Category Archives: Women In Tech

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Laura Wallendal

[Stories from the Women in Tech Trenches is a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This week we met up with Laura Wallendal, Co-Founder and COO of EdTrips. EdTrips is a travel company centered around the school field-trip process and keeping the focus on learning rather than logistics. With a background in languages and art history, Laura found that fusing the tech world with her passions of travel and education could create meaningful strides in the classroom. Laura shows that the tech trenches are not solely relegated to those within the math and science fields. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Laura Wallendal

I’m the Co-Founder and COO of EdTrips, an edtech and travel company.  Originally from Friendship, Wisconsin, I moved to Boston in 2004 and co-founded EdTrips in 2011 after years of experience in the educational travel industry. At EdTrips, I head up strategic partnerships and business development.

Questions:

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

It wasn’t until after training for my first mud run obstacle course in 2010 that I became interested in solving problems with technology.  I wanted a way to coordinate with other people who had the same interest in crazy obstacle course events. That led me to create my first website. At the same time, I was working in the educational travel industry and seeing a lot of ways that things could be done better—for instance, the basic ways in which travel was booked. Solving a problem using technology for my personal interests gave me the confidence to begin tackling those problems I saw in educational travel, and begin seeing that I could start to solve them.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

No. I wasn’t really exposed to the tech world until I got to college. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, I was one of the first kids in my grade to have a home computer, and our family had internet access before my elementary school even did, so technology wasn’t a focus in the community.  Given my tech-sheltered past, I never imagined starting a tech company.

3. You co-founded EdTrips in 2011, and since it’s been a way to integrate technology within the classroom. Can you tell us a little about EdTrips and the company’s overall mission?

EdTrips is a tool to streamline planning and managing school travel. Whether a field trip, overnight trip or overseas trip, EdTrips is an open and flexible platform that decreases the workload for the trip organizer. It handles everything from payment collection to forms, so travelers and educators can focus on learning, not logistics. It’s our mission to make travel a part of everyone’s education.

4. What was the inspiration behind EdTrips?

After working for a large educational travel company, I moved on to do consulting for 3 small travel abroad companies.  Doing sales and business development for both large and small companies, it was evident that trip organizers were in need of a solution to help manage travel online, the way individual travelers have so many tools to use. Doing payment collection by hand, managing accounting and recruiting travelers with spreadsheets and inviting people with emails, phone calls and flyers is time consuming and we knew there had to be a better way.

5. What led you to this career path? When did you first start working with tech? Was it by choice?

After realizing the work I was doing with teachers and schools could be done better with technology, I immediately called a friend from college for advice.  He recommended I look into building a platform using Ruby and made introductions to several development shops around town to get quotes and find that sweet spot for our Minimum Viable Product.  I gave myself a crash course in a new way of thinking and solving problems. I was hooked!  It was absolutely by choice and now I could not see myself doing anything else.

6. Did you experience any personal or systemic setbacks at any point of your academic or professional career?

Yes, I have faced both personal and systematic setbacks in my academic and professional career.

When I was in college, my younger sister passed away of Leukemia and my academic career was severely disrupted.  I took a semester off and transferred schools to be closer to home and got my higher education back on track.

When it came to looking for a job, like many recent grads, I found it a challenge to find what was right for me. Eventually I landed in sales for an educational travel company and found something I was truly successful at, enjoyed, and found rewarding. I was the top performing sales person on my team, but found the politics a turn-off. I switched teams and eventually decided to leave altogether and work for myself. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Laura Wallendal →

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Emma Ideal

[Stories from the Women in Tech Trenches is a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This week we met up with Emma Ideal, an author, physicist, and inspirational woman in tech. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Photo Credit: Harold Shapiro
Photo by Harold Shapiro

Emma Ideal received a Bachelor’s degree in physics from UCLA in 2009 and is now in her fifth year of doctoral studies in physics at Yale University. She is working on a thesis in particle physics, performing a search for the elusive Standard Model Higgs Boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider located near Geneva, Switzerland.

Questions:

1.) You’re doing ground-breaking work in particle physics at CERN at the Hadron Collider, especially at an exciting time in physics as the Higgs Boson particle is gaining more worldwide recognition. Can you tell us a little about that?

