We are honored to have so many amazing thought leaders joining us in the DevZone at Dreamforce 2015 to share their experience, inspiration, and practical advice.

These luminaries will address two key themes:

• Growing Developers: how to cultivate developers to meet the needs of a growing tech economy, in ways that create new job/business opportunities and add diversity to the tech workforce.
• Workplace Inclusion: how to use technology to increase diversity at work & how to recognize our own unconscious biases, and rethink our assumptions to make our companies more inclusive.

The Dreamforce Agenda Builder is LIVE, so jump in and make sure these luminary developer sessions are on your schedule. If you haven’t registered for Dreamforce yet, do it now, using the Developer Discount Code D15DEVPR.

Luminary Sessions: Growing Developers

Karla Monterroso, VP Student Programs, CODE2040

Code2040: The Future of Tech
CODE2040 creates access, awareness, and opportunities for top Black and Latino/a engineering talent to ensure their leadership in the innovation economy. Join us to hear how CODE2040 is supporting innovative entrepreneurs, connecting students with tech internships, and helping engineers get their first or next job in tech. Hear how you can participate in increasing diversity in tech.

Ashara Ekundayo, Chief Creative Officer, Impact Hub Oakland

DJ Cavem, O.G. and Founder of EcoHipHip

Cultivating A Healthy Development Team
Permaculture is a system of social design principles centered around simulating patterns observed in natural ecosystems. Join us to learn how to apply these principles to your workplace to grow a healthy, diversified, sustainable development team.

Corinne Warnshuis, Executive Director, Girl Develop It

Girl Develop It: Unlocking Tech Potential in Women
Operating in 50 cities, Girl Develop It provides affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning web and software development. Join us to hear from GDI’s Executive Director as she shares her journey from student to leader, and stories of how women of diverse backgrounds have achieved their technology goals and built confidence in their careers and their every day lives. If there isn’t a GDI chapter in your city, maybe there should be!

Susan Mernit, CEO, Hack the Hood

Hack the Hood: Empowering Youth with Tech Bootcamps
Hack the Hood introduces low-income youth of color to careers in technology. Join us to hear how they are inspiring and empowering young people by providing the training and experience needed to land a job in tech while building websites for small businesses in their own communities. In the past year, the program has expanded to serve six times the number of youth. See what it’s all about and how you can start hacking the hood in your own community.

Dr. Sathya Narayanan, Associate Professor, California State University Monterey Bay

CSUMB & Salesforce: Changing the Pipeline
Concerned about increasing underrepresented minorities in the tech pipeline? Join us to hear from Dr. Sathya Narayanan, Director of CSUMB’s Computer Science program. He’ll share how California State University Monterey Bay is changing the pipeline through their innovative CSin3 program which offers a timely and cost effective way for underserved students with economic hardships to complete undergraduate degrees in computer science in just three years. Also hear how Salesforce is helping to make the connection between learning and employment through internships.

Elaine Marino, Owner, LadyCoders Productions

Margaret Spyker, Map Scientist, GIS and Data Analyst, Xentity Corporation

Go Code Colorado: Inspiring Innovation & Opening Data
Public data is an underutilized resource developers and entrepreneurs should be able to use to build apps and businesses. But not all government agencies see the value in making their data publicly available. Go Code Colorado challenges developers to create apps that solve business problems—and creates new businesses in the process. Join us to hear about how Go Code is creating a community that values open data, from state agencies that are making their data public, to developers that are creating innovative solutions to make Colorado a better place to do business.

Luminary Sessions: Workplace Inclusion

Marilyn Nagel, CEO, Ready Aim Fire

The Unconscious Mind and Inclusive Decision Making
Neurologists have proven that our thinking, perception and actions are shaped by activity in our brain that occurs outside of conscious awareness or control – this results in unintentional influences that may not align with our values, or the values of your company. We call these unintentional influences “unconscious bias” and they are neither good nor bad. In this interactive workshop, participants will have an experience of how our unconscious mind works, discuss how unconscious patterns impact groups particularly around decision making at work, and put in place strategies and actions that can be taken by each of us to balance conscious intent with unconscious beliefs to build a more inclusive environment.

Brit Fitzpatrick, Founder & CEO, MentorMe

Guide to Building a High-Impact Mentoring Program
Thinking of starting a mentoring program? You’re not alone. Did you know that more than 60% of college and graduate students listed mentoring as a criterion for selecting an employer after graduation? Getting a mentoring program up and running successfully requires significant time and resources. But, too many programs barely get off the ground. Before you get cleared for takeoff, there are a few things you should consider when designing your mentoring program. Join Brit Fitzpatrick, Founder & CEO of MentorMe and creator of the Mentoring Canvas, to learn how you can apply lean startup methodologies to build a successful mentoring program for your organization.

Stephanie Lampkin, Founder & CEO, Blendoor

Hacking Unconscious Bias: Diversity on Purpose
Recently, America’s top tech companies have shared employee diversity stats: 90% White or Asian and 75% Male. These numbers have actually gotten worse since the first tech boom of the 1980’s. Why? There are several underlying factors, but we’ll explore how people are hacking unconscious bias to increase diversity recruiting at tech companies. Unconscious bias is the natural way in which the brain processes certain cues such as race, gender, sexuality, ‘ableness’ and the way someone’s name sounds which often lead to unfounded judgements about one’s qualifications for a role.

Wait There’s More!

There’s one more session I’d like you to attend about workplace inclusion…mine!

Hacking the Tech Workforce

It’s been over a year since Silicon Valley tech companies published their dismal diversity stats, showing the low number of under-represented minorities and women in tech. In response, we’ve seen a growing community of entrepreneurs and programmers hacking the tech workforce, one hackathon/conference/company at a time. Join us to hear their stories and learn how to implement these hacks in your workplace.