Dotty Scott talks about building confidence through local networking and public speaking, and shares her experience with clients who preferred men for technical work. She encourages women and girls to pursue STEM and computer science.
Well, I started off being not so much a people person, and I really changed that. I've grown a lot in that aspect. I started with a local networking group here, and they met twice a day. There was like, I don't know, 50 chapters in the Vancouver-Portland area, and the rules were if there was nobody else doing what you did, if you were a member, you could go to any of the meetings. So my job that I quit started at like 11 or so in the morning. And so every morning I would go to a networking meeting and I would force myself to be able to meet people I didn't know because I was in a community I didn't grow up in. We actually had just moved there. I didn't know anybody. When I jumped into this. So I didn't have the, you know, support of other business owners that could help me along. And that's why I joined that networking group, which was probably one of the best things that I did. The other thing that it taught me was I could get up in front of a small group of people and actually say something. I was not a public speaker. I, the first time I did that, my voice was shaking. I was scared to death and there was maybe 10 people in the room. So, so that has been a big growth as well, or change or learning experience, whatever you want to call that. So now it doesn't freak me out quite so much and I'm able to get my message across to people in, in ways that they can understand. And relate to. You know, as far as some of the other challenges I've had, um, you know, you probably— well, you say you have a lot of women in your life as far as your family goes, so maybe you will have at least experienced this through them. I've had people along the way that will call me up and, you know, want a website And I go to meet with them and they're like, well, I want to work with a man. Hmm. It's like, huh, well, you called me and the last time I looked, I don't know any men named Dotty Scott. Um, well, well, can you refer me to, to a man that does what you do? And the very first time this happened to me, because it's been more than once, I actually was friends with a guy who did what I did, and I called him up right after that meeting. I'm like, do you, would you want to work with this person? He goes, no, why would I want to work with somebody that is like that? But so, you know, he was left in the wind, but, you know, I've had that sort of an adversity all along. To where people, for whatever reason, I'm in the STEM field, if you want to call it that. They do in schools anyway. And it's dominated by men. And I'm here to tell all of the women out there, all of the girls in high school, that women can do this better. Than men, because not only can we learn the skills, but we can relate to people on a level that most of the guys that I know that do my job can't. So I just want to throw that out there. So if you're thinking about getting into any of the STEM sciences fields, um, computer science, anything, you can do that.
