This is a guest blog post written by Avanade alum, Vikki Leach.

Earlier this month, Avanade opened its relocated New York Metro office by hosting a day focused on innovation, with a particular emphasis on women in innovation.

We took this as an opportunity to publicly announce Avanade’s newly formed partnership with The Aspire Foundation, which is aligned to Avanade’s corporate citizenship mission; help close the gender, technology and income gaps for women to better enable them to realize their full potential.

Improving women’s lives through innovation technology is a shared passion for the people of Avanade. From several angles, including bringing more women into technology careers, and applying innovation to improve women’s lives. We know that when you give women opportunities, the benefits ripple out into their communities and lift everyone up.

Avanade has begun a global campaign to help The Aspire Foundation make a positive impact in the lives of 1 billion women by 2020. This is an ambitious goal we are proud to be part of. Avanade people possess a wealth of skills that can really benefit women who are looking for support. In just one hour a month, we can initiate that ripple effect into communities worldwide.

Upskilling, empowering and giving access to these women is essentially what we do with our clients. We offer a sounding board and apply our own experiences to upskill and empower clients to realize results with their own customers.

In New York, Dr. Sam Collins, CEO and founder of The Aspire Foundation, spoke on a panel at the New York event about the power of the ripple effect. More than 50 Avanade employees were inspired enough to volunteer on the spot, bringing the total number of Avanade mentors who have signed up since early September to 200.  But, with 500 women waiting for people to help and support their charitable efforts, we want to keep building this movement and passing on the skills that we take for granted to help make a change in communities.

We also had a second panel discussion with our female clients talking about women and innovation and why it’s so important to have gender balanced teams. We know through research that it makes absolute business sense to have gender balanced teams throughout all levels of an organization to perform better and be more innovative and creative.

In addition to providing mentors to The Aspire Foundation, Avanade is also working with them to digitalize their organization. An Innovation Day at the New York Metro office in November will be another step forward in what we hope to be a long a fruitful journey. Innovation is in our DNA and our newly opened New York office now includes our 6th Innovation Center, which showcases the latest technology advances such as smart LED lighting, beacon and Internet of Things technology, augmented reality hardware, multi-screen and mobile devices.

We were honored to have Avanade CEO, Adam Warby, and CMO, Stella Goulet, onsite joining in on the festivities, In fact, Adam closed the event with a special ribbon-cutting to celebrate our new office.