• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, August 6, 2015

You may have noticed a lot of activity surrounding the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag over the last few days. It was created by OneLogin Platform Engineer Isis Wenger in response to reactions to an ad created by her company that features her. 

The campaign, in the form of San Francisco BART and MUNI boards, certainly garnered reactions -- but not necessarily the intended reaction, which was to recruit engineers for OneLogin. You see, Isis Wenger is a pretty woman, and naturally, a sad and overwhelming majority of people have a really hard time believing that a pretty woman could possibly be an engineer.

People claimed Wenger doesn't properly represent the "look" (whatever that is) of an engineer. People thought her smirk in the ad was too sexy. People questioned whether or not the ad appealed to men versus women. People were just mean.

People were also very supportive and shared hundreds of images of engineers that -- surprise, surprise -- turned out illustrating the fact that engineers do, indeed, come in all sizes and shapes.

Following this, Zana Web Developer Michelle Glauser organized an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for an agency, Titan360, to develop a billboard that will be placed somewhere in San Francisco to further the #ILookLikeAnEngineer effort. 

The Indiegogo effort seeks $3,500 for the billboard but has far surpassed that number bringing in, to date, $8,461 with 29 more days to go in the campaign. The more money the campaign raises, the more expansive the campaign will become with some of the money earmarked for donation to funding organizations that teach programming to underrepresented groups.

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