Top 10 Women in Tech Groups and Resources in Fort Collins, CO in 2026

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Fort Collins Tech Ecosystem
• Exponential Impact Women in Tech
• Women's Success Summit
• Girls Who Code Fort Collins
• AnitaB.org and Grace Hopper Celebration
• Fort Collins Boss Babe Networking
• CSU's Engineering and Spark Events
• Women&TECH Colorado
• Local Employers with Strong DEI
• NOCO Women in Business
• Founded in FoCo Community Events
• Conclusion and Path Forward
• Frequently Asked Questions

Exponential Impact Women in Tech

Launched in 2026, Exponential Impact (XI) - Women in Tech represents the vibrant, hyper-local regrowth of professional networking in Northern Colorado. This high-impact series directly connects female tech founders, leaders, and aspiring professionals, intentionally designed to foster the deep, meaningful connections that build resilient ecosystems from the ground up.

The value is in the unparalleled quality of access. As noted from its inaugural event, the atmosphere is described as "electric," built on the principle of "showing up, lifting one another up, and creating space for meaningful connection." Panels feature prominent Colorado leaders like Lindsay Pack Moll, CEO of InnovaFlex® Foundry, and Jamie Brown, CEO/Co-Founder of Acuity Innovations LLC, providing direct mentorship and practical advice for navigating the NoCo and Front Range tech scene.

This initiative fills a critical void with a focused, local approach, moving away from broad national models. By hosting events at local venues and promoting through XI's social channels, it ensures the community remains interconnected and accessible, embodying the mycelial network that strengthens the entire regional tech landscape.

Women's Success Summit

Serving as an enduring pillar of the regional ecosystem, the Women's Success Summit in nearby Loveland marks its 17th annual flagship event on April 7, 2026. While broader than tech alone, it is a critical convergence point for women scaling tech businesses or advancing into leadership roles within established companies across the Front Range.

The 2026 theme, "SHIFT: The CEO Advantage," is designed to deliver actionable strategies for scaling ventures. For women in tech, this translates into direct sessions on fundraising for startups, building high-performing engineering teams, and strategic growth planning - essential skills whether you're launching a venture in Old Town Fort Collins or leading a tech division at a company like Woodward or OtterBox.

This summit demonstrates the sustained, local momentum that forms the bedrock of the community. It connects Northern Colorado professionals to the wider Colorado leadership landscape, where advice from top leaders emphasizes tenacity and assuming positive intent. It’s a prime example of the ground-up regrowth, providing a trusted, annual platform for advancement that outlasts the rise and fall of any single organization.

Girls Who Code Fort Collins

True ecosystem resilience requires nurturing the next generation at the roots. Girls Who Code provides this vital pipeline in Fort Collins with active clubs for grades 3-12 throughout Northern Colorado. These hyper-local chapters, like the one for 3rd-5th graders at Coyote Ridge Elementary, create the first, crucial connections to technology in a supportive, all-girls environment.

For high school students, the free, virtual Summer Immersion Program offers an intensive gateway to specialized fields. The 2025 program focused on game design and AI, connecting participants with industry mentors from across the country. This creates a direct talent pipeline, allowing students from Fort Collins to access national tech opportunities while remaining rooted in their local community.

This foundational work is essential for the long-term regrowth of the women-in-tech ecosystem. By inspiring young women before they enter college or the workforce, programs like these ensure a steady stream of diverse talent into Colorado State University's computer science programs and, ultimately, into the Northern Colorado tech sector, strengthening the entire network from its origin point.

AnitaB.org and Grace Hopper Celebration

While the strength of Fort Collins's network is in its local roots, it remains intelligently connected to global resources. AnitaB.org persists as the most significant global advocate for women in tech, and its virtual offerings ensure professionals and students in Northern Colorado are not isolated. Through digital channels, individuals can participate in events like the "Limitless: Women in Tech Summit," a major hybrid conference held each September.

The crown jewel of accessible opportunity is the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). Applying for a GHC scholarship is a career-defining milestone for any student or early-career professional. The conference offers unparalleled networking, recruitment, and learning experiences, directly linking local talent from CSU and other institutions to the international tech stage.

This represents a sophisticated layer of the ecosystem's regrowth: leveraging global scale for local advantage. By pursuing these scholarships and virtual events, Fort Collins-based women can bring world-class insights and connections back to the Northern Colorado community, enriching the entire local network with external energy and perspective, all without leaving the supportive ground of the home ecosystem.

Fort Collins Boss Babe Networking

In the quiet, consistent rhythm of local regrowth, the Fort Collins Boss Babe Networking meetup serves as a foundational root. Held every 3rd Friday at Kiln on Remington Street, this grassroots gathering is defined by its accessibility and regularity, requiring no formal membership - you simply show up.

In the landscape following broader network dissolutions, these consistent, informal gatherings become the essential bedrock for community. They facilitate the formation of the "unseen connections" that are critical in a smaller, interconnected market like Northern Colorado, often leading to direct job referrals, collaborative projects, and a genuine sense of belonging.

This event exemplifies the ground-level, mycelial networking that defines Fort Collins's resilient ecosystem. It’s not a large, branded canopy but a reliable, local point of connection where the community rebuilds itself through face-to-face interaction, proving that sometimes the most powerful networks are the ones that meet consistently in a familiar local venue.

