Big changes have taken place at Women in 3D Printing.
The group has been promoting the idea of diversity in the additive manufacturing workplace for over ten years now, having been launched by Nora Touré. At its peak, the organization had multiple chapters worldwide, held meetups at major 3D print events, and had its own online conference.
However, in recent years, there seems to have been some challenges at the organization after founder Touré stepped down. The online conference has not been seen in years, and their website hasn’t been updated in over two years.
I’ve been wondering what should happen to re-energize the organization when I saw an announcement from Touré:
“I’m pleased to report that, after months of discussion, I’ve come to an agreement with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to take over the operations and assets of Women in 3D Printing, effective immediately. It has been an amazing ten years, and I realized that additional resources were needed to continue the mission of Women in 3D Printing. The acquisition by ASME will not only allow us to preserve what made Wi3DP special; ASME will help Wi3DP grow and evolve.”
ASME is a non-profit organization that’s been running for almost 150 years. It promotes engineering and associated sciences around the world in 135 countries through outreach, research, standards, conferences, publications, and more. The organization already has a strong DEI focus, and apparently, the Women in 3D Printing work will land within that. Touré explains further:
“This program will sit under ASME’s Programs & Philanthropy (P&P) department and be led by Pooja Singh, Program Manager, Strategic Initiatives. A mechanical engineer, MBA, and certified Project Management Professional®, Pooja will be tasked with managing and guiding this initiative as we begin the integration process.”
ASME has quite a number of programs in operation, and it sounds like Wi3DP will be integrated into many of them. ASME also has a number of local and regional networks that apparently match well with Wi3DP’s chapters, so we may see some specific integration there.
This is very good news for Wi3DP, which seemed to have stalled in recent years, likely due to resource limitations. Those challenges should be solved with the power of the much larger and well-established ASME organization.
Via Women in 3D Printing and ASME
