Powerful Women in Technology - who are they?

Many are familiar with the names of the world’s most famous people in technology such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook etc. It is a fact women are a minority in the technology sector, however some senior key positions of powerful companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, IBM, HP are held by women with outstanding technical achievements;

Virginia "Ginni" Rometty is President and CEO of IBM. She is the first woman to head IBM. 


She has been ranked #15 on Forbes magazine's "World's 100 Most Powerful Women 2012". and named to Fortune magazine's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" for seven consecutive years, ranking #7 for 2011.

 
Sandy Carter is Vice President, Social Business Evangelism at IBM.

 

 

JaneMoran is Global Chief Information Officer,Thomson Reuters,

 

Susie Wee is VP and CTEO (Chief Technology and Experience Officer) of Collaboration and Communication at networking giant Cisco Systems

 Cher Wang is co-founder and chairwoman of HTC Corporation, Taiwan’s leading technology business. Forbes Magazine describes her as “the most powerful woman in wireless”.

JudyEstrin the CEO of JLabs is a networking technology pioneer and Silicon Valley leader. Since 1981, she has co-founded seven technology companies and served as the CTO of Cisco Systems

DeborahEstrin is a pioneer in the field of embedded network sensing and is the director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at UCLA.

Margaret Cushing Whitman is the president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard.
Whitman transformed the online auction site eBay from a $4 million company to an $8 billion one.

MaxineFassberg is Vice President of the Technology and Manufacturing Group for Intel Corp, manages manufacturing operations at Intel Israel, the world's biggest manufacturer of semiconductor chips and the country's largest private employer.

UrsulaBurns is now chair of Xerox, is the first African-American woman to lead a major U.S. corporation.

SherylSandberg is Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, transformed Facebook from a hugely popular website into an extremely profitable company.

 

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer started out at Google in 1999, Google’s first female engineer where she was instrumental in developing Google’s iconic search box layout and also responsible for many of Google’s most successful consumer-facing products, including Gmail, Google News, and Google Maps.

ElizabethBaron runs (and helped create) Ford’s Immersive Virtual Environment Lab, a state-of-the-art space that uses virtual reality to help designers and engineers envision and ensure safety of a vehicle before it’s actually built.

 
CindyBates is the Vice President of Microsoft’s US Small and Medium Business Distribution.

RobinBienfait oversees the Enterprise Business Unit, BlackBerry Operations, Customer Service, and Corporate IT functions and plays a major role in leading the vision for BlackBerry enterprise solutions, and the execution of making that vision a reality.

Adriana Karaboutis has been global CIO at Dell involved in the transition of Dell from a PC supplier to a services-led organization

DonnaDubinsky is a major force behind Palm. She was cited for “introducing the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA) and who is now developing a computer memory system modeled after the human brain.” 

 

Safra Catz assumed the role of president of hardware and software company Oracle in January 2004

In 2009 she was ranked by Fortune as the 12th most powerful woman in business. She was also ranked by Forbes as the 16th most powerful woman.

Women and Technology - Leaping forward

The fast development of modern technologies and accessibility of information has brought about substantial changes to the ways women interact today. Many studies show female users are the most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies. 



Brian Solis’s 2010 analysis shows females are the majority of visitors on Twitter, Facebook, Deli.ci.ous, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Upcoming.org, uStream, Classmates.com, Bebo and Yelp. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook says women are not only the majority of its users, but drive 62% of activity in terms of messages, updates and comments, and 71% of the daily fan activity.

However the number of women going into technology continues to lag behind that for men. More here.

“Around the world, women are not full partners in driving the creation of new technology that will define their lives. This is not good for women and not good for the world. Women need to assume their rightful place at the table creating the technology of the future.”...............AnitaBorg, Founder, Institute for Women and Technology.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook has this suggestion on how to close that gap “Let your daughters play video games. Encourage your daughters to play video games!”





Microsoft partnered with 85 Broads on a remote working survey to kick off the “Your Office, Your Terms” campaign, to educate women on the benefits of remote working and the technologies. 85 Broads is a global women’s network whose mission is to generate exceptional professional and social value for its members.



Carolyn Leighton founded WITI, primarily a U.S. based networking group now a leading worldwide organization dedicated to empowering women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership and economic prosperity.

women in technology - we are female

She Will is a focused campaign created by Intel to empower girls and women around the world by fostering equal economic and educational opportunities. 

Teen Sex Education in Schools – Parent’s Involvement?

Sex remains a taboo subject especially in this part of the world (Asians) probably due to cultural and religious restrictions or the ways our parents brought us up. I have to admit I was not prepared, in fact never would have expected my daughter to approach me with very intimate questions about the birds and the bees.

 

Daughter: Mum, are you free? 

Me: Of ‘cos, what’s up?

Daughter: May I ask you a question?

Me: Sure, why not?

Daughter: We had sex education in class this morning; how should I answer this question mum? >>>hmmm, Madam Ann plans to have a baby, how many times must she “MATE” with her husband to conceive one<<<?

Poinggg! ....  Oh dear ..... such question coming from my little girl, and she nicely used the word "mate" instead!


I was taken by surprise - I heard the Ministry of Education was planning to implement sex education in schools (called social and reproductive-health education) but I never bothered to find out more - the syllabus or topics that they will discuss in class. 


My first (instant) reaction was a hearty laugh, (she chuckled too), then suddenly mumbled I had something important to attend to and quickly excused myself! How many of you out there were jolted by your teenage kids’ sudden "facts of life" questions?

The Guardian is running a year-long series looking at young people's sexual health and sex education in the UK and around the world (paid for by IPPF and FPA). Last 31^st of May 2012 The Guardian  opened a live forum on sex and sexuality education and called on all parents/guardians/interested parties to join in and participate. 

It is an interesting topic, an eye opener and some comments included links to many helpful websites and reading materials/references for parents on how best to approach this subject. 

Finally after gathering tips from various sources I was confident enough to know what and how best to explain to my daughter. Just the two of us - we sat down to have the talk. She appeared pretty comfortable with the subject, very well informed about our reproductive systems (covered in class) so her questions were way beyond that and much more intimate in nature.

     

None of my boys approached me with direct questions. However I noticed whenever they are alone with me they will raise questions, (very curious to know) about the relationships - between mum and dad such as;

1.  How did you meet dad and wanted to hear details from A to Z 
2. I have never seen the two of you fight, why? 
3. Other boyfriends before dad? 

Maybe what they actually wanted was to initiate some sort of discussion but just did not know how to get these messages across to me?

PYTHON “IN MY CLOSET” – Plantation Life (3)

Suppose I wouldn’t be here blogging today had the python slithered in and decide to rest in my closet! 

From day one I entered the jungle/plantation snakes~~ snakes~~ snakes ~~~~~~~~~~~~:>~ kept playing on my mind and our gardener found this behind the kitchen! I did not see how Haji Supardi caught the snake as I was hiding inside the house - of fright!

 

Later they assured me it was okay to come down (eeekkk they wanted me to get some pictures) so I braved myself and got these shots.

  

 

The python was still alive, somewhat in a dazed state; Haji Supardi is an expert snake catcher. 

 
They later released the python in the forest reserve away from the plantation.

What amazed me was how cool these people handled this reptile, eeekkk (squirming all over inside) so damn cool.

 

My kids grew up in this kind of environment, today all of them are avid animal lovers – zoos and pet shops are their favourite choice of visits since they were small. (Photo: with snake handler at Taiping Zoo, Malaysia).

(Photo: Crocodile farm Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia)