The Story Behind our Incredible Women Initiative

Incredible Women is an internal grassroots initiative created for women — and anyone who identifies as a woman — at GetYourGuide. With the mission to help women grow in their careers, the group hosts workshops, open forums, and presentations.

The gatherings serve as a central place for women to connect, discuss, and share challenges. One of the group founders, Julia Randow, director of sales APAC and general manager Dubai, tells us where the idea began and how it evolved into what it is today. She also shares three big realizations she had while coming up with the voluntary initiative.

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The inspiration

The room was buzzing, and you could feel the passion, excitement, and allyship in the air. Everyone seemed so engaged and excited to be sitting with all these incredible women in one room. This scenario was the beginning of a Women in Tech SoftBank conference in San Francisco In 2019. The event was called Connect and Lead and was a summit where influential women leaders from some of the most important global tech companies gathered to discuss what winning meant for women in tech. There were many strong and confident women in the room who knew how they could make a difference — and were not afraid to show that to the world. I can't think of anything more inspirational than that.

We had vulnerable conversations about failing and how these failures — or better said — learnings shaped us into who we have become. We all make mistakes. No one is perfect. The important part is just to talk about it and release tension

The summit kicked off with Adena Friedman, president and CEO at Nasdaq. She was giving one of the most inspirational, powerful, and motivational interviews that I'd ever heard. It was a combination of knowledge-sharing and practical info on how she became successful at Nasdaq. The day was a mix of fireside chats, panel talks, networking sessions, and smaller breakout sessions.

You might also be interested in: Becoming a leader: female forces at GetYourGuide

The speakers uncovered many challenges we face as women in senior positions. They spoke about being the only woman in the room — and how you can best leverage that position. Content aside, it was a great feeling just to have the conversations and discuss the challenges and concerns that most of us are facing. It reminded us that we're not alone. I was attending the event with Claire Davidson, previously the director of GetYourGuide Brand. It was the first time Claire and I realized that we had a shared passion for championing women's growth. This sparked some thoughts

Realization 1: The urgency for change

At the Connect and Lead event, I had never in my career been surrounded by even a fraction of the same amount of senior women in leadership roles in one room. And even less so when I think about being in the tech industry.

Claire and I agreed that this view needs to change. Before getting on our return flights, myself to Dubai and Claire to Berlin, we sat down over dinner and asked ourselves, “What can we do to help women grow and rise?” We both felt mixed emotions of excitement and responsibility. At that moment, we decided to start Incredible Women: a grassroots initiative at GetYourGuide aimed at helping women grow to new levels — and creating a safe space for that to happen.

Getting started
We started in the evenings and weekends to develop and plan content together, based on a bias for action. It started with planning fireside chats with women in our workspace, such as Sharon McCollam, GetYourGuide's first female board member. Before Incredible Women became official, Sharon had already been hosting smaller group sessions for women in senior level positions. Through these conversations she was known for being a great storyteller and fantastic communicator. She had talked early on about being the first and only woman in the boardroom and encouraging others to build self-advocacy.

What was missing at GetYourGuide was not programming or content but a central place for women to connect, discuss, and share challenges. Just enabling that to happen was the most critical step.

Much of the programming is made for and by women, but we believe that to support women and anyone who identifies as a woman, all genders are essential to participating in the discussions. That's why we made most of the programming open for everyone.

One of the most appreciated workshops we’ve held was a breakfast seminar discussing our career journeys. We had vulnerable conversations about failing and how these failures — or better said — learnings shaped us into who we have become. We all make mistakes. No one is perfect. The important part is just to talk about it and release tension. Other things we did were personal brand workshops, virtual after-work gatherings, and forums. We also have a Slack channel to create engagement and a space to discuss inspirational and challenging topics.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and appreciative. Here's some feedback we gathered from one of our sessions:

"I liked that this was a very actionable session, focusing on what steps we can take to improve. I've taken part in many sessions like these, and only very few manage to do this. "

— Practical workshop attendee, GetYourGuide

"Both Claire and Julia were very natural presenters and engaging. It was a good opportunity to consider personal development in a neutral setting and hear reflections from leaders in the organization about their key learnings and examples."

— Practical workshop attendee, GetYourGuide

I like to know that I am not the only one thinking that we, as women, need like-minded women to inspire each other. I would love to have this session all the time just to share insights and knowledge"

— Inspirational panel attendee, GetYourGuide

Realization 2: Creating a safe space

What was missing at GetYourGuide was not programming or content but a central place for women to connect, discuss, and share challenges. Just enabling that to happen was the most critical step. We knew what we needed to do from here on, which made us excited to start thinking bigger, do more, and build on this momentum.

Thinking big

Doing more obviously meant we needed more time and resources. Time, people, and budget were resources we didn't have as this was and still is a grassroots initiative. To meet the demand from more and more GetYourGuide women joining our events, we extended the group to include Amanda Mohlenhoff from our UX team and Krete Paeske from our Executive Assistant team. Having them joining us made a huge difference. Not only did we now have more help, but it was also eye-opening and inspirational to get fresh new perspectives.

We recently added Lizzie Butcher and Steph Hubner from our Sales team and Meg Telson from our Care team. We created an internal survey to see what we could do more to live up to our mission of helping women grow in the organization. We sent it to our Incredible Women Slack channel which has around 200 women and men. Based on survey results, we created programming for all 2021 based on three key pillars: inspiration, practical workshops, and networking.

Realization 3: There’s a demand and we can meet it

To scale anything successfully, I realized that we had to look closely at the 'customer data' from internal surveys and do more of what's working well already. We want to bring people on board who are super passionate and want to make a difference. I'm proud of how far we've already come with Incredible Women and cannot wait to see all the growth opportunities for women that 2021 will bring. Internally, we post our Incredible Women events in our Growth Hub and mention them in our Slack channels and Global or Friday Updates.

For updates on our open positions check out our Career page.

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