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Women in the field of coding and innovation have shaped technological trends for decades. Here are 10 women who are acing this industry!
When this article was still in progress, my research led to quite a few articles that talked about how the future of the tech industry and the programming world belongs to women. More talked about why should women explore the world of coding.
But, despite the dearth of names on the Google search about Indian women in the world of innovation and coding, not all is bleak.
There have been ones who have managed to break the glass ceiling, and are inspiring girls to step into this heavily male-dominated field.
These women are Indian by origin, and most by education as well, and they are now a global name in the world of coding and tech. Let us have a look at the names!
Image Source: Wikipedia
Arasu earned her computer engineering degree from Pune university and started her professional journey with Oracle as a software developer in the United States. One company led to the other, and she ended up being the Vice President of Engineering for Trading at eBay, the world’s largest marketplace, in 2001.
Multiple successes and senior post responsibilities later, she is currently the Executive Vice-President and the Chief Technology Officer at Autodesk.
Throughout and through her career, she was responsible for improving connectivity, technological intelligence, and smooth experience of the respective websites by the customers, partners, and ancillary teams.
Image source: Kernel Recipes 2018
Vaishali is an open-source developer based out of Berlin, Germany. She graduated in the year 2017 from Gujarat Technological University and started working as a Linux Kernel Engineer in Oracle.
Though she had always been interested in the Linux kernel and open-source technologies, it was not until she met with an accident that restricted her to bed for 3 months that she dived into the concept. And then, she was unstoppable.
She completed her Outreachy internship, a program by Software Freedom Conservancy to get underrepresented groups in free and open software to get more involved.
Soon after, she was awarded the Kernel Guru scholarship. She was also invited as one of the panel speakers at PyCon 2017 to discuss the scanty number of women in the Open Source Software Community.
Currently, she works as a Senior Software Engineer with Polar Signals in Berlin, Germany.
Image Source: Forbes
The major force in the world of technology, Anjul Bhambhri describes her career with 3 words— data, databases, and big data analytics.
They do not just describe her interests, but also her experiences. She is a graduate of Delhi College of Engineering, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering.
She started her career as a SQL server coder at the then-startup company Sybase and rose ranks to be the vice-President of Engineering for the Big Data and Analytics Platform at IBM, most recently.
After having worked at IBM for 14 years, she shifted to Adobe as vice president of Platform Engineering in 2016. She has over 30 years of experience in the field.
In 20128, she made it to the top 10 in Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Female Engineers” list. And why not!
Image Source: Your Story
“Coding involves analytical thinking, design and entrepreneurship, and connects kids to tech positively, to create and innovate.”
A mother to 2 kids, Ashni Dwarkadas was an Investment Banker having completed her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University before she decided to immerse herself in her new entrepreneurial journey— Hackberry— having merged her passion for coding and early education, together.
What is Hackberry? It is an intensive programme that teaches 5 to 15-year-olds coding via interesting games and activities. It was a massive hit with over 3000 students paying for the service, that too at the initial stages itself.
Inspired by the success rate, she went on to co-found Teachberry, a platform that helps schools to work with their effective curriculum to impart knowledge on coding to young children.
With coding on a massive rise in popularity, her workshop is a boon for the next generation, indeed!
Image source: San Francisco Business Times
If you are a frequent user of LinkedIn, have you ever come across their Women in Technology initiative? Isn’t it so awe-worthy? Meet its co-founder, Prachi Gupta.
Having completed her higher studies at Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyala in Indore, and started her professional journey as a Software Engineer at Impetus in 2003. Soon after, she joined LinkedIn and rose the ranks to be appointed as the Director of Engineering in 2015.
After nearly a decade’s association with the company, she joined the popular streaming platform, Discord, as its Vice-President of Engineering.
With nearly 2 decades of experience in the field of massive consumer technology, she is responsible for the strategies and execution of the technological stacks.
Image Source: LinkedIn
Sameera’s colleagues feel that she is one of the most brilliant GCC contributors from India. And why would they not? With over 14 years of experience, she has over 100 patches to the open-source compiler.