As you say, I landed in graduate school at a very good time! The Higgs Boson is a fundamental particle that was theorized to exist in 1964, so it’s taken almost 50 years to find evidence of its existence. The Higgs is an unstable particle, meaning quickly after its production, it “decays into” other particles. Therefore, we discover the Higgs Boson not by observing the Higgs itself, but by observing these daughter particles. There are many different particles the Higgs can decay into, and my research focuses on particles called taus. These are essentially heavier versions of the familiar electron. The discovery of the Higgs Boson gives us insight into how the various fundamental particles have acquired mass (and are therefore not whizzing around our universe at the speed of light!).

2.) You just recently authored the book, Blazing the Trail: Essays by Leading Women in Science, a collection of essays of renowned female physicists, engineers, and chemists – can you tell us a little about that? How did the idea come about and what inspired you to do it?

In April 2011, I flew halfway around the world to South Africa as a U.S. delegate to the 4th International Conference on Women in Physics. There, I stumbled upon a workshop focused on methods for attracting girls to physics. A member of the Indian Academy of Sciences presented on his book Lilavati’s Daughters, a compilation of essays written by female Indian physicists. I was inspired to create an analogous book for an American audience, where essayists describe what brought them to the sciences, recount gender-related issues they’ve faced and have overcome, and give advice to the next generation on how to successfully launch a career in the sciences today. Readers will have a look into what a physicist’s life is really like, see that science is fundamentally about curiosity and asking (and finding answers to!) hard questions, and discover how attainable success is with the right attitude and work ethic. In addition, many young women can feel isolated in the career and gender challenges they face, and my hope is that from reading the essays within they see that, in fact, they are not alone!

We all know there is a gross under-representation of women in most sciences, and in particular physics. Blazing the Trail: Essays by Leading Women in Science was created to inspire a new generation of young women to consider careers in STEM, attacking this problem of Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Emma Ideal →

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Wendy Neal

[Stories from the Women in Tech Trenches is a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This week we met up with Wendy Neal, belovedly known in the SharePoint community as SharePointWendy. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Wendy

I started my career as a web developer, and when my current company brought SharePoint into the organization in 2007, I was completely hooked. I like to blog about my SharePoint experiences, and enjoy speaking at user groups and conferences to share what I’ve learned over the years.

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I’m not sure there was one single moment where the light bulb turned on and I realized I wanted to pursue a career in technology.  I do remember taking a BASIC computer programming class in high school and thinking it was kind of neat.  I even wrote a couple simple video games for fun.

It wasn’t until I was working as an office manager for a small electronics company in the mid ‘90s that I realized I really enjoyed working with computers, and more specifically, creating websites after I built the local office website.  The whole Internet thing was brand new, and it fascinated me.

I knew I wanted to create websites, however I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, so I wasn’t getting any job offers. I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. I declared my major to be Computer Science and attended school part time for the next 3 years while working full time until I obtained my degree.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

I don’t think I had many preconceived notions about the world in general back then. I grew up in a small town in rural Iowa and probably had no idea what was going on in the world around me. I only knew a couple people who worked in the technology field and I had no idea what they did. Besides, I was too busy planning my career as a professional football player (in elementary school), and after that I wanted to be a pro beach volleyball player (high school).

These were also the pre-internet days, and my family didn’t even have cable TV until I was in high school.  The fact that I didn’t know any better was probably one of the reasons why I didn’t have any reservations about pursuing a career in technology once I finally realized that was the direction I wanted to go.  I just decided that’s what I wanted to do and I did it.

3. As a SharePoint architect, reputed speaker, and evangelist, what led you to this career path? When did you first start working with tech? Was it by choice?

My first job upon graduating college was working as a web developer for a company that provided clients with stock market web sites and solutions.  I loved it!  I worked with Microsoft’s classic ASP and also did a little SQL and JavaScript programming, then moved to ASP.Net when that first came out.  After four years at that company, we got purchased by another firm and they closed the office that I worked at. 

I then started working for my current employer, GreatAmerica Financial Services, starting as a Microsoft .Net software developer, then gradually moving into the world of SharePoint Development.  Eventually I was doing nothing but SharePoint-related work on a daily basis, including development, branding, administration, and even training our users.

I became heavily involved in the SharePoint Community in the summer of 2011.  The people I had admired from afar up to that point, who gave their time endlessly, really inspired me.  I wanted to give back and help others like those who have helped me over the years; so I started a blog, which led to writing articles for prominent SharePoint sites like NothingButSharePoint.com, and then to speaking at user groups and conferences.  I’m even currently working on an upcoming jQuery and SharePoint book.

