A very special Canadian initiative is stopping in Montreal tonight as part of its cross-country roadtrip.

Driving WinTech, a community-based research initiative from Women in Tech World (WinTech), is happening at Centech tonight to facilitate a conversation on women in the tech field.

“The community conversation is one stop in our tour across Canada apart of Driving Women in Tech,” Sarah Main, one of the organizers of Driving WinTech told MTLinTECH.

This fall, Wintech is facilitating 50 community forums across the country as a kind of Canada-wide fact-finding tool, stopping at more than 30 cities coast to coast in two months.

“The idea of the tour was founded due the lack of data we have on women in Canada in STEM, whereas the current data primarily focuses on quantitative stats behind the number of women in positions and leadership. However, we want to discover what is truly happening in our communities.”

“The purpose of the community conversations is to hear directly from them about what is happening there, what they are looking for and what change they hope to see in the future.”

The tour aims to connect with over 10,000 people from diverse tech backgrounds, create and share a National Report on the experiences of women in tech in Canada, create a set of Playbooks to facilitate more inclusive and diverse tech communities, and to share these findings through WinTech’s online platform publicly.

Tonight’s event includes a panel of local trailblazing women in tech moderated by Notman House’s own Emma Williams. The panel includes Beatrice Couture (General Manager of InnoCité MTL), Nathalie Tufenkji (Professor, TIER 1 Canada Research Chair Biocolloids and Surfaces, Department of Chemical Engineering McGill University), Soodeh Farohki (PhD, Founder and Tech lead at C2RO Robotics), and Adeola Odusanya (Founder of Bluhen Solutions).

“We encourage both men and women to attend our event, but our focus is professionals and students in STEM careers as we want to facilitate a conversation around diversity and how we can help promote inclusion.”

You can register for this free event here. The networking portion of the event kicks off at 5:30 pm with the panel discussion commencing at 6:00. Please note that this event will be held in french, but an English translator will be on site.

Photo from Women in Tech World Facebook page