The Real Women of STEM

Leading by example, these are the real-life examples of successful women in STEM, from junior devs to CTOs and everything in between.

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Margaret Hamilton, CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc.

Margaret H. Hamilton is the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. (HTI). She created the Universal Systems Language (USL) and its automation, the 001 Tool Suite; the mathematical theory upon which it is based, Development Before the Fact (DBTF); and has been responsible for many applications designed and developed with USL-001.

As Director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT's Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Hamilton led the team that created the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo command modules and lunar landing vehicles.

(From http://htius.com/About_Us/About_Us.htm)

Hamilton’s work with onboard flight guidance not only steered Apollo missions, but was credited with preventing an abort of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and continued to be used in later space missions including Skylab.

Hamilton is credited with coining the term “software engineering”.  She was awarded the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award in 1986, and in 2003 received a NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for scientific and technical contributions.

More information about Margaret Hamilton is available at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%29

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Katie Moussouris - Chief Policy Officer at HackerOne

At Hacker One Katie oversees the company's philosophy and approach to vulnerability disclosure, advises customers and researchers, and works toward the public good to legitimize and promote security research to help make the Internet safer for everyone.

Prior to Hacker One, Katie spent several years at Microsoft leading security strategy, including establishing the Blue Hat Prize and bounty programs, leading security researcher outreach, serving as BlueHat content chair, and advising on vulnerability disclosure, and Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR).

Katie also serves as a subject matter expert for the US National Body of the International Standards Organization (ISO), in vulnerability disclosure (29147), secure development (27034), penetration testing (20004-2) and Vulnerability Handling Processes (30111). Katie received the 2011 Executive Women's Forum Women of Influence Award in the category of One to Watch.

Information above and image below from Katie's LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmoussouris

[realwomenofstem]

Dorothy Denning - Distinguished Professor, Naval Postgraduate School

"With a B.A. and M.A. in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue, Dorothy Denning is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. Introduced to computer security work in her first graduate school course on operating systems, Denning is perhaps best known for her 1976 publication, "A Lattice Model of Secure Information Flow," which established a mathematical basis for enforcing information security on a computer system. Denning served as a computer science professor at Purdue from 1975 to 1983. While teaching a course on computer security in the late 1970s, Denning determined that none of the existing textbooks addressed the latest developments in computer security, such as the Diffie-Hellman paper on public key cryptography, or its subsequent practical implementations. In 1982, Denning completed Cryptography and Data Security, which became a standard text in the burgeoning field of computer security. This publication coincided with a growing controversy between the National Security Agency and security researchers. The NSA stated that divulging cryptographic techniques to the public posed a national security threat. Denning did not agree, although she would later change her position on public cryptography."

"In 1983, Denning joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), where she continued her work in computer security, developing a system for intrusion detection. In 1987, she examined graphics and interfaces at Digital Equipment Corporation's Palo Alto research center. In the early 1990s, Denning pursued her interest in hacker culture, writing about the public misconceptions of young hackers -- a position she would later recant. In 1991, Denning became chair of the Georgetown University Computer Science Department, remaining at Georgetown until 2002, when she joined the Naval Postgraduate School as a professor and Department of Defense analyst. She has continued to write numerous articles, book chapters, and essays regarding computer security and related topics, including privacy, hacking, and cyber terror."

Quote from the Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota: https://wiki.umn.edu/CBI_ComputerSecurity/PeopleDenningDorothy

Image from http://faculty.nps.edu/dedennin/

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Rebecca Bace - Chief Strategist, Center for Forensics, IT and Security, University of South Alabama

"A pioneer in cyber security research, Bace was an early information security program manager, directing research in information security for the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Her work in building the early intrusion detection research and development community led to her recognition as the “Den Mother of Intrusion Detection.” Her book on intrusion detection remains the definitive text on that topic. Bace’s public service also includes stints as a security operations officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory and as an investment team lead for InQTel. She worked in the venture capital industry for a decade, building the information security product and service industry. In 2005, she was also named one of the five most influential women in the information security and risk management industry. In 2007, Information Security Magazine named Bace one of the ten most influential people in the information security industry."

From University of South Alabama announcement on her joining USA.

