Sara Herald, MBA ’11, Ladies First champion and Director of Venture Development, with Blaze Tracker, the winning team at Technica.
The weekend of November 9th, the Dingman Center hosted a table and sponsored a prize at University of Maryland’s Technica, the nation’s largest female and non-binary hackathon. The Dingman Center table was manned by alumnae of the Ladies First Founders program, a 1-credit course for female and nonbinary students to form a community and overcome gender bias issues in entrepreneurship. The course is the flagship program of the Center’s Ladies First Initiative to get more female and nonbinary students at UMD engaged with entrepreneurship. Many students were excited to learn how they can get more involved with the Dingman Center to help grow their business ideas beyond the hackathon. At the end of the 48 hour hackathon on Sunday, the Dingman Center presented a Kate Spade wallet to Blaze Tracker, the best venture at Technica. Blaze Tracker consists of a team of four computer science freshman who created an app to provide information to those affected by the California wildfires in real time, and for others nearby to open their homes as temporary lodging. They were awarded this prize for having an innovative, unique, and profitable idea. We look forward to the next edition of Technica!