in 2003 I fell in love the relationship
had a lot of full starts and to be
honest it often crashed we had something
special
whenever I had a crazy idea we would
work on it together and whenever I had
some kind of thing to say
I felt like within that relationship I
had the freedom to say it it was the
first time I had a partner in crime that
was with me in all of my endeavors
this little inanimate object and I were
inseparable the Mac Mini wasn’t the
first piece of hardware I owned as a
teenager I had an Ericsson pager a Nokia
mobile phone and obviously a Sega Master
System but there was something about the
Mac Mini that made me feel empowered it
was the first time I felt like a piece
of technology had empowered me
empowerment is often defined as having a
sense of self-expression of having
autonomy and the freedom to make
decisions for yourself the starting
point of empowerment in this story was
about being recognized and hurt the
first independent project I made on that
map Mini was a magazine about women in
hip-hop because this was a group that I
felt had no voice I was obsessed with
hip-hop every Friday I would go with my
girl crew go and get my nails done go to
the curb and be all excited but when we
got there we’d be like a handful of
girls in a room of 200 boys they either
expected us to be the DJ’s girlfriend or
someone’s sister and when they found out
that we weren’t either they would ask us
out hit on us and it was highly annoying
it was so frustrating to not just be
able to go out and enjoy the music and I
desperately wanted to talk about that
frustration so I booted up my Mac Mini
and started making war magazine Wow
stood for we ain’t hos when I was 21
years old I spent two months running
around after uni lectures interviewing
women in hip-hop I would interview
female DJ’s female graffiti writers
female break dancers and female rappers
by making this magazine I gave them a
platform for expression and recognition
this little map Minnie had given me a
voice but this wasn’t a singular
endeavor
I built a community for other women this
little piece of hardware had not only
enabled my voice but it enabled all the
other women who felt the same for me it
was a beginning of a journey of using
technology to empower women to other
bits of software had made this little
empowerment party possible Photoshop and
InDesign to make the magazine I sat down
and I taught myself how to use these
programs literally by using the help
function to this date they’ve been the
most useful skills I’ve acquired in
executing all my feminist projects when
we decided to turn wire into a blog in
2006 I could design my own cover headers
when I wanted to host a club night with
female DJs playing hip hop I could
design my own flyer I never had to wait
for a boy to do anything I didn’t have
the frustrations of communicating the
exact shade of jelly pink that I wanted
for the background color of the flyer to
a typically male graphic designer
I even part designed our first book this
featured all of our favorite women from
all the work that we were doing and it
sold 70,000 copies worldwide the fact
that I even contributed to that design
was a revelation to me in 2009 this
community of women had grown online so I
opened now salon to create a physical
space for all of the endeavors that we
were doing online it would act as a real
life Center for our projects I started
one ours with a laptop and a vision I’d
use InDesign to make the shop sign the
window vinyls the now main news I would
just sit at my computer every single
night and make stuff for that shop Adobe
InDesign had given me autonomy the
autonomy to create and the freedom to
run what was now an actual business so
now we’ve moved from hardware to
software but actually the biggest
explosion for the wild business was
social media
I discovered tumblr and used it to
create and build our website I tweet the
HTML again just by googling it to
customize our own theme the reach of our
business
mmunity and our female empowerment
agenda was now limitless for every 500
women who actually came into the nail
salon they’d be another 500 thousand
online who are seeing our nails now
we’re involved in a network the power of
the online network was completely
fascinating to me I’d utilized a single
user software system with Adobe
we’d harnessed a feed based blogging
platform with blogspot but now here was
tumblr and instagram which had given me
all the power of the publishing tools I
had before but in a networked
environment as technology became part of
the daily running of my business I
became quite obsessed with how it was
built and who was building it but this
is where my love affair with technology
stalled
I choose publishing and social media as
an empowerment tool to create and
connect but now I needed an empowerment
tool to earn I was a young business
woman by now and a mother and like most
small businesses I was living fairly
hand-to-mouth technology had given me a
voice I’d gained recognition it had
given me the ability to create so I
found self-expression Tech gave me
