Here’s how WDAI started: I was on sabbatical. I knew that at some point I wanted to dive into the fray of all things AI. I come from a data family and worked in analytics, so it was inevitable. Then some former colleagues reached out about a stat they were seeing in the research: that women were adopting AI at slower rates than men. I was not surprised, but I was still very disappointed. I have a daughter, she’s turning two this month, and I think about the gender STEM gap a whole lot. 

I started to reach out to women in my network. Senior, mid/late career, highly-successful, highly-capable women. I thought to myself, “Surely, this group will be different than the average.” But no, the hesitation to experiment was real even in this group within my network. I didn’t have big ambitions to “start a community.” I just wanted to help a few of the women I was talking to first. I thought, “Well, I’m going to experiment. Maybe some other women will want to form a study group with me and experiment together.” I thought I’d get 5 people to sign up for a “study group” with me. 5 turned into 30 in the first week. 50 by the first month. 150+ before the end of the second month. Nichole, my cofounder, was actually one of those in that first week of joiners who reached out and said to me, “Hey, I love everything you’re doing here and I would like to help in whatever way I can.” Extra help in community management? OF COURSE I SAID YES. 

When we reached about 150 members, I realized this was as big as we could get while I could still really manage things organically, so I made the choice to pause the invites and transition the community from “this is an experiment” to “this is something durable and long-lasting.” That was 3-4 months into the life of our community.

Going zero to one can feel so daunting sometimes. I’ve coached a lot of people who were starting out as runners over the years, and I think that there’s a useful analogy here. Running a mile for the average non-runner can seem really hard. When people think about running for the first time, they think, “Wow I’m not a runner. I don’t think I could run a mile.” So they don’t even start. The first thing I coach people on is: you don’t have to run a mile, and you don’t even have to run the entire time. The best way to start is sometimes to just jog for 1 minute, walk for 10 minutes, jog for 1 minute, etc.—rinse and repeat for however long you feel like. Then, over time, move toward flipping that ratio of walk/run time. For most people I coach, there’s this lightbulb moment of: “WHAT. That doesn’t sound terrible. Can I really do that?” Yep. 

Iteration and evolution is part of anything that you start. And the most important part of all of this is committing to taking that first step, then the next, then the next. And that at every point, YOU have the choice to say, “Does this still work for me?” 

It’s OK to close something down; I was very prepared for this if my community experiment didn’t work. I remember telling members, “I am testing out this format for getting more people to learn-by-doing” and if it ends up only being a space to share more links then it’s ok to say, “Cool, this didn’t work.” I also wanted to give myself at least 3 months to figure out how to make it work instead of giving up right at the start. 

It’s also OK to slow down in the middle—like I said, I paused the invites! And this is what I mean by running doesn’t mean you have to run a full mile end-to-end. Sometimes it’s really valuable to step back, pause as you need, and be intentional about the next direction you take something. 

One last thing: it’s wonderfully OK to do something small and then have it surprise you and want to have much bigger ambitions and dreams for that thing down the line. DO let yourself dream big.

Honestly, I didn’t have much of a vision or plan for the community to start. I just knew I wanted to get women in my network together to learn. That was the inspiration nugget. 

And then it was just active listening, participating, and experimenting with the community to see what was valuable, what clicked. For anything that you start, the closer you are to your “customers”—or “members,” in this case—the better you will be able to adjust and iterate on things that they need. And you’ll realize very quickly that, for example, the balance between something like specific goals and open-ended inspiration is an ever-evolving thing. You need both but that balance looks different at every stage of an organization or community.

If I want the women in this community to dream bigger for themselves, for this space, for each other, I needed to paint a vision that also felt wonderfully ambitious and worthwhile. Everything about community comes down to this: the best way to create a healthy, self-reinforcing environment is to always WALK THE WALK.

I wrote these values about three months into the community, but they were always there because it comes down to both what are MY core values as the founder, and what’s my WHY— why did I create this space to begin with. The process of getting these written down though was an interesting mix of a few things! 

1. How was I already communicating the set of values to members? (I wrote every person’s welcome DM in those first 3 months, and every community recap.) What was I already saying when I talked to people about WDAI? 

2. How were other people experiencing those values? I talked to Nichole and some other active members about the thing(s) they valued the most from this space. What made it so special? 

3. Then I put together a draft and shared it with those people to get their feedback: what felt “right” and what didn’t to them. At this point, I also got some additional ideas from ChatGPT around different tones. For example, how to make this sound more fierce and spicy! 

4. I took all their input and re-drafted based on what felt right TO ME. This part is important because feedback is always valuable BUT you have to be the one to ultimately say, “This is it and this is my call on what matters the most.” For example, Nichole came up with a set of 8 values and, very quickly, I made the call that it could not be more than 4. At that moment, I recognized that my philosophy was: “If it is not simple, it will not be memorable.” 

5. Finally, read and simplify, and rewrite again. Because, again, if it is not simple, it will not be memorable. And your values become the ethos of the culture, the community, and the way people think about your organization and community. If it is not memorable, it is not valuable.

This is a value I see ALL THE TIME in the community. For example, every time someone has an idea for an experiment to try and share that back with others. Or every time someone else signs up to run a study group—like creating AI agents—to DO then TEACH.

