Original Article: Corp! Magazine – Digital October 2020
Whim is honored to be selected as a Diversity Focused Company honoree for the 13th Annual Corp! Magazine’s Michigan’s Salute to Diversity Conference and Awards on October 8th, 2020.
As a woman-owned innovation lab and technology partner for businesses, Whim focuses on building a diverse team to support some of the development and implementation of some of the most innovative projects for their clients. The Whim team breaks all the barriers for the percentage of minorities in leadership, and amongst our junior software engineers, cloud architects, and technician team members. Additionally, Whim has pledged to work with organizations that embody similar diversity goals and objectives.
Our mission is to be a leader in the advancement of gender equality and empowerment of women as a culture, and as a team that works with like-minded clients, to drive new innovations and creative solutions to grow businesses and customer experiences with those goals. “The entire technology field has received a reputation for being an especially male-dominated and Whim has taken great strides in breaking that stereotype,” said Holly McLellan, Whim’s People & Operations Manager. “Whim has made it their mission to celebrate technology advancement and champion the women wielding innovation through technology.”
As a part of Whim Labs, CEO Lori McColl has also founded the Detroit Fashion + Tech Hackathon, a 36-hour weekend innovation challenge that brings together diverse teams with the goal of creating new tech solutions. This year, Whim hosted the event with participants spanning the globe. The event brought together 11 countries and people from across the United States.
“It is a definite struggle to ensure that all people are represented in the technology world and the Detroit Fashion + Tech Hackathon offers a challenge open to everyone which ultimately inspires technology-centric leadership aspirations from all backgrounds,” McLellan said.
Prominent tech companies have made little progress in their stated goal of hiring more minorities. To deliver change, Whim embraces the power of diversity with a “powerful team that embraces agility, process, deep technical knowledge, and creativity.”
“We empower our diverse minds to support a new innovation vision,” McLellan said. “There must be a place for the best minority software engineers and architects to thrive and grow their careers. You can’t create, design, and implement solutions that change peoples’ lives if your teams aren’t embracing diversity.” By embracing diversity, Whim has seen many advantages brought to the organization: increased creativity, stronger governance, and better problem-solving abilities – which brings about increased profitability.
“By employing people with diverse backgrounds, Whim has brought together a group of people who bear their own perspectives, ideas, and experiences – all of which has helped us create an organization that is resilient and effective – outperforming organizations that do not invest in diversity,” McLellan said.