new women, to organize conferences, which hampered efforts toward gender diversity prior to the 2015 event. The timeline shared by our interviewees for conversations about a women-led RAS conference directly correlates to the increase in women in leadership roles in RAS-sponsored conferences, from ~4% in 2012 to ~22% in 2018. All signs point to the idea that simply starting conversations about this diversity problem led to increased awareness and spurred people to action. As we stated, the original idea for an all-women-led ICRA originally came from Lee, a professor at Purdue University and veteran conference organizer who was originally going to be general chair of the 2015 event. He began talking about the idea of an all-womenorganized conference with Parker and Amato as early as 2010. At first, both were hesitant about the concept and not convinced it was a good idea. They were The welcome banner for ICRA 2015 at the Washington State Convention Center. " actually quite worried that there would be backlash from the community, especially because the community was maledominated. Playing a role in these things is important for people's careers, and we were going to take all of these Attendees listen to a talk. 164 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * SEPTEMBER 2021