Member Spotlight | Meeting a Need to Belong - Jenifer Chilcott founder of iWIST
Jenifer Chilcot, Counsel with Farris’ Victoria
Our lifetime membership recipient for 2024 is Jenifer Chilcott, Counsel with Farris’ Victoria, practicing primarily in the areas of technology law, Internet law, intellectual property, commercial law and privacy.
What did it take to plant the seeds that eventually became Island Women in Science and Technology?
According to Jenifer Chilcott, bringing together women in technology seemed like the best move to make when she moved to Victoria from Ottawa 16 years ago. “When I moved to Victoria 16 years ago from Ottawa to set out to build a practice in my area of expertise, technology and IP, I had no idea that Victoria had such a robust tech community! I thought that I might have to default to my second career as a trained sommelier! Way more fun, but less money”. She did attend tech focused events and functions to try and get involved but she often felt like “the other”. Jenifer didn’t blame the culture of those organizations - they weren’t unique to Victoria - with an emphasis on a male model of connecting, usually based on beer.
While chatting with a client, Ryley McKenzie – the Founder of Expeto, who was also quite new to Victoria at the time - Jenifer took him up on his offer to introduce her to a couple of other women in tech who were likewise feeling isolated.
That was the beginning of what was to become iWIST, “Once we connected, we met for drinks, and immediately bonded over our shared experiences as women in the local tech community. We decided to organize a lunch, and to extend an invitation to any woman we could think of working in tech – adding encouragement to spread the word”.
She really didn’t know if anyone would even show up that day. “When the day came, we had no idea who would show up, and thought we’d be lucky to get around 10 people. Over thirty came to that first lunch at a now-closed restaurant on Yates. After an amazing couple of hours of sharing experiences, and lots of laughs, it was clear that there was both a need and a desire to organize. We shared the common feeling of “not fitting in” with the existing tech culture. We collected email addresses, and that was our first unofficial membership list.” For Jenifer it was a revelation to see how eager local women in tech were to connect with each other. She arranged for no-cost breakfast meetings at the Empress where attendees could discover that they really weren’t alone. “I scrounged around and found speakers – usually women who held leadership roles in local tech companies, often my clients”, Jenifer explained, “Sometimes we had as many as 70 or 80 attendees”.
Bringing women together as Island Women in Tech (iWIT) demanded a lot of her time, and she soon realized the need to focus on building her practice and being a mom to her son. “That’s when Robyn stepped up and offered to help. I trusted her passion for the group and iWIST has now grown into an amazing community. We aren’t alone”.
Secret Power: Jenifer is a trained sommelier and, prior to moving to British Columbia in 2008, was a part-time instructor in the Sommelier certification program at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario.
Early iWIT Christmas breakfast at The Empress