Oursky’s female team members are in every position in the company: development, project management, QA, design, business development / sales, and marketing. We’ve all had different experiences as women in tech, so we’re sharing a few quotes that inspire us. Hope you like them!
Angie Chang, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Hackbright Academy
With an undergraduate in English and Social Welfare, Angie Chang spent a decade working working on startups with fewer than 50 employees. She founded organisations such as Women 2.0 and Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners before joining Hackbright Academy as Director of Growth. Now, as VP of Strategic Partnerships at Hackbright Academy her role alternates between engineering to product management.
Vanessa Hurst, Co-Founder of Girl Develop It
Vanessa Hurst led data and analytics for Paperless Post and managed databases for TheLadders, Capital IQ, and WealthEngine before founding CodeMontage and Girl Develop It. Previously, Vanessa founded and ran Developers for Good and she is a self-declared “computer programmer, social entrepreneur, and lifetime girl scout“. You can check out her viral video on Code.org What most schools don’t teach.
Rosalind Brewer, President and CEO of Sam’s Club
Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Sam’s Club, is the first woman and first African-American to lead a Wal-Mart division. She is a chemist by training and joined Wal-Mart as vice president in 2006.
Under Brewer’s leadership, the company earned $57 million in revenues in 2015. Outspoken about her belief in diversity, she commented about her unease at sitting in a meeting that was entirely male and Caucasian and prompted a Twitter backlash and death threats. Doug McMillon, CEO of the parent company Wal-Mart, stepped up to support her position.
Megan Smith, CTO of the United States
Before becoming CTO of the United States, Megan Smith worked in Google as a general manager for Google.org and vice president of business development and Google respectively. She was is also the CEO of Planet Out.
She was part of the MIT student team that designed, built and raced a solar car 2000 miles in the first cross-continental solar car race across the Australian Outback.
Lauren Mosenthal, Co-Founder and Former CTO of Glassbreakers
With a $5,000 check, Lauren Mosenthal and Eileen Carey quit their jobs to work on Glassbreakers full-time. The company began as a peer mentoring firm for women in tech, but has now pivoted towards an enterprise software company for diversity and inclusion. As a product designer, Lauren has brought a mix of design, product management, and front-end engineering to the startups and agencies she’s worked for, such as AKQA and Made Movement.
Kathryn Minshew, Co-Founder and CEO of The Muse
This Forbes 30-under-30 tech leader got her BA in Political Science in and French. Now, Kathryn Minshew is CEO of the company she founded, The Muse, which helps people navigate their career journey. Before founding The Muse, Kathryn co-founded PYP Media, and worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Before that, she was a management consultant.
Now, she is a a Wall Street Journal & Harvard Business Review contributor and Y Combinator alumna. She has an interview with Bloomberg sharing a smart approach to finding a dream job.
Jess Lee, Investing Partner at Sequoia Capital and former CEO of Polyvore
Hong Kong native Jess Lee worked as a product manager at Google under Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) before joining Polyvore, which sold for US$230 million to Yahoo. She has since become Sequoia Capital’s 11th investing partner.
Jean Bartik, Programmer for ENIAC
Jean Bartik and Frances Elizabeth Holberton were the two lead female programmers as part of a team that created the ENIAC, the first computer of its kind. She studied mathematics and was recruited in World War II to develop a machine that could calculate the firing trajectories for artillery shells. She and her colleagues developed and codified many of the fundamentals of programming while working on the ENIAC. Afterwards, Bartik held positions as an engineer, programmer, writer, and manager before ultimately being laid off at the age of 61. She found a second career as a real estate agent and was finally recognised in the 2000s for her landmark work.
Jinni Rometty, CEO of IBM
Rometty started as a systems engineer for IBM in 1981 and rose through the ranks to become president and CEO in 2012. With a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Ginni Rometty first worked for General Motors Institute before joining IBM. In recent years, she led IBM Watson to commercial use and is focusing the company’s efforts in cognitive computing systems.
Erin Teague, Product – VR for Youtube
Erin Teague, was previously Director of Product Management at Yahoo and headed the Fantasy Sports department. Prior to Yahoo, Erin worked as a Product Manager at Path and Twitter, and is now managing the VR Products for Youtube. She started her career designing algorithms Algorithmic Trading Technology group and Morgan Stanley. In 2014, Erin was named one of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley 100″ and she is also recognized as one of “19 Extraordinary Women In Silicon Valley Tech”, one of the “46 Most Important African-Americans In Technology”. This video of a day with Erin Teague
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