Unfortunately, STEM is still not a statistically common field for women, nor is it well-known for those women to receive totally equal treatment. At Rocky Mountain Computer Specialists, this part of the industry is not only something we wish to change, but also an opportunity to innovate and shed light on successful women in the field of computing and computer science.
The first we’d like to bring to attention is Sandy Kurtzig. According to Wired, Kurtzig successfully sold a software package to Hewlett-Packard by the late 1970’s. Her website says she’s a mother of two, and started out in sales pedaling timeshares (for computers). Her business went from a hobby run out of her spare bedroom to one of the fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley in the late 70’s and early 80’s. We salute you, Sandy Kurtzig.
Next, hear Sandy Lerner’s story. Lerner’s a Stanford woman who essentially invented what we know as the modern router. That’s the box installed in almost every home with wifi connectivity that allows different computers and devices to talk to each other. Lerner did this with a small group of others through research and testing at the university. They called their new company Cisco to sell the product to computer giants at the time. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, Lerner’s story in Silicon Valley goes south once investors began to play a role in her company. After acting as CEO from the start, Lerner was replaced by another CEO a new investor appointed, and she was later fired from the company by the board of directors. We thank you for the magic of the modern router, Sandy.
The last for this particular post is Diane Greene. Though there are hundreds of other women we could feature, Greene’s story is one of perseverance and in many ways, comeuppance. Greene served as the CEO of VMWare in the early 2000’s. This was a venture with her husband, after she’d already sold her first startup venture, VXtreme, to a little company called Microsoft in the late 90’s for a whopping $75 million, according to Forbes. Again, the board fired Greene for reasons we can’t understand or fathom, but she bounced back by taking a job with Google on the executive team. She leads the enterprise department, which essentially housing everything that has to do with the ‘Cloud’ concept, or Cloud Computing.
At Rocky Mountain Computer Specialists, innovation and excellence is never limited to one gender. We believe in bringing great minds together to accomplish our business mission: to offer quality computer support services to our customers in a competitive, friendly way.