From April 25-26, over 530 attendees gathered at Paulaner am Nockherberg to participate in WE Local Munich.
The event was one of five annual WE Local conferences that the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) organized in 2024. These in-person events offer professional development sessions, engaging speakers, and a networking exhibition to help engineers connect and learn from one another.
Each WE Local conference included a poster competition, and you can find the winners highlighted in this blog post.
This year, each WE Local conference offered a “Live Without Limits” panel. These unique discussions, moderated by FY24 SWE President Dr. Alexis McKittrick, highlighted SWE’s annual theme and exposed attendees to the inspiring stories of women who are paving the way to a more inclusive STEM landscape.
2024 WE Local Munich: By the Numbers
While most attendees came from Germany, WE Local Munich had representation from 17 countries, including Australia, Canada, Dubai, Jamaica, Russia, and the U.S.
The largest proportion of Munich registrants had 11-15 years of experience (18.9%), with a slightly smaller percentage having 16-25 years of experience (17.7%). Attendees with three to five years of experience represented 16.8% of the participants.
The event served individuals across a variety of engineering disciplines, with the largest number of attendees in mechanical engineering (14.8%), followed by electrical and electronics engineering (12.2%) and aerospace engineering (11%).
The top-represented professional levels at WE Local Munich were individual contributors (15.8%). Close behind were mid-level managers (14.9%) and technical specialists (14.1%).
“I liked the positivity, the empowerment, and the diverse topics that were communicated broadly and clearly so that everyone could learn something.” — WE Local Munich attendee
Katja Millard, corporate vice president of critical communication networks at Motorola Solutions, opened the conference with her keynote “I’ll Figure It Out.” Andrea Igl, program head of transformation at Tech Mahindra, gave a keynote talk on “People-Led Transformation” to close the conference.
Dr. Lindarti Purwaningsih, principal engineer, integration engineering at GlobalFoundries, presented a popular WE Local Munich session titled “The Engineer Wears Prada.” She explores the topics in her talk, including dressing authentically at work and dismantling appearance-based biases, in episode 268 of Diverse: a SWE podcast.
WE Local Munich had participation from 26 partner organizations, dozens of breakout talks, as well as a guided walking tour of Munich. Attendees also had the opportunity to meet top engineering and technology organizations at the conference’s networking exhibition.
Explore over 951 photos from WE Local Munich in our Flickr album.
You can read our recap of the 2024 WE Local Las Vegas, Baltimore, and Wichita conferences here and the 2024 WE Local Bengaluru conference here.
Want to join SWE at our next WE Local conference? Wondering if we will hold a WE Local in your area? Visit the WE Local website to find updates on future WE Local conferences, including the dates and locations for 2025!
