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Nakeema Stefflbauer is bringing underrepresented women to Berlin’s tech scene.
Nakima Steffelbauer had only lived in Berlin for a few years when refugees from countries like Syria and Iraq began arriving in Germany in large numbers in 2015. A New York native who became familiar with Arab and Middle Eastern culture through her travels in the area, Steffelbauer decided to volunteer to support the newcomers. She says that the people she talks to are grateful to talk to someone who “understands their community, who, contrary to the general view of Germany, is backward and not up to speed with modern technology.”
In the year Stefflbauer, who worked in various tech positions before moving to Berlin in 2013, was dismayed by what she saw. She has been working with an organization that aims to connect immigrants to the tech community, but she feels the group is overlooking female immigrants in its immigration efforts. “I was upset,” she says. “The people leading the effort didn’t care about the technology or the gender imbalance in their program as long as there were refugees standing in front of their photos.”
She decided to take matters into her own hands. Steffelbauer began visiting refugee hostels in the city to find women interested in learning tech skills. With a few members of the original team, she formed a new NGO.
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Like other tech hubs, Germany has challenges around race and diversity. According to a national survey, more than half of first-generation immigrant startup founders surveyed reported experiencing racism. In the German information technology and communication sector, the number of women in management positions in software development and programming is only 9 percent. “Companies are talking about differentiation, competitiveness and innovation,” Steffelbauer says. But how and what are you innovating when everyone looks and talks?
FrauenLoop (“Women’s Loop” in reference to the idea that women are getting out of the loop in the tech world) Since its inception in 2016, the grassroots initiative FrauenLoop (“Women’s Loop”) has been growing ever since. He has tied up with various companies, including GitHub, EcoVadis and Taxfix, who donate funds and host workshops. FrauenLoop now has a core team of around 30 consultants, and each year around 150 female participants take courses in areas such as full-stack web development, data science and software test automation. The organization offers job search support — and advice for navigating and developing in what Stefflbauer calls a “non-utopian” tech hiring environment.
About 40 women from different nationalities participated in the program. Stefflbauer cites examples of participants who have gone on to find well-paid jobs in the industry, including seven former trainees who have joined SAP. On average, 10 to 15 of the 50 women who complete the organization’s extended 12-month program each year are hired in full-time positions, she said. “Following up with women after the training is key for me,” she says.
FrauenLoop’s numbers may seem small compared to the scale of Berlin’s technological diversity challenges. But Sarah Chander, senior policy adviser at the Brussels-based European Digital Rights Group, says the organization has been doing important work. “FrauenLoop is one of the most marginalized and marginalized women-centric tech inclusion startups,” she says. This was especially important in a world where tech companies systematically excluded and disadvantaged women of color. Chander said she expects FrauenLoop’s influence to spread widely in Europe.
Steffelbauer works for the German Startup Association and is working on a book featuring first-person accounts of black women in prominent positions in global tech industries. All of this is part of her broader goal of pushing for change. “While the sector is globally important and influential, it should be a place where we can all see ourselves, be accepted and have our aspirations fulfilled,” she said.
Gori Sharma is a freelance journalist and writer based in Berlin.
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