Nevertheless, Bekah Coded in 2022

Today I hosted my first Twitter Space as a Technical Community Builder as a member of the Deepgram Devs DevRel Team. Our topic was “Every Voice Heard and Understood in Tech,” which is a play on the Deepgram mission: “Every voice heard and understood.” Before joining Deepgram, this was my personal mission in other words: “To do my best to make sure no one felt alone,” which, for me, implies both hearing and understanding. Because you can be in a room full of people, you can be sharing your experience with others, and still feel alone when you’re not being heard. And as a woman in tech, this is especially important to me.

One of my favorite quotes from today’s Twitter Space was from Saron: “No one can take your story from you.” There’s so much power in that. And it reminded me of a quote from my educational coach, Katie McKenna, when I was in bootcamp: “We don’t tell our stories for ourselves. We tell our stories to invite others to share theirs with us.” There is power in your story. There is power in the story of every woman in tech. There is power in sharing your story because it creates the opportunity for people to see that they aren’t alone, that there are pieces of their story in the stories of other women, that their voices do have a space in this field.

We do not have to be defined by our work. We are more than our tech titles, our expertise, our achievements. We are our history, the history of the women before us. We are our experiences, our stories. We are meant to bring our stories--our whole selves--to where we are. When we are allowed to do that, when our voices are heard and listened to and understood, we will make a bigger impact on the spaces we find ourselves in. We will be more willing to share, to feel safe to share.

Everyone grows when we do our best to understand the stories and voices of those around us. It should not matter how long someone has been at the company. It should not matter what their seniority is. I am thankful for the women who have shared their stories before me. I am thankful for the ones they’ve shared on podcasts. I am thankful for those told in whisper networks. I am thankful for those that are shared during struggles and good times. I am thankful for everyone who has shared their story and for the invitation to tell mine. This year, I’ll do my best to listen and understand. To invite other women to tell their stories. And to share my story too.