In today's post, we will celebrate those powerful women who broke the glass ceiling in the technology sector. Statistics reveal that women employee in the largest tech companies constitute only 34.4 % of all the employees. There has been a gross underrepresentation of women in technical jobs, even in developed countries like the US.
This article will provide insights into the following topics:
- Female tech CEOs
- Top women in business
- Forbes women in tech 2020
- Famous women in technology
- Most Powerful Women In Technology
- Female leaders in technology history
- 10 Most Influential Women in Technology 2020
Here is the list of the top women in the tech industry who are not only highly influential but also highly paid. These are mostly the ones who rose to C-level positions in the biggest tech companies in the world.
Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM
Virginia Marie "Ginni" Rometty is the Executive Chairperson of the multinational technology and consulting company, IBM. She joined the company about four decades ago as a system engineer and eventually became head of Global Sales, Marketing and Strategy. She also served as the company's first female President and CEO from 2011 to January 2020. Under her supervision, the company saw increasing revenues in specific areas like Blockchain and Clouds, and she also inclined the business processes towards more advancing areas like Artificial intelligence.
She is also a part of the Board of Directors of AIG, a multinational finance and insurance corporation functional in more than 80 countries. She was part of the White House Business Advisory Panel in 2017. She has often appeared in lists like the hundred most influential people in the world and World's Most powerful women.
Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube
Susan Wojcicki is Cheif Executive Officer of Youtube since 2014, making her longest-serving chief of the company. Earlier in her career, she also headed Google's marketing and original video service. She is linked to the acquisition of Youtube (2006) and DoubleClick (2007) by Google, development of Google Doodles, Google Images and Books. She also oversaw the development of AdSense, AdWords and Google Analytics.
She is a member of the board of Salesforce, an American Software cloud-based company, Room to Read- a non-profit working for gender equality in education and UCLA Anderson School of Management. She has frequently appeared on Fortune's and Forbe's list for most powerful women in the world.
Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle
Safra Catz has been CEO of the multinational computer technology corporation since 2014. She has been part of the company since 1999 and in 2011 rose to the position of co-president and CFO. She is also a billionaire banker and had started her career with an American investment bank, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette as its MD. She oversaw the acquisition of software rival PeopleSoft. She has also been a part of HSBC group from 2008 to 2015 as its director and is also in Board of directors for The Walt Disney Company. She has often been ranked in top businesswomen in the world and drew the highest salary as a woman CEO in April 2017.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
Sandberg, a Harvard graduate, has been working with big names like Google, Facebook and has been in the Board of The Walt Disney Company, Starbucks and Brookings Institution. She was responsible for Ad and Sales in Google and grew its team from 4 to 4000. In 2008, she joined Facebook where she looked over sales, marketing, communications etc. and her leadership mainly saw the importance of advertising in the social networking site. She has also co-authored two books which deal with leadership in business and women's position in such areas as well as facing challenges in life.
She has also worked with Larry Summers for the US States of Treasury from 1996 to 2001. She has been part of many non-profits like Women for Women International, the Center for Global Development and Ad Council.
Ruth Porat, CFO, Alphabet
Porat appeared on the seventh position on Fortune's most powerful women 2020 list owing to her role of Chief Financial Officer in one of the most valuable companies in the world, Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. She has been serving the position since 2015 and before that was working as CFO and executive vice president of Morgan Stanley for five years. During the dot-com meltdown in 2000, she was a banker and consultant to the United States Department of the Treasury and New York Federal Reserve Bank and was also credited to save Amazon from the financial crisis using European Debt financing.
She has been named 'Best Financial Institutions CFO' and 'Best Internet CFO' for her work in both the companies.
Amy Hood, CFO, Microsoft
This American businesswoman rose to fame in 2013 after Microsoft announced her appointment as its new CFO. She had worked at Goldman Sachs, the American multinational Investment Bank and financial services provider, before joining Microsoft in 2002 in the area of investor relations. She was also made chief of staff as well as was also running the business development team. The Harvard graduate has been credited for much of Microsoft's stock surge to 300%. She has been involved for over 57 deals including $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub in 2018. She was listed at the 26th position for most powerful women in the world according to Forbes.
Jennifer Morgan, Co-CEO, SAP
Jennifer Morgan is an American technology executive who is known for her role as Co-Chief Executive Officer at SAP SE, which was many firsts- first American woman to be on the company's executive board, first female Chief Executive SAP ever saw and first female CEO of a DAX company.
She started her career with Accenture, working in business development at Siebel Systems for four years. She then joined SAP- a German multinational software company especially known for ERP. Within five years, she became SAP's President of the Americas & Asia Pacific Japan followed by the President of the Cloud Business Group. Last year in October, she was appointed co-CEO along with another executive board member, Christian Klein. However, she stepped down after six months. She also worked to close the gender pay gap and in 2019 started her podcast, A Call to Lead discussing leadership and career advancement.
Roshni Nadar Malhotra, CEO, HCL Technologies
Roshni Nadar became the richest woman in India after she took over the $9.9-billion multinational IT corporate HCL in July this year. The company was founded by Shiv Nadar in 1976 and is the third largest in the industry today. She became the first woman to lead a listed IT company in India. Before joining the company, she has also worked as a news producer at Sky News UK and CNN America.
She has also been the trustee to Shiv Nadar Foundation and has worked for educating underprivileged and creating a sustainable ecosystem. She was added to 54th position in Most Powerful women's list by Forbes.
Gwynne Shotwell, President, SpaceX
Shotwell is President and Chief Operating Officer of Elon Musk's SpaceX. The businesswoman and engineer started her career with Chrysler Corporation, followed by The Aerospace Corporation. She worked at Microcosm Inc. in business development for some time before joining SpaceX in 2002. She was the eleventh employee and was given the role of Vice president of business development. Now President and COO she overlooks operations, customer and strategic relations for the company's growth. She also joined the board of Polaris Industries. She is currently at the 55th position for the most powerful women in the world.
Maggie Wei Wu, CFO, Alibaba Group
Maggie Wu is the Chief Financial Officer of the Chinese multinational technology company, Alibaba. She oversaw the implementation of its first IPO as well its privatization in 2012. She had worked at KPMG for fifteen years before she joined the world's largest retailer and e-commerce company. She served as deputy chief financial officer from 2011 till 2013, when she was appointed CFO. Her role deals with commercial operations, cloud computing and the new retail strategy to bring together both conventional retailing as well as the online one. She was ranked 57th in the most powerful women list in 2019.
Conclusion
There are many women right now who are making it big into the tech world by bringing innovative technology. They are not in this list but are surely the ones we need to watch out for. Jasmine Anteunis, Chantelle Bell, Elina Berglund are some of these businesswomen who have founded their own companies, which brings a novel solution to world issues. And they will definitely be appearing in future such lists.
Co-author: Shreya Arya
A digital marketing enthusiast with experience in HR and hospital management, Shreya has wide interests ranging from philosophy, psychology to latest trends in automation. She is also a freelance content writer and loves lending beautiful words to ideas and feelings.
