Tag Archives: technical women

September 19, 2013 · 10:52 pm

TechWomen Mentor Workshop and Mixer

We 2013 TechWomen mentors met as a group for the first time today. What an inspiring group of talented technical women! Dozens of Silicon Valley’s great companies are actively supporting this impressive program. TechWomen is an Initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs:

TechWomen is a professional mentorship and exchange program developed in response to President Obama’s efforts to strengthen relations between the United States and the Middle East and North Africa. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first announced the TechWomen initiative on April 28, 2010 during President Obama’s Entrepreneurship Summit. In June 2011, TechWomen launched with 37 participants from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories. In 2012, the program expanded to include women from Tunsia and Yemen. In 2013, the cohort doubled in size with the addition of women from Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

We were welcomed this afternoon by Heather Ramsey (Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships, Institute of International Education) in person, and Lee Satterfield (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State) with Sheila Casey (Deputy Director, Office of Citizen Exchanges at U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs) by way of video from Washington D.C. The interesting keynote address was by Gabriela Styf-Sjöman (Ericsson Vice President, Product Line IP and Broadband Cloud Computing and NMS), followed by a cultural training session.

Our 78 Emerging Leaders arrive early next month from the Middle East and Africa. My 2013 mentee is from Algeria – I am so looking forward to meeting her in person! I am serving as her Cultural Mentor with Larissa Shapiro as her Professional Mentor.

Famous Women in Computing – Wordle Graphic

Click on the Graphic to See a Bigger Size

This Wordle* graphic presents key words about famous women in computer science. It describes women who are pioneers and leaders in computing, recognized by their peers, academia, and the technology industry through major awards and other public acknowledgements of excellence. Since 2009, I have lead a committee of the Anita Borg Institute – Advisory Board that collects and presents information about notable women in STEM.

In March 2012, we published the Famous Women in Computer Science web resource. Last month, we announced the “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” (and the list with more than 230 names). For more, see Notable Women List Triples.

As always, thanks to my wise and energetic committee members, including:

Frances Allen, IBM Fellow Emeritus
Elizabeth Ames, Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Alliances, Anita Borg Institute
Kristine Bell, Marketing Manager, Anita Borg Institute
Chandra Krintz, University of California at Santa Barbara, Professor of Computer Science
Nancy Ramsey, Futurist, Author and Entrepreneur
Kathy Richardson, Consultant
Susan Rodger, Duke University, Professor of the Practice in the Computer Science Department, and Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) project leader
Robert Walker, Kent State University, Director School of Digital Sciences

The graphic above includes information from both the 2012 and 2013 lists.

* “Wordle is a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.”

American Association of University Women – AAUW San Jose

This weekend, I became a member of the San Jose branch of the American Association of University Women – AAUW. I was honored to give a presentation about mentoring at the national AAUW meeting in New Orleans in June and have continued to be impressed by the effective and interesting work of this venerable organization. Newly-elected Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez joined the San Jose branch the same day I did – that’s her photo above. I am also a member of the California On-line AAUW branch.

Patrick Schmitt (Chancellor at the West Valley-Mission Community College District) gave a excellent talk about the future of higher education. He predicted that in 30 years, the higher education model will be “bespoke” – customized and driven by student success and student-focused measures. This reminded me of the future presented in Neal Stephenson’s remarkable novel Diamond Age. AAUW San Jose also awarded tech-camp and college scholarships to over a dozen young women at the meeting.

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as AAUW, San Jose, teaching, technical women

August 15, 2013 · 9:36 am

Getting Beyond Marie Curie

I admire Marie Curie as a great scientist and inventor but I get tired of hearing about her. Several times in meetings where attendees were asked to name great women in STEM, Marie Curie was the only one anyone could think of. Marie Curie is extremely impressive: the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. On a wall at Cal Poly, the portrait of Marie Curie is next to that of Albert Einstein. But she did die almost eighty years ago and there have been many great women in science, math, and technology before and since.

One of my smaller motivations for helping to create the “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” (and the list of notable women in computing with a current total of 234 names) is to get beyond Marie Curie. Maybe next time I participate in an icebreaker exercise at a meeting, participants will shout out…

…or even the name of a still-living woman. But please not just Marie Curie.

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Tagged as Geeks, teaching, technical women

August 13, 2013 · 6:57 pm

Notable Women List Triples!

Susan Landau, 2008

Radia Perlman, 2012

Since 2009, we have been expanding the list of notable women in computing. Recently, the list tripled in size! The Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board (ABI) committee I chair published the first version of the Famous Women in Computer Science list in March 2012. It included about eighty names, short biographies, plus a Pinterest board.

This year, our ABI committee started collaborating with Dr. Susan Rodger (Duke University) of the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W). We combined the list CRA-W developed with the original ABI list – for a current total of 234 names.

The women on this list are pioneers and leaders in computing, recognized by their peers and the technology industry through major awards and other public acknowledgements of excellence.

Why make such a list?

Public acknowledgment of success and excellence is good for both the honored individual as well as their company, institution, or university. Women on this list serve as role models for girls and young women entering the field. The list also provides encouragement to women already working in computing. Moreover, public recognition builds on itself. For example, award winners are more likely to be noticed and considered for additional awards.

Goals for this project:

To raise awareness of notable women in computing as role models.
To identify and document the accomplishments and lives of notable women in computing, particularly in Wikipedia.
To increase the number of women writing for Wikipedia by developing the “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing“. A survey done in 2010 indicated only 13% of those writing Wikipedia pages were women.
To identify women with award-winning potential. Awards and other honors often go begging for lack of good nominations. A great woman is often overlooked because no one mentioned her name or took the time to build her case. Increased focus is needed on awards going to great technical women at every stage in their careers.
To encourage those who want to understand their own potential for promotion, honors, and awards.
To support efforts to organize and inform a nomination or promotion.

