
Events that Engage, Empower and Educate

Data-Driven Dreams: Is Your Car Your Friend or Big Brother?
Road trip, anyone? As AI takes the wheel, our vehicles are learning and adapting to their surroundings. Cars are evolving into data-gathering machines but at what cost? Are we heading towards secure connectivity and personalized mobility, or socially segregated and congested cities under data surveillance? This panel of influential experts will explore advancements in AI, cybersecurity within the automotive space to help shape a future where vehicles will be your best friend and not Big Brother.
Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Time: 2:30 - 3:30 PM CT
Location: Hilton Austin Downtown, Salon G
Past Events
Difficult Conversations: Breaking Down Automation Levels
You’re invited to a Difficult Conversations event on levels of vehicle automation where we’ll explore the difference between L2, L2+, L3, and L4. Join us to hear from experts at Zoox, Plus, and more. We hope to see you there!
Date: Wednesday, March 5th, 2025
Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location: Huddle Community Space at Google Visitor Center
2000 North Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View, CA 94043
WAT Summer Happy Hour
You’re invited to a Women in Automotive Technology Summer Happy Hour! Join us for an evening of networking and fun at Salesforce Park Beer Garden.
Sponsored by Massed Compute, Pure Storage, and Amaara Networks!
Date: Tuesday, August 6th
Time: 5:30 - 7:30 PM PT
Location: Salesforce Park Beer Garden
Difficult Conversations: Exploring Our Love Affair with Driving
You’re invited to a Difficult Conversations event on personal vehicles and other forms of transportation. We’ll explore our love affair with driving and facilitate a dialogue on various mobility solutions like personal cars, bicycling, public transit, and EVOTL, along with the prospects of a mixed mobility future.
Date: Thursday, April 25th,
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 PM PT
Location: Hyundai CRADLE
Entering the Era of AV 2.0: How Generative AI is Streamlining Autonomy
The autonomous vehicle (AV) industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven largely by generative AI. Specifically, developers are shifting from software architectures relying on multiple deep neural networks to a singular, unified deep neural network – an approach known as AV 2.0. This panel will discuss the intricacies of this evolution, exploring recent generative AI advancements and development needs associated with the convergence toward a unified architecture.
Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Time: 5:30-7:30 pm PST
Location: STAR Space
Sponsored by Star
Celebrate the New Year: WAT & WIA Happy Hour
Kick off the New Year with style at our Women's Happy Hour! Join us for an evening filled with laughter, good vibes, and the perfect start to a fantastic year ahead.
Date: Thursday, January 18th, 2024
Time: 5-7 pm PST
Location: Prive Sushi Sake & Spirits
1125 Burlingame Ave, Burlingame, CA
Sponsored by AutoSens Academy
Difficult Conversations: Ensuring Autonomy with Safety, Privacy, and Security for Women in Autonomous Vehicles
Date: Thursday, October 26th 2023
Location: Cruise Sunnyvale Corporate Office
840 W California Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Time: 4:30 - 6:30 pm PST
We are excited to announce our next event of the Difficult Conversations services: Ensuring Autonomy with Safety, Privacy, and Security for Women in Autonomous Vehicles. This event will be around the exchanging of ideas featuring esteemed female experts, centered around the crucial realms of safety, privacy, and security within autonomous vehicles. These conversations will delve into the multifaceted dimensions of Safety, Privacy, and Security tradeoffs in Autonomous Vehicles for Women, offering insights from security, product development, and regulatory/policy perspectives. Each role's unique considerations for the well-being of women and vulnerable individuals will be explored, uncovering viewpoints, proposed solutions, obstacles, and vital considerations for our audience.
TCXpo National Demo Day & CAV Canada – A Double-Hitter on the Future of Smart Mobility
Date: September 27 & 28, 2023
Location: Area X.O in Ottawa, Canada or online from the location of your choice
TCXpo, the national smart mobility demonstration day hosted by Area X.O, the R&D complex for next-gen smart mobility, connectivity and autonomy in Canada’s Capital, Transport Canada and fellow public and private sector partners
Date: September 27, 2023
Time: 5AM – 1PM PST; 8AM – 4PM EST
CAV Canada, the co-located smart mobility conference hosted by Area X.O with co-founding multinational partners such as BlackBerry QNX, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia and Accenture and 500 participants from industry, government, academia the investment and non-profit community
Date: September 28, 2023
Time: 5AM – 2PM PST; 8AM – 5PM EST
Women Driving the Smart Mobility Revolution
Area X.O, Invest Ottawa and Women in Automotive Tech are bringing to you a smart mobility focused discussions this March 29 as part of #IWW2023.
Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM PDT/ 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT
This event is free and open for all to attend. Please click the button below to register via Hopin. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Difficult Conversations: Automotive Propulsion
We are thrilled to announce that WAT will be kicking off an exciting series Difficult Conversations next month hosted by Hyundai Cradle, and we want to make sure that you save the date! Our event is dedicated to Automotive Propulsion EV vs ICE and will bring together different perspectives from across the industry.
This is a fantastic opportunity to network, learn, and engage with like-minded individuals. We have an exciting lineup of speakers and activities that you won't want to miss.
Date: Thursday, March 9th
Time: 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm PST
Location: Hyundai Cradle
1335 Terra Bella Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043
A link will be provided for those who cannot attend in person.
More details will be sent to you soon. In the meantime, please mark your calendars and plan to join us for a great time!
TCXpo: Area X.O Canadian Smart Mobility Demo Day
An Epic Canadian Smart Mobility Demonstration Day Hosted by Area X.O in partnership with Transport Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED)
WHEN: Tuesday, September 20, 2022
TIME: 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM EDT
WHERE: Ottawa, Canada (virtual link to be provided)
Mobility Innovator Forum
You are cordially invited to the 7th Mobility Innovators Forum at San Francisco’s famous Palace of Fine Arts.
Join us for the 7th MIF 2022, where we’ll be discussing, showcasing, and debating how to best harmonize interconnected innovations of the mobility ecosystem to make human-centered mobility future visions a reality.
We’re thrilled to be hosting a diverse range of speakers from the mobility space: government leaderships, startups, VCs, and more.
WHEN: Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
TIME: 1 PM ~ 6 PM PDT,
Startup exhibition opens at 10:30 AM PDT
WHERE: The Palace of Fine Arts in SF,
In-person event
Don’t wait, reserve your spot today for what promises to be a very compelling and meaningful forum.
WAT Summer Kick-Off Happy Hour
The WAT board would like to kick off the summer and welcome everyone back with Happy Hour at British Bankers Club!
Date: Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Time: 4:30-7:00 pm PST
Location: British Bankers Club
555 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025
http://www.britishbankersclub.com
Full Throttle: Engage Women Driving the Smart Mobility Revolution
Award-winning founders, innovators and researchers. Leaders driving global innovation collaboration to improve our world. World-leading experts in self-driving cars, AI, 5G and robotics.
Welcome to Women Driving the Smart Mobility Revolution, an International Women's Week event hosted by Area X.O operated by Invest Ottawa and Women in Automotive Tech.
Join us for inspiration and actionable insight from women leading in smart mobility who are:
Championing groundbreaking innovations, strategies and investments
Leading courageously during challenging times...launching new startups, research networks, global collaborations, smart city and climate change solutions
Driving diversity, inclusion and equity in the global CAV landscape by empowering women leaders from every walk of life
Date: Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Time: 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM PDT/ 12:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
This event is free and open for all to attend. Please click the button below to register via Hopin. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Driving Your Career with Women in Autonomy
Women in Autonomy is excited to announce their final event for 2021! Join them on December 14th for the virtual panel "Driving Your Career" which brings together leaders in technical and business roles at leading #selfdriving companies to discuss taking charge of your #career! Panelists include:
Julie Derence: Co-Founder, @TBD Robotics LLC
Apoorva Sachdev Lakshmanan: Technical Program Manager, @Waymo
Jessica Smith: Senior Staff Technical Lead, Perception Simulation, @Aurora
Date: Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Time: 4PM - 5PM PT / 7PM - 8PM ET
This event is free and open for all to attend. Please click the button below to register via Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
AccelerateOTT Hybrid, Invest Ottawa's flagship entrepreneurship conference
Date: Wed, October 27, 2021
Time: 5:30 AM – 1:00 PM PDT/ 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM EDT
The must-attend event for founders, owners, aspiring entrepreneurs & investors
AccelerateOTT 2021 has women founders and funders leading from the stage and airwaves. Its speakers are changemakers and ground-breakers. And they're pushing through She-Cession. At this epic one-day conference, you can expect:
Authentic and actionable insight from the tech and entrepreneurial trenches
Secrets of success and lessons learned during the pandemic
Scale-up, revenue gen, customer, and funding strategies to accelerate your growth
Different Delivery. Same Epic Event.
