Kate Hathaway

Tell us about yourself and your work with WIT?

I am a manager in the Student and Academic Support Systems team at Yale ITS. I am also the chair of the Women in Tech (WIT) group at Yale. WIT is a shared interest group whose goal is to empower and support women in technology through professional development and networking. I am particularly interested in engaging the entire community (not just women!) and showcasing all the neat things that women are doing in tech. I am always looking to partner with other groups around campus (like FLY!) to have a broader reach. Past speakers have included a software engineer at Google, a 3D printing artist, and a woman who does innovation bridging – connecting tech startups with government funding.

What inspired you to get involved with WIT? 
I do not have a technical background and had never even considered a career in tech (my degree is in communications).  While at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where I worked as a project coordinator, I had the opportunity to work on two projects that changed my career trajectory. One was developing an online course, the other was working with ITS to stand up an instance of the software Salesforce.  It was so neat to see something that I conceptualized be built and shared out with the world. Newly interested in software development and design, I heard about an event that WIT was having and decided to attend to learn more. The current chair at the time spoke about her career path and it was amazing because she had started off exactly where I was at the time (a non-technical person working on a technical project) and from there became a business analyst at ITS – a role that I didn’t even know existed! I left that meeting feeling inspired and with great contacts, which helped when I later applied and was hired at ITS.  I continued to participate in WIT group events, and eventually became chair. Technology is a huge and growing market, and I want to make sure that women don’t self-select out of these jobs because they don’t think they are qualified, or they because they don’t even know the jobs exist.

What is the best advice you’ve gotten as a young professional? 
Network! I hate it – but it works!  One of my mentors gave me a list of three people and told me to reach out to all of them. I didn’t want to do it, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to talk about, but that is how I ended up getting my first job at ITS. You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable