Women Tech Quest marks ninth event

LAHORE: More than 3,000 women from various fields of technology recently attended the 9th Women Tech Quest event, an initiative of 10Pearls, in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

The competition having been a longstanding success in Pakistan, was also launched in Costa Rica, Latin America, marking a significant milestone in its global outreach in 2024. It comprised three streams: ‘coding’, ‘testing’ and ‘design’. The coding competition included a series of problems presented to the participants; they could use any programming language to solve them. The ‘Testing’ competition presented contestants with a set of objectives to test database and automation concepts; while the ‘design’ competition required participants to solve a UI/UX challenge, and their approach towards user research, persona building and user flows was gauged.

There were two categories -- professional and student -- for each stream, in each city. Each city had 6 winners, so in total 18 winners were announced. Winners received grand cash prizes and shields, whereas all participants received ‘swag’ kits and certificates of participation.

According to Head of People & Programs -- EMEA, 10Pearls Syeda Sana Hussain: “The ninth chapter of Women Tech Quest has solidified its purpose in the minds of young, female tech-enthusiasts nationwide. It goes to show that our vision nine years ago of creating an inclusive space of women to come forward in tech has come to fruition and with each year we are just getting bigger and better. Every year, we are breaking even more barriers and reaching out to more and more women. Now all our focus is on the next WTQ which will mark a decade of empowering women and accelerating careers.” Every year a carefully curated panel of inspirational speakers also mentor these young women on various topics and conduct workshops, not only leading the participants to share their own experiences but also gain industry knowledge and bolster other women in the field to grow and excel.