autonomy I was making decisions for
myself on my own terms
it definitely been instrumental in
building my brand and my business but
something in this relationship was
missing money I was looking for economic
empowerment I was looking for equality
in earnings I myself had grown up to a
single mother the eldest of four
children so I knew firsthand what the
effect of financial insecurity can have
on a family and on a woman it’s why we
stay in abusive relationships it’s why
we do that job that doesn’t necessarily
make us feel good it’s another form of
control and it’s another way of removing
that autonomy and it wasn’t just my
story that made me feel this way at wah
we’d inspired countless young girls to
start beauty businesses and I was part
of a new generation of beauty salon
owners we’d worked with over a hundred
young women directly men
of whom with single mothers they had
escaped abusive relationships they’ve
never even painted nails before before
finding expression in the skill but they
worked from home before finding comfort
in a salon a lot of them had anxiety and
depression and because of the low wages
many of these nail techs were living on
benefits we’d also work with a charity
called art against knives which has set
to now bars in social housing estates
until over 500 girls now nail skills and
kept them off the streets this new
generation of Beauty professionals had
worked hard in building their public
profile to gain clients like me they’d
use the publishing tools and social
media to get their name seen and heard
but they were all saying the same thing
like some reblogs don’t put food on the
table for these girls self-expression
did not automatically lead economic
empowerment why were we being left out I
thought and thought about how we could
grow our wild business financially how I
could increase my earnings to move
towards that hallowed economic
empowerment that I set for myself
naturally I thought we should get a
salon software system it would increase
my efficiency help with marketing and
allow me to track my revenue but when I
googled what was on the market this is
what they look like after years of me
using the most innovative bits of
technology to build my cool business I
didn’t want to work with something that
looked like it was built in 1998 they
had neither the publishing tools nor the
network Beauty professionals were
artists and creatives and salons were
the original social network so why were
we being left out perhaps it’s because
beauty services are typically seen as
women’s work it’s not stable work it’s
not secure work and in fact 98% of the
beauty services market are self employed
what that means is they have no benefits
no pensions these young talented engaged
women are in a state of financial
instability every day but the beauty
service industry is worth 100 billion
globally so ask again why was too
ecology leaving us out why was it at the
ground level of beauty where all of
these women were doing the work will we
still financially insecure so I decided
to get to work I was like I’m gonna
build my own system I thought by now
it’s 2015 and my love affair with tech
had been rekindled by the emerging
startup ecosystem that we have here in
London the concept of building my own
salon system hadn’t even occurred to me
when I had my little Mac Mini all those
years ago but now now anything’s
possible I began working on my dream
salon software system for one hours we
had a global audience and we had quite a
complicated booking system so it
definitely was not going to be easy but
I’m a woman who gets her nails done and
has run a salon and I’ve worked with
other women
so surely I knew what I was doing and
for the bits I didn’t know namely coding
I could hire four and then it hit me
just like I’ve done with war magazine
this project wasn’t just for me it was
for a whole future generation of women
who wanted to close the gap between
publishing their work on social media
and actually selling their services and
earning money I had an opportunity to
build technology for other women so that
became my North Star I soon realized it
wasn’t just my revelation the
sustainable development goals are a
collection of 17 global goals set by the
UN in 2015 they act as a framework for
world peace and prosperity by the year
2030 goal number five sets out to
achieve gender equality and empower all
women and girls but its target 5b that
interests me in particular promote
empowerment of women through technology
so last year we became an official
participant of that goal and that’s why
I built Beauty stack taking everything
I’d learned from 15 years of being a
girl on the internet to have
self-expression to connect with women
and to gain autonomy mixed with the
future of helping women transact online
economic empowerment beauty stack allows
women to build their beauty portfolios
connect
calendar but most importantly connect
their bank accounts you can buy those
hairstyle all those nails from the girl
who actually created it the UN didn’t
specifically say economic empowerment in
