The 50 Women to Watch in Tech – The First 10
Femmeonomics came up with the idea for the Top 50 Women in Tech in order to highlight the unknown, unacknowledged and under-appreciated tech stars in our midst.
By far, the most rewarding part of this experience came from our readers, who willingly (and unselfishly) submitted the names of their friends, co-workers, bosses, sisters and even spouses. Our fabulous judges Whitney Johnson , John Paul Aguiar and Mathew Ingram also unselfishly offered their time because they believed in the importance of highlighting these women. Please thank them by following them on Twitter, if you don’t already.
Femmeonomics will be releasing these names 10 at a time in alphabetical order so stay tuned for the rest!
1. Vanessa Alvarez – Stereotype Buster
Vanessa (@) is a well-respected industry analyst in a male-dominated industry: data storage and cloud computing. She is a frequent speaker at various conferences (GigaOm Structure, Interop, Cloud Connect, WITI’s Cloud Summit, etc.) She is based in Boston.
2. Jennifer Arguello – Stereotype Buster
Jennifer is a product manager on the apps team at Mozilla, helping to define the next generation of apps and the future of the web. On the technical side, her project is about contributing to web standards by pushing the boundaries of what the web can do today. She is based in San Francisco.
3. – Game Changer
Valerie (@vaurora ) is co-founder of the Ada Initiative , a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media. She is based in Tuscon.
4. Lili Balfour – Game Changer
Lili founded Atelier Advisors to provide strategic and financial advisory services to early-stage companies committed to changing the world. She has been providing investment banking services to early-stage tech companies for the past five years. Since inception, Atelier Advisors has worked with over 100 companies covering a range of industries including software, e-commerce, clean tech, digital media, consumer goods, and social enterprise. Her motto=Rethink Investment Banking. She is based in San Francisco and New York.
5. Dr. Sue Black – Unsung Hero
Sue is a Senior Research Associate in the Software Systems Engineering group in the the Department of Computer Science at University College London and a Senior Consultant with . Since 1998 Sue has been campaigning for equality, and more support, for women in tech. She founded the online networks LondonBCSWomen in 1999 and BCSWomen in 2001, BCSWomen now has over 1200 members. Sue is known for her campaign to save Bletchley Park , the site for codebreakers during World War Two.
6. – Unsung Hero
Farrah just beginning to build a name for herself as a game changing creative technologist. Long influential as a visionary in mobile technology, with cutting edge strategy ideas on augmented reality and QR codes, Farrah is now a leader in the “lean planning” community. In addition, she helped coordinate the Famine Hackathon for the 50/50 Project. She is based in Brooklyn.
7. – Stereotype Buster
Angela , director of Community Development at Acquia, is the core co-maintainer for Drupal 7, recipient of the Google-O’Reilly Open 2008 Source Award for Best Contributor, co-author of the O’Reilly book Using Drupal, and an open source evangelist who lives and breathes Drupal. She got her start as a Google Summer of Code student in 2005 and since then has completely immersed herself in contributing to open source. She is based near Vancouver, British Columbia.
8. Ann Mei Chang – Stereotype Buster 
Ann Mei (@annmei) is currently a Franklin Fellow in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the US State Department. She is on a 1-year leave of absence from Google where, until recently, she was the Senior Engineering Director for Emerging Markets, leading a global team to bring relevant internet services to the half of the world’s population which is not yet connected.
9. Oonie Chase – Game Changer
Oonie (@ooonie) is co-founder of IfWeRanTheWorld & MakeLoveNotPorn, where she works with Cindy Gallop (more on Cindy Gallop later). An experienced designer and director, Oonie has been fearlessly crossing the streams of graphic design, interaction design and storytelling for over 15 years. She is based in the greater Seattle area.
10. – Unsung Hero
Judith is founder of the Glasshouse, an international network for investors and entrepreneurs. She is also the CEO and founder of , a boutique consultancy that provides innovative solutions to business challenges through the power of an enviable network of entrepreneurs, academics, artists, advocates and visionaries of all kinds. Judith is based in London and New York.
Category: Career Girl, Women in the World
Great list and idea to showcase some great woman.
Happy to be a part of the judging team
I have follow them on Google+ except Valerie Aurora (no profile found) and Judith Clegg (a profile was found but I’m not sure if it’s hers).
Thanks, Whitney, John, Mathew and Femmeonomics!
Eric – I don’t use G+ much. Work Twitter is @atelieradvisors if you’d like to follow.
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