Hardware Meetup NZ - Women in Hardware

Overview

Come along to our event - Hardware Meetup NZ: Women in Hardware 🎉

There are strides to be made within the tech industry when it comes to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This is especially so for Hardware, and to support this mission we want to launch a series of focused events. We’re kicking off the series with the first event - Women in Hardware.   

This event is perfect for someone who 

• Is part of an underrepresented gender group, this includes women-identifying, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals
• Is interested in hardware or is working at a hardware related organisation
• May be a student wanting to explore the hardware and startup world

It will be a fun evening of learning and socialising that will first start with a panel discussion followed by networking. On the panel, we will be hearing from 3 incredible women with hardware backgrounds.

Speakers

Speaker 1: Kate Davenport from Halter

Kate is a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Auckland, who has been interning with the Production team at Halter for nearly two years. During her internship, she has played an important role in bringing several products to mass production, gaining hands-on experience in setting up production lines, developing reliable processes, and designing testing jigs. Kate is passionate about tackling challenging problems and is an advocate for increasing female representation in engineering. In her free time, she enjoys baking, making music, and bouldering.

Speaker 2: Emily Melhuish from Multitudes

Emily loves to be involved in a range of things from blowing up circuits to riding horses to rockets. She's an Electrical Engineer by trade but has found herself working in the realms of software and data science. With a passion for both hardware and software, she hopes to combine the two to make technology smarter and more sustainable. She’s worked at Rocket Lab and Halter. Currently, she is leading engineering at Multitudes, a startup providing engineering metrics that aren’t creepy to unlock happier and higher-performing teams.

Speaker 3: Dulsha Kularatna-Abeywardana

For Dulsha, becoming an electronics design engineer had always been her passion, to combine her creativity and technical skills to change the world for future generations. As a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, she uses her passion for teaching to enlighten and guide students to excel in electronics engineering. Through role modelling, encouragement and confidence building female students are more likely to follow careers in STEM fields, and so within her role at the university and the IEEE Women in Engineering society Dulsha extends her knowledge and services to encourage women to reach their full potential in the engineering profession.

MC: Mikayla Stokes

Mikayla is a Mechatronics Engineer at Crown Equipment making autonomous forklifts. She loves using tech to make cool wearable things like a light-up dress or 3D printed earrings. She's passionate about creating an inclusive community where any kid can pursue a future in STEM, and is the two time overall female winner of the BrightSparks inventing competition.

Event Details:

• Date: Tuesday 17th September 2024
• Time: 5:30pm 
• Venue: Outset Ventures, Level 4, 24 Balfour Road, Parnell, 1052
• Cost: Free

About Hardware Meetup NZ

Hardware Meetup NZ exists to showcase founders and engineers and the world-leading products they're building, or diving into hardware-specific topics. Since 2016, we've showcased dozens of New Zealand's most exciting physical product companies.

Sponsors

Outset Ventures

Outset Ventures are committed to empowering overlooked science and engineering innovators to transform their ideas into groundbreaking ventures, helping them succeed at the critical early stages. As New Zealand's center of gravity for science and engineering startups and scaleups, Outset is home to a community of 40+ founder-led companies, 5000 square meters of laboratory and workshop spaces, and the country's most active deep technology investment fund.

Lune Digital

Lune Digital is an embedded systems expert specializing in high-tech, IoT and wearable solutions. For the past 10 years, Lune Digital has been assisting visionary companies with hardware design, electronics engineering, embedded software development, and technical advice. They excel in optimizing battery life, boosting power efficiency, enhancing wireless connectivity, and creating scalable, future-proof systems.

Lowndes Jordan

Lowndes Jordan is a top niche law firm with corporate, commercial, property, employment, IP and litigation service offerings.  The firm acts for a wide range of organisations across the spectrum of maturity from startups through to listed companies/multinationals. Lowndes Jordan has deep expertise in the startup space, having acted for startups, founders, investors and employees of startup companies on a wide range of matters including capital raising (including crowdfunding), ESOPs, shareholders’ agreements and disputes, IP protection and licensing, commercial contracts, US flips, acquisitions and IPOs.  Advising on a full range of corporate and commercial transactions, Lowndes Jordan’s highly-skilled team takes a personalised approach to providing clear advice, developing innovative strategies, and solving problems in ways that provide elegant solutions for its clients.

Blackbird Ventures

Blackbird Ventures is a venture capital fund based in New Zealand and Australia. Blackbird backs generational ambition and invests in the best startup companies, all the way through their journey from idea to beyond IPO.

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Event Alignment: This is an independently run initiative and is not aligned with any one organisation.

Media Permissions: My attending this public event, you grant Hardware Meetup AKL permission to photograph, video record, and audio record the event and to use these photos, videos and recordings in our website and Social Media Channels.

Membership: By registering for this event, you will be added to out database so that you will hear about our events first.  Also, you will automatically become a member of Hardware Meetup New Zealand Incorporated.