As you look around today, you realize how significantly technology impacts our world — from the ubiquitous chips in all of our devices, including tablets, cars, and refrigerators, to the more recent revolution of online technologies from Google, Facebook, and Amazon. AI dominates our future and has the potential to be ubiquitous as well. To inhabit this new world, it is imperative that the perspectives of both men and women are involved in envisioning and creating these new technologies.
I became enthralled by the promise of technology early in my career and ultimately became committed to creating an organization whose purpose was to celebrate and welcome women’s participation. One of the things that I am most proud of is the impact my work had on thousands of young women whose views and decisions changed after they participated in the programs of the Anita Borg Institute. In my work and my career, I’ve learned that women are one of technology’s greatest untapped resources.
The Early Days
In my youth, technology was not as prevalent as it is today, so I never considered it for my future. No one I knew was an engineer of any kind. The idea of studying engineering or computer science never occurred to me.
I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and raised in Southern California. My parents were divorced when I was seven, and my mother and I moved to California. My mother, my biggest cheerleader and the center of my world, passed away from cancer when I was 15. My subsequent grief influenced every aspect of my life, even today.
I moved back to Salt Lake City to live with my father and stepmother and became a member of our blended family, a challenging situation for everyone involved. While these times were difficult, I realize, looking back, that I developed a resiliency that has served me well throughout my career.
Although I was good at math, I received little feedback and guidance about college preparation. I was lucky because the University of Utah, a large public university with an excellent reputation, was available to me and close to home. I enrolled as a theater major, which quickly proved disastrous. I then contemplated a major in political science and psychology.
When I took an interest inventory test, I stumbled into computer science because I saw no other choices. I scored significantly higher in programming and computer science than in any of the other areas. Curious, I enrolled in a programming course. From the time I took my first programming class, I knew I had found where I belonged. The class used large, unwieldy card decks for programming, and students had to turn in each deck to the computer office and wait for a printed listing. The process was cumbersome, but I was captivated by what these program decks could do.
The University of Utah participated in early Arpanet development, which eventually became the Internet, and it was one of the first universities to offer computer science as a major. I didn’t think it unusual at the time that the class was taught by a woman.
Starting an engineering major late in my sophomore year and working to put myself through college meant that I would be late in graduating, but I loved what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan to attend graduate school after obtaining my degree, but that changed when, in my senior year, faculty member Rich Riesenfeld introduced me to Ivan Sutherland. Ivan had been at the University of Utah for several years and was now at Caltech, where he and Carver Mead had founded a growing computer science department.
What I’ve learned in recent conversations with Rich is that Ivan told him that he would give a lecture only if Rich introduced him to his best student. Rich had observed my potential from a class I attended and made the introduction. With help from Rich and a colleague of his in the math department, I applied to Caltech graduate school and was accepted.
While Caltech was small, it was a great place to develop my skills in computer science. During 1979–1980, Caltech was very involved with the VLSI (very large scale integration) revolution. VLSI is the process of creating an integrated circuit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution ).
The vision Ivan and Carver espoused was to apply computer science system-level design principles to chip design, allowing people to quickly develop application-specific chips. Over the years, the impact of this approach resulted in the proliferation of special purpose chip designs that fuel many of the devices we take for granted today, such as iPhone and Android phones, as well as Fitbits, laptops, “Internet of things” (IoT) devices, home appliances, and cars. In the technology arena, revolutions are common, and I was excited to be in the middle of the VLSI revolution. In 1985, I graduated with a PhD and was ready to take on my new adventure in the computer science world.
Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship: When Silicon Meant Chips
With my newly minted PhD in hand, I was excited about Silicon Valley as a place to exercise my deep passion for technology. I landed my first position at a research lab, and, in fact, had seven offers at various research labs. I chose the Schlumberger Palo Alto Research Center but quickly understood that my strength and love for innovation were a better match for Silicon Valley start-ups.
My first start-up was Actel, which made something called field programmable gate arrays. The idea of field programmable gate arrays was to provide customers with application-specific designs completed in hours versus months. An engineer would develop a design on their computer and then “program” the chip using a proprietary antifuse technology to create a design by pushing the program button. I applied my expertise in structured silicon development to the Actel chips, including automatically creating portions of the chip. We created the largest programmable chip available on the market at that time.
