Throughout history, women in technology have played critical roles in the development of technology. From Ada Lovelace to Grace Hopper, there are many great names on the list of famous women in technology to whom we can never be thankful enough.
In this blog, we are listing down a few top names of women in tech world operations that have used and pushed technology to reach new heights. With a little bit of insight into the personal lives and education of these famous coders, we will discuss the contributions that made these females in technology remembered forever.
So, without any further ado, let’s begin!
1. Ada Lovelace
Known as the very first programmer, Ada Lovelace was an expert mathematician and English writer. Daughter of famous poet Lord Byron and his wife Anna Isabella Byron, Ada was a visionary woman way ahead of her time. One of the top female role models in technology, Ada was born on December 10, 1815. Her professional partnership with Charles Babbage, Charles Dickens, and Sir David Brewster among others gave her the opportunity to showcase her talents. Among all women and technology examples, Ada played the most important role in programming.
2. Margaret Heafield Hamilton
Margaret was born on August 17, 1936, and is known for her crucial contributions to the Apollo Program by NASA. Among top women in tech world operations, Margaret’s contribution is remembered in the form of programming codes written for Lunar modules of the Apollo Program.
Her educational background was more focused on Mathematics from the beginning. She studied at Earlham College, Richmond, and Brandeis University before accepting the job at MIT itself. At MIT, Margaret, one of the most famous women in technology, worked on building weather prediction software while working on a postgraduate project for the meteorology department.
Later, this woman developer also joined the SAGE project where her team worked on developing programs for guidance and control systems under her leadership. This project was done to identify enemy aircraft.
3. Grace Hopper
Born on December 9, 1906, Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was a prominent American Computer Scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. This female IT influencer is known for her participation as one of the first programmers of Harvard Mark I Computer. Moreover, she is also known as one of the first developers who brought Linkers into existence. Before the Navy, Grace, one of the important women entrepreneurs in technology finished her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University and then joined Vassar College as a Professor of mathematics.
The computing career of Hopper began when she joined the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. Later, she joined the UNIVAC Computer I development team in 1949. Her role is well known for creating a programming language based on English. By 1952, her compiler called A-0 System was already ready. She also co-authored papers based on her work on Harvard Mark I.
In 1954, Hopper was selected to lead the department of automatic programming by Eckert-Mauchly. Later, she also released FLOW-MATIC, the first compiled language. This pushed forward some of the latest technology trends that are still coming in handy to developers.
Hopper has received 40 honorary degrees from many universities globally throughout her lifetime. A Yale University college was also renamed after her and in 1991, she was awarded the National Medal of Technology as well. Later, Barack Obama honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
4. Ruchi Sanghvi
Born on January 20, 1982, in India, Ruchi Sanghvi was the first female engineer hired by Facebook. One of the top female tech entrepreneurs, Sanghvi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004 and then moved to Silicon Valley and joined Oracle Corporation. In 2005, Sanghvi joined Facebook as the first female engineer and worked there until 2010. She was a crucial part of the initial team that worked on the News Feed product of Facebook.
In 2011, Sanghvi co-founded Cove with Aditya Agarwal which was acquired by Dropbox in 2012. Sanghvi and Aditya both joined Dropbox where Sanghvi later became the Vice President of Operations at Dropbox. Sanghvi worked there until 2013 and then left her full-time position instead working in an advisory role for the organization.
In 2015, Sanghvi, one of the most famous women entrepreneurs, launched South Park Commons (SPC), a community and co-working space. SPC raised funds of $40 million and $150 million in 2018 and 2021 respectively. Currently, Sanghvi is serving as the co-head and general partner in the SPC Fund.
5. Julia Grace
Julia Grace has an educational background based in Computer Science which she pursued from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of writing this blog, Grace is working as a VP- Product Engineering at Netflix. At Netflix, Grace, one of the top women and technology examples is leading a team of approximately 325 engineers. Before Netflix, she has also worked as a Director of Engineering at Apple where she led a team of approximately 200 engineers in Product Engineering for Siri.
Grace has 15 years of experience in software and web application development activities. Throughout her career, she has worked in crucial roles in organizations such as Slack, IBM Almaden Research, and more. Apart from being a part of Netflix, she is also a Board Director at Medcorder since June 2019.
6. Tamara Johanna Klink
Tamara has been working with Salesforce for more than 3 years now and throughout her tenure there, she has worked on multiple roles like Senior Campaign Manager, Lead Campaign Operations, and Senior Solution Engineer. She has done her Business Management and Accounting course from Bond University while, throughout her career, she has earned some amazing certifications and licenses. Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Consultant, Datorama Admin Specialist, Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Administrator, and Google Analytics among others are a few examples of achievements that Tamara has.
But not only is her professional background impressive, but she is also known for her Advocacy for Women in Tech. In 2019, she was awarded Top Five, Leading Ladies in Tech on Instagram and she was also a Finalist for Women in ICT Awards.
7. Joanna Rutkowska
A Polish computer security researcher, Joanna Rutkowska was born in 1981 in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. This one of the most famous females in technology is known for her crucial role in the research on low-level security and stealth malware. Also, for her role as the founder of Qubes OS, she has gained quite an impressive reputation among tech experts and enthusiasts.