Now in its ninth year, the annual flagship entrepreneurial conference is going hybrid. Live and online real talk, pitches, and networking are taking place from two fantastic locations:
Bayview Yards, Ottawa's one-stop business acceleration shop and innovation hub
Wherever you are on planet earth – steaming live in real-time to your favorite device on the Hopin platform
If you are a founder, aspiring entrepreneur, investor, or business owner, this event is not to be missed.
All are welcome. And it's all free.
So, what does your free ticket include?
Live and online networking
6 inspirational sessions
6 hours of content
25+ speakers
1 pitch competition landing founders $200,000 in investment
$0 from your bank account
A chance to join us in-person
A few surprises… to be unveiled!
Check out www.accelerateott.ca for the amazing speaker lineup.
SheBoot Kicks It Up a Notch
Don't miss the second SheBoot pitch competition when nine amazing women founders compete for $200,000 in investment from 20 women angels. You will have the opportunity to vote for Crowd Favorite! Looking to see who will take the mic? Check out accelerateott.ca to see this amazing lineup!
Chalk Talk with Women in Autotech
Date: April 8, 2021
Time: 4:15-5:00 pm PST
Miss getting together to talk shop and network? Pop into our next social event in the Autotech Council Virtual Lounge.
Join a topic table for small, personal conversations. You can take a seat at a virtual table with/ or without a specific agenda, move around, and switch tables to connect with others or engage in different topics.
Topics may include: (per table):
· Impact of the pandemic on transportation
· Rise of EV's, AV's - where are we now
· Autotech updates in the news
· Networking
The Elevate International Conference - Focus: Economic Empowerment of Women.
Keynote Panel – Women Leaders Driving Global Economic Revolution and Recovery. Hosted by Invest Ottawa 8 AM to 9:00 AM PST
The world has completely changed. COVID-19 delivered a decisive blow to global health and our global economy. The pandemic has derailed growth plans, stalled investment, eliminated market opportunities, and prompted waves of layoffs. The impact of the health and economic crisis is widespread, impacting our entire population. But not everyone is fighting from a level playing field. Women business leaders (defined as all individuals who identify as women), particularly those with intersectional identities, are disproportionately hit by this crisis. This impact is attributed to the systemic inequalities and barriers women have faced for generations, compounded by the countless challenges induced by the pandemic.
Recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute underscores the devastating and disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on women.
Taking action now to advance gender equality could be valuable, adding $13 trillion to global GDP in 2030 compared with the gender-regressive scenario
This crisis creates opportunity for influential women decision-makers and leaders in powerful global industries take strategic action to address gender inequality and revolutionize our global economy. The time is now. And during IWW 2021, we are assembling key leaders driving this critical change.
This 75-minute executive panel will focus on opportunities for women leaders, decision-makers and influencers in lucrative tech sectors to:
Catalyze the growth and performance of innovation-intensive technology industries and achieve increased impact during unprecedented times;
Economically empower current and future generations of women from every walk of life to build a rich, robust and diverse pipeline of leaders for the technology sector, and the many diverse industries and markets it supports; and
Take targeted action to drive gender equality and the recovery of our global economy.
Women in Charge: Accelerating Electric Vehicles
Please join us for an interactive panel discussion with leading experts from the automotive industry to illustrate the story of the growth of EV industry throughout the lens of their careers at a diverse group of Auto OEMs. We will discuss the growth of the EV industry, challenges in adoption, and as well as the outlook now and post-COVID. Speakers will speak to a spectrum of use cases and the high level technologies impacting the industry.
Panelists
Jess Nigro, General Manager and Head of Technology and Innovation Policy, Daimler N.A. Corp
Amandine Muskus, Senior Manager Government Affairs and Branding, Kia Motors Corp
Samantha Hoyt, EV Marketing Manager, Ford Motor Company
Moderator
Ashley Horvat, VP Auto OEMs, Greenlots, a Shell Company
We hope you will join us for this exciting ZOOM panel followed by questions and conversations from participants. This event is being presented by Women in Automotive Technology (WAT) and Women of Electric Vehicles (WEV).