For more information, see https://wiki.umn.edu/CBI_ComputerSecurity/PeopleBaceRebecca

Image from http://www.infidel.net/infidels/bacebio/

[realwomenofstem]

Senior System Engineer at The Nature Conservancy

I am not a superhero, I am a System Engineer, of the system administrator/operations variety.  I do not leap tall buildings, stop trains, build multi-million dollar companies from an idea on a napkin, etc.  I do not manage 100 other engineers or design brain simulations or help NASA send a probe to Mars (all of which sound very interesting but also very not something just anyone can do).  I make computers talk to each other for a Large (3000+ staff) Environmental Nonprofit.  I get to help people who are seriously, no lie, out to save the world.  And I get paid enough doing it to own a house, support my cat fostering habit and enable my book reading addiction.  I do not have a technical degree and I am not a programmer and I don't really like any math past trigonometry (I can do it, I just don't like it; IMO calculus is made up generally integrals are pure fabrication).  I am self taught in technology and mostly learned from books and experience. What I'm saying is - anyone can do what I do.  It is work learning the basic principles but once you have those - and as long as you remember your job is to help others by making things work, not to just make things work in a vacuum - you can do anything in operations and do it pretty well.  And the reality is, all the shiny in the world is going to break at some point - there will always be work for people willing to roll up their sleeves and fix something someone else created or even better, design deployments of that stuff so it doesn't break in the first place.  Though yeah, the best is doing that kind of work supporting a mission you believe in. :)

[realwomenofstem]

Karen Gillison - Founder, CodeSherpas Inc.

Karen Gillison is a founding partner of CodeSherpas Inc. As an analytical software engineer and project manager, she has demonstrated a commitment to developing high quality web applications to enable her clients to get products to market faster. Through time tested and assured processes, Karen consistently delivers results.

Karen is a founding organizer of the Washington, D.C. RubyNation conference and is a member of the Northern VA Ruby User's Group. As an early adopter of Ruby on Rails, Karen is a Golden Spike alumna of the Pragmatic Studio Ruby on Rails, and a winner of the FGM Technical Achievement Award in 2000 and 2006.

Karen takes an active role in encouraging and supporting women to join in careers in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Karen has coached and sponsored several Rails Girls events, which focus on giving tools and community support to women of all backgrounds and experience levels who want to learn software development.

Follow Karen on Twitter @kgillison

[realwomenofstem]

We'll miss you, Evi Nemeth - Godmother of Systems Administration

From Wikipedia: "Evi Nemeth (born June 7, 1940 -- missing-at-sea June-July, 2013) was an engineer, author, and teacher known for her expertise in computer system administration and networks. She was the lead author of the “bibles” of system administration: UNIX System Administration Handbook (1989, 1995, 2000), Linux Administration Handbook (2002, 2006), and UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (2010). Evi Nemeth was known in technology circles as the matriarch of system administration.

Nemeth was best known in mathematical circles for originally identifying inadequacies in the “Diffie–Hellman problem,” the basis for a large portion of modern network cryptography – and has an Erdős number of 2.

Nemeth received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Penn State in 1961 and her PhD in mathematics from the University of Waterloo, Ontario in 1971. She taught at Florida Atlantic University and the State University of New York at Utica (SUNY Tech) before joining the computer science department at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) in 1980. She served as manager of the college’s computing facility from 1982 to 1986. She also was a visiting Associate Professor at Dartmouth College in 1990, and at UC San Diego in 1998, while on sabbatical from CU Boulder.

While at CU Boulder, Nemeth was well known for her undergraduate systems administration activity, in which students over the years had the opportunity to develop in-depth knowledge and skills in Unix system administration. Together with Steve Wozniak, Nemeth established the Woz scholarship program at CU Boulder which funded inquisitive undergraduates for many years. Nemeth also has a special talent for inspiring and teaching young people. She mentored numerous middle- and high-school students, who worked with her to support computing in the college and came to be known as "the munchkins." She also mentored talented young undergraduates, taking them to national meetings where they installed networks and broadcast the meetings’ sessions on the Internet on the multicast backbone. She coached the university's student programming teams in the ACM's annual International Collegiate Programming Contest.

From 1998 to 2006, Nemeth worked with Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California, San Diego, on various Internet measurement and visualization projects.

Outside the United States, Nemeth has helped bring Internet technology to the developing world through her involvement with programs of the Internet Society and the United Nations Development Programme.

Since her retirement, Nemeth sailed her 40-foot sailboat Wonderland around various parts of the world, including a circuit of the Atlantic, Panama Canal, and across the Pacific to New Zealand. She, along with the other crew aboard the vintage yacht Nina, disappeared en route between New Zealand and Australia, on 4 June 2013.

On July 5, 2013, the New Zealand authorities officially ended the search for the Nina. No trace of the boat or its seven passengers was found."

[realwomenofstem]

Georgia Weidman: Founder and CEO at Bulb Security

Georgia Weidman received her B.A. degree in Mathematics at the age of 18, then went on to complete a Master's degree in Computer Science from James Madison University. While at JMU she joined the cyber defense club and began competing in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. In 2008, her cyber defense team took 2nd in the Mid Atlantic region, and in 2009 she led the team to 1st at regional qualifiers.

Since graduation Georgia has worked in information security in both the public and private sectors. She recently founded her own security firm, Bulb Security LLC focusing on security training, research and development, and penetration testing.

She began speaking at security conferences with Shmoocon 2011 and has had a full schedule ever since, presenting all over the world, including; Takedowncon, Hacker Halted, Defcon Wireless Village, and many Bsides events. She also provides security training, both online and in-person. Georgia was recently awarded a DARPA Cyber Fast Track grant to continue her smartphone security research.

Georgia’s security work has been featured in print articles including Ars Technica, PC World, and MIT Technology Review. She has also discussed security on television on programs such as Fox News Live and 16×9 on Global TV Canada.

When not hacking Georgia enjoys writing, photography, film making, and painting. You can find her on Twitter.

[realwomenofstem]

Jennifer Eliuk - Software Engineering Student

After working several years in construction, reviewing building plans for code compliance and project coordination in both the public and private sectors, I knew I wanted a better career and one that was still technical. I want my work to better the lives of others and allow me to never stop learning. 

So in January, I moved from Colorado's beautiful Rocky Mountains to Denver to attend a six month, intensive, full-time Ruby on Rails program. I never went to college (I went skiing instead) so to go back to school - and for software engineering, no less! - is a dream come true. I'm surrounded by people that are bright, very driven, and full of ideas of ways to solve really important problems.

I hope my background will help me bring a unique perspective and other talents to this field, and I'm really excited to see where my STEM skills will take me. When I graduate in July I hope to find an apprenticeship to keep the full-time learning going!

Please follow me on Twitter, read my blog and check out my code on Github.

[realwomenofstem]

Hadley Taylor - VP Systems, Tenthwave Digital

Hadley is the head of the TechOps team for Tenthwave, a digital advertising and media company. With clients as diverse as Duncan Hines, Google, Facebook, and eBay, Hadley and her team assure uptime and performance for websites and applications large and small.  Hadley started her tech career as the Systems Administrator at ECHO (East Coast Hang Out), a pre-web New York-based BBS system started by Stacy Horn. The then-Admin had been sent to prison for computer hacking and phone system manipulation, leaving the BBS without an admin. A Sound Engineer for Broadway musicals at the time, Hadley was fascinated by the  UNIX system where the BBS ran and, with some help from friends, taught herself how it worked.  A classically-trained cellist, Hadley has also been a mountain bike racer.

[realwomenofstem]

Leah Hanson - Julia Programmer

Leah Hanson is a programmer with an interest in lesser-known languages and technologies – Rust, Julia, and the Haiku operating system. A summer of writing OCaml as an intern at Jane Street completely convinced her of the value and practicality of functional programming.

While at Hacker School this spring, she tried out Julia, wrote the WebSockets.jl package, and fell in love with the language. Since then she has given several workshops on Julia and is spending the summer at MIT adding opt-in type “critiquing” (like type checking, but gentler) to the language.

In the fall, she will return to finish an MSE at Johns Hopkins University, where her thesis project will be the continuation of her type critiquing work.

Fork her on Github, follow her on Twitter, and check out her blog.

[realwomenofstem]

Stacey Mulcahy - Developer, Technology Evangelist for Windows 8

Stacey Mulcahy is a technical evangelist for Windows 8 with Microsoft. Previously she was  the Lead Developer with Brooklyn based interactive agency Big Spaceship. She has worked at Teknision and Fuel Industries in Ottawa, Canada and IQ Interactive in Atlanta in a variety of development roles. A public speaker, technical editor and instructor, Stacey enjoys sharing her love for her work in interactive development.

Her latest passion is physical computing – working with the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard and the Arduino.