4. Did you experience any personal or systemic setbacks at any point of your academic or professional career?

It seemed I had always had weird health issues off and on since I was a teenager that no medical doctor could ever diagnose. In the fall of 2009 my symptoms manifested, and I became very ill and missed about a month of work. I had never felt so horrible in my life. I think it was by sheer will and my fear of hospitals that I forced myself to start eating and slowly regained my strength. Thanks to a wonderful naturopathic physician I was finally diagnosed with multiple food allergies and hypothyroidism. Now, with a simple change in diet to eliminate my food allergens, and a few natural supplements to control my hypothyroidism, I feel like a new person.

I also feel that being physically and mentally healthy for the first time in so many years opened new doors for me.  It boosted my confidence levels and allowed me to venture down the road of public speaking.  I felt like I could try new things and not have to worry about canceling plans or backing out at the last minute for feeling sick.

5. Whom do you look to as mentors and/or sources of inspiration?

One of the people I admire most is my late Aunt Wanda. She fought various forms of cancer for over 17 years, eventually succumbing to the disease in 2000.  Many times she was told by doctors that she only had months to live, and she fought to stay alive each time. And she did it all with a positive attitude; I never saw her in a bad mood, no matter how miserable she was feeling due to her illness and treatments.  It has taught me that the mind is very powerful, and that you can literally do anything if you set your mind to it. Even when people tell you otherwise, if you believe then you can.

6. Why do you think the rate of attrition for women in software engineering is higher than that of women in most other tech fields?

I think it’s because the ratio of women to men working in the software engineering field is extremely low, even lower than some of the other tech fields. For example, I’m the only female on our team of eight developers. I think a young woman starting out in this scenario can feel isolated and alone at times. If she has no female mentors or role models to look up to, she may feel stuck as far as understanding how she can advance her career. Often times a man will get promoted after he saves the day or performs some other heroic feat for the company. Women, on the other hand, have a fear that if they make a mistake they’ll be demoted or devalued, so they build systems that don’t crash in the first place. This is great; however, they rarely get recognized for that fact, which can leave them feeling unappreciated and unnoticed when promotion time comes around.

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to get more girls interested in computers and computer science? Is this important to you?

I think there may be a misconception among girls that all careers in computer science are either hard or boring or that computers are just for geeks.  If girls knew that there were many opportunities out there besides the perceived “geeky” jobs like programming, it may open their minds to the computer science field.

I think education and mentorship at a young age are the key to getting more girls interested in technology.  In my opinion all girls should take an intro to computer programming or engineering course in high school.  They may realize it’s not quite what they thought it was.

8. Do you have any advice for women interested in computers and computer science? Is this important to you?

I’d say go for it, and don’t let anyone hold you back!  Don’t listen to the naysayers, and just do it if that’s what you love. The technology field definitely needs more women, because they bring a unique perspective and diversity to the workplace. Women are typically good at multitasking and relationship building, and having more women in the industry also brings more viewpoints to the table. Hopefully companies are recognizing this and trying to recruit more women into computer and technology roles.

9. Do you have anything to add that you haven’t had a chance to mention?

Don’t be intimidated by the possibility of working in a “man’s world.”  Especially if you want to be a developer. You will likely be one of a few women, if not the only one, working on a team of men. Be comfortable with that. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind and hold true to your convictions when you think you’re right. Your coworkers will respect you for that. And if they don’t, then you’re probably working for the wrong company. Find a company that has integrity and supports a diverse work culture, or start your own.

Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Adriana Gascoigne

[This is the thirteenth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way.  This week we met up with Adriana Gascoigne (ln), founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, Inc. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Adriana-Gascoigne

Adriana Gascoigne is the founder and CEO of Girls in Tech, Inc. As a woman in tech, her passion lies in empowering, engaging and educating other women within the tech community. With an impressive background steeped in marketing, branding and business development, Adriana’s worked for companies such as hi5, SocialGamingNetwork, Edelman, and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. She’s also worked in an advisory capacity to Intel along with startups like Startup Exchange and Involver. Today you can find her launching HelpLearnAsia, an eLearning platform, which teaches SMEs in Asia online marketing tools. Chat with her in Spanish, Japanese or French about her passion and dedication to furthering women in tech.

