Six badass women in tech you have to know about
What does your gender have to do with how much of an impact you can make in the world of tech? With the problems that the tech industry unfortunately still has with diversity and harassment, it’s perennially notable that women have been leaders and innovators in technology. According to HackerRank’s 2018 Women In Tech report, the gender gap in software development is slowly shrinking, but there is still more work to be done.
In honor of International Women’s Day (but there’s never a bad time to celebrate women), we’ve collected inspiring stories of six badass women who revolutionized technology, some of whom are still working to make the field more inclusive.
Susan Kare, Apple Icon Designer
Susan Kare should be a hundred times more famous than she is, because of her contributions to the design of the original Macintosh computer. The Museum of Modern Art hailed her as “a pioneering and influential computer iconographer,” and you may recognize her work in icons that are still used today, like the Finder icon (that weird two-tone face that you click to access your file system) and the trash bin.
You can take a look at her sketchbook where she designed pixel icons on a grid, or learn more about how she works today to get inspired.
Grace Hopper, Programming Pioneer
Grace Hopper was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2016 for creating the first code compiler and for her work on the Harvard Mark 1 computer — one of those really early behemoths that was the size of several refrigerators.
Even in the early days of computing, she was a huge advocate for mentoring others in tech. She’s quoted saying: “the most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, ‘Try it.’ And I back ’em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir ’em up at intervals so they don’t forget to take chances.”
Alaina Percival, CEO of Women Who Code
Today’s Superwoman of mentoring in tech is Alaina Percival. Women Who Code is a global nonprofit providing resources, community, and financial support for women in tech. Over 50,000 women have benefited from their support under the leadership of one Alaina Percival. After working for tech startups herself while volunteering for Women Who Code for several years, she grew it into a full-blown nonprofit organization, filing for 501(c)3 status and trademarking the name, before becoming CEO in 2014. When asked in an interview with The Huffington Post about what advice she would give to her younger self, she said: “Be inspired by the world around you, and find the big problem that you want to solve.”
Nonny de la Peña, Founder of Emblematic Group
Called “The Godmother Of Virtual Reality”, Nonny de la Peña made her mark in VR filmmaking with the 2012 documentary Hunger, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Showing the plight of homeless people in Los Angeles through a virtual reality experience to create an empathic connection with the audience was a new frontier, and her company Emblematic Group now seeks to challenge the way we relate to news and other forms of media with VR. She gave a TedTalk about the topic in 2015
Ida Tin, CEO and Co-founder of Clue
Clue is a women’s health app, released in 2013, and founded in Berlin. Ida Tin is credited with coining the term “femtech,” and is serious about building a diverse team at Clue, as well as not patronizing women when it comes to their health. Tin acknowledges there’s “still a social taboo” talking about and building products for reproductive health, but has overcome many obstacles in raising $30 million for the company.
Jennifer Hyman, Co-founder of Rent the Runway
Rent the Runway was founded in 2009, and is getting close to a $1b valuation today, in no small part due to the leadership of Jennifer Hyman. Similar to Grover, they provide access to luxury fashion (instead of the latest tech products) on a subscription basis. When asked by Fortune about technology that she’s excited about, she said: “I’m really excited about educational technology and all of the strides that have been made to use technology to make more dynamic, interactive curriculums that are personalized to the user… I love companies like Codecademy, Coursera, and Amplify, which are disrupting the game in terms of how we learn.”
