This damned pandemic^[1] has been getting the best of me, but Talking About Mental Health is Important, and it’s more important now than ever. So when I learned that the Data Platform Women in Tech user group was hosting a free day-long online event focused on mental health and wellness, I knew I wanted to participate.

Today I am excited to announce that I will be presenting on “Unleashing your personal superpower” on Friday May 7th:

Building a successful career in tech is hard. Every day is a battle, and sometimes the barriers placed in your way seem insurmountable. Wouldn’t it all be easier if you had a superpower?

Maybe you do.

Greta Thunberg famously described her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis as being a superpower: “I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And – given the right circumstances- being different is a superpower.” We can all learn something from Greta.

In this informal session, Microsoft program manager Matthew Roche will share his personal story – including the hard, painful parts he doesn’t usually talk about. Matthew will share his struggles with mental health, how he found his own superpower, how he tries to use it to make the world a better place… and how you might be able to do the same.

Please join the session, and join the conversation, because talking about mental health is important, and because the first step to finding your superpower is knowing where to look.

You can learn more about the event here, and you can sign up here.

I hope you’ll join me!

^[1] Of course it’s more than just the damned pandemic, but when I first typed “this year” I realized this year has been going on for decades now, and I figured I would just roll with it because finding the perfect phrase wasn’t really important to the webcast announcement and anyway I expect things will probably suck indefinitely and isn’t this what run-on sentences in footnotes are for, anyway?