What can you do?

Review the current spreadsheet listing Notable Women in Computing.
Fill out this entry form to add a name to the list.
Fill out this update form to add information about a woman already listed.
Get started writing Wikipedia pages on notable women in computing.
Consider nominating a woman for an award, promotion, or honor in the field of computing. Check out The RAISE Project for a list of awards.

Lucy Sanders,
and Fran Allen, 2010

Genevieve Bell, 2013

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July 12, 2013 · 1:55 pm

Creative Writing Exchange

This month I am enjoying experimenting with new writing – part of an exchange my daughter Jessica set up among eight pairs of friends. We are committed to write for at least ten minutes a day in answer to her email prompt and also to giving only positive feedback to our writing partner. For example, on 6 July 2013, Jessica’s prompt was: “What are the women saying to each other? One is wearing cultural dress, another a stove-pipe hat, and the third sunglasses.”

My response was the short story below. Following Mark Twain’s advice to “Write What You Know”, I borrowed the names of some TechWomen friends but this is a work of fiction – not about particular women! Only the conferences and places are real: I have travelled recently to both Portland, Oregon and Amman, Jordan.

Afnan, Noor, and Colleen were shopping in Amman. The three geeks had met at the OpenStack conference in Portland, Oregon, the year before. Professional discussions between technical sessions, about programming and politics, had moved into complaints about guys and how pleasant it was for once not to be the only woman in the room. The usual complaints had become more personal and by the time they went to Powell’s Books and lunch together, the three were friends.

Afnan and Noor were both graduates of Princess Sumaya University, although from different years. Colleen had gone to Cal and was fascinated by the other girls’ stories about Jordan and the developing technical culture of the Middle East – so different from her experiences in the People’s Republic of Bezerkley and California. By the time OpenStack ended, the three were collaborating on an open source project together, firmly connected in Facebook, LinkedIn and all of the other web-based glue of the technical world. When Colleen’s Cal thesis advisor was invited to speak TEDxAmman the following year and offered her a ticket to the big event, she grabbed the chance.

Colleen was a true nerd, wearing what was comfortable and clean, but sometimes adding a bizarre element to keep her all-male co-workers noticing that she was still a girl. Some days it was yellow socks with pink and white nigiri sushi images, today it was a stove-pipe hat. Colleen was a firm believer in the principle that you can be as weird as you are good. She was a very good programmer. At first, that Afnan and Noor wore hijab and more stylish clothes did not concern Colleen. It was their kind of uniform, just as jeans and funny socks or hats were hers. Noor wearing her sunglasses propped on top of her headscarf was kind of like a hat.

Colleen told Noor and Afnan that her professor’s TEDx talk had gone well and that she was meeting amazing new people, men and women whose work had made a difference, who were trying to change the world. But for the first time since High School, Colleen was a little worried about her clothes. Maybe the hat wasn’t right for this high-end crowd. She asked her elegant friends to go shopping, to help her spend some money. Colleen did not want to wear hijab or that western-uniform, the skirted suit, but the long dress and coat that Afnan wore or Noor’s fitted slacks and jackets looked good. Colleen was ready for a change.

Girl Style, Boy Style

On our recent vacation to Loon Lake, Wisconsin, I made some observations about girl style and boy style. My husband John was much in demand to drive the Starcraft speed boat for the nine kids at our family cottage. As his spotter, I sat backwards and watched the kids riding the tube or skis or wakeboard: to be sure they were safe and to relay their hand signals (“faster” “slower” “stop!”) to John – while of course taking pictures of all the fun! This was a small group of children, ages seven to eighteen, with six boys and three girls, who participated in dozens of speed boat runs over six days.

Most the kids wanted to do tricks while riding the fast-moving tube – such holding their hands up, kneeling or standing up. Our first day out, I got tired of the boys energetically blocking the girls from any participation. After enough of this, I set up a girls-only ride to encourage them to get started. The two teenage girls took several runs with the seven year old between them on the tube. Then the big girls took some runs by themselves. On one of these runs, I saw the girls do something I had never seen before: they held hands and balanced against each other so that both could stand (see Photo 1). The boys were out for themselves – sometimes even holding each other down in their efforts to do the best trick (see Photo 2). After their girls-only ride, the girls seemed more willing to compete for speedboat runs.

Photo 1

Photo 2

My vacation observations are not statistically-valid but the competitive behavioral patterns are interesting nonetheless. For more, check out “Are Men Really More Competitive Than Women?” by Melissa Lafsky (2008) who commented on insights into the underlying sources of the observed gender differences in an early version of the research paper “Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society” by Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, John A. List (2009).

Because of my professional work with the Anita Borg Institute, TechWomen, and the American Association of University Women, I am frequently asked what can be done to increase the number of girls and women in STEM, and particularly in the very-competitive technical fields. After observing some highly-successful programs (such as that of Dr. Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd College and Dr. Jane Margolis and Dr. Allen Fisher’s Unlocking the Clubhouse work at Carnegie Mellon), I know that fast and effective change is possible. The best way to start is not to pretend that girls and boys are the same but rather to give girls a good beginning: a chance to have fun, to experiment and succeed in a supportive environment before taking on the whole world.

Tag Archives: technical women

TechWomen Mentor Workshop and Mixer

Famous Women in Computing – Wordle Graphic

American Association of University Women – AAUW San Jose

Getting Beyond Marie Curie

Notable Women List Triples!

Creative Writing Exchange

Girl Style, Boy Style

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