Prominent Technology Organizations Drive Diversity in Technology with Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program

SAN FRANCISCO, CA --(Marketwired - June 27, 2017) - Together with Foundry Group, Techstars, Cooley, Yesware, Help Scout, Cloudability, Kulesa Faul, FullContact and Anchor Point Fund, Distil Networks, the global leader in bot detection and mitigation, today announced the inception of the Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program. This annual program awards several $3,000 scholarships to female undergraduate and graduate students committed to a career in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). Distil Networks and its founding sponsors are committed to promoting a professional environment that represents the people of America.

In 2016, the Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program founding sponsors joined 80+ other companies to sign the Tech Inclusion Pledge in collaboration with the White House and President Obama. Companies who participated in this initiative pledged to take "concrete action to make the technology workforce at each of their companies more representative of the American people." As part of this pledge, the founding sponsors are asking for others to participate in this important initiative. Organizations interested in increasing diversity and empowering women in STEM fields can make a contribution to the scholarship program. More information available here.

Supporting Quotes:

"I've been working with startup technology companies for over 30 years and have only seen a minimal increase in female entrepreneurs during this time. In fact, only three percent of America's venture capital-backed startups are led by women. Increasing diversity in the workforce has been a passion of mine for years, joining many organizations to further the advancement of women including my work with the National Center for Women and Technology. I am proud to partner with like-minded, progressive companies like Distil to bring attention to and support such an important initiative. We hope others will join us!" - Brad Feld, Co-founder of Foundry Group

"Women have historically been underrepresented in the technology industry and, according to the Census Bureau's most recent American Community Survey, women comprise 48 percent of the U.S. workforce but just 24 percent of STEM workers. At Distil Networks, we are committed to empowering women to tackle some of today's toughest technology challenges. Through this program, and a deeper awareness around the lack of female presence in technology, we will establish greater balance within our industry." - Rami Essaid, CEO and Co-founder of Distil Networks

"In my personal experience, I've found diverse teams make better products, build stronger work cultures and power great businesses. As a company, we're committed not only to strong diversity and inclusion goals, but also to broadening the talent pool through the support of outstanding organizations. That's why we're honored to sponsor the Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program and its commitment to this effort." - Nick Francis, CEO of Help Scout

"Cooley is delighted to support a cause that is extremely important to the firm, aligning with our ongoing commitment to advancing women lawyers in the technology sector. We believe that promoting diversity in the fields of innovation and technology is vital and we're honored to team up with this admirable group of companies." – Mike Lincoln, Partner and Global Business Department Chair of Cooley

"Diversity is essential to the growth, engagement, satisfaction and level of innovation our employees can achieve. Our partnership with the Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program embodies the focused and collaborative effort we hope to lead in the industry." - Marcus Carter, Talent Acquisition Partner at Cloudability

Scholarship Program At-A-Glance:

• Multiple scholarships of $3,000 each will be awarded each year
• The first deadline to submit is August 1st, 2017, and winners will be announced on September 1st, 2017
• Both undergraduate and graduate students may apply
• Applicants must be accepted into or currently enrolled full-time at an accredited university in the US, in a STEM field

Interested applicants must complete a 1,000-word essay, present educational transcripts and deliver one letter of recommendation. To learn more or to apply, please visit: https://www.distilnetworks.com/women-forward-in-technology-scholarship/

About Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program

Founded by Distil Networks, Foundry Group, Techstars, Cooley, Yesware, Help Scout, Cloudability, Kulesa Faul, FullContact and Anchor Point Fund, the Women Forward in Technology Scholarship Program promotes diversity within the STEM workforce. The program is designed to encourage women to pursue a career in technology, minimizing the gender gap. The program awards multiple $3,000 scholarships to female graduate and undergraduate students annually. For more information or to make a donation, please visit https://www.distilnetworks.com/women-forward-in-technology-scholarship/.

About Distil Networks

Distil Networks, the global leader in bot detection and mitigation, is the only proactive and precise way to verify that legitimate human users are accessing your website, mobile app, and APIs. With Distil, you automatically mitigate 100% of OWASP Automated Threats without imposing friction on legitimate users. Distil defends against web scraping, competitive data mining, account takeovers, transaction fraud, unauthorized vulnerability scans, spam, click fraud, denial of service, and API abuse while slashing the high tax that bots place on your internal teams and web infrastructure. Get complete visibility and control over human, good bot, and bad bot traffic, and make your online applications more secure with comprehensive bot defense. Distil Bot Defense for Web protects your website by verifying human traffic on real browsers. Distil Bot Defense for APIprevents bots from accessing your API servers, whether it be through web or mobile. Distil Analyst Managed Service assigns a dedicated team of security analysts to manage your bot defense program. For more information on Distil Networks, visit us at https://www.distilnetworks.com/block-bot-detection/ or follow @DISTIL on Twitter.