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

The very first startup that I worked at (GUBA) was my light bulb moment in technology. It was a dream to be able to work with such a diversified group of technology professionals, while building a groundbreaking product and having such an impact in the development process of something so scalable, fun and useful.

I never thought that I would be so amused with my job at a startup; however, when something that you get paid for turns into a hobby, that’s when you know you’ve hit your “eureka” moment. So, I thank GUBA for breaking me into the industry. Technology will always be a part of my career.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Yes, I think everyone on the outside does. I believed that the technology industry was filled with massive amounts of coders and that was it. “Code monkeys” stuck in their cubicles typing out their 1’s and 0’s until the carpal tunnel kicked in. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

While the technology industry thrives on the talents of coders, developers and engineers, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were the only people involved in the innovation, design and monetization strategy behind the product or service. Innovation is the execution of an elaboration of something new, fresh and interesting, and I strongly believe that it takes a team of diversified professionals to build something that will work.

I didn’t realize this when I was growing up and now, through Girls in Tech, we consistently evangelize the fact that the technology industry caters to all different types of professionals with unique experiences and levels of “techie” aptitude.

3. As founder of Girls in Tech, what led you to this career path? When did you first start working with tech? Was it by choice?

Really, I fell into working in the technology industry when I relocated from Miami to San Francisco. I was debating on Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Adriana Gascoigne →

Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Melissa Pickering

[This is the twelfth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way.  This week we met up with Melissa Pickering (ln), founder and CEO of iCreate to Educate. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Melissa Pickering

Among edtech digest’s most fascinating edupreneurs, Melissa Pickering, is founder of iCreate to Educate, a local Boston startup aimed at empowering students to blend the arts and sciences with hands-on learning. An impressive background as a mechanical engineer at Disney Imagineering, Melissa harnessed her experiences to fan the flames of passion for STEM in the future innovators of America: K-12 kids. (View some of the stop-motion films students have created with tools iCreate to Educate provides.)

1. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am the founder/CEO of iCreate to Educate, a small learning company in Boston that engages kids with simple tools to blend hands-on exploration with digital creativity.  I’ve built up the company for three years to unleash the imaginations of kids in both homes and classrooms around the world.

2. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I first became interested in technology through my half-credit intro to mechanical engineering course as a freshman in college.  We were exposed to and challenged to create various types of robots out of LEGO MINDSTORMS, programming them with the computer to achieve certain tasks such as walking or picking up objects.  From that point on I started becoming heavily involved in leading similar activities in local K12 classrooms, recognizing the skill-sets each student (elementary or university level) could gain from the integration of technology into the core curriculum.

3. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Growing up I was generally exposed to the engineering and tech worlds because my dad was an engineer and my younger brother was always taking apart and rebuilding computers.  Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Melissa Pickering →

Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Pam Conway

[This is the eleventh in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way.  This week we met up with Pam Conway (ln) of CompuWorks. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Pam Conway

Pamela Conway has over 20 years of experience in the technical education field. A graduate of Purdue University, Pamela joined CompuWorks in 1991 as a technical writer and software trainer.  After many years providing traditional classroom training and curriculum development, in 2000 she became part of CompuWorks’ management team concentrating on implementing new training modalities and planning training/support projects for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. In 2007, Pamela, along with Andrew and Stacy Wight, assumed ownership of CompuWorks. Pamela has lectured throughout the United States and Europe.

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I can still vividly remember the moment when I fell in love with technology. I was a freshman in college and had a paper due in one of my classes. As many of us have done, I’d procrastinated too long to write out the paper, edit it and then type it up to turn in the next morning – yes, we were stilling typing on actual typewriters back then, but it was just on the cusp of the explosion of personal computers. This was 1986. A friend of mine who was majoring in information technology – the program was one of the first of its kind at the time – told me to come use her Mac and I could compose, edit and type all at the same time. I was an English major and very wary of computers, but I was desperate. All it took was that one night typing away on her Mac using the first version of Microsoft Word and I was hooked. I turned the paper in on time and chucked my typewriter out the very next day.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

I sure did. It was mostly based on my best friend’s brother and his friends who would sit in his room all day playing with his Commodore 64. Naturally, they were all male. So for me, the world of technology was populated by geeky boys who sat in dark rooms. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but junior high perception is pretty compelling! Luckily, I attended a university that was very tech heavy and happily had my perceptions altered. The truth is, at this stage of the game, the tech world is THE world. It’s everywhere, but these old perceptions of things die hard for some folks. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Pam Conway →

