin Bar, a female-founded business) and music, including a few virtual jazz bars with V. Shayne Frederick and a special, custom playlist for our internal calls, thanks to our incredible A/V team.
We don’t plan to stop celebrating or providing opportunities for the women of Mozilla to connect. In the upcoming months, we will have more small group sessions, virtual peer coffee chats, and broader group connection sessions that allow our women to help and support each other, themselves, and Mozilla.