Stacey considers her lack of verbal filter and extreme candor just a small part of her womanly charms. 

Follow her on Twitter @bitchwhocodes or visit her website at http://thebitchwhocodes.com.

[realwomenofstem]

Dr. Pamela McCauley Bush - Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Dr. Bush is a nationally recognized speaker, entrepreneur, author and tenured Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida where she leads the Human Factors in Disaster Management Research Team. She previously held the position of Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Through incredible determination and vision, Dr. Bush overcame immense life hurdles (including teen motherhood and relying on state welfare assistance) to be hailed today as an award-winning innovative leader, respected engineering expert and a globally renowned motivational speaker in the Women’s Leadership and STEM Education communities. Most recently, Dr. Bush authored Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation: Inspiration and Strategies for Women , a practical yet research based approach that goes beyond "leaning in," offering real strategies that can be put in place by corporations and academic institutions to create an environment of success that "walks the talk."

Dr. Bush would love to feature STEM Professionals on her website's STEM SPOTLIGHT PAGE. Please share your suggestions. http://pamelamccauleybush.com/

[realwomenofstem]

Liron Fishman Sabbah - Mobile Dev, VP of Programming & Co-Founder

Liron Fishman Sabbah, one of the creators of Friendthem, a location-based connectivity app, thinks that women play a critical role in app development because they can bring a different perspective to app development that is often overlooked by men. For example, in creating the Friendthem app, Sabbah and her team were particularly concerned about privacy issues and were diligent about minimizing a woman's exposure to their connections via the Frendthem app. "We had to take the creepiness factor out of it," Sabbah said. With Friendthem, if someone sends you a friend request, the user has the option to be visible or invisible to those requesting to connect with you.

Similar to Curry, Sabbah was an computer science major in college. She said that many of her female classmates that started out in that field did not finish the program, and she speculates that women just don't like the solitary nature of working with computers. Instead, she finds more women are migrating to the marketing and management side of app development. "Women want to be above the code," Sabbah said.

Source: Fierce Developer - Dec 2012

[realwomenofstem]

Allie Curry - Mobile App Developer

At Solstice Mobile, Curry specializes in business apps for the company's enterprise customers that either offer the apps to their clients or use them internally. Like many app developers, Curry comes from a computer science background. While at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she started developing Android apps on the side as a hobby. 

Curry enjoys app development because it gives her a chance to use her problem-solving skills to create solutions for clients. She is the only female in her department and says that at times that can be overwhelming.  Her advice to women that work in app development is to speak up and make sure your voice is heard. "I would definitely say it's important to be vocal," Curry said.  "You still have to say what you want to say."

Source: Fierce Developer - Dec 2012

[realwomenofstem]

Chui-Ki Chan - Software Engineer & Mobile Game Developer

Chui-Ki Chan started as a software engineer at Google but was lured to startups because she wanted to grow beyond just writing code. She worked for a series of startups but didn't find her niche until she went to an AT&T (NYSE:T) hackathon in San Francisco and came up with an app that helps people learn Chinese writing. That hackathon was the start of a viable business and the basis of Monkey Write, Chan's  Android app that launched earlier this year on Google Play.

Chan is still improving her app and also working on developing her next mobile app. She often speaks at app development conferences and believes this is a good forum for encouraging more women to work in app development, and in particular, start their own app development businesses.

Source: Fierce Developer - Dec 2012

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Michelle Abraham - iOS Game Developer

Female developers are particularly rare in the gaming industry where it is estimated that only 10 percent of gaming industry employees are women, according to Game Developer Magazine. Michelle Abraham, who started in educational software and then transitioned to console gaming, found the move appealing because console game development is much more lucrative than making educational apps.

Abraham then transitioned from console gaming to mobile gaming because it allowed her a chance to become an independent developer. "When Apple  released its SDK I saw that this was a big opportunity for going out on my own," Abrahams said.  

Eventually Abraham partnered with a friend and created a shuffle board game called 10 Pin Shuffle for iOS and recently finished the Android version of the game. The game, which has been very successful, has allowed Digital Smoke to attract a dedicated customer base, and the company is now working on other games to add to its portfolio.

Abraham said that it's fairly rare for her to encounter other female mobile game developers. She believes women are intimidated by the field and would like to see more companies provide outreach to women so they see mobile app development as a viable career option.

Source: Fierce Developer - Dec 2012