Actel started with a staff of 30 people and grew to about 800 during my time there. The growth acceleration was exciting, and I worked alongside great minds to bring our ideas and plans to life. In 1993, Actel went public. As a young engineer, seeing the real-life applications of my PhD work and then understanding what it takes to bring a product to market and grow a company was enthralling.
Actel also was where I grew up and evolved professionally. I ultimately became an engineering director and helped define their next generation of products. It was also the first place where I understood the importance of organizational culture to its people.
I left Actel in 1998 to join Malleable Technologies, an early-stage chip start-up. I was employee number four and a member of the founding management team as Vice President of Engineering. Our product was a novel programmable processor. Over the next two years, I led the engineering effort to create a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) processor. The engineering development included a custom chip design, a software system for customers, and sophisticated digital signal processing software supporting the VoIP effort.
Malleable was bought by PMC Sierra, a chip company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in the spring of 2000. By most metrics, the Malleable start-up was successful, because we created a working product and had a decent financial exit. But the product was the victim of the dot-com crash in 2001 and did not survive the recession. I had long since left PMC-Sierra, and despite the product’s fate, my time there made clear to me that I thrived on the creative approach to innovation that often is present in the early days of a start-up.
When I think back to my time involved in these start-ups, I can’t help but remember how lucky I was to be in a loving and supportive marriage. I would be remiss not to credit my marriage as a key factor in my career success. I have observed when I speak to audiences, primarily women, that the most important career decision you make is who will be your partner.
A few years after moving to Silicon Valley, I met my husband, Bill. while camping with friends in Yosemite, a place that to this day feeds my soul during difficult times. Bill grew up in the Bay Area and worked in construction. He was a commercial air conditioning mechanic and can fix anything.
As a former Transcendental Meditation (TM) teacher, who was not always happy with my crazy schedule, he nurtured our relationship during the years when I focused on my career. That loving and deep connection strengthened me to face each day. Although like any partnership, we have our challenges, that deep-seated love and his belief in me were instrumental in my life. As of 2022, we will have been married for 29 years.
Awakening to Women’s Participation in Technology
At the University of Utah, I was one of a few women students, but there were women faculty and graduate students. I was oblivious to being a member of such a small minority, partly because of my late adoption of a computer science major. I was so thrilled to find a major I loved that I did not notice the lopsided representation.
At Caltech, the overall student population was about 13% women. It was one of the first places I experienced isolation based on my gender. Carver Mead, my advisor, also advised several other women, which was unusual within the department and is a testament to his commitment to inclusion. Still, there were odd behaviors from the many male students and the faculty that communicated their discomfort toward women students, including me. But I found people who respected my work, and I focused on technology and science.
As an aside, Caltech has been on its own inclusion journey. I serve on a Caltech advisory board for computer science, and for the school year 2021–2022, 41% of undergraduates and 31% of graduate students were women, but this change is only because of the commitment to action of many of its key leaders.
I moved to Silicon Valley because of my passion for participating in the technology revolution in the chip industry. This passion also led me to make a commitment to seek out technical women. The semiconductor field that I worked in had few women in leadership roles.
I met a community of women seeded by a Stanford women’s network in computer science and remain friends with many from those early days, but the most impactful relationship was my friendship with Anita Borg. Anita and I moved to the Bay Area at the same time. We worked in different technology areas, but we shared a mutual interest in hiking and the technical women’s community.
Through people I met in the group and through my friendship with Anita, I learned more about the impact of women in computing. Prior to meeting Anita, I had consciously refrained from discussing my participation as a woman in engineering. I wanted desperately to be recognized for my work, not necessarily singled out based on my gender. Years later, I frequently observed the same response in the young computer science students I met.
