In spring 2024, more than 160 tech professionals gathered at the Sistech conference. Photo: Jenn Cress
Discover how a bimonthly meeting grew into a nonprofit organization that supports women in the field of data science.
On the first Tuesday of every other month, about 30 women gather for dinner to talk data, share career tips and offer support in a male-dominated field. She Talks Data, founded by two women in Lakeville, has met every other month at Lela in Bloomington since 2016—and there’s often a waitlist. “There’s no shortage of women doing this work,” says Laura Madsen, a data consultant and co-founder of the Moxy Foundation and Moxy Analytics. “We just tend to be a little bit more in the background.”
Madsen started She Talks Data with Serena Roberts, a former co-worker, with the intention of creating a supportive environment to discuss everything from asking for salary raises to defining professional attire for women. Every meeting had a featured speaker with time allotted for questions and networking. Every other month, they filled the room at Lela. “We were just so tired of feeling alone,” Roberts says. “We thought there’s got to be other women that we can connect with, so we can feel less alone. Not so gaslit. And it turns out, there were lots of other women.”
While they celebrated the success of those bimonthly meetings, their consistent waitlist provided evidence that there was a larger audience for these gatherings.
In 2019, Madsen and Roberts started their own data consulting company, Moxy Analytics. As they worked to launch their company, they decided to bring She Talks Data to a larger audience through a conference: Sistech, a sisterhood of tech professionals. They started The Moxy Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to support Sistech and She Talks Data.
Then COVID-19 hit. In 2021, they held the first Sistech conference with a hybrid model—some attendees in person and others on Zoom. In spring 2024, the second Sistech conference attracted 160 participants. “It was really quite phenomenal,” Madsen says.
Working on She Talks Data together is what inspired them to start their own company. “When we started, I had been at this for 18 years, and I could tell you on one hand how many other women I knew that did what I did,” Madsen says. “We just didn’t have that network or community … It was just a lot of validation that I wasn’t alone in what was a very lonely career up to that point.”
Building a network through those meetings has helped Madsen and Roberts to blaze their own trail, while sharing the tools of success with their industry peers. They don’t charge a fee for She Talks Data because they don’t want to create any barriers to entry. “We get people from all different walks of life,” Roberts says. “You know, it’s been an amazing way to build this incredible network of incredible women.”
