Former PostRank CEO Carol Leaman inspires at this week’s Girl Geek Dinner in Waterloo, with tales from her experiences with technology startups
By Linda Forrest 
It’s been a busy week, with Francis Moran and me visiting Waterloo and region for a number of events, client and business development meetings. We kicked off our trip by attending the Girl Geek Dinner, which took place Tuesday evening at Waterloo restaurant Oliver & Bonacini.
One of these things was not like the others in that Francis was the only male in attendance; the inverse was just about true the following night at Demo Camp Guelph where I was one of a handful of women in the crowd. But the intimate room at O&B was filled to the brim with interesting, welcoming and friendly women who work in technology. The brainchild of Cate Huston, a software programmer at Google, who upon moving to KW from Ottawa started up a local version of this international concept, Tuesday’s dinner marked the third local iteration of the event, which is also organized by PJ Lowe, and Michelle Kostya.
The speaker for the evening was Carol Leaman, a serial leader of startups, who recently sold PostRank, an aggregator of social engagement data, to Google. Almost as soon as we were seated, it became apparent that many of the women in the dynamic crowd knew one another, thanks to the tight-knit and supportive tech community in the region. But they welcomed Francis and myself with open arms, and it took us just several minutes to establish the (very few) degrees of separation from everyone at our table. We had the great pleasure of sitting with a variety of women, all of whom are working or studying in different and fascinating aspects of the technology ecosystem.
