Author Archives for Keren Gu

Grace Hopper Takeaways: Pipeline, Retention, and Diversity

A few weeks ago, I attended my first Grace Hopper Celebration as a technical speaker. There, I presented twice, sharing some findings from my research work on human-robot interaction. I walked away from the conference having learned two new words: pipeline and retention. Don’t get me wrong – I know and understand these words individually, but I’ve never heard these two words used more frequently anywhere else in my life. Every keynote and plenary speaker talked about either the pipeline problem, the retention problem, or both. They picked sides over which is the bigger problem, or waffled between the two. Every brunch, linner, and dinner conversation revolved around these two keywords.