Women succeed in STEM careers and as tech entrepreneurs

Meet CARMIS—client relationship management software designed to simplify reporting for agencies serving refugees and immigrants.

Western Economic Diversification Canada (WD) helped NSD Tech Inc. upgrade CARMIS to a new version that simplifies reporting and data flow for its not-for-profit users. WD funding from the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy is also helping NSD market the software across the country.

But this is not a story about software. It’s about people.

Sumegha Gupta, NSD President and CEO, stresses the importance of young girls and women going into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers. She says that women are natural multi-taskers and that only the sky is their limit. “Just give them the right tools. It is very, very important, it is necessary to have more voice and advocacy around STEM.”

CARMIS is the story of how Gupta and other women entrepreneurs are making waves in Western Canada today.

Transcript: Women succeed in STEM careers and as tech entrepreneurs

[music]

Text on screen: NSD Tech logo

SUMEGHA GUPTA, President, NSD Tech Inc.:  My name is Sumegha. I’m a coder by heart and an entrepreneur by profession. Where I am today is mostly because of the support I had from my family, especially from my mother, who always helped me and pushed me to do whatever I want.

Video shows various scenes of NSD Tech, coders, office scenes.

SUMEGHA GUPTA (voiceover): NSD Tech is an IT firm. We specialize in website and application design. We design, we code, we do branding, lots of stuff. We are very good coders, and we are not very shy about it! But the main thing on which we are focusing these days is CARMIS, which is a Case Management solution for non-profits.

Scene of branding examples appear on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA: The team I have is like my family. These people just help us achieve everything we are doing today. We have young graduates, we have senior management, which brings the fresh ideas plus the stability which you need in a company.

Scenes of the staff appear on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA (voiceover): We provide solutions in ten-plus languages, because most of the people we work with are immigrants, they have internationally trained experience, we’re very fortunate to have a great team able to do what we do here.

Scenes of the office appear on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA: When I came to Canada it was a challenge before, of course, because coming from a different continent, you’re an emigrant, you speak a different language, you don’t know the rules, that was the barrier which I faced. But because of organizations like SEED Winnipeg and support from government, we were able to find good resources in Canada to navigate through it. So that was the main thing.

Scenes of the staff appear on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA (voiceover): But the game-changer was the Women Entrepreneurship Fund from WD which helped us to excel. It helped us to opportunities which we never thought of. Today we are innovating things, we are creating things, we are going towards AI, we are providing solutions which can be so beneficial for non-profits. And of course the CARMIS, the product we developed using this funding, is a game-changer for many non-profits.

Scene of CARMIS logo appears on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA: Lots of things go when you think of a woman entrepreneur, but the one thing which always bugged me was, why are we always being called “women entrepreneurs” and just not “entrepreneurs”?

Various scenes of the office appears on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA (voiceover): Yes, today the things are changing, we are recognized more, we have more opportunities. It is not easy, it will not happen overnight, but with the right attitude we can keep moving forward. And we can make space and place for the women who are coming behind us so that we don’t have to keep saying “women entrepreneurs,” and maybe near future we will just say “entrepreneurs”.

Scene of the staff appears on screen.

SUMEGHA GUPTA: We need more young girls and women to be part of STEM. If you give a problem to a woman or a young girl and you tell them “Can you solve this?” they will solve it. Women are natural multi-taskers, you know? And what if they have the skills where they can write code, where they can go into science, they can analyze data. The sky is the limit, you know? Just give them the right tools. It is very, very important, it is necessary to have more voice and advocacy around STEM

WD Wordmark appears on screen.

Canada Wordmark appears on screen.

[music stops]