“Is Silicon Valley sucking up all the top talent? Can an Austin company compete in today’s talent wars? Conventional wisdom says that what Trilogy accomplished in the 90’s – recruiting scores of the top students from the top schools to Austin, TX – can’t be done today. It is too hard to compete with startups, established tech giants, and unicorns. But some Trilogy alumni still think you can recruit the best talent from top schools in 2016 and beyond. Can it be done? Is anyone actually doing it? In this session, we’ll have a showdown between these two world views on recruiting “only the best.”

While commended for its forward thinking, Silicon Valley is dangerously dated in its views on gender equality. And, despite efforts by several companies to change internal views, the Valley’s long-standing identity as a “brogrammer’s haven” symbolizes a community too far ingrained in its existing culture to enact quick change. But a city like Austin, with its growing tech scene & abundance of female executives, is ripe to solve the gender disparity issue & serve as an industry example. Let’s explore how companies (particularly those in male-dominated industries) can inspire change at a company level, & how growing cities like Austin can scale initiatives to the national & industry-wide level.