target 5b but for me personally I’d feel
it’s where we’ve made the most
difference after being live for just one
month we’re already seeing the effects
Kali is a now tech who’s living on the
London living wage on Beauty stat she
earns two weeks of her salon wage in a
single day she’s 23 and lives with her
parents and four siblings with their
earnings on Beauty stat she can soon get
her own place and her own independence
Emily was in a salon business over here
with a quite abusive husband when they
got divorced she set up as a makeup
artist on Beauty stack and for the first
time in years she had her own income
going into her own bank account
she actually said here which was quite
emotional for me I don’t feel like a
Stepford wife anymore I didn’t study
computer science or engineering and I’d
never built technology before I just
consumed but now it’s time to create to
build what we consume and not just build
it for ourselves as individuals but to
lift other women so that we can all rise
together how do we help women not just
post but get paid in the same way I have
specialist knowledge from actually
running a salon which gave me the
impetus to build a sonar system by
virtue of sitting here and being a woman
you have specialist knowledge that can
contribute to the building of Technology
for other women women a 50% of our
population but we represent us the 10%
of the starting foundat teams we are 50%
of the population and we receive four
percent of the venture capital and if we
want to go back to economic empowerment
because we only make up 10% of those
founding teams we actually own around 9%
of the equity in startups right now that
are the ninety one percent of equity in
tech companies belongs to men
so the real disruption here is not just
innovation in technology but disruption
in the process of who is creating that
technology I urge you all to think
how you can participate in the building
of Technology how you can turn from a
user into a creator and how can you move
from being a creator into a builder and
as a builder how can you empower and I
mean economically empower women with the
technology that you build we are in the
best time for women to build technology
there is access there are tools and
there is capital and I am living proof
of this my relationship with technology
has gone through many many different
love affairs but I think by building
technology that economically empowers
young women I found myself in an equal
rights marriage so let’s put some food
on the table for those girls [Applause]
had a lot of full starts and to be
honest it often crashed we had something
special
whenever I had a crazy idea we would
work on it together and whenever I had
some kind of thing to say
I felt like within that relationship I
had the freedom to say it it was the
first time I had a partner in crime that
was with me in all of my endeavors
this little inanimate object and I were
inseparable the Mac Mini wasn’t the
first piece of hardware I owned as a
teenager I had an Ericsson pager a Nokia
mobile phone and obviously a Sega Master
System but there was something about the
Mac Mini that made me feel empowered it
was the first time I felt like a piece
of technology had empowered me
empowerment is often defined as having a
sense of self-expression of having
autonomy and the freedom to make
decisions for yourself the starting
point of empowerment in this story was
about being recognized and hurt the
first independent project I made on that
map Mini was a magazine about women in
hip-hop because this was a group that I
felt had no voice I was obsessed with
hip-hop every Friday I would go with my
girl crew go and get my nails done go to
the curb and be all excited but when we
got there we’d be like a handful of
girls in a room of 200 boys they either
expected us to be the DJ’s girlfriend or
someone’s sister and when they found out
that we weren’t either they would ask us
out hit on us and it was highly annoying
it was so frustrating to not just be
able to go out and enjoy the music and I
desperately wanted to talk about that
frustration so I booted up my Mac Mini
and started making war magazine Wow
stood for we ain’t hos when I was 21
years old I spent two months running
around after uni lectures interviewing
women in hip-hop I would interview
female DJ’s female graffiti writers
female break dancers and female rappers
by making this magazine I gave them a
platform for expression and recognition
this little map Minnie had given me a
voice but this wasn’t a singular
endeavor
I built a community for other women this
little piece of hardware had not only
enabled my voice but it enabled all the
other women who felt the same for me it
was a beginning of a journey of using
technology to empower women to other
bits of software had made this little
empowerment party possible Photoshop and
InDesign to make the magazine I sat down
and I taught myself how to use these
programs literally by using the help
function to this date they’ve been the
most useful skills I’ve acquired in
executing all my feminist projects when