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Susann Luperfoy


[This is the tenth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way.  As Executive Director of UPOP, Susann Luperfoy (ln) equips MIT students for careers in STEM. With an impressive background in Artificial Intelligence and Akamai technologies, Luperfoy provides insight to how she got to where she is today and challenges she faced along the way. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

I’m Susann Luperfoy, a former research scientist and engineer in artificial intelligence who also worked on several startup companies as well as startup ventures inside established companies.  I now teach MIT undergraduates the skills they need to thrive and lead in STEM careers outside elite academia.

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

So many eureka moments: the first GUI (I was used to programing on ASCII terminals), the first demo of xMosaic and the worldwide web as an elegant replacement for FTP.  But the relevant answer to your question would be the moment I watched a social science major get promoted over an MIT grad who was not only vastly more qualified technically, but also more creative, more generous with his ideas and his time, harder working, more productive, better able to manage a project team, etc., however not interested in anything that sounded like management.  A string of such surprising experiences prepared me for teaching UPOP.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Growing up the plan was always to be a physician. (An engineer was someone who drove a steam train.)  But I loved technology from the start, anything that involved tools; fixing things and building things—cars, bicycles and custom designed clothes as a 5’11” teenager.  Tools and medicine: in some parallel universe I am now a happy surgeon.

3. As Executive Director of UPOP, what led you to this career path? When did you first start working with tech? Was it by choice?  

UPOP was never remotely in the plan, but so many experiences in the world of work prepared me for this position.  When UPOP was first conceived, I was still immersed in work as a research scientist and engineer in Artificial Intelligence.  When UPOP launched in 2002 I was busy in the Cambridge startup world. It was such a great program that I was happy to support it from the outside and eventually took it on full time. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Susann Luperfoy →

Big Data, Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Abby Fichtner

[This is the ninth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This time around we chatted with Abby Fichtner (t|ln), better known as Hacker Chick for her devoted work with Boston startups. Recently named Founding Executive Director of hack/reduce, a non-profit big data hacker space, Abby is in constant search of shaking up conventional wisdom and finding out what lies beyond. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please feel free to email me.]

Hi! I’m Abby Fichtner – although more people probably know me as Hacker Chick. I write The Hacker Chick Blog on how we can push the edge on what’s possible, and I’m about to launch a non-profit hacker space for big data called hack/reduce.

Prior to this, I was Microsoft’s Evangelist for Startups where I had the most incredible experience of working with hundreds of startups. I’ve been alternately called the cheerleader and the guardian angel for Boston startups. I love this community and am super excited to launch hack/reduce to help Boston continue solving the really hard problems and keep our title as the most innovative city in the world.

Questions:

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I like to joke that programming is in my blood.  My Dad has been programming since the 1960’s and my brother followed him into Computer Science. So when we were kids, my parents told us that whoever made the honor roll first would get an Atari. This was 1980 and so Atari game machines were The Thing to have.

Sufficiently motivated, I made the honor roll and my Dad came through – with an Atari 800, the PC!  Pretty much nobody had PCs in 1980, so this was pretty elite. For games, we got these Atari magazines that had pages and pages of source code in them and our father-daughter bonding experiences were typing in the machine language to build our own games. Talk about hard core, right?!

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Growing up I did not want to be a programmer! I thought that was something my Dad and my brother did. I was an independent woman and going to follow my own path. I heard that if you’re really good, they make you a manager. So my goal was to be on the business side of things. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Abby Fichtner →

Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Jen Stirrup

[This is the eighth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. Author of a prestigious BI blog, Jen Stirrup (t|ln), runs a small Business Intelligence company (Copper Blue Consulting) with Allan Mitchell (t|ln) and is an active member of the SQL Server community. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Meet Jen:

“I have been a SQL Server Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for nearly one year, in the SQL Server discipline. This allows me to connect more deeply with the great minds and kind hearts in the MVP community and at Microsoft. One day, I hope that I won’t be as tongue-tied when I meet the other MVPs that I’ve admired for such a long time!”

1) Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

When I was eight years old, my Uncle gave us a computer that he’d fixed. It was a little Sinclair ZX81, and I loved it. I learned to program in BASIC, and my love of technology has been with me ever since.

2) Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

My perception of the tech world was shaped by older males in my family, who took the time to involve me in all things electronic and computer-focused. For example, my grandfather was one of the first television engineers, and continued to be impressed and excited by technology until he passed away in his mid-eighties.  One of my great uncles was a spy during the Second World War, and worked to code-break Japanese codes. Their experiences combined to influence me, and continue to do so until this very day.

3) When did you first consider a career in technology? What did you envision doing?

Initially, I wanted to train as a psychologist and I had a specific interest in cognitive psychology. I used my programming skills in order to set up psychological experiments and I found that I preferred it to psychology.

I moved into Artificial Intelligence, moving from my cognitive psychology and programming background. I was fascinated by the algorithms that attempted to further research into human cognitive processes. I still see Artificial Intelligence alive and well, but in a different guise (e.g. search technologies).

4) Did you experience any personal or systemic setbacks at any point of your academic or professional career?

In the first two years of my son’s life, he was critically ill on occasion. At some points, he was given an hour to live. His illness was a constant stress, and I obviously couldn’t work as he recuperated. I’m glad to say that he survived, partially due to his own tenacity and zest for life. I’m very grateful to the doctors and nurses who saved him, despite the odds.

5) Whom do you look at as mentors and/or sources of inspiration in your field?

I am inspired every day by people in the community, particularly the Professional Association of SQL Server (SQLPASS) community. There are a huge number of selfless volunteers who give up their time to create training material, give presentations, and provide help and support to people who are on the path to learning SQL Server.

6) How has your participation in both the on- and offline SQL Server communities changed the way you look at and work with these technologies?

I’ve learned a lot about business benefits and perspectives from interacting with people in the community. Someone might ask a question which seems strange, but when you start to understand the ‘why’ of the question, it becomes clear that there may be a strong business reason for doing something, even if the proposed technical response seems strange.

I’ve met members of the Analysis Services, Excel and Reporting Services teams, and I’m hugely impressed with their dedication and innovation to provide high-quality products and solutions that SMEs can afford.

7) Why do you think the rate of attrition for women in software engineering is higher than that of women in most other tech fields?

I’m not sure if this is the case, cross-culturally. From my own experience, the issue is perceptions about returning to a technical role after maternity leave. Women leave the field for awhile, and then lose confidence to come back to technology since the tech world has moved on so fast. I have to say that, after returning to work after having had my son, women should not lose confidence in coming back to technology after having had a child. Remember most of the guys you work beside are also parents. The technical skills are transferable to newer versions and editions.

8) Do you have any suggestions for how to get more girls interested in computers and computer science? Is this important to you?

I think it is important to show girls that technology can help people. For example, Microsoft uses technology to help girls across the globe, in partnership with UNESCO.

Don’t dismiss girls from technology, at an early age. Teachers need support in the classroom to make sure that girls also get attention and equal education in subjects such as math, computing science and so on.

Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Ann Millspaugh

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[This is the seventh in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame at the very last statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. Like a number of our interviewees, Ann Millspaugh (t|ln) entered the tech world after college. In less than two years, the former Luddite went from reluctant Drupal admin to passionate advocate of STEM education for girls. She’s currently co-organizer of the Columbia Heights Community Wireless Network and the Online Community Manager for the EdLab Group. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please feel to email me.]

1)      Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

To be honest, I don’t think I can claim to be a “woman in technology”. At best, I’m a woman learning technology, and probably more importantly, how to think about technology. For a lot of people, especially “Millennials” and “digital natives,” there’s something almost noble about being adverse to technology – there’s an attitude that “I haven’t submitted myself to this trend yet” or “I’m grounding myself outside of this consumer-driven society.” I’m not saying this as a condescending outsider – I used to feel that way.

Do I feel like I’m now a tech guru who is going to invent the next Linux system? No. But, I do feel like I can be a contributor, and for me, that feeling of empowerment is critical to the way people use and adapt to technology. It’s not about seeing technology as old or new, good or bad, but comprehensively seeing technology for what it is– the resources creating the product, the labor assembling the product, the ingenuity and creativity in software development, and the behavioral trends in the actual usage of these products rather than a cold, static piece of materialism. For me, it’s been fascinating to begin thinking about technology as a tool to improve, analyze and assess behavioral patterns, and that’s what began to get me interested in technology.