Having completed her M.Tech from IIT Bombay. Her rise to the top has been slow and steady. Hers is a profession that has come to be common— a software engineer working in a company— but what makes her stand out from the rest are her contributions and her smart ability as a coder.
She currently works as a Senior Compiler Engineer at Quadric.io, but, her colleagues regret the fact that no one knows her despite the talent that she possesses.
Image Source: Twitter
AI is now said to be the future of the world. If we do sideline the scary aspect of it, Artificial Intelligence does have the ability to change how the world works. We are coming to realize it this decade, but long back, in 2013, a woman decided to quit her corporate job to co-found an AI company— Mad Street Den.
Ashwini Asokan completed her higher education at Carnegie Mellon University and joined Intel Corporation as a design researcher.
She quit the company in 2013 to co-found Mad Street Den. Theirs was an idea to bring AI out of the labs into the daily lives of the common mass.
She is currently the CEO of Veu.ai, Intelligent Retail Automation, where she is also the founder since 2016.
Image source: 2019 GDG Thiruvananthapuram’s Facebook Page
Ranked as the top 10 Data Scientist in India back to back in 2020 and 2021 by Analytics India and Analytics Insight Magazines, Usha Rengaraju is the world’s first woman triple Kaggle Grandmaster.
Currently working as Chief of Research at Exa Protocols, working to resolve problems in the interface of cybersecurity and AI, she organized India’s first ever Neurodiversity conference— Neurodiversity Indian Summit 2020.
Alongside, she also organized India’s first research symposium on the interface of neuroscience and Data Science. She was the keynote speaker for PyCon India 2022.
She also worked as a Beta Tester for Coursera, a community of enthusiasts who test a course before it is offered to the public. Furthermore, she has been a curriculum developer for students at BITS Pilani who are pursuing Masters’s in Data Science.
Image source: Twitter
She hailed from a family that believed in the power of education and technology but was also discouraged from working. Once she completed her graduation in Electrical engineering, she was married off.
She accompanied her husband and shifted continents to the United States. However, she completed her higher education there at San Jose State University.
She believes technology came naturally to her. She began her career with Sun Microsystems. After mostly working with start-ups, she founded her own company, dLoop.Inc, which was later acquired by Box.
Her journey since then has been an upward graph. The box is a leading cloud company in the world. She then moved on to be the director of Adobe Sensei Platform, followed by Google Core ML (Machine Learning). Her expertise lies in abridging technology gaps and product innovation.
Her philosophy is “Keep it simple.” It reminded me of my editor, who said the same thing to curb my use of complex language structures.
Image source: Wikipedia
Jariwala has always been a bright student. She graduated with her higher studies from Surat’s Veer Narmad South Gujarat University with a first rank.
Dr Jariwala is a professor and PhD. guide at her Alma Mater, and has over 13 years of experience in guiding her students in the corporate world, and product innovation for the business market.
But combining her passion for technology and altruism was born her greatest invention— a model that converts Hindi, English, and Gujarati texts into Braille Language.
Apart from texts, the model would also convert mathematical drawings and equations into speech mode. This was her PhD. research topic, which she took four and half years to complete.
But her invention will forever change the lives of the visually impaired who have to give up on their ambitions due to their disability. Through and through, inspiring!
Recently, there was an article speaking about how the number of women at workplaces considerably keeps dropping as the seniority of the post increases.
The causes are attributed to the societal expectations of women being the primary caregiver at home, the lack of organizational policies that support women, and sexism (of course).
Concrete steps to ensure the retention of women in the workforce need to be planned and implemented. Till then, the lack of known names in male-dominated industries as such will continue, despite the sugar-coated encouragement of girl empowerment that society tries to pose with, in the name of modernity.
Image source: Edited on CanvaPro
The author is a Gen-Z kid who resorts to writing to vent out about the problematic ways of the world. Having majored in Theatre, English, and Psychology, I take a guilty pleasure in complex read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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