we decided to turn wire into a blog in
2006 I could design my own cover headers
when I wanted to host a club night with
female DJs playing hip hop I could
design my own flyer I never had to wait
for a boy to do anything I didn’t have
the frustrations of communicating the
exact shade of jelly pink that I wanted
for the background color of the flyer to
a typically male graphic designer
I even part designed our first book this
featured all of our favorite women from
all the work that we were doing and it
sold 70,000 copies worldwide the fact
that I even contributed to that design
was a revelation to me in 2009 this
community of women had grown online so I
opened now salon to create a physical
space for all of the endeavors that we
were doing online it would act as a real
life Center for our projects I started
one ours with a laptop and a vision I’d
use InDesign to make the shop sign the
window vinyls the now main news I would
just sit at my computer every single
night and make stuff for that shop Adobe
InDesign had given me autonomy the
autonomy to create and the freedom to
run what was now an actual business so
now we’ve moved from hardware to
software but actually the biggest
explosion for the wild business was
social media
I discovered tumblr and used it to
create and build our website I tweet the
HTML again just by googling it to
customize our own theme the reach of our
business
mmunity and our female empowerment
agenda was now limitless for every 500
women who actually came into the nail
salon they’d be another 500 thousand
online who are seeing our nails now
we’re involved in a network the power of
the online network was completely
fascinating to me I’d utilized a single
user software system with Adobe
we’d harnessed a feed based blogging
platform with blogspot but now here was
tumblr and instagram which had given me
all the power of the publishing tools I
had before but in a networked
environment as technology became part of
the daily running of my business I
became quite obsessed with how it was
built and who was building it but this
is where my love affair with technology
stalled
I choose publishing and social media as
an empowerment tool to create and
connect but now I needed an empowerment
tool to earn I was a young business
woman by now and a mother and like most
small businesses I was living fairly
hand-to-mouth technology had given me a
voice I’d gained recognition it had
given me the ability to create so I
found self-expression Tech gave me
autonomy I was making decisions for
myself on my own terms
it definitely been instrumental in
building my brand and my business but
something in this relationship was
missing money I was looking for economic
empowerment I was looking for equality
in earnings I myself had grown up to a
single mother the eldest of four
children so I knew firsthand what the
effect of financial insecurity can have
on a family and on a woman it’s why we
stay in abusive relationships it’s why
we do that job that doesn’t necessarily
make us feel good it’s another form of
control and it’s another way of removing
that autonomy and it wasn’t just my
story that made me feel this way at wah
we’d inspired countless young girls to
start beauty businesses and I was part
of a new generation of beauty salon
owners we’d worked with over a hundred
young women directly men
of whom with single mothers they had
escaped abusive relationships they’ve
never even painted nails before before
finding expression in the skill but they
worked from home before finding comfort
in a salon a lot of them had anxiety and
depression and because of the low wages
many of these nail techs were living on
benefits we’d also work with a charity
called art against knives which has set
to now bars in social housing estates
until over 500 girls now nail skills and
kept them off the streets this new
generation of Beauty professionals had
worked hard in building their public
profile to gain clients like me they’d
use the publishing tools and social
media to get their name seen and heard
but they were all saying the same thing
like some reblogs don’t put food on the
table for these girls self-expression
did not automatically lead economic
empowerment why were we being left out I
thought and thought about how we could
grow our wild business financially how I
could increase my earnings to move
towards that hallowed economic
empowerment that I set for myself
naturally I thought we should get a
salon software system it would increase
my efficiency help with marketing and
allow me to track my revenue but when I
googled what was on the market this is
what they look like after years of me
using the most innovative bits of
technology to build my cool business I
didn’t want to work with something that
looked like it was built in 1998 they
had neither the publishing tools nor the
network Beauty professionals were
artists and creatives and salons were
the original social network so why were
we being left out perhaps it’s because
beauty services are typically seen as
women’s work it’s not stable work it’s
