Tag Archives: Jessica

June 30, 2019 · 11:54 pm

Petrified Wood and Painted Dessert

Yesterday, Jessica and I saw the lovely Petrified Forest National Park, painted dessert, and ancient petroglyphs in Arizona. Before going into the park, we shopped at Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Company in nearby Holbrook to ensure we would not be tempted to pick up souvenirs. The store has fields of petrified wood, geodes, and minerals collected on private land. In the Park, we saw colorful badlands where the ancient stone logs were either on the open grass or eroding out of the ground.

Gas here is much less expensive than in California: $2.74/gallon. Ice, however, is $1.99/bag because it is so hot (110 degrees Fahrenheit today in Phoenix). Although we saw a coyote trotting along the road last night, there continues to be a disappointing lack of roadrunners on our journey.









Photographs Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

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June 29, 2019 · 12:34 am

London Bridge, Hidden Valley, Desert Botanical Garden


Yesterday, Jessica and I we drove to Joshua Tree National Park and walked the Hidden Valley Nature Trail which is full of yuccas, cactus, and piles of vast granite boulders. Today, Jessica and I started off with a walk across London Bridge over Lake Havasu, Arizona. The 1830s structure over the River Thames was dismantled and rebuilt in Arizona in 1971. We then drove to the superb Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix where the temperature was 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Tomorrow, we go to the Petrified Forest National Park and Santa Fe. In long stretches of desert driving, we have seen shoe-laden ruins, lizards, birds, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels (and one big snake) but no roadrunners or tortoises yet. Still hoping to see a roadrunner…











Photos Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

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June 27, 2019 · 10:40 am

Miracle Hot Springs to Joshua Tree

Jessica and I slept at Sandy Flat Campground (near Lake Isabella) last night after a visit to the Miracle hot springs nearby. This morning, we drove thru the Joshua Trees to San Bernardino where she has a meeting. We head to Arizona this afternoon.

Photos Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

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June 26, 2019 · 1:57 pm

Road Trip Circumnavigating Nevada

Jessica and I are on a road trip to six national parks and seven states, not including Nevada! We started driving early this morning and are now eating lunch outside of Bakersfield. We have already visited the L.T.Sue Tea Emporium in Hanford’s China Alley, and Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park. I am also trying out blogging from my phone.

Photos Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

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March 23, 2019 · 3:45 pm

Arts and Crafts in Sierra Leone


In addition to meeting new people and mentoring, style, fashion, and exploring local markets have been some of my great joys during many trips to Africa. The recent TechWomen Delegation to Sierra Leone was no exception. This is an update on my 2017 blog post Fabric Arts and Crafts in Sierra Leone. Having shopped in Sierra Leone before, my daughter Jessica and I arrived with clear ideas on what we wanted to bring home this time.

An unexpected delight was that TechWomen Fellow, Engineer, and fashion entrepreneur Michelle Sesay (of House of Cordelia in Freetown) generously offered to have clothes made to order for the TechWomen mentors. She brought fabric and some made-up samples, took our measures and design ideas, and delivered wonders. Her tailor is amazing! Jessica and I and most of the TechWomen wore our new outfits to the final dinner.

In addition, Jessica and I brought home bolts of fabric, batik, and wood carvings as presents and to decorate our homes. After experiencing the design and color flair in West Africa, the San Francisco Bay Area is visually boring.





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Images Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson –  with thanks to TechWomen for the group photo!

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March 15, 2019 · 5:10 pm

TechWomen Delegation to Sierra Leone

I recently returned from the TechWomen Delegation to Sierra Leone and am still catching up with all of my work and homework. I was happy to be able to travel with my daughter, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, who was also a Delegation Member and who posted excellent daily blogs during the trip. We met with hundreds of girls and boys, entrepreneurs and leaders, schools and organizations, and came home inspired by the energetic and welcoming people of Sierra Leone.

Jessica and I had a long layover in London, so we were able to see an excellent all-female cast of Richard II at the Globe Theater. Once our flight arrived in Sierra Leone, we took the boat between Lungi and Freetown. The next day, we started visiting initiatives around Freetown developed by the creative and dedicated TechWomen Fellows of Sierra Leone, and participating in other events, including

  • The Services Secondary School, Juba
  • Reception by US Ambassador Maria E. Brewer
  • STEM Career Day with secondary students at British Council, Tower Hill
  • Fourah Bay College STEM students
  • Women’s Leadership Forum at Radisson Blu Hotel
  • Connecting the Future networking event and reception at Sierra Lighthouse
  • Women in #Techpreneurship at Family Kingdom Resort
  • Pitch Night and Startup Exhibition at Toma Boutique Hotel
  • Reduce-Reuse-Recycle at Saint Edward’s Primary School
  • Hands-on STEM Experience with Students at Buxton Memorial Methodist Church

I gave a keynote on Networking, and Jessica gave a talk on Finding Funding, and we joined all of the Delegation members to help present workshops and activities. Of course, Jessica and I passed out our Notable Women in Computing cards and posters. After the delegation ended, many of us took a bus to visit Families Without Borders in Makeni. Even after a 42 hour trip home, it was a remarkable and fulfilling experience.





















