Get IT Girl!

CF: Trend Micro initiated Get IT Girl! back in 2019 to empower and uplift women in the tech industry. What have been some of the milestones in that effort?

LM: I can speak to that personally. Especially in cybersecurity, there is this gap in skills and we’re trying to help shorten that gap. But we also recognize there’s a gap when it comes to our female population in technology, whether it comes from we just haven’t done an outreach to that community or whatever it might be. So we’ve partnered with a company called Girls In Tech, and they’re also closely aligned with AWS.

And personally, I can speak to that because I’m a mentor to some girls who are part of Girls In Tech. They formally put one executive in a company with a girl who is looking to get into technology or who might be in technology but wants to expand her career and who wants a mentor in this world. So I’ve been mentoring some females in Girls In Tech, and what’s interesting is one of those females joined Trend Micro in one of our graduate programs. We have a program called Certification Program in IT Security (CPITS). Because I met this person, I encouraged her to look around, and looking around means hey, there might be a program here at Trend Micro that might be of interest to you. And she got accepted and is now part of the community here at Trend Micro. I’m really proud of that, and I think it’s a well-needed community for a group of people who may not feel comfortable joining a certain part of a company where they don’t have the skill set just yet.

JC: It’s not just on the technical side, although we’ve done “capture the flags” with groups of women who want to get into the technical side. We’ve done that in North America and South America. We do programs in the Middle East, everywhere around the world. There are 4 million open jobs in cybersecurity around the world. We need more people, and so there’s a great opportunity. I think it’s a fabulous industry for anybody to to participate in. So we welcome anybody and everybody. But definitely we are working very hard to try and attract women into tech and partnering with Girls In Tech is helping us do that.