Women in Technology
The world celebrated women’s day last week. But in technology, Silicon Valley still remains largely a boys’ club except few women personalities who made their way up into great positions. Here we list a few among the celebrated tech women.
Virginia Rometty - CEO, IBM
Virginia Rometty is the first female CEO of IBM. She joined the IBM as a systems engineer more than 30 years ago andas a Senior VP of Global Business Service in 2002, she completely changed the direction of IBM by helping lead its $3.5 billion takeover of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, a tedious task due to the size and difference in corporate culture of the IBM company. She is also responsible for pushing the IBM into emerging markets like Brazil and China.
Marissa Mayer - VP Location and Local Services, Google
Mayer was the first female engineer hired at Google and one of their first 20 employees, joining the Google in June 1999. She is significantly responsible for the success of the UIs of Google Search and Gmail, which made her the ideal candidate to control Google main business – advertising. As the Vice President of location and local service now, she is responsible for generating the maximum revenue for the Google company.
Sheryl Sandberg - COO, Facebook
Sandberg might be the most experienced person in Facebook Company. Prior to joining Facebook Company, this Harvard topper in economics served as the vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and before that, Sheryl Sandberg was served the Chief of Staff for United States Department of Treasury. With her experience in the field, this highest paid employee of Facebook turned company into a $100 billion worth business.
Shaherose Charania
Shaherose Charania might have invented the most supporting platform for the women- Women 2.0, a global network and social platform for aspiring and current female founders of technology ventures. This expert of mobile and telephony startups is now running Founder Labs, a pre-idea incubator for mobile startups. Earlier Shaherose Charania had worked in Ribbit, which was acquired by British Telecom and also at Jajah, later acquired by Telefonica.
Katie Jacobs Stanton - Head of International Strategy, Twitter
Katie was appointed as the head of international strategy at Twitter Company in beginning of 2010. Prior to that Katie was a prominent figure in Google where her work included Google Finance, Google Moderator and Open Social initiative. Katie Jacobs was also a special advisor to the Office of Innovation at U.S. Department of State. She was behind Twitter’s revised censorship policy.
Ursula Burns - Chairman and CEO, Xerox
Ursula Burns is a perfect example for an American success story. Ursula Burns joined Xerox where she worked as an intern and build her way up in the ladder till she became the first Afro-American woman to head a Fortune 5OO company. Ursula presided over the $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services,Xerox’s largest deal in history.
Caterina Fake - Cofounder, Flickr
Millions of people around the world will be thanking Flickr every time they upload an image into the website which save their space and manage their memories. But the credit goes to Caterina, who along with her then-husband Stewart Butterfield, invented the photo-sharing site, taking idea from their own business failure- Ludicorp a company which developed “Game Neverending”- a multiplayer online role playing game. Eventhough her first attempt went bankrupt, she made$35 million when Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005. Caterina recently launched Pinwheel, which lets you find and leave notes around the world.
Jessica Livingston - Cofounder, Y Combinator
Jessica Livingston, along with her husband Paul Graham and Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell launched Y Combinator, the popular three month boot camp for startups in Silicon Valley. Their programme had already launched more than 300 startups including Dropbox, Reddit and Airbnb and is processing a lot more.
