Inside the August WIT Forum: Closing the Opportunity Gap

Three people pose and smile in front of a purple backdrop with WIT Women in Technology logos. The group includes two women and one man dressed in business attire.

Every WIT Forum starts with a question, and this month’s, delivered live to a packed room, cut right to it: is there really a promotion gap between men and women in tech?

Roughly 80% of the room said yes. And the data our panelists brought to the stage backed them up: according to McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org’s Women in the Workplace 2024 report, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women were promoted at that same stage. The gap doesn’t open up mid-career. It starts at the very first promotion, and compounds from there, into pay, into retirement contributions, into every opportunity that follows.

That’s the kind of insight WIT Forums are built to surface. But the real value of this session wasn’t in naming the gap. It was in what our panelists, Jasmine Grant, Ryan Radding, and Kanyatta Walker, gave the room to do about it.

Mentors help. Sponsors move careers.

One of the sharpest distinctions raised on stage: mentors are common. Sponsors are rare, and they’re the ones who actually advocate for you in rooms you’re not in. As one panelist put it, “who’s got the juice” in your organization? Who’s quietly taking on more, growing their scope, showing up in conversations before the job is even posted? Those are the people worth building relationships with, not because they can hand you a promotion, but because visibility, sponsorship, and opportunity tend to travel together.

Find your “superpower,” then talk about it.

Panelists pushed back on the idea that doing great work is enough on its own. In today’s environment, being your own advocate, professionally, not performatively, is part of the job. That starts with identifying what you uniquely bring (your “superpower,” as one panelist called it) and being intentional about how you communicate it, whether that’s in a 1:1, a hallway conversation, or the meeting before the meeting.

The system changes as you rise, and that’s not a secret you’re supposed to already know.

Another key point: promotion decisions get less personal and more institutional the higher you go. Early-career moves might be a single manager’s call; senior-level moves happen in rooms with names like leadership committees or promotion boards, rooms most people don’t know exist until someone tells them. Understanding who actually sits at that table, and who influences them, is part of navigating the system rather than just working hard within it.

Negotiate anyway, even when the answer is no.

The panel also tackled a common misconception directly: one attendee cited newer research that shows women do ask for raises and promotions at rates comparable to men, they’re just told no more often. The advice from the stage wasn’t to stop asking. It was to treat repeated “no’s” as information: know your market value, and be willing to look outside your organization’s walls if your organization won’t recognize it inside them.

What happens next

This is where WIT Forums do their real work, not in the panel discussion itself, but in what attendees carry out of the room. Every attendee left with a discussion guide to keep the conversation going with their teams, their WIT groups, and their own networks. That’s the multiplier effect of these sessions: one morning of insight, translated into hundreds of conversations across the companies represented in that room.

If this conversation resonated, there’s more where it came from. On October 9th, we’re hosting the WIT Careers in Action Summit: a half-day program focused on professional development, community, and intentional career advancement at every stage.

Thank you to our Presenting Partner

None of this happens without the partners who make WIT Forums possible. Thank you to our presenting partner, Tier4 Group, for supporting this session from start to finish.