50 Top Women in Tech (cont.)
Xeni Jardin, 35
Journalist and Blogger, Boing Boing
Los Angeles
An appearance on Boing Boing, the Internet’s best-read blog, is a mixed blessing: So much popularity can make one’s technological head explode. Jardin is one of four editors of this constantly churning tech “directory of wonderful things” (also lovingly known as “crack for geeks”). She hosts its new online-video venture, Boing Boing TV, covering everything from space couture to homemade robots. More than two million people visit the Boing Boing site monthly, so when Jardin or her cohorts link to another website, the influx of traffic can overwhelm servers—that’s the phenomenon known as “getting Boing Boinged.” Jardin is also a ubiquitous presence in old media, writing for Wired magazine, talking on National Public Radio, and appearing as a tech expert on CNN, Fox News, and the like.—BAP
Amal Johnson, 56
CEO, MarketTools
San Francisco
What do you need to know? Johnson heads up the online market-research firm MarketTools, ranked as one of the fastest-growing technology outfits in the U.S. The company offers its clients Web-based surveys, real-time data analysis, and access to an online panel of two and a half million people, whose opinions and perspectives can be solicited on matters ranging from consumer preferences to business problems. Before coming to MarketTools in 2005, Johnson was a venture partner at ComVentures, a founding partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, president of Baan Supply Chain Solutions, and president of ASK Manufacturing Systems. —KP
Directorship: Mellanox Technologies
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Defense Lineup at Lockheed |
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Linda Gooden, 54 Gooden heads Lockheed’s Information Systems & Global Services unit in Gaithersburg, Maryland, one of four business areas at America’s biggest defense contractor. She oversaw the unit’s formation in February of last year, consolidating two systems and information-technology branches into a 52,000-employee force to be reckoned with. The groups that were merged into it earned $9 billion in 2006 revenues from IT, aircraft maintenance and modification, and management and logistics services. Gooden joined the aeronautics, space-systems, and tech-services company in 1980 and came up through the technology ranks. —BAP |
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Lots of liftoff for this tech exec. Maguire oversees a Littleton, Colorado-based unit of the defense giant that in 2006 sold $7.9 billion of government and commercial satellites, strategic and defensive missile systems, and satellite launch vehicles. Space Systems has responsibility for Lockheed’s role in the U.S. |
Aileen Lee, 38
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers;
CEO, Danoo Inc.
Menlo