Women in tech: a comparative perspective between the EU and China

🗣Charlene Liu: Co-Founder – Diversity & Inclusion Consulting (DNIC), Ladies Who Tech, Q-Events, ShanghaiPRIDE

Charlene Liu was born in Malaysia and has lived in the US, Singapore, and now Shanghai, China. She is an engineer, a social change maker, and a community leader. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BSc in Electrical Engineering and has 20 years of working experience in different areas of the Semiconductor & Electronics industry, ranging from design, engineering, manufacturing, project management to sales and marketing. She also has

experience with events, corporate innovation, and management consulting at PwC.

Charlene has 16 years of community leadership, commercial event management, and Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) advocacy experience. In 2009, she co-founded ShanghaiPRIDE, an annual festival run entirely by volunteers

that promotes diversity, in 2014 Q-Events, an event management company, in 2016 Ladies Who Tech, a social impact community for women in STEM, and in 2019, D&I Consulting, a consultancy which helps corporates cultivate a

more inclusive culture. Charlene is now embarking on a full-time journey managing these platforms.

In 2014, she and team ShanghaiPRIDE were awarded Shanghai Hero by Time Out Shanghai, and in 2018, Best Event Organizer in East China by Huodongxing.

🗣Berta Herrero Estalayo is Senior EU Public Affairs Manager at Huawei, where she leads the company’s equality, diversity and inclusion efforts at EU level, among other issues related to strategy, government affairs, communications, and policy development.

Ms. Herrero is the Programme Director of the company's School for Female Leadership in the Digital Age, which provides top students and young professionals with a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to acquire the skills needed to shape Europe's digital transition, under a full scholarship.

She has extensive experience in the field of European Union politics and policies in three different sectors (institutional, corporate and media), and in areas ranging from foreign affairs and enlargement to cohesion, new technologies and innovation.

Prior to joining Huawei, Ms. Herrero served in the cabinet of a Vice-President of the European Parliament in Brussels, and previously as a journalist for Spain's newspaper El Mundo, reporting from different countries across the world.

Ms. Herrero studied Journalism in Madrid, European Studies in Amsterdam and East European Studies in Berlin. She is personally invested in contributing to overcome the divide, be it digital, geographical or gender-related, that prevents European society from moving forward in a fair and inclusive way.

In 2021, she was honoured to be featured on the prestigious Santander-CIDOB '35 under 35' list that recognizes the potential of 35 young leaders who are shaping the digital era worldwide.