SatelliteWP Rewards Marie-Philippe Gill for her Involvement

My name is Maxime and I’m the Co-Founder of SatelliteWP.

I was a full-time student for more than 5 years in Computer Science. In a group of about 70 students, we’d be lucky if there were 5 women in the room, for a male / female ratio below 10%. Ouch! I remember at the time wanting to do something about it, but what?

Once you’re in the classroom, it’s already too late. Work must therefore be done upstream by women who can clear a path and serve as role models for future women. I’ve seen very few female role models during my studies, but times have changed and social media as well as the internet are finally leveling the playing field.

A Woman on Hostile Ground

A few years ago, I stumbled upon the site of a young student of ÉTS that had created a blog about her passion for technology, where too few women generally venture. Her name: Marie-Philippe Gill. Her site felt somewhat experimental and the mission wasn’t clear yet. But over time, the site transformed, matured and the vision became clearer. This wonderful woman had decided to come on hostile ground and chart a path for women of the next generation.

On her website Girl Knows Tech, Marie-Philippe shares her daily life and promotes technology for women. She speaks about her experiences, answers questions and encourages other women both directly and indirectly to do like her and jump into the technological adventure. What’s even more impressive is realizing that her site is fully bilingual!

Marie-Philippe is now a role model for younger girls and we were so impressed by her actions that we wanted to help.

The Reward

Today, we are pleased to announce some great news!

We’re very proud to contribute to the Girl Knows Tech project who’s mission is to encourage other women in joining STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines.

Marie-Philippe is also part of the Les ingénieuses group, which promotes the integration of women in the engineering field at ÉTS. She has participated in several events and conferences including WordCamp Montréal, visiting Google offices during the Google Student Retreat event in San Francisco and much more! She’s also received the Woman Techmakers scholarship, encouraging women who excel in Computer Science and Technology, as well as being honored by former Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard as a recipient of the Youth Recognition Award, recognizing the excellence of her achievements and her engagement with youth earlier this year.

As her website is powered by WordPress and it’s been fascinating to see all the efforts she’s poured into it, we have offered to manage her web infrastructure via a custom SatelliteWP Maintenance Plan for the next 12 months. This carries a value upwards of $2,000.

And to help her further her mission, we’ve also extended a cash prize of $500 for her involvement in the promotion of STEM. We truly admire her work and wish to see her continue on this path.

First of a Kind

This is the first time we’ve awarded a scholarship in this way and we’d like to also use this opportunity to ask you a favour: to share Marie-Philippe’s Girl Knows Tech website to your network and on social media. Perhaps you too can encourage a young girl to follow in her footsteps? We definitely need more ambassadors like her!

To share to your network:

• The website Girl Knows Tech
• The Instagram account of Girl Knows Tech (32,000+ followers)
• The Facebook page of Girl Knows Tech (1,600+ members)
• The Twitter account of Girl Knows Tech (2,500+ followers)
• The YouTube channel of Girl Knows Tech (4,200+ subscribers)

What’s Next?

By posting this blog entry, we hope we can positively impact Marie-Philippe mission. More than that, we also hope that this can encourage other organizations in doing the same (or more).

Finally, w’re looking for the next Marie-Philippe and we’re asking your help to find her. Send us an email if you know of other women who are promoting women in technology. We hope that this first scholarship is the beginning of a great adventure and that Marie-Philippe will have been the first in a long line of women that contribute to the emancipation women in STEM disciplines!