Katarzyna Świtalska (Casha for short) is a financial services professional and Geek Girls Carrots Luxembourg organizer. She graduated from the University of Luxembourg with an MSc in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She is an enthusiastic promoter of local start-up and business scene and collaborates with Grid Design on communication and development. We are proud to welcome her as a new contributor to Silicon Luxembourg.
Kate, you are currently running the association Geek Girls Carrots Luxembourg. What is the purpose of it?
The purpose of the Geek Girls Carrots Luxembourg community is to promote women in IT, to educate and inspire them. We want to motivate women to run their own projects and establish new technology related companies. At our meetups and workshops they can meet interesting people and have the opportunity to find someone new for their projects, start-up teams, or find inspiration for new beginnings.
What do you think of the presence of women in entrepreneurship in general and in Luxembourg in particular?
Sheryl Sandberg once said “A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions, would be just a much better world.” and I am a strong believer in the equality that statement reflects. Worldwide there are a number of female entrepreneurs who can be used as role models, however they are generally not as well known or promoted as heavily in the media as equivalent male entrepreneurs. Luxembourg scores well for the percentage of entrepreneurs who are female with 39% of all Luxembourg entrepreneurs being women. This is the fourth highest percentage in Europe as per European Commission data from 2012. Only being beaten by Liechtenstein, Latvia and Lithuania… there is clearly something about female entrepreneurs and the letter L !
To you, what are the main efforts Luxembourg has to make to boost entrepreneurship?
Most definitely taking the 1-1-1 company initiative forward to fruition.
What topics would you absolutely talk about on the website?
New ventures, businesses and local start-ups, also events associated with entrepreneurship and the start-up scene in Luxembourg.
More info about Geek Girls Carrots Luxembourg, click here.