2)      Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Yes, I undoubtedly had preconceptions about the tech world. I started out as one of those people who saw technology as an inhibitor of real-world interaction. Computers were draining, for those anti-social types. I was pretty extreme – I even had a phase in college where I refused to be in pictures because I thought they were too distracting. I think technology can be seen this way – as a way to be self-indulgent and unnecessarily inconvenienced, a byproduct of a consumer-driven society.

It becomes an either-or: either I’m a technology person or I’m not. I think it’s important to realize that just because you don’t dream about coding or you don’t want to eat, sleep, and breathe at a computer doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy computer science. Somehow technology never enters into a realm of moderation; it’s a binary of hacking 24/7 or waiting in line for the Geek Squad. Science and technology fields are like any career – there are people who are obsessed, but there are also plenty of people who live a balanced life.

3)      When did you first start working with tech? Was it by choice?

I was always interested in writing, and over the course of several jobs, realized that writing (as well as many of the arts) is now completely intertwined with technology; it’s almost impossible to pursue those fields with having at least a basic technological background. For me, it was a begrudgingly slow progression over to the tech-side. But, that mindset ultimately came from a lack of understanding. For example, I’ve always liked learning languages, and learning HTML and CSS was just like learning another language. It never occurred to me that the skills I already had could be translated into a STEM field, and that I would actually like it!

4)      Did you experience any personal or systemic setbacks at any point of your academic or professional career?

Like I said before, I started working with technology by accident –I never saw myself as someone interested in technology, or even particularly apt in technology. In fact, when I was in college, computer science classes were at the bottom on my list, for no particular reason except for my perceptions about computer science. I read an interesting book: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computer Science, that talked about the implicit socialization processes that drive women away from CS, and technology at large (having a computer in your son’s room versus your daughter’s room; taking your son to fix the car with you). These small actions create superficial gender associations that build and become a heavily weighted reality over time. In a lot of ways I feel like the epitome of those socialization processes – I was never bad at science or math, and in retrospect, I’d have to say it was the accumulation of unconscious decisions and stereotypes that drew me away from the field. I would say that was my biggest setback, that I didn’t explore the field until after college.

5)      Whom do you look to as mentors and/or sources of inspiration in your field?

The open source development communities have been incredibly inspiring to me. Everyone is so authentically collaborative: people work together for the sole purpose of making software easier and more accessible to people – for free. And most people do this in their spare time! You can post a question and have a response with seconds, find tutorials and rank suggestions. It’s this incredible network that continually expands through connective curiosity; you rarely see anyone pitching their company or bragging about their latest contribution. There’s a “we want to keep making this better” attitude that drives people to recognize how much more powerful collaboration is than siloed, individual production. No copyrights here!

6)      Why do you think the rate of attrition for women in software engineering is higher than that of women in most other tech fields?

The perception of computer science and programming. There are lots of studies that women tend to be more emotionally-driven; technology, particularly software engineering, can have the perception of being cold, isolating, and distant from immediate applicability. I think it’s important to stop thinking about technology as a new, revolutionary entity. In my opinion, technology doesn’t revolutionize the way people behave. Fundamentally, people want the same things they’ve wanted for hundreds of years – to communicate, connect, and understand – and technology enables these things to happen at an increasingly accelerated rate. If we start to think about technology through this lens, I think many more people, men and women, will be drawn to the field.

7)      Do you have any suggestions for how to get more girls interested in computers and computer science? Is this important to you?

Hopefully by now, it’s evident that yes – this is important to me! Working with the EdLab Group, I’ve been reading and researching how to make STEM fields more appealing to girls. There are a lot of ways to pursue this, one of the most cited examples being that girls enjoy contextualizing information in real-world examples. Rather than solving for a variable in an algorithm, ask girls, “How can this algorithm be applied to make Georgia’s healthcare system more efficient?”

While this is a successful strategy, I also think attributing certain characteristics to STEM competency can be a slippery slope. Bart Franke, a teacher at the Chicago Laboratory High School who boasts a female enrollment of 50% in his computer science classes, recently gave a presentation about his success, citing, “I teach girls, I don’t teach to girls.” As soon as you make distinctions as a woman, a minority, a socio-economically disadvantaged person, etc… you cause people to self-identify in a way that can perpetuate certain stereotypes. Even though gender, ethnicity or socio-economic status is undoubtedly a significant individual and collective characteristic, there are times where this emphasis is appropriate and then there are times where it’s irrelevant and distracting.