This post is the case study from my participation at the Mozilla Open Leaders Cohort 7 from January-May 2019 TLDR: I am collecting/sharing academic stories of my colleagues and friends (at EMBL, Bio-IT, Mozilla and other Open Communities). You are invited to contribute to this project by scheduling a meeting with me (use this link) to share your stories/ideas that you would like others to know. (See info on the official Mozilla page)

This post first appeared at Katja’s homepage Author: Katja Ovchinnikova Last week, I co-led a session on ally skills with Malvika Sharan, Sofya Mikhaleva and Paul Gerald Sanchez as a part of the Women’s Day at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. The concept of the ally skills training was originally developed by Valerie Aurora, a former Linux kernel developer. Valerie has designed extensive and well structured materials offering guidelines for learning and teaching how to step up and use our social advantages to support others in workplaces and communities.

On 8 March 2019, with the support from the members of Bio-IT, Staff Association, Equality and Diversity Committee and LGBTQ+ committee at EMBL Heidelberg, I co-organised a skill-building and networking event under the title “International Women’s day: ‘TheyForShe’ Networking and Skill-Building Event“. On March 7th, the event was launched with an Inspirational Seminar by Edith Heard, the EMBL Director General, who shared her career and life story in her talk “Life with two X chromosomes”.