{"id":2101,"date":"2018-09-21T14:09:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T18:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2019-01-29T13:41:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T18:41:11","slug":"breakfast-meeting-june-15-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/breakfast-meeting-june-15-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast Meeting, June 15, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Komal Singh is in the midst of her first book tour \u2013 making appearances on talk shows and in bookstores \u2013 but she\u2019s not what you\u2019d consider a typical children\u2019s book author. The Google program manager and engineer wrote the book when her then-four-year old daughter casually remarked that only boys were engineers. \u201cIt really bummed me out!\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So in August of this year, Ara the Star Engineer <\/em>was born. It\u2019s the story of a young girl who solves big problems with courage, creativity and collaboration \u2013 which are all hallmarks of Singh\u2019s own story, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singh grew up in India in the 1980s, when female role models in the sciences were few and far between. Now, in Canada, she wants to change that for little girls growing up today. \u201cMy anchor was my father,\u201d she says. \u201cHe encouraged me to study and never give up on my goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2005, Singh graduated from Simon Fraser University with a masters degree in computer science and, after 10 years in the software engineering business, landed her dream job at Google (on her third attempt of the company\u2019s notoriously grueling interview and vetting process). \u201cI loved the idea of doing work that impacts billions of people around the world,\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted to be somewhere I could be a whole person \u2013 a mother and engineer and someone with passion projects so I could inspire my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Singh says she hasn\u2019t faced overt discrimination as a woman in the male-dominated field of software engineering, she points to more subtle forms \u2013 like the fact that when the team scores a win, they sometimes circulate memes of white men high-fiving, or the fact that brainstorming sessions are recorded on whiteboards she\u2019s too short to reach. \u201cThese seem like such small things, but over time they make you doubt you belong,\u201d she says. And she hopes that getting more women and girls interested in computer science will help eradicate such continuing challenges through sheer numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the publication of Ara the Star Engineer<\/em>, she hopes young girls will see that there is a place for them in engineering and that women will seek out mentors committed to diversity, as she has over the course of her career. As part of her commitment to closing the gender gap in her field, all profits from the book are being donated to charities encouraging girls\u2019 and underrepresented groups\u2019 participation in STEM fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Komal Singh is in the midst of her first book tour \u2013 making appearances on talk shows and in bookstores \u2013 but she\u2019s not what you\u2019d consider a typical children\u2019s book author. The Google program manager and engineer wrote the book when her then-four-year old daughter casually remarked that only boys were engineers. \u201cIt really … Continue reading Breakfast Meeting, June 15, 2019<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakfast-speakers-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8RivX-xT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2186,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wenetwork.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}