SAP is Returning to the Lesbians Who Tech Summit, Ready to Welcome a Queer Future

Exactly one year ago I was heading to a conference I had primarily learned about via Twitter.  The account’s bio read: "We are a global community of 50,000 LGBTQ women, trans and non-binary folks, queer women of color, and our allies in tech."

Founded by Leanne Pittsford in 2012, the Lesbians Who Tech Summit is the largest gathering of LGBTQ professionals in the world. Past keynotes include Edie Windsor, Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, Angelica Ross, Kara Swisher and many more. At this tech conference, they don’t just talk the talk, they live it, too. 

Approximately 80% of the speakers are queer women, 50% women of color, 25% black and latinx, and 15% transgender and gender non-conforming. This year’s summit agenda is no exception. This year’s keynotes include Stacy Abrams, Rumman Chowdhury, Rosanna Durruthy and London breed, to name a few. 

Also speaking is our very own SAP Concur VP of Software Development, Michelle Grover, who’ll be talking Saturday, March 2. at 3 P.M. in the Main Stage Castro Theater. Her session is titled “From Green Books to Neighborhood Safety Scores: Innovative Ways to Find Safe Spaces."

The future is queer

I’ll never forget the first time I looked up at the Castro Theater’s marquee that read: “The future is queer, inclusive + badass.” Walking around the Castro neighborhood, rainbow flags line the streets as they hang from light posts, and rainbow colors are painted across wide pedestrian crosswalks. There’s so much rich history in this vibrant melting pot of cultures, immigrants, artists, and gay rights advocates including renowned Castro native Harvey Milk.  

But something stands out during this particular week when the Lesbians Who Tech Summit is in town. The streets are crowded with mostly women, all here to celebrate inclusivity, growth, perseverance, and equality in the tech industry and beyond. Their energy is electric.  

But perhaps my favorite part of the LWT Summit is meeting students at our career fair booth. At SAP, we seek candidates who are culture adds – individuals whose diverse backgrounds and identities help us have a grander and more colorful way of thinking, creating, innovating, and leading. They are our future.

Meet Bharat Sri Vardhan

As he was entering the career fair pavilion during the 2018 LWT Summit’s last day, Bharat Sri Vardhan spotted the SAP booth. Bharat could have been doing anything on this particular Saturday while visiting San Francisco for job prospects from Indiana, where he was completing a master’s degree in Data Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Yet, he found himself shuffled between dozens of students waiting in line to speak with company recruiters as the sky above turned from a cool rainy breeze to small patches of open sunlight. 

“The booth was a busy place,” he recalls. “My first thought was, ‘will I ever get to speak with anybody here?” Eventually, Bharat made it through the line and that’s where I met him and listened to him as he unfolded his background information to me, a complete stranger. 

At our SAP recruiting booth, my team and I spend hours talking to students and interested candidates about our company culture and career opportunities. For recruiters with specific job recs to fill, they have a pretty good sense of who they’ll want to connect with post the career fair. 

It’s an exhausting day, and we don’t always have the right answers. But we continue to do what we love most: Share our personal stories and love for what brings us to our own work desks every morning – a large portion of that is working for a company that embraces our differences and celebrates diversity. 

Bharat shared that he was born and raised in India, and worked in IT a few years before moving to the states for his master’s program. “SAP is a global company, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to SAP,” he says. 

Bharat joined our SAP Internship Experience Project summer 2018 cohort as a data science intern on SAP Concur’s travel products, Hipmunk and TripIt out of San Francisco. “My summer project was equal parts interesting and fun,” he says. “I worked on a machine learning project and in the process I learned a lot.”

He adds: “After meeting all of the other interns, it was clear to me that I was working at one of the most diverse and fun places in the city and country,” 

Bharat recommends that students attending the career fair come prepared with an elevator pitch. Hey, it got him the job!

One year later, Bharat currently works full-time as a data scientist for the same team he interned for. “My favorite [thing about] being part of SAP is the people. [When] working with people who are supportive and helpful, work is more fun than work,” Bharat says. 

If you'll be at the Lesbians Who Tech Summit, come say hello at the Edith Windsor Pavilion Thursday, for our tech crawl demos, and Friday and Saturday, March 1 and 2 for our career booth. Interested in a job at SAP? Join our talent community.