International Women’s Day grew out of the labour movement to become a recognised annual event by the United Nations (UN), formalized in 1975.
International Women’s Day has become a date to celebrate how far women have come in society, in politics and in economics, while the political roots of the day mean strikes and protests are organised to raise awareness of continued inequality.
On this day, we want to highlight these wonderful women who stand out in the technology industry, not only for their intellectual abilities but also for being an inspiration to many women and men.
Virginia M. (Ginni) Rometty
Virginia M. (Ginni) Rometty is the former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM.
Rometty began her career with IBM in 1981 and held several leadership positions before advancing to the top of the company. Her education from Northwestern University gave her a bachelor’s degree with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering, showcasing the knowledge she had acquired in order to take on the responsibilities at IBM.
One major goal of hers that stood out, in particular, was her dedication to diversity and inclusion. To ensure these qualities actually exist in the workplace.
Today when I think about diversity, I actually think about the word “inclusion.” And I think this is a time of great inclusion. It’s not men, it’s not women alone. Whether it’s geographic, it’s approach, it’s your style, it’s your way of learning, the way you want to contribute, it’s your age – it is really broad.
Ginni Rometty
Reshma Saujani
Reshma Saujani is the Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, the national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology and change the image of what a programmer looks like and does. The organization has already reached 90,000 girls in all 50 US states. She is the author of three books, including Brave, Not Perfect, which is scheduled for release in winter 2018, Women Who Don’t Wait In Line and the New York Times Bestseller Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World.
The culture of tech companies cannot change if women aren’t in the room.
Reshma Saujani
Radia Joy Perlman
Radia Joy Perlman has made significant breakthroughs in many areas of Internet routing and networking protocols. Her contributions have had a unique impact on how we use the Internet today, as she (re)designed and made possible the robustness, expansion and easier management of routing protocols.
Perlman redesigned the STP by introducing the TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL), which has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).5 TRILL’s introduction corrected the STP’s flaws, improved its robustness and stability and allowed the efficient forwarding of Ethernet packets using the Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) link-state for routing protocol instead of the spanning tree.
I try to design things that someone like myself would like to use, which is that it just works, and you don’t have to think about it at all
Radia Joy Perlman
Jude Milhon
Judith [Jude] Milhon (1939 – July 19, 2003), in Washington D.C., best known by her pseudonym St. Jude, was a hacker and author in the San Francisco Bay Area. Milhon coined the term cypherpunk and was a founding member of the cypherpunks
when you’re in cyberspace no one knows what your sex is
Jude Milhon
Sophie Proust
Sophie has been the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Atos since January 2019. She joined the Atos group in 2014 following the acquisition by Atos of Bull, where she held the position of Head of Research & Development. At Atos, Sophie was head of the Research & Development for the Big Data & Cybersecurity division, from 2014 to January 2019. Alongside this, Sophie is part of the Atos Quantum Advisory board. Before Atos, Sophie held various technical managerial positions at Bull in the mainframe, IT administration solutions and HW server design. In 2010, Sophie headed the Tera100 Project which delivered the CEA with the first Petaflops-scale calculator in Europe. She has been a member of the board of directors of Worldline since December 2016 and a member of the board of directors of the Université Technologique de Troyes (UTT) since December 2018. Sophie Proust is a graduate of the Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité “Supélec” of Paris.
With diversity you address a problem from different angles, the problem the situation – women for instance do not tackle problems the same way a man does. It is also true that not all women have the same approach so it is not just gender but also different backgrounds, character, generation – it is important for business that we do not all look in the same direction.
Sophie Proust
Roshni Nadar Malhotra
Roshni Nadar Malhotra is a pioneer of women in tech and is the first female IT CEO in India’s history. The company was founded in 1976 by her father Shiv Nadar and other engineers and has grown into one of the most successful information technology companies in South Asia. In her role as Chairperson of HCL Technologies, she oversees an organization with a market cap of over $20 billion and revenue in excess of $10 billion. She is also Chairperson of HCL’s Corporate Social Responsibility Committee, through which the company aims to invest in philanthropic endeavors that benefit its communities.
Malhotra has received awards and accolades for her exceptional success and generosity and has been named on Forbes’ “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” list in several successive years. In 2018, she launched The Habitats Trust, a foundation dedicated to preserving India’s natural resources and wildlife.
To make a difference, you have to have large aspirations.
Roshni Nadar Malhotra
Jocelyn DeGance Graham
Cofounder and president of LEVERS, a competency and project-based learning platform, Graham is also Diversity Partner Liaison to Google as well as the founder of Cloud Network of Women. Cloud Network of Women (CloudNOW) is a non-profit dedicated to promoting equality in the tech world and celebrating women’s contributions to the cloud.
The cultures that women can really accelerate in have to be able to be inclusive–to be able to be an environment where it’s already set up so people feel like they belong,
Jocelyn DeGance Graham
Maria Ferreras
Maria Ferreras is the Vice President of Business Development for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) at Netflix. She worked for the last 10 years as Director of Partnerships for YouTube for Southern Europe and Emerging Markets, shaping and growing the YouTube partnership ecosystem in key markets and looking after the Content Strategy for direct partners. A strategic thinker with exceptional business and leadership skills.
Maria Ferreras holds a master’s degree in Telecom Engineering and a Postgraduate inMarketing. Maria has also served on the board of The Valley, an innovative DigitalBusiness School. She is an accomplished public speaker with more than 20 years ofexperience in the Internet and communications industry.
“Making mistakes is fine, nothing happens, learning from mistakes is the best way to grow”
Maria Ferreras
We hope you liked our selection of outstanding women in technology; without a doubt, it has not been easy to choose so few!
Do we still need an International Women’s Day?
“Yes! There’s no place for complacency. According to the World Economic Forum, sadly none of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. Gender parity will not be attained for almost a century.
There’s urgent work to do – and we can all play a part”. [Extract From IWD website https://www.internationalwomensday.com/about]
This day is not only for women but also a reminder that diversity and inclusion are important to our society and that we all play a crucial role. There is a lot of work ahead of us, but together we can have a better world to live in.
References
https://www.ibm.com/about/ginni/
https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/biography/radia-perlman/
https://www.ted.com/speakers/reshma_saujani
https://atos.net/en/expert/sophie-proust
https://atos.net/en/blog/7-traits-highly-successful-women-within-atos-diversity-important
https://www.forbes.com/profile/roshni-nadar-malhotra/?sh=147107a4726c
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-tech-industry-needs-more-discussion-about-womens-accomplishments/
https://learn.g2.com/trends/women-in-cloud-computing
https://www.google.com/url?https://business.vogue.es/lideres/articulos/maria-ferreras-vicepresidenta-netflix/122
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