Anita and I partnered to create a conference to celebrate the achievements of women in computing. In 1994, we launched the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. As a start-up conference, we couldn’t have the impact we desired without help. From the response, it was clear that our dream met an untapped need. The Computing Research Association agreed to be the fiscal sponsor of the first conference. The National Science Foundation provided sponsorship money for students to attend. Every senior person we asked to speak said “yes,” and that included several of the first women to win the Turing Award (https://awards.acm.org/ ) years later.
The speakers were extraordinary. The first conference had about 500 attendees, almost exclusively women and only about five men. As I reflect today, it is evident that the conference met a deep need in the community. In the first 10 years, the conference grew modestly and then experienced a sharp increase. Ultimately the conference grew to over 26,000 attendees in 2019, the last time it was held in person.
The Grace Hopper Celebration conference was the beginning of a remarkable and unique community that continues today. I was deeply ensconced in the two chip start-ups during the first two Grace Hopper Conferences, held in 1994 and 2000. When we held the third conference, I became more involved in the national community in order to increase the participation of women in computing.
Anita Borg founded the Institute for Women and Technology in 1997 with the belief that women belonged at the table creating technology. Here is a quote from her 1997 Grace Hopper Celebration speech where she announced its founding:
I can think of no challenge that would draw young women into this field, greater than knowing that what they are doing is not sitting in a lab doing work that is disconnected from the world. They are sitting in a lab doing something that is very connected. And they can bring their whole selves to it. Their full sense of what the world is. The intuition we are so famous for.
In 2000, when her beloved institute was still mostly exploring new ideas, Anita was diagnosed with brain cancer. It was a challenging time for a tiny new nonprofit. In 2001, I left PMC-Sierra and began working more actively with Anita, finding ways to help. In 2002, at the request of the institute’s board, and after an agonized and soul-searching decision, I took the helm of the institute, which was subsequently renamed the Anita Borg Institute. This was an excruciating decision. My professional identity was as a technologist. To this point, all my contributions focused on technical products. I saw my efforts to increase the participation of women in technology as a volunteer activity.
But something changed in me. I flipped the switch in 2002 and focused exclusively on the entrepreneurial work of building a successful and sustainable nonprofit organization. As an experienced start-up entrepreneur, I had skills in creating an organization from scratch.
As the co-founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration conference, I had deep connections to the burgeoning world of computer science and women. I also had the support of the Anita Borg Institute Board of Trustees, a small but highly influential group of individuals, including the head of the National Academy of Engineering, Bill Wulf; Maria Klawe, and several senior industry technology leaders. I had the connections for a broad national-level effort, but as a nonprofit, what we needed was a sustainable revenue model.
Building a Nonprofit Steeped in Technology with Growth and Impact
Anita passed away in the spring of 2003, and we renamed the institute in her honor — the Anita Borg Institute. We celebrated her life and work through an event (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resEXQgcaJo ) and scaled back the existing programs and staff to create some time to develop a plan. The year brought on a new set of obstacles and changes.
As the new CEO of the Anita Borg Institute, I needed to focus on two essential aspects of the organization. One of the priorities was understanding the unique products and services the institute provided for its core audiences. The second was to develop and deploy a sustainable funding model. All this needed to be thoughtfully completed while leading and managing a nonprofit in severe financial trouble.
Several people made significant commitments to the Institute before I joined. The first was Rick Rashid, who founded and led Microsoft Research. The second was Greg Papadopoulos, who was the CTO of Sun. The third was Wayne Johnson at HP. All three believed in the organization’s mission, but they knew, and I knew, that for the institute to survive, we needed to develop a sustainable revenue model.
All three were on our board of trustees, with Maria Klawe, Bill Wulf, and Bill Unger, a former venture capitalist and nonprofit guru extraordinaire. The stature and commitment of the board allowed me to navigate the national landscape of computer science and women. The initial corporate support from Microsoft, Sun, and HP was attractive to other corporations considering sponsorship.
Before I joined the Anita Borg Institute, the early programs were educational and inspirational, but they were not sustainable for long-term growth and were only mildly successful when measuring impact and scale. The first program provided students with service-oriented projects that illuminated the importance of technology to the broader world. These projects were very attractive to the students who participated, but only a limited number of colleges were willing to make the substantial investment required, and it was difficult to secure funding for the existing participating colleges, let alone what was required to scale the program.
