Women in Silicon Valley — How to Survive and Thrive as a Women in Tech
Have you ever heard of Silicon Valley? a very famous place as the largest technology producer located in the southern area of San Francisco, California South America, big companies like Google, eBay, Yahoo, Appel, and others are also located in Silicon Valley. According to the dreamhost.com site in 2020 there are 12% of engineers at Silicon Valley startups are women. Only 11% of executive positions in Silicon Valley companies are held by women. Although dominated by men, some women in Silicon Valley have succeeded in changing the perspective that women also have expertise in the field of technology, who are those great women?
Mary Lou Jepsen — CEO and Founder Openwater
“The technology could be used to do everything from detecting cancers early to reading people’s minds”
Mary Lou Jepsen is a graduate of Studio Art and Electrical Engineering at Brown University. a technical executive and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware. She is a former executive at Facebook and Google, at Google, she is a technical director at Google X who leads 2 “moonshot” programs reported to Sergey Brin (google founder). With her abilities, she also had the chance to establish four startups, one of which is One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Mary is also famous for her work as a multimedia artist, which made her enter the TIME 100 Moat Influential People and The CNN Thinkers and received great awards from various communities in her field.
In 2016 Mary developed a company, namely Open Water, a startup that works on a holographic infrared engineering device that allows users to see inside the brain and body very clearly, by creating this device we can diagnose and treat disease even further. On the official Openwater website, it is written that this will allow this device to be out sometime in 2021.
Bozoma Saint John — Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Netflix
“Silicon Valley will be the one adapting to her, not the other way around”
Bozoma saint john is known as “the most fashionable woman in silicon valley” her clothes are always amazing when working so she got the title, she said “I’ve always wanted to wear what makes me feel most powerful”. But on the other hand, she is a marketing executive who has extraordinary experience in the world of marketing, her first job was to work as an assistant to Spike Lee, she was also the head of global customer marketing at Apple Music & iTunes and the Chief Brand Officer at uber. She joined uber in June 2017 as Chief brand officer. At uber he was given the task of turning uber into a popular brand like Apple. Bozoma is the woman who inspired him to join uber when the troubles of her CEO scandal were exposed, with Bozoma’s energy, optims and creativity finally saving the company’s reputation. But in June 2018 Bozoma left uber and joined Endeavor as chief marketing officer, a company that includes marketing companies, media companies and talented agencies, until finally in 2020, Netflix Inc appointed Bozoma as chief marketing officer, which means she became a well-known black executive Netflix’s senior management.
Melody McCloskey — CEO and Founder Styleseat
Melody McCloskey is a business woman who founded Styleseat in 2011 which is an online application for beauty and wellness professionals and clients, this application can be said as “America’s salons”. This application is very profitable for stylists’ income, even most of the beauty professionals multiply their income when the first year the stylist was used.
“I talked to all these stylist and salon owners, i want to help you be an incredible business owner and make a lot more money, and do what you love and make a better living”
Melody McCloskey certainly has a big impact on some people because her idea of making this application, therefore she got the nickname “Most popular entrepreneur with the age of 35 years old” she started start up at the age of 26 years with no software engineering background. Even though the path she took was not easy, she had received some rejections, but it was because of her persistence and creativity that all materialized in the way he motivated herself, even now she is a notable entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Kate Mitchell — Co-Founder of Scale Venture Partners
“Gender is only one variable of diversity, but the one I can speak to best. During my career, I’ve evolved from not wanting to talk about being a woman in business, to today, when I feel it is my responsibility to do so.” (source: Kate Mitchell on scalevp.com)
Kate is a Co-founder of Scale Venture Partners, operating as a technology company by offering early-stage financing services for the growth of the technology industry located in Silicon Valley. She has led investing for more than 25 years in software in technology, finance, and management. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Kate held several companies as a way of developing technology at Bank of America. During her career, he was a former chairman and board member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Currently Kate has 2 jobs as Co-Founder & Partner at Scale Venture Partners and Investor at Broadway Angels. Some of the successful companies have her women and support teams such as ExactTarget (Salesforce), RingCentral (NYSE: RNG), HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS), Box (NYSE: BOX).
Being a woman in the tech field is challenging, but they have succeeded in showing that women deserve to be engaged in technology, some of them have gained worldwide recognition as women who have an influence on technology and business. Then, do you want to be one of the women in tech?
Written by Adila Putri Anisya
