Mentorship as a route to leadership for women in tech
Women remain underrepresented on conference stages and in technical leadership roles. A 2019 study found that only 25% of keynote speakers at tech events are women, and 70% of female speakers reported being the only woman on a panel. Programs aimed at changing that picture often pair structured training with one-to-one mentoring.
Women Developer Academy (WDA) and Road to GDE are two such initiatives run by Google's developer communities. WDA, organized by Women Techmakers, targets professional IT practitioners and has graduated more than 1,000 people worldwide. Its focus is public speaking, presentation skills, and confidence building through workshops and mentoring sessions. Road to GDE is a three-month program supporting people from historically underrepresented groups in tech on the path to becoming Google Developers Experts. Both rely on direct mentor-mentee relationships and an individualized approach rather than a fixed curriculum.
Why these developers signed up
Three Web GDEs involved with the programs took different routes into frontend development but share a common interest in mentoring. Glafira Zhur, a team leader with 12 years of experience, originally planned a career in music before switching to technology; she was reinstall Windows at age 11. Julia Miocene came from more than a decade in product design and was drawn to CSS; she became a GDE to work closely with Chrome and DevTools. Debbie O'Brien, a Developer Advocate with a focus on user experience and performance, joined the GDE community first and has since acted as a mentor for both programs.
For Zhur and Miocene, who became GDEs in January 2022 and October 2021 respectively, the road ran through the first edition of both WDA and Road to GDE. All three describe the value of the GDE program itself as the community: meeting people with shared technical interests, networking, and offering early feedback to the web team. Mentoring, they say, serves a different function—it boosts confidence and gives both sides the chance to create and share knowledge.
What mentees take away
A major component of being a mentee is learning how to share knowledge effectively with other developers. Miocene emphasizes that a mentor is not a teacher but something more: the aim is to create something jointly, whether that is an idea, a lasting connection, or a plan for the future. Zhur says she learned to see social media as a distribution channel for knowledge, however small the piece of advice: even a short tweet can resolve someone's stuck technical issue. “Social media is now my tool, I can use it to inspire people, invite them to join the activities I organize,” she says. “It's not only about sharing rough knowledge, but also my energy.”
Working with mentors who have built audiences for their own channels also helps participants handle the practical side of content creation: picking topics that interest readers, setting up studio lighting, or preparing an engaging conference speech.
The mentor's side
For O'Brien, the best part of mentoring is watching mentees grow. “We see in them something they can't see in themselves, we believe in them, and help guide them to achieve their goals,” she says. “The funny thing is that sometimes the advice we give them is also useful for ourselves, so as mentors we end up learning a lot from the experience too.”
Both Zhur and Miocene say they are ready to mentor other women in turn. Asked what they value most from their own mentorships, both point to confidence—believing in yourself is something they want for every female developer.
Growing through community
The networking that happens around these programs was another key takeaway. Both Zhur and Miocene met inspiring people in their local developer communities during the programs and learned to ask for help, share doubts, and act on feedback. Miocene notes the importance of seeing someone else succeed and following in their footsteps—an opportunity to map out a professional path by learning from others' victories, not just their failures.
The community also offers concrete audience-building opportunities: Zhur recalls receiving multiple invitations during the Academy to share her knowledge on other contributors' podcasts and YouTube channels. But beyond growing an audience, the deeper goal is finding your own voice. As O'Brien puts it: “We need more women speaking at conferences, sharing knowledge online, and being part of the community. So I encourage you all to be brave and follow your dreams. I believe in you, so now it's time to start believing in yourself.”