CSU's Engineering and Spark Events

Colorado State University acts as a central hub in the Northern Colorado talent pipeline, hosting cornerstone events that ignite interest from grade school through graduate entrepreneurship. The twin anchors are "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" on April 11, 2026, and the Spark! Conference on April 10, 2026, both leveraging the university's world-class facilities and faculty.

"Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" provides K-12 students with a hands-on immersion at the Suzanne and Walter Scott, Jr. Bioengineering Building. It's a direct investment in the earliest stages of the talent pipeline, exposing young women to engineering concepts in a dynamic, university-setting environment and planting the seeds for future CSU Rams.

The Spark! Conference, held at the Nancy Richardson Design Center, focuses on entrepreneurship and technical prototyping for CSU students and recent graduates. This event is critical for translating academic knowledge into venture creation, directly linking emerging talent with the university's vast research network and the broader Fort Collins startup ecosystem, creating a seamless pathway from classroom to community impact.

Women&TECH Colorado

For professionals in Fort Collins, the tech ecosystem extends along the entire Front Range. Women&TECH Colorado is a Meetup-based community that serves this broader corridor, with events and connections that actively integrate the Northern Colorado network into the state-wide conversation.

The value of this group lies in its regional scope. It is an ideal resource for Fort Collins-based women who commute to roles in the Denver-Boulder tech corridor, collaborate with startups in those hubs, or simply want to stay informed about larger trends impacting Colorado's tech industry. The group hosts both virtual and in-person events, making it accessible regardless of location.

This community functions as a vital set of connective threads in the mycelial network, bridging the approximately 60-mile geographical gap between Fort Collins and the major tech concentrations to the south. It ensures that the regrowth happening in Northern Colorado is not insular but is interwoven with the innovations and opportunities across the entire state, strengthening the overall resilience of Colorado's tech landscape.

Local Employers with Strong DEI

The regrowth of a supportive ecosystem isn't limited to formal groups; it thrives within companies that cultivate inclusive cultures. In Fort Collins, targeting employers with strong, recognized DEI initiatives provides a built-in community and clear pathways for advancement.

Vertafore is consistently cited as a top Colorado company for women in engineering, noted for its robust mentorship programs and support for professional development, including annual certification reimbursements. Similarly, Eaton earns high marks locally, with a 4.6-star rating for equal opportunity on employee review platforms, reflecting a culture where technical contributions are valued.

These companies, alongside local anchors like OtterBox with its significant female leadership presence, form the corporate backbone of the Northern Colorado network. They demonstrate that the most tangible resource can be a workplace where advocacy and growth are integral to the culture, allowing women to build careers without having to seek support solely from external organizations.

NOCO Women in Business

While not exclusively focused on technology, NOCO Women in Business stands as one of the most active and broad-based professional networks for women in Fort Collins. This organization exemplifies the cross-industry connective tissue that is vital in a smaller, integrated market like Northern Colorado, where tech roles exist within healthcare, manufacturing, education, and startups alike.

The group's value is evidenced by its supportive reputation, holding an 18-review rating on Trustpilot where members consistently praise the network's impact. For women in tech, this provides essential resources that go beyond pure coding: business development, executive leadership training, and strategic partnerships that are crucial for entrepreneurial success or advancing into management.

This is particularly valuable for women building tech ventures or those in technical roles at major regional employers like UCHealth or Colorado State University. By offering access to a wide professional spectrum, NOCO Women in Business ensures that the regrowth of the tech community is deeply intertwined with the overall economic and leadership ecosystem, reinforcing the resilient, interconnected model that defines the region's recovery.

Founded in FoCo Community Events

Emerging each fall like the season's first green shoots, the Founded in FoCo multi-day event series captures the innovative, grassroots spirit actively shaping the future of the local scene. This community-driven gathering frequently features panels on tech, startups, and organizational development, with a strong emphasis on highlighting women-led ventures and collaborative frameworks.

Sessions like "Organizational Mutual Aid" provide fresh, cooperative models for business growth that resonate deeply in Northern Colorado's interconnected ecosystem. The value here is in connecting with the founders, thinkers, and innovators who are not just participating in the tech scene but are actively designing its next iteration from the ground up.

Attending Founded in FoCo is like walking through a meadow of fireweed after a burn - it’s where you witness and contribute to the newest, most adaptive growth. It represents the forward-looking edge of Fort Collins's resilient regrowth, a space where the community comes together to prototype the future of its own ecosystem.

Conclusion and Path Forward

The landscape has fundamentally changed, but the Fort Collins ecosystem is not diminished; it is thriving with quiet, resilient regrowth at the roots. The path forward for women in tech here isn't about finding a single replacement for what was lost but about actively engaging with the interconnected, local network that has emerged in its place.

This new map, from the high-impact connections of Exponential Impact to the foundational pipelines of Girls Who Code and the corporate cultures of Vertafore and OtterBox, represents a more distributed and durable model of community. It’s a system that draws strength from its hyper-local connections, its academic partnerships with CSU, and its integration with the broader Colorado tech corridor.

Your journey begins by choosing one node in this network. Start by showing up at one local event, applying for one scholarship, or reaching out to one leader highlighted here. In Fort Collins, the community is ready to connect, proving that the most important growth continues to happen from the ground up, fostering a resilient and inclusive future for everyone in tech.

Frequently Asked Questions