Networking event gives Bay Area high school girls a map to tech careers

The Tech Interactive brought together 150 students to Pave It Forward, an event where they could meet Silicon Valley women working in STEM fields.

To get ahead in Silicon Valley, is it what you know or who you know? To be honest, it’s a bit of both and that’s why it was important for about 150 students from around the Bay Area to get to know women who have built successful careers in STEM fields last Friday in San Jose.

The occasion was “Pave It Forward,” an annual event presented by the Tech Interactive that gives young women (and nonbinary folks) an opportunity to spend an afternoon hearing from and interacting with mentors who shared their career journeys, accomplishments and challenges along the way. The students came from 15 schools from as far away as Gonzales, while the mentors were from 30 companies including Accenture, PNC Bank, GitLab, ServiceNow and Pinterest.

“You are the future of STEM,” Tech Interactive CEO Katrina Stevens told the students. “This is your chance to strike up a conversation, to ask a question.”

Sabrina Farmer, chief technology officer for San Francisco-based GitLab, an open-source software company, addressed the group at lunch and was part of a discussion panel with other female executives, shattering the illusion that tech is a men-only environment.

“Despite what you might hear in the press, there are women in tech,” Farmer said. “They work at the highest levels of tech, and they love it.”

A career in business or tech wasn’t on Farmer’s mind at all when she was in high school. She wasn’t even planning on college until she visited the University of New Orleans. She graduated from there with a degree in computer science and was hired at Google, where she spent nearly two decades working on all the company’s biggest products from Chrome and Google Mail to YouTube and rose to the position of vice president of engineering, core infrastructure.

She established two scholarships at her alma mater “to encourage the next Sabrina to stick with it.”

EGG-CITING WEEKEND: It’s Easter weekend, and that means the return of the Bunnies and Bonnets parade in downtown Campbell on Saturday morning. The long-running tradition — organized this year by Bombshell Boutique owner Brooke Ramirez and other members of the Downtown Campbell Business Association — will see bands, dancers, animals and community groups traveling along Campbell Avenue starting at noon.

Normally, the parade would follow an egg hunt at the Campbell Community Center, but that event isn’t happening this year. J.R. McKee, who had been the guy behind the event for the Campbell Kiwanis Club for most of its 41 years, hung up his basket after last year. Hopefully that event will make a future comeback, but if you’re looking for an egg hunt this year, San Jose might be the place to go.

SONGS OF SPRING: Musician Margo Cilker will celebrate our region’s agricultural past with a concert at the Los Altos History Museum’s courtyard on April 7. She’s a fifth-generation resident who now lives in the Northwest and is coming back to her family roots. Accompanied by her husband, Forrest VanTuyl, Cilker will perform songs from her album, “Valley of Heart’s Delight,” which touch on themes of family and nature.

She’ll be joined at the 4 p.m. show by Robin Chapman, the author of “The Valley of Heart’s Delight: True Tales from Around the Bay” and “California Apricots: the Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley,” who’ll share her insights about the Los Altos Heritage Orchard. It’s not a bad pairing as both women are doing their part to preserve a bit of Los Altos history.

Admission is $15, but it’s free if you’re a museum member or age 10 or under. Go to losaltoshistory.org/cilker to register.