not secure work and in fact 98% of the
beauty services market are self employed
what that means is they have no benefits
no pensions these young talented engaged
women are in a state of financial
instability every day but the beauty
service industry is worth 100 billion
globally so ask again why was too
ecology leaving us out why was it at the
ground level of beauty where all of
these women were doing the work will we
still financially insecure so I decided
to get to work I was like I’m gonna
build my own system I thought by now
it’s 2015 and my love affair with tech
had been rekindled by the emerging
startup ecosystem that we have here in
London the concept of building my own
salon system hadn’t even occurred to me
when I had my little Mac Mini all those
years ago but now now anything’s
possible I began working on my dream
salon software system for one hours we
had a global audience and we had quite a
complicated booking system so it
definitely was not going to be easy but
I’m a woman who gets her nails done and
has run a salon and I’ve worked with
other women
so surely I knew what I was doing and
for the bits I didn’t know namely coding
I could hire four and then it hit me
just like I’ve done with war magazine
this project wasn’t just for me it was
for a whole future generation of women
who wanted to close the gap between
publishing their work on social media
and actually selling their services and
earning money I had an opportunity to
build technology for other women so that
became my North Star I soon realized it
wasn’t just my revelation the
sustainable development goals are a
collection of 17 global goals set by the
UN in 2015 they act as a framework for
world peace and prosperity by the year
2030 goal number five sets out to
achieve gender equality and empower all
women and girls but its target 5b that
interests me in particular promote
empowerment of women through technology
so last year we became an official
participant of that goal and that’s why
I built Beauty stack taking everything
I’d learned from 15 years of being a
girl on the internet to have
self-expression to connect with women
and to gain autonomy mixed with the
future of helping women transact online
economic empowerment beauty stack allows
women to build their beauty portfolios
connect
calendar but most importantly connect
their bank accounts you can buy those
hairstyle all those nails from the girl
who actually created it the UN didn’t
specifically say economic empowerment in
target 5b but for me personally I’d feel
it’s where we’ve made the most
difference after being live for just one
month we’re already seeing the effects
Kali is a now tech who’s living on the
London living wage on Beauty stat she
earns two weeks of her salon wage in a
single day she’s 23 and lives with her
parents and four siblings with their
earnings on Beauty stat she can soon get
her own place and her own independence
Emily was in a salon business over here
with a quite abusive husband when they
got divorced she set up as a makeup
artist on Beauty stack and for the first
time in years she had her own income
going into her own bank account
she actually said here which was quite
emotional for me I don’t feel like a
Stepford wife anymore I didn’t study
computer science or engineering and I’d
never built technology before I just
consumed but now it’s time to create to
build what we consume and not just build
it for ourselves as individuals but to
lift other women so that we can all rise
together how do we help women not just
post but get paid in the same way I have
specialist knowledge from actually
running a salon which gave me the
impetus to build a sonar system by
virtue of sitting here and being a woman
you have specialist knowledge that can
contribute to the building of Technology
for other women women a 50% of our
population but we represent us the 10%
of the starting foundat teams we are 50%
of the population and we receive four
percent of the venture capital and if we
want to go back to economic empowerment
because we only make up 10% of those
founding teams we actually own around 9%
of the equity in startups right now that
are the ninety one percent of equity in
tech companies belongs to men
so the real disruption here is not just
innovation in technology but disruption
in the process of who is creating that
technology I urge you all to think
how you can participate in the building
of Technology how you can turn from a
user into a creator and how can you move
from being a creator into a builder and
as a builder how can you empower and I
mean economically empower women with the
technology that you build we are in the
best time for women to build technology
there is access there are tools and
there is capital and I am living proof
of this my relationship with technology
has gone through many many different
love affairs but I think by building
technology that economically empowers
young women I found myself in an equal
rights marriage so let’s put some food
on the table for those girls [Applause]
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