Updated 23 March 2019

Photos Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson – Thanks to TechWomen for the Pitch Night photo!
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January 3, 2019 · 4:48 pm

4th Edition: “Notable Women in Computing” Playing Cards Listing

Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Susan Rodger and I have just updated the Notable Women in Computing playing cards – publishing the 4th Edition since 2014. These will be available for sale at the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education – SIGCE 2019 event, and (as always) on Notable Technical Women. The cards have been updated to reflect some of the new honors for these remarkable leaders – and this is the first version in which each of the 54 honorees has a photo, plus a link to her Wikipedia page. In the first edition, 25% of the honorees did not have a Wikipedia page.

Notable Women in Computing playing cards are associated with the long-term “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” project.  We encourage you to use this information to inspire students and teach computer science, and write or improve Wikipedia pages – especially creating new pages about remarkable women who have none. Please watch our 2014 Kickstarter video about why we picked these 54 women from among all of the remarkable technical women.

All 54 cards:

Suit Honoree Name Position, Honors, Awards Wikipedia Link
Joker Maria Klawe Harvey Mudd College President, ACM Fellow, Canadian Information Processing Society founding Fellow, ABIE Award – Leadership Linked Here
Joker Mitchell Baker Exec.Chair Mozilla, ABI Woman of Vision, Internet Hall of Fame, Webby Lifetime Achievement Linked Here
Hearts Queen– Frances Allen IBM Fellow Emerita, Turing Award, Computer History Museum Fellow, IEEE Fellow Linked Here
❤ King– Barbara Liskov MIT Professor, Turing Award, ACM Fellow, SWE Achievement Award, National Inventors Hall of Fame Linked Here
❤ Jack– Shafrira Goldwasser MIT Professor, Turing Award, ACM-W Athena Lecturer, ACM Fellow Linked Here
❤ Ace– Hessa Al Jaber Qatar ICT Minister, Chair CS Department – Qatar Univ. Linked Here
❤ 10- Mary Jane Irwin Pennsylvania State Univ. Professor, ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, NAE Member, ACM-W Athena Lecturer Linked Here
❤ 9- Irene Greif ABIE Award for Technical Leadership, IBM User Experience Group, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Formed Lotus Research 1992 Linked Here
❤ 8- Duy-Loan Le Senior Fellow-Texas Instruments, WITI Hall of Fame, ABI Women of Vision Linked Here
❤ 7- Grete Hermann Univ. of Göttingen mathematician, 1926 foundational paper for computerized algebra Linked Here
❤ 6- Manuela Veloso IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, JPMorgan Chase AI Research head Linked Here
❤ 5- Lila Ibrahim COO DeepMind, CBO Coursera, Founder Team4Tech, ABI Woman of Vision, Purdue University-Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer Linked Here
❤ 4- Padmasree Warrior Former Cisco and Motorola CTO, WITI Hall of Fame, Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Delhi Linked Here
❤ 3- Genevieve Bell Australian National University Director – Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute, ABI Woman of Vision, WITI Hall of Fame Linked Here
❤ 2- Marilyn Wescoff ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame Linked Here
Diamonds Queen– Anita Borg Founder Anita Borg Institute, WITI Hall of Fame, Fellow ACM, EFF Pioneer Linked Here
♦ King– Deborah Estrin MacArthur Fellow, IEEE Internet Award, ACM, AAAS and IEEE Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, ACM-W Athena Lecturer Linked Here
♦ Jack– Yuqing Gao Former IBM Distinguished Engineer, ABI Woman of Vision, IEEE Fellow Linked Here
♦ Ace– Susan Graham UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor, ACM, IEEE, NAE, AAAS Fellow Linked Here
♦ 10- Cristina Amon Univ. of Toronto Dean-Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, IEEE Fellow, SWE Achievement Award, Canadian Academy of Eng., Spanish Royal Academy, Royal Society of Canada, US NAE Linked Here
♦ 9- Betsy Ancker-Johnson 1st observation of microwave emission without the presence of an external field (1967), Fellow Am Physical Society, Fellow AAAS, IEEE Fellow, Member NAE Linked Here
♦ 8- Arati Prabhakar Former head US DARPA and NIST, IEEE Fellow Linked Here
♦ 7- Sophie Vandebroek COO IBM Research, former CTO Xerox, IEEE Fellow, WITI Hall of Fame, Royal Flemish Academy for Arts & Sciences Member Linked Here
