The New Role Models: How Nidhi Gupta and SheTO Are Empowering Women to Build Tomorrow’s Technology

In engineering, the people shaping new technologies have not always represented the full range of perspectives in society. For women and non-binary professionals, this can translate into a sense of underrepresentation in conversations about the future they contribute to building. Nidhi Gupta remembers walking into an industry dinner, expecting to be the only woman in the room. “To my surprise, I was surrounded by more than a dozen women executives,” she says. “That moment made me realize we exist. We just needed to find each other.”

Gupta later discovered a Gartner study showing that women held less than 9% of engineering executive roles. “I hoped someone, somewhere, was already fixing this problem,” she says. “But there wasn’t anyone focused on women in engineering leadership.” The following month, Gupta quit her executive role and co-founded SheTO, a vetted and purposeful community for women and non-binary leaders in engineering.

Turning Isolation Into a Movement

SheTO started with 15 handpicked members and a simple question: How many women are out there, waiting to be seen? Gupta explains, “The change we’re seeing is more than meaningful, it’s measurable. Women are getting promoted, refusing to give up, and becoming the leaders they aspire to be.”

Today, SheTO serves more than 5,000 vetted members across 65 countries. Gupta calls it a “movement,” a word members echoed at the 2024 Ignite Summit. “Several women came up to me and said ‘SheTO changed my life,’ or ‘I owe my promotion to this community,’” she says. “That energy keeps me going.”

SheTO does not try to be everything to everyone. “Support at the senior level looks very different from early career guidance,” Gupta explains. “That’s why we build programs that reflect where women are in their leadership journeys.”

Beyond Mentorship: Real Outcomes

Many women in engineering struggle with what Gupta calls “the director ceiling,” where representation drops sharply. “That’s where bias starts to compound,” she explains. “At SheTO, we help build structured pathways, visible sponsorship, and early leadership opportunities so the director level becomes a springboard.”

SheTO’s Accelerator program helps participants get promoted within a reasonable timeline. “Women are not just advancing on,” Gupta says. “They are growing in confidence and owning their voices.”

SheTO tracks promotions, leadership transitions, and event engagement, but Gupta emphasizes that impact goes deeper. “One member had left the tech industry due to bias,” she says. “After engaging with our community through events and mentorship, she returned with stronger confidence, ready to lead again.”

Building Connection That Feels Personal

Even with global growth, SheTO stays grounded in four principles: authentic, intimate, relevant, and impactful. “We review every single application because relevance matters,” Gupta says. “We want to make sure the conversations happening within SheTO are meaningful and valuable.”

SheTO hosts local meetups, executive peer groups, and its annual Ignite Summit. “Women crave real, live connections and intimate conversations,” Gupta explains. “Our community succeeds because it helps women see what’s possible when they support one another.”

Looking Ahead: A New Kind of Leadership

By 2035, Gupta wants women to hold at least 20% of executive roles in engineering. “It’s ambitious, but progress is possible when we work together,” she says. After all, as she says, “You cannot be what you cannot see, and that is exactly why SheTO exists.”