Dear WISP Community,

WISP’s seven founders first convened in 2014 to further a shared mission – promoting the development, advancement, and inclusion of women in the information security and privacy fields. In two short years, with the dedicated support of our membership community, WISP now has over 700 members nationwide. We’re excited by this growth and the potential it holds for WISP’s future.

As WISP Project Director, I’m proud to announce another critical milestone. WISP has achieved official status as a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, an SF Bay Area 501(c)(3). With our new non-profit status, WISP can now expand its current fundraising activities and membership offerings. Our 2016-2017 plans include:

Advancing our “Tandems” peer-to-peer mentorship program
Providing practical and technical workshop intensives, such as our June event on web application security
Establishing a strong pipeline of future female leaders across STEM fields, particularly in the security and privacy industries
Launching our education initiative to faciliate WISP members to educate high school girls about privacy and security career paths
Continuing to host networking events and career advancement programming
Creating opportunities to feature our members and their achievements
Developing a variety of member resources, including a job board, calls for publications, community discussion, and partner event discounts
Partnering with the #EqualRespect program to achieve equal representation of women at conferences.

We would love to partner with you to achieve these goals. If you or your company shares support for our mission, please consider joining WISP as a Founding Corporate Sponsor. Contact us for additional information. Or, you can make a tax-deductible donation online.

Also, please join us at our next event on June 21, 2016. We’re partnering with Security Innovation to host a fun Web Application Hackathon Game to teach the importance of effective website security and secure coding habits.

There’s a lot of work that lies ahead, but we are confident that with our new non-profit status, we can continue to build a strong and collaborative community of WISP professionals.

Thank you for your continued support!

Kenesa Ahmad

Project Director, Women in Security and Privacy