♦ 6- Ruzena Bajcsy UC Berkeley Professor, NAE and NASIM Member, Fellow ACM, IEEE, AAAI, and AAAS, IEEE Robotics and Automation Award Linked Here
♦ 5- Laurie Hendren Professor McGill Univ., ACM Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Linked Here
♦ 4- Lixia Zhang UCLA Professor, ACM and IEEE Fellow, IEEE Internet Award Linked Here
♦ 3- Betty Snyder ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, Augusta Ada Lovelace Award, IEEE Computer Pioneer Award Linked Here
♦ 2- Kay McNulty ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, National Inventors Hall of Fame Linked Here
Spades Queen– Grace Hopper US Navy Admiral, 1st compiler for a programming, Computer History Museum Fellow, Dist Fellow-British Computer Society, Fellow AAAS, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Hopper College at Yale University Linked Here
♠ King– Chieko Asakawa IBM Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, Japan Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon Member US NAE Linked Here
♠ Jack– Denice Denton Univ. California Santa Cruz Chancellor, AAAS Fellow, IEEE Fellow Linked Here
♠ Ace– Radia Perlman Intel Fellow, IEEE and ACM Fellow, 1st ABI Woman of Vision award winner, National Inventors Hall of Fame, Internet Hall of Fame Linked Here
♠ 10- Clarisse de Souza Professor PUC Rio de Janeiro, CHI Academy, Scientific Merit Award of the Brazilian Computer Society Linked Here
♠ 9- Linda Petzold Univ. California Santa Barbara Professor, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, NAE Member Linked Here
♠ 8- Jennifer Widom Professor Stanford Univ., ACM Fellow, AAAS Member, NAE Member, Dean-Stanford School of Engineering, ACM-W Athena Lecturer Linked Here
♠ 7- Jean Sammet IBM Researcher, 1st woman ACM President, ACM Fellow, Computer History Museum Fellow, NCWIT Pioneer Award Linked Here
♠ 6- Helen Greiner CEO of CyPhy Works, Founder iRobot, ABI woman of vision, WITI Hall of Fame, Presidential Ambassador for Global Leadership Linked Here
♠ 5- Anuradha Annaswamy MIT Senior Research Scientist, IEEE Fellow, Hay Medal, Indian Institute of Science Linked Here
♠ 4- Qiheng Hu Founder, China Internet Network Information Center, Internet Hall of Fame, Research Professor – Chinese Academy of Sciences Linked Here
♠ 3- Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame Linked Here
♠ 2- Fran Bilas ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame Linked Here
Clubs Queen– Katherine Johnson NASA Mathematician, calculated the trajectory of early space launches, NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility, Subject of movie “Hidden Figures” Linked Here
♣ King– Augusta Ada Lovelace King Mathematician, 1st computer programmer 1843 Linked Here
♣ Jack– Jennifer Chayes Microsoft Research Distinguished Scientist, ACM Fellow, ABI woman of vision, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, von Neumann Prize Linked Here
♣ Ace– Vicki Hanson CEO of ACM, Former RIT Distinguished Professor, Professor Univ. of Dundee, ACM Fellow, SIGCHI Social Impact Award, ABI woman of vision, Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh Linked Here
♣ 10- Ellen Ochoa NASA Astronaut and Johnson Space Center Director, 1st Hispanic woman in space, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Harvard Foundation Science Award, San Diego State Univ. Alumna of the Year, Astronaut Hall of Fame Linked Here
♣ 9- Tova Milo Professor Tel Aviv Univ., ACM Fellow, Academia Europaea Linked Here
♣ 8- Valerie Taylor ACM Fellow, Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, IEEE Fellow Linked Here
♣ 7- Kathleen McKeown Professor Columbia Univ., ACM and AAAI Fellow, Founding Fellow Association for Computational Linguistics, ABI Women of Vision Linked Here
♣ 6- Susan Landau Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, National Cyber Security Hall of Fame Linked Here
♣ 5- Mary Lou Jepsen Founder OpenWater, former Google X Head of the Display Division, ABI Woman of Vision, WITI Hall of Fame, One Laptop Per Child Designer Linked Here
♣ 4- Kristina Johnson National Inventors Hall of Fame, Former Undersecretary US Dept. of Energy, IEEE Fellow, Member NAE, ABI Woman of Vision, SWE Achievement Award Linked Here
♣ 3- Sophie Wilson Broadcom Director IC Design, Designer Acorn Microcomputer, Computer History Museum Fellow, Fellow Royal Society-London Linked Here
♣ 2- Jean Bartik ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, Fellow Computer History Museum, IEEE Computer Pioneer Award Linked Here

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