A top woman developer, Rutkowska has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the Warsaw University of Technology. Since then, she has made crucial contributions in the cybersecurity field that became permanent parts of emerging technology trends.
8. Dani Roxberry
Dani has led 30+ successful project launches while she also has impressive experience in software development consulting for more than 10 years. Her expertise in digital solutions for e-commerce, enterprise, fashion, financial, gaming, marketing, social networking, and telecom industries is proven to be unmatchable. Dani is an Instructor of Applied Compiler Science with an expert command over programming languages like Python, R, Ruby, C#, Objective-C, PHP, C++, CoffeeScript, and more. One of the top female tech entrepreneurs, Dani’s abilities include various frameworks and methodologies. Her expertise ranges from Backend technologies like Django and Flask to Testing with Unit and Selenium among others.
Her career includes CTO at Titrate Solutions Ltd, Founder and CTO at FrameBuzz, Contract Instructor at UC Berkeley Extension, and Contract Instructor of Applied Computer Science at the Dominican University of California among others.
9. Sara J. Chipps
Working as an Engineering Manager, Flagship Infrastructure at LinkedIn, Sara started working as a part of the Software and Open Source community in 2001. She has also co-founded Girl Develop it and Jewelbots in June 2019 and September 2014 respectively. At Stack Overflow, she worked as an Engineering Manager between July 2018 to September 2019 and then as the Director of Product between September 2019 to Jane 2021. She is also a part of the Member Board of Directors at the .NET Foundation.
Sara did her Computer Science course at Penn State University and her career has been filled with impressive achievements. One of the crucial names in women in tech history, Sara has been playing a crucial role through Jewelbots in increasing the number of girls entering the STEM fields.
10. Aleksandra (Ola) Kunysz
Aleksandra finished her Bachelor of Computer Science from the Nowy Sacz School of Business (WSB NLU) in 2008 before pursuing a Master in Management in Finance degree from the same college. Later, in 2011, she started pursuing her one-year Master in Computer Science degree from DePaul University. Throughout her learning journey, she was also working as a Research Assistant at DePaul University.
Aleksandra is now officially mentoring new developers and working independently on contracts or short-time projects. She is known for the quality guidance and lectures that she provides to guide aspiring developers into the industry. In the past has worked with some reputed organizations such as Nokia, Capgemini, and more.
11. Lisa Bettany
If you own an iPhone and ever used the Camera+ app, the credit of co-founding that app goes to Lisa Bettany. Born on November 3, 1981, Lisa is a Canadian tech entrepreneur and photographer. Creator of top technology trends in businesses, Lisa was raised in Victoria, British Columbia by her parents. She loved figure skating since she was three years old. However, by the age of 19, Victoria’s figure skating career had to end because of an injury she got. Bettany along with six other developers of many different countries built the Camera+ app and launched it in 2010. The camera app was a successful project and generated $2 million in revenue within a year.
Lisa has been named as a top female tech entrepreneur in 2012 by Forbes, got recognized as Most Creative People in Business 1000 list by Fast Company, got featured in magazines like Entrepreneur, and more. She also has a history of hosting Gadget shows.
12. Robyn Exton
Founder of HER, the best LGBTQ+ dating app, Robyn has also founded the London Queer Fashion Show. In an interview with CNET, Robyn had expressed how HER social media app came into existence by a diverse group of people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. The idea was to ensure that people who are working on the app understand the requirement of the space.
Robyn finished her Bachelor of Science from the University of Bristol in 2007. After that, she kick started her career as an Account Manager at TAG. Robyn has been focused on Account Management profiles before she founded HER in August 2011. Through HER, Robyn has used the dating concept to provide a safe space to LGBTQ+ women, and with regular innovations, she is continuously making the space safer and more inclusive. Compared to the 2 gender identities that the HER app was released with initially, the social dating app has now 40 gender identities to pick from.
13. Prerna Gupta
CEO of Telepathic Inc. currently, Prerna Gupta was born in Oklahoma. Prerna has won the title of Miss Asia Oklahoma at a beauty pageant in 1999. In 2004, she graduated with a degree in Economics. Her career began with Monitor Group but in 2006, she co-founded a dating app for young Indians called Yaari. After getting 2 million users on Yaari, Gupta launched an app company called Khush. Later, she released LaDiDa that brought the concept of creating background music for users’ singing.
Khush was acquired by Smule in 2011 and Gupta was made Product Officer at the company. In 2013, she left Smule and became an active angel investor. Gupta is also the co-founder of the Hooked app that was launched under her company Telepathic Inc.
Conclusion
Well, these were all famous women in technology that we wanted to talk about. As in the above discussion you can see, these women have played their respective roles that became crucial for the tech world that we know of today. From writing first programming papers to making English useful for coding, and now creating a safe space for LGBTQ+ dating, these female IT influencers can not be thanked enough.
In the end, hopefully, this blog was interesting for you. You can explore MobileAppDaily for more blogs on different topics like app development trends, app reviews, names of top apps for different categories, top app development companies for different categories, and more.
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