The Protagonismo <688/> is at IT FORUM and What it Represents Goes Beyond a Program

The technology market has been talking about female inclusion for years. There are courses, hackathons, March campaigns, and discussion panels. What rarely appears is the next step: hiring.

The initiative was structured to address one of the sector's main bottlenecks: not just the entry of new professionals, but the difficulty of turning training into effective employability.

That is the gap that Protagonismo <688/> came to close.

How it works in practice

In the program, launched in partnership with MCIO Brasil on March 25th, Grupo Taking covers the first three months of salary for each hired professional and guarantees contracts of at least one year in technical positions.

The process covers the entire journey: curation and selection by MCIO Brasil, technical training, resume review, mock interviews, and direct referral to client companies.

The goal is to repeat the cycle every year, with 25 women per cohort, covering positions such as data analyst, back-end developer, front-end developer, and support analyst, all at junior level.

And the horizon is concrete: the expectation is to place 125 professionals into the market by 2030.

Why this is a business decision and not just a purpose statement

Marco Romero, CEO of Grupo Taking, was straight to the point in the article from IT Forum:

"The market talks a lot about training, but there is still a gap between preparing and actually hiring. What we are proposing here is to close that gap with a model that shares the risk and accelerates the insertion of these professionals into real projects."

Grupo Taking already presents indicators that support the investment: 55% of the total workforce is made up of women, and 40% of management positions are held by them.

Diversity is not an imposed goal here. It is the consequence of an ongoing process and now, of a structure that accelerates this process beyond the company.

The profile the program aims to expand

Another central point of the program is to expand the profile of candidates, including women in career transitions, many outside the traditional technology sector stereotype. The proposal is to break with the still-dominant logic in the industry, which concentrates opportunities in traditional technical profiles, and to accelerate the entry of professionals with diverse backgrounds, including women over 40.

The journey of Cinthia Scafi Catarino, now Zone Transfer Lead at AB-InBev, illustrates exactly this. With a psychology degree, she entered the technical field through a previous MCIO initiative and was hired in the same month she completed her training. As she described:

"I learned the fundamentals of IT and technical support and entered the market through the partnerships the program offers."

The role of MCIO Brasil in this equation

MCIO Brasil, the largest association of women IT executives in the country, with over 500 members and 22 years of history, is responsible for the curation of candidates and follow-up throughout the entire journey.

Walkiria Marchetti, Executive President of MCIO Brasil, points out where the real challenge lies:

"The challenge of female presence in technology is not just about access, but about staying and advancing to strategic positions. This program works precisely at that transition, connecting training with concrete opportunities."

It's not about doing the right thing. It's about doing the smart thing.

Camila Besseler, CMO of Grupo Taking, sums up what guides the initiative well:

"Diversity cannot be an isolated discourse. When you build a real talent pipeline and connect it directly to the business, the impact shows in innovation, performance, and delivery capacity."

Protagonismo <688/> was born from a number — 68.8% of global gender inequality overcome, but 123 years still needed for full parity. And it became concrete action: training, employability, and results.

The first cohort is in selection.

Get to know the program and learn how to participate →