Top 5 Women Who Impacted Technology in 2010

Katie Stanton, International Strategist for Twitter

Katie Stanton has impressively long names of companies in her resume. They include the White House, Google Inc, and her latest addition is Twitter. Her remit is working on Twitter’s international strategy and her experience in social media will be a key asset to the company. Katie has a history of working in technology, and her knowledge of departmental laws will help Twitter work alongside government agencies, as she’ll be spearheading the free information approach, especially after the Wikileaks incident.

Stanton has been a key player in the techsphere for some time, and this extends to her private life. Following the Haiti disaster she worked with a group of engineers to create a free texting service to help those in need and she is constantly in demand as an expert in both social media and government policy.

Caterina Fake, Co-Founder of Flickr and Hunch

Despite having a surname which sounds like a pseudonym for a spy (it’s 100% real), Caterina Fake is a very smart cookie. Her projects over the years have included the start-up of photo sharing site Flickr, being the chairman of Etsy, and she is now working on Hunch, a project which creates ‘taste graphs’ of the web and allows you to get info on topics that you enjoy. It hasn’t quite taken off yet, but seeing Caterina’s impressive history with start up ventures, we’d firmly place them in the one to watch column.

She has a long history of being involved with online projects, and her resume is exhausting to look at, including a stint as the Art Director of Salon.com and Creative Director of Yellowball. She remains friendly and down to earth, with her current company regularly stopping for team, brainstorms and beer and has managed to do all this and still retain an approachable edge, something which many successful entrepreneurs lose.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

Sheryl Sandberg understands what makes people tick, so it’s no surprise she left Google for Facebook, after deeply impressing Mark Zuckerberg at a conference. Her career history not only includes a stint as VP of Google, but also at the Treasury Department, and her venture into Facebook territory shows how au fait she is with today’s current technological trends.

She holds a BA in Economics from Harvard and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She has a history of hard work and innovation, and she has even followed through her passions with a marriage/merger, as her husband is the founder of successful web survey site Survey Monkey. Talk about taking your work home with you (sorry!). Not only does Sheryl help lead Facebook from strength to strength but she also manages to keep her cool with a team of young people- and we all know how hard that can be!

Leslie Sobon, Vice President World Marketing AMD

 

People love their computers, but they can often falter when reading the specsheet of a new purchase. Quad core processor, Graphics card, Windows 7 bit or premium- the head starts to spin and people start to get quite sulky. Leslie Sobon aims to strip away the jargon from computer purchasing, and make upgrading your PC a lot more intuitive. She prides herself on making AMD products clear and understandable. ‘(I’m) not into the fluff-crap marketing stuff, but they do want to know there’s real technology behind it.”

Her vision for her role at AMD is all about putting the consumer back in the driving seat, and making the buying process centered around their needs, rather than showing off what great computers they have. Love that attitude, after all if you can’t get people to use your products they’ll never know if they’re worth it or not. “Buying a PC is not a lot of fun. It’s all fact tabs and yet PCs are becoming like cameras or TVs in their usage patterns. In America, more people know 1080p is than know than what a microprocessor is.” As well as continuing to develop a usability strategy, she also finds time to blog about a wide range of geeky related subjects such as ‘How to date a geek’ which we are assured is 100% her own words. How can you not like this woman?

Diane Nelson, President DC Entertainment

Love a bit of comic book action? Whether it’s Superman, Batman or the Green Lantern that has you smiling, Diane Nelson is the lady to thank that they’re still going strong. Diane took over the helm of DC Comics in 2009, and her arrival has helped the company retain their massive hold on the comic book market. Diane has been involved in topical geekery for awhile now, as her previous role at Warner saw her heavily involved with the Harry Potter franchise, so it’s fair to say that she understands popular culture. Her history in film might help us see the growth of some much loved comic characters turn into big screen heroes- but she is tantalizingly quiet on what any new developments might be.

On the subject of women in the comic book world, she’s very positive though- refusing to be cowed by the so called ‘boy’s club’ mentality of comics. Diane says, ‘I think there are attributes that many women executives

have that will be a great addition to this business, I hope. While it would be as wrong of me to attribute these traits to women at the exclusion of men as it would be for a man to do the reverse, I think women can often be very strong team players and good communicators and collaborators’. I like her attitude and hope that through her role as president we’ll see more female superheroes in comic books, and the role of female characters become far more than just supporting acts.