WIB-RTP & Carolina Women in Tech: End-Of-Year Celebration, December 6, 2023

On December 6, 2023, the RTP Chapter hosted an event in collaboration with Carolina Women in Tech (CWIT) and Society for Information Management (SIM) to celebrate our 2023 achievements and engage our community. The event was an in-person event at the Hyatt Southpoint in Durham. Big Thank You to Meta Ripke-Wieberand, Area Director of Sales, RTP Market for the Hyatt, for donating the venue! We were accompanied by four local women-owned businesses: Melanated Wine, Sabika Jewelry, Violette Eve Candle, Samthi Designs, Women’s Center, and Connecting Community, a non-profit organization.

Our committee chair, Shirley Paddock, provided a high-level overview of WIB-RTP's mission and membership benefits and our 2023 Achievements below:

• We hosted 12 events (YWIB included) with over 1100 attendees.
• Our mentoring program (MAPS) has over 120 current mentees across four different groups; Midtown Young Professionals MAPS will start in January 2024!
• We grew membership from 345 to 425, almost 25% growth over 2022.
• We hosted our first chapter event outside of RTP (Wilmington).
• We raised $10.5K for sponsorships and secured a Leading Chapter Sponsor.
• We have over 3800 followers on LinkedIn – the highest of all chapters!
• We “graduated” our first set of start-up board-ready leaders via our 3.8 program.
• We completed our 5th year of executive mentoring (eMAPS) and modified the curriculum.

Shirley Paddock recognized the RTP team for the achievements, referred to her team as the “secret sauce,” and ended by thanking all of our sponsors, members, and volunteers for their support. Lindsey Epps, from Carolina Women in Tech, provided a high-level overview of the organization's mission and the 2023 Achievements for the chapter. She also gave a sneak peek of upcoming events in 2024. This was an immensely successful event where we fulfilled our objectives of celebrating our achievements, empowering our community with TED talks, which have been a phenomenal success with our attendees, supporting women-owned businesses, and bringing our communities together.