The Grace Hopper Celebration Conference was founded before the organization was formed but became an essential program of the newly created nonprofit.
Curiosity and creativity were necessary at this phase of the organization’s development, and experimenting with many offerings was key to defining the organization’s success. We experimented with workshops, offered a yearly inspirational event recognizing technology leaders, and created a series of awards specifically recognizing women. At the heart of our decision-making was highlighting the extraordinary technical contributions and contributions to technology by the award recipients.
In 2006, we decided to make the Grace Hopper Conference an annual event. This decision was important for the organization because it increased our visibility and impact and provided a vehicle for sustainable sponsorship from corporations. One of the factors in my decision to make it annual was that in 2001 a sister conference had been launched, the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing. We connected with the Tapia Conferences and agreed to alternate years to prevent conflicts in scheduling for attendees; however, after we decided to become annual, Tapia also became annual. Deemed by many to be risky, it actually increased the impact of both conferences. Realizing the need to recognize both technology cultures and individual women, we added to our portfolio of awards.
As an experienced entrepreneur, I understand the phases of innovation, where ideas begin to build momentum but have yet to achieve success. There is a period in which you are enthusiastic about your offerings, but are just getting by; then at some point, your work hits a critical need, and there is an inflection point. That is what happened at the Anita Borg Institute.
Initially modestly successful, the Grace Hopper Conference continued to grow. In 2006, 1300 people attended. Many more universities were participating in the conference, organizing their women students to attend as part of the university’s effort to increase their overall numbers of women students. Companies sponsored the conference as a vehicle to recruit women in the field.
In 2013, we hit an inflection point, and conference attendance hit the classic hockey stick phenomenon, where conference attendance doubled every year until 2019, the last time the conference was held in person, when 26,000 people attended. We didn’t anticipate the massive turnout. Interest was much more significant, and conference registration sold out in 20 minutes.
What changed? The topic of diversity and inclusion became more pervasive at companies and universities, and we were uniquely positioned because of the talented students already attending. In addition, we became leading experts in soliciting the best content — technical and professional — that attracted industry professionals.
The conference content was based primarily on proposals from the community. About 75% of sessions came from these proposals, and the conference was designed by women for women. Although academics initially had a better understanding of how to submit accepted proposals, we listened to our industry attendees and developed a more attractive method for soliciting broad-based content from companies as well.
Around this time, many more companies sent hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of their female employees to attend as part of their own retention programs. The following words from a Latina engineer epitomize many women’s experiences at the time:
“I remember Grace Hopper being transformational for me and thinking, why have I not done this before? Why have I not been here since I stepped onto campus as an undergrad? It was magical. I hadn’t heard any of these words spoken in my entire career.”
This inflection point changed the possibilities ahead of us. There were times in the mid-2000s when we were barely staying afloat. Once, we had to ask a sponsor to expedite payment for a committed sponsorship in order to make payroll. Finally, in 2008, we were able to build a rainy-day fund allowing us to weather challenging times. When I stepped down in September 2017, our annual budget was $28 million, and our staff had grown to more than 60 people.
Our success also allowed us to add programs to our offerings. I realized that as important as it is to recognize the achievements of women, it is also important to recognize companies committed to building inclusive cultures. In 2009, we launched a formal corporate partnership program and the Top Companies for Technical Women program to use data to recognize companies most effective at developing women in their leadership ranks. Recognizing cultures that develop women became an essential aspect of much of our work.
We Are Not Alone
In nonprofit work, I often found a landscape of competition with other nonprofits. This competition is exacerbated by nonprofit funding models. Many organizations believe they are competing for limited funding dollars, but when your goal is to change the overall landscape, organizations need to work together.
In December 2003, Lucy Sanders and Bobby Schnabel met with me to discuss an idea they wanted to launch. Lucy and Bobby envisioned an institute that brought together social science researchers and people from across academia and industry to understand practices that work to affect the participation of women in computer science. They believed that this institute would be a connector providing knowledge to many of the organizations doing great work.