A great example of unyielding curiosity is when we had a mini watch party in channel for the openAI Dev Day. Some of us who follow this space closely had MANY thoughts to add to the thread; there were something like 39 threaded messages. Then, one member had a great comment to add: “I am here representing all the women who read these 39 messages and only understand about a 1/4 of what you all are talking about. Thanks for the updates and now I shall go and read around them all to try and keep up!” And it was that simple “no question is a dumb question” mentality that got us to stop and actually create a more everyday-person summary of the event to help explain why this was such a big deal for so many of us. And that led to even more questions like “Wait, what’s a token?” Which was great! It’s a very simple question but the fact that members were willing to say “I don’t know and I feel safe enough to ask” is what matters.

You have likely heard the term “disagree and commit.” This is similar but different. As a community—not explicitly but very obviously—we care about diverse opinions. We bring together diverse people, from varying backgrounds, industries, etc. I think very related to that is this idea that you can support THE PERSON without necessarily supporting THEIR OPINION. You can value that everyone can have their own opinion about something, and that actually, you want, and understand, that nothing in life is so black and white. And that’s what it really comes down to. Unwavering support is ultimately about members’ connection to the broader org. We’re doing what we're doing here together. And there is power to doing it together with the varied voices behind the broader WDAI umbrella. 

There’s a line we have pinned in our leaders channel that’s very related to this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

I see women in the community uplifting others by making opportunities available and/or being the encouraging support behind the scenes and the nudge for each other: “You can do this!” We had an event organizer ask for recs from the community for speakers for that AI and healthcare panel. The opportunity was shared with the community, with a few suggestions on who would be GREAT for it. One member expressed interest, but she had some personal hesitation around signing up, since she looked at past speakers and wrote, “I’d definitely be interested but looking at the profiles of past speakers, I’m very under-qualified.” Many of us jumped in and expressed our support and the fact that she was in fact NOT under-qualified but actually the right person with the best experience to speak to the practical applications of AI in healthcare.


Helen Kupp

As Women Defining AI has grown from an experiment into a durable community, it was important to me to clearly articulate what our goals are and how we’ll get there.

Mission, Vision, and Values at Women Defining AI

We aim to level the playing field for women and non-binary individuals

 by closing the technology-gap at work, and 

changing who defines & leads the conversation around innovative technology, starting with generative AI.

people in underrepresented groups are often disenfranchised and devalued during moments of economic and societal transition.

 And research shows that the same risk is present in this moment of widespread workplace AI adoption, particularly for women. Only 1/3 of women are using AI in their personal & professional lives compared to more than half of men. And women still make up less than 30% of STEM related jobs.

To lead the thinking around generative AI, you have to 

 how generative AI works and deeply understand what is possible, what isn’t, and where the risks and possibilities are. You only get there by first learning about the tech, then experimenting with it in earnest. 

That’s how we get to a future where women are truly DEFINING AI.

if we can close the gender-tech gap for women then we start to empower more women to be at the decision-making-table

 by opening the door to more women founding companies, investing or buying companies, and purchasing technology.

we start to close the gender-financial gap and really start to level the playing field for women — that’s the underlying Big Vision and Purpose of our community.

Our Values focus on creating the culture to bring this mission and vision to life. Because it starts here, with us building the system and environment internally that we wish we had externally. At baseline, it’s a community-first ethos which emphasizes that discussions, content, and resources shared within our community are intended for the collective benefit of all members (see our Community Guidelines). And at our best, it’s about bringing to life our biggest, wildest ambitions for women at work.

🔨 Working at the frontier of what’s possible with generative AI means getting into the weeds and actually experimenting with different tools to really understand what is & isn’t possible.

Why: Too often women are the ones who are waiting for the best practices to be published, or tell ourselves that “we’re too busy with other things to carve out time to learn”. But experimenting can be as quick as a 90 second ChatGPT prompt. And we promise you’ll learn more about the quality of AI tech in those 90 seconds, than in any blog article you’ll read.

 🗨️ We embrace relentless learning and encourage each other and ourselves to dive in, ASK QUESTIONS (no question is a bad one), and share openly in a default-to-public-channel manner to inspire the women around you about what’s possible

Why: We have to fail and share that we might not know an answer to something, to create a space where everyone (from beginner to expert) can feel like tackling something as new (or scary) as AI can be possible.

🚀 We’re not here to keep the status quo going, to keep telling ourselves we are “not the expert” or “not technical enough”. Together, we’re here to shake things up and redefine traditional boundaries of what’s possible.

Why: We aim to make waves in the AI landscape… enough said.

 🖤 We actively strive to be allies and supporters in the pursuit of each individual’s goals and aspirations. We recognize that our strength lies in lifting each other up, offering guidance, encouragement, and assistance to each other.

A rising tide lifts all boats — but let’s together, create that rising tide (for this community, and for the women outside of this community).

Why: The world of work was not built for us (women, moms, caregivers, people of color), but this community is. 

We have a chance to BE the change we want to see in this world, and that starts with uplifting each other here & out there.

Mission, Vision, and Values at Women Defining AI

Mission, Vision, and Values at Women Defining AI

Our Mission

Our Vision

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