The Dream Collective empowers potential female leaders in Singapore with inaugural bootcamp

Source: The Dream Collective. 

The Dream Collective, a global female corporate leadership training platform which offers a refreshing perspective on female empowerment and sparks a much-overlooked dialogue around talent development of female leadership in a corporate landscape, has launched the Emerging Leaders Bootcamp - Singapore Edition. 

Inspired by the MBA syllabi of the world's leading business schools, the programme works with leading corporations to identify, shape and equip high-potential young women with leadership capabilities. Designed to equip the next generation of corporate leaders with the skills, confidence, network and knowledge necessary to advance into higher management positions, the programme also recognises the importance of harnessing and honing soft skills. 

The two-day intensive programme focuses on upskilling five main areas of development – leadership, business, innovation, communication and wellness. The programme encourages collaboration through facilitated discussion, debate and skills training to deliver to members the skills and knowledge required to succeed in today's ever evolving and highly competitive corporate landscape. At the end of the programme, members are urged to set attainable goals to help them achieve new career heights.

Founded in 2012 by Sarah Liu, an entrepreneur deeply passionate about unlocking individual potential, The Dream Collective has worked with 123 leading corporations across Australia to deliver leadership programmes that empowers and equips high-calibre young professional women, and now, Singapore as well. 

Noticing a gap in leadership development opportunities that women faced in the corporate workplace today, The Dream Collective strives to build the pipeline of female leaders worldwide by empowering and equipping high calibre young professional women during the early to mid-stage of their careers. 

While Singapore is progressive in fostering entrepreneurship amongst women – it is ranked 8th best city for women entrepreneurs by the 2017 Women Entrepreneur Cities (WE Cities) Index by Dell – the Singapore corporate ladder is still proving to be a steep climb for women. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, female representation within the science, technology, engineering and mathematics industries (STEM) in Singapore has been hovering around the 30% mark since 2006. A new study by Monster Singapore of 2,000 respondents revealed that 41% of local women cited a lack of opportunities for their career advancement. 

Liu said: “Singapore and Tokyo are proactively seeking out avenues to foster greater female empowerment in the corporate landscape. This is promising to see because like Australia, there is currently a gap in these markets when it comes to building up emerging female talent in the workplace.” 

Since its inception in 2012 in Australia, The Dream Collective has helped advance the careers of thousands of emerging female talents. With its launch in Singapore and then Tokyo, The Dream Collective hopes to power the momentum towards unshackling women from the gendered norms in corporate workplaces today. 

Interested?

The first session will kick off in October 2017. Register interest

Four reasons why coding is part of future careers

September 12, the 256th day of the year, was International Programmer’s Day. Computers work on bits and bytes in binary form, and 256 is a significant number as it is 2⁸, the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte.

"Today, we take for granted how simple it is to stay in touch with our loved ones, shop online...We rarely pause to consider that all these conveniences and benefits of technology are actually only possible through the work of coders and programmers," said Dr Daiana Beitler, Philanthropies Lead, Microsoft Asia.

In celebration of  International Programmer’s Day Microsoft has come up with some major reasons why coding is important:

Source: Microsoft. According to a recent study by Accenture, more than a fifth (22%) of global GDP today can be attributed to some form of digital skills, capital, goods or services.

Source: Microsoft. According to World Economic Forum research, over five million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of technological change. On the other hand, technology can generate jobs and ignite overall economic growth by creating a spillover effect in other industries.

Source: Microsoft. The app economy is expected to double in size to US$101 billion by 2020, says App Annie. Coding could help individuals turn ideas into products.

Source: Microsoft. There are many free resources available for those who want to get started.

Interested?

Four (2²) suggestions:

Watch Code Trip, a documentary created by Microsoft in partnership with Roadtrip Nation, that follows three computer science students as they meet with coders, researchers, and robotics engineers, finding inspiration and guidance from people who have defied stereotypes to build meaningful careers in tech

Minecraft Hour of Code Tutorial introduces players to basic coding within the popular Minecraft environment

Small Basic makes coding easy for beginners

Develop software. Kodu Game Lab  allows users to create games on the PC and Xbox via a visual programming language, while Touch Develop is a development environment to create apps for touch-enabled mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets

Hashtag: #ProgrammersDay

It's International Women's Day: can you #MakeWhatsNext?

Source: Microsoft blog. Ada Lovelace was the world's first computer programmer.

Microsoft is calling on girls around the world to #MakeWhatsNext in celebration of International Women’s Day, a global celebration of women’s social, economic, cultural and political achievements.

According to the World Economic Forum, the gender gap is not set to close until the year 2133 - a gender gap that is clear in computer science and science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM). And the Asian Development Bank says women in the region are on average 70% less likely than men to be in the labour force, notes Dr Daiana Beitler, Microsoft Philanthropies Lead, Asia, in a blog post. 

Children are hardly taught about women in science, as a recent Microsoft video shows. The company asked girls to name female inventors – they couldn’t. 

"On International Women’s Day, we want to put the spotlight on the leading ladies who have helped transform our world with technologies that we now find hard to live without. Their innovations and designs have more than shaped what defines a technology pioneer – they have become beacons for young girls all around the world to learn and draw inspiration from," Dr Beitler said in the blog post, which celebrates 10 women behind key technology breakthroughs.

Microsoft's efforts to encourage girls and women to change the world include the DigiGirlz campaign as well as the MakeWhatsNext hub, which spotlights girls and women who are already making what's next under the Microsoft YouthSpark initiative, and shares details about a Patent Program launched on March 7 that focuses on inviting select female inventors to receive support in patenting their ideas.

Interested?

There are 2016 DigiGirlz Days planned in Sydney, Australia, as well as in Beijing and Shanghai, China.

Hashtag: #MakeWhatsNext