The following summer, the National Center for Women and IT (NCWIT) was launched. I was a cofounder along with Lucy and Bobby. Based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from its earliest days NCWIT included a robust social science focus, as well as a group of alliances of universities, companies, and nonprofit organizations coming together to create meaningful change.
Contrary to the view espoused by some in the nonprofit space, both NCWIT and the Anita Borg Institute grew significantly over the next decade, and through their success, expanded the money invested in the world of women and computing, not just for the two organizations but for other organizations as well.
I was involved in the early years of developing the alliances for NCWIT that still exist today: workforce, higher education, K-12, and more. NCWIT remains a powerhouse of information, 4connections, and activism for the entire sector. Over the next 15 years, the Anita Borg Institute and NCWIT ramped up. My focus returned to scaling the Anita Borg Institute’s programs and impact, but Lucy, Bobby, and I continued to meet regularly for many years.
I have been committed to working and connecting with other organizations as well. Valerie Taylor and several colleagues founded the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in 2001 and the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities (CMD-IT) in 2011. I still serve on the CMD-IT board. CMD-IT and Tapia were modeled on Grace Hopper and Anita Borg, focusing on underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities. Their work is complementary to our work at the institute.
In addition, the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional society of the computing profession and the co-presenter of the Grace Hopper Conference, had a committee on the status of women. The Computing Research Association had a committee on the status of women. Both organizations and Anita Borg Institute always found ways to work together to achieve common goals.
These are the organizations I worked closely with over the many years while leading the Anita Borg Institute, but there were too many others to mention that also had a significant impact.
The results of organizations partnering together to drive meaningful change set the stage for future generations to thrive. Some of the many challenges of driving that change are commitment and staffing, and, of course, communication.
Today and Lessons Learned
In September 2017, I stepped down as CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. A nonprofit CEO position is a 24/7 commitment, and as with any CEO position, it was time for someone new. I also understood that my strength was as an entrepreneur. The organization needed a skilled CEO who could continue to manage its growth.
Brenda Darden Wilkerson has done a splendid job taking the organization forward, and I am proud to see the ways in which she has built new offerings on the core strengths of the organization.
What’s next for me? I’ve adopted a portfolio approach to this next phase. After working a full-time, round-the-clock job for 35 years and managing an increasing number of people, I am now more interested in projects with impact and prefer working with a few people I enjoy and respect. In essence, I manage a portfolio of projects.
Included in my project time commitments are serving on four boards — three nonprofits and one private for-profit. The three nonprofit organizations allow me to focus on what continues to be vital to me: the intersection of technology and inclusive organizations. All four boards are start-ups or small organizations, because that phase of an organization is where I find the most satisfaction.
The Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT) continues the work that I know well but focuses on underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities. AI4All is an education start-up founded at Stanford that is developing the next generation of AI leaders. Power and Systems is an organizational development nonprofit whose work provides tools for organizations to merge cultures. The for-profit start-up, Everactive, is a semiconductor company whose battery-less sensors could change the world for power and sensors.
In addition to my board work, I manage a consulting practice helping companies with women and technology. I speak regularly to women’s groups. I mentor technology leaders, primarily but not exclusively women. My commitment is to change the culture of technology innovation in a meaningful way. Speaking, consulting, and amplifying the work of others allows organizations to create meaningful and positive change.
I am also involved in a number of survey efforts that collect data that characterizes the organizational culture experience of people working in the industry. This data informs the practices I regularly talk about to clients and women’s groups.
I am proud to see the growth of my work and to know that our programs have impacted tens of thousands of women navigating their careers and continue to impact thousands more. In 2022, I was excited and thrilled to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Here are the lessons that I have learned along the way:
Careers often involve a pivot; embrace the possibilities of meaningful change.
Have the courage to take risks.
Embrace curiosity and creativity as essential ideas, especially when you are building a new idea or organization.
Be patient; innovation and good ideas take time to come to fruition.
Partner with other like-minded organizations and people, selecting those that allow you to achieve a significant impact.
Find work that is meaningful to you, and enjoy the journey.
Excerpted from Lessons Learned: Stories from Women Leaders in STEM (American Association for Physician Leadership, 2023).