Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
We were personally so pleased to hear that the Digital Signage Federation, the only independent not-for-profit trade organization serving the digital signage industry, announced this week (Tuesday, Sept. 23/14) that it has established the Geri Wolff Scholarship Fund to be earmarked specifically for young women who are committed to majoring in computer sciences as a way in which to interest them in choosing a career in the digital signage industry.
We doubt that there is a nicer woman working in the industry than Geri Wolff, DSF director of marketing communications and membership, who has spent many years doing her personal best to help the digital signage industry grow.
Geri told us that she is ‘thrilled on so many levels with this honour.” but how the scholarship came to be is incredibly interesting in itself.
“Ideas have been percolating in my head for the past year-and-a half when I talked to my then 14-year-old niece about her future plans and possibilities of becoming a software engineer,” says Wolff. “She had no idea at the time of what digital signage even was, so I started thinking about that fact that there were relatively few women in the field and if there were ways to attract them. Most of the women in digital signage are in sales, marketing or administration. There are women in IT, but there was no real path for them to become interested, no internship program, nothing to help build a passion for work in digital signage.
“And as the industry grows, there will be a shallow labour pool unless we can bring more people, and especially more women, into the industry. So I took my thoughts and ideas to the DSF Board and especially to the members of the DSF Education Committee. They came back and said that this is what we are proposing: a scholarship fund, but we want to name it the Geri Wolff Scholarship Fund.
“I am thrilled beyond words, because I see this as one step to attract women engineers into the industry. I foresee possible internship programs that could help them get jobs when they graduate. And since the Education Committee has been thinking of the student memberships, maybe there could be student events, and maybe they could take the DSCE courses while they are studying, so that they would be so much more knowledgeable when they graduate.”
The scholarship program will be administered by the DSF Education Committee, which will develop the award criteria, evaluate applications annually, allocate funding, and determine award amounts. Awards may be used to defray the cost of university education, but may also be allocated to help pay for DSF student membership, or DSCE certification for students prior to graduation to ensure an ingoing requisite familiarity with the digital signage industry.
Kim Sarubbi, 2014 DSF Chair, says, “Geri was instrumental in the founding of the DSF, has a passion for our industry and has helped proactively initiate programs designed to encourage industry growth. Because Geri also takes great joy in helping others in our industry, it seemed natural to recognize her efforts on behalf of all of us in this way.”
Wolff says, “This is an extraordinary honor for a wonderful cause that resonates with me personally. As a professional woman, I feel privileged to work with the DSF and all my friends and colleagues in the digital signage industry. I invite others to join me in ‘paying it forward as I pledge an annual $1,000 donation to this fund to ensure that we establish a program to attract young women to a career in our industry, where they can make a significant contribution. I invite others to ‘pony up!’”
Anyone who would like to contribute to this scholarship fund is welcome to contact Brian Gorg, DSF executive director at bgorg@digitalsigangefederation.org or go online here.
And, by the way, we hear that Geri’s niece, still a high school student, is taking the courses that could one day lead her down the path her aunt suggested.
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