Welcome to a new year of ACM-W activity!  This promises to be a year of much transition and change on many fronts.  The first of those is that this newsletter, which had been appearing in your inbox monthly for many years, is (with this issue) transitioning to a quarterly publication.  We feel this change will enable our communications team and the volunteers that lead our many projects to compile deeper and more interesting articles about the exciting things that are happening globally.  In the coming months, we also will be transitioning the format of the email to more of a “digest” approach (think ACM-W Tech News, e.g.) in order that readers may be introduced to each article on the email with the option to read the full article posted on our web site.

As the newsletter transitions both in format in content, we invite you to stay connected to ACM-W in an ongoing manner by connecting into our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter feeds.  We use those channels to post timely articles and information that are valuable resources for the women in computing community and to boost postings made by our various regional committees and student chapters.  So use the links at the bottom of this newsletter to tap in and stay connected!

It is my pleasure as we begin this new year to introduce two new members of our ACM-W leadership team – Chunlei Tang (Co-Treasurer) and My Thai (Standing Committees Co-Chair). You can learn more about Chunlei and My via their biographies that appear later in this newsletter. 

There are two additional changes to our global leadership efforts.  Arati Dixit, who had served the past two years as Standing Committees Co-Chair, has transitioned to the positions of Region Committees Co-Chair, a new position that will provide additional assistance to support our growing global community.  For the past two years, Reyyan Ayfer has capably led the regional committees chairs in ACM-W Asia-Pacific, ACM-W Europe, ACM-W India, and ACM-W North America.  With increasing ACM-W activity occurring in Africa and South America, Arati’s partnership with Reyyan will assist in the onboarding of these new regions to ACM-W.  Much more on that upcoming in the next year.

Nutan Limaye, formally Vice Chair of ACM-W India, has accepted a newly created position of Global ACM Celebrations Chair. In this role, Nutan will support the ongoing efforts of our regional committee Celebrations chairs and also assist those organizing events outside of regions where ACM-W has established committees.  We are excited to have Nutan involved and look forward to continued growth of the project in the coming year.

Another exciting development this year is the launch of the ACM-W Chapter Five Star (5*) Buddy System.  This project was proposed by Arati Dixit and approved by the ACM-W leadership team in July to launch this fall with a goal of virtually connecting ACM-W chapters with other chapters and SIGs and fostering shared understanding of the global impact that ACM and ACM-W are having on behalf of women in computing.  You can learn more about this project in a full article below.

Additional project information:

• Nominations for the ACM-W Rising Star award are open until October 30^th. Visit our website (https://women.acm.org/awards/rising-star-award/) for more information, including a link to the nominations form
• Google renews support for the ACM-W Scholarships program (see below)
• ACM-W Professional Chapters report by Rachelle Hippler (see below)
• Next ACM-W Celebrating Technology Leaders webinar on October 21^st (see below)

Thanks for standing with us as we work to fulfill our mission.

Jodi Tims
ACM-W Chair

ACM-W thanks Google!

Google has been a steadfast supporter of our Scholarships project for many years. ACM-W has received a donation of $20,000 from Google that will provide funding for students to attend technical conferences in the coming year.  We are very grateful for this generous support. For more information on the Scholarships project and the application deadlines for this year, please visit our website (https://women.acm.org/scholarships/).