As a small tech company in an ever growing tech town, we have something that sets us apart from many of our competitors. Yes, we have strong websites, passionate social media campaigns,  tedicious SEO efforts, and all of that jazz.

It is something different. Our company is managed almost entirely by women aside from some of the owners and a couple of programmers (fear not, we also have women programmers).

With that being said, it is time for a blog entry that celebrates some of the most important women in tech. 

Side Note: This makes us happy, because I have found too many to write about in one post. However, I am going to focus on a few modern and historical influencers.

If there is anyone you think should be on the list, please Tweet or comment at us. and we will definitely do a part II. 

Breaking the Glass Ceiling 

These women have been shattering the glass ceiling in the tech industry. 

Virginia Rometty

Everyone knows who IBM is. They were running computers before it became a household item, or before people even thought of it as a computer. 

Virginia "Ginni" Rometty broke ground by becoming the first woman CEO of the 104-year-old company after starting out in 1981 as a systems engineer. 

She has also been named Fortune magazine's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" for eight consecutive years. This all for a good reason. 

Photo Source: Bloomberg

Marissa Mayer

From Google to Yahoo, where would we be without Mayer? She is an exceptionally brilliant woman in the tech industry with accomplishments such as:

• Stanford graduate
• Google's 20th employee
  • Spent 13 years at Google
  • Google's Vice President
• Backing startups including uBeam, Brit Media, Square, Minted, Airtime, and One Kings Lane
• Became CEO of Yahoo! in 2012

Mayers seems to be a go to woman in terms of citing women in tech. This leads us to our next candidate. 

​Photo Source: 360i

Tracy Chou

Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, has been in the spotlight recently after bringing attention to the limited amount of women in engineering/programming/tech positions.

Chou herself has worked at Facebook, Google, and Quora before her career at Pinterest. 

The actual numbers I’ve seen and experienced in industry are far lower than anybody is willing to admit. This means nobody is having honest conversations about the issue.

Tracy Chou, Medium 

Not only are women not recognized in the tech industry, but the numbers regarding women in the industry are skewed.

I set up a Github repo to track numbers that people are submitting: https://github.com/triketora/women-in-software-eng.
Please contribute data if you can

Tracy Chou, Medium 

Chou, an expert programmer, decided to address this her own way. She wrote a program to track the numbers and put pressure on companies to fess up. 

Image Source: Spencer A Brown

Brianna Wu

Wu, an indie game developer, recently received a large dose of sexism towards women in the industry.

Those who attacked the developer referred to a movement called "Gamergate". 

Game developer Brianna Wu, head of development at Boston-based Giant Spacekat, fled her home after receiving a series of specific, violent threats directed at her and her family on Twitter last night."

Huffington Post 

Developers like Wu are creating interesting, diverse games that do not consist of mostly nude women being rescued by men. This upset a lot of people, which seems a bit crazy, but it did.

It upset people to the point that Wu and women game journalists received so many death threats that they had to evacuate their homes. 

The threats, though extremely terrible and unfortunate, opened everyone's eyes to exactly what women are standing up against. 

Image Source: Boston Globe

The Historical Masters 

Some of these names may not have been mentioned in history class, but they are crucial to the tech movement. 

Ada Lovelace

Lovelace, a mathematician, became famous for her work on the Analytical Engine which was an early mechanical general-purpose computer. 

Her notes and research are considered to be the first algorithm intended to be processed by the machine which makes Lovelace the world's first programmer. 

Image Source: Metro

Grace Hopper

Hopper was the first of many many things that paved the way for women and the tech industry in general. 

Firsts: 

• Programmer of the Harvard Mark I
• Female student to graduate from Yale with a Ph.D in mathematics
• Woman Admiral in the U.S.
• Developed the first compiler for a computer programming language, Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL)

This is a woman of many accomplishments. 

Image Source: ComputerHistory.org 

Hedy Lamarr 

Lamarr developed an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping making her a pioneer the field of wireless communication.

Not only did Lamarr contribute to defeating the Nazis in WWII with the spread spectrum communications, she also set the foundation for cell phones and other wireless devices.

She was finally recognized with a special award in 1997 for "Trail-blazing development of a technology that has become a ket component of wireless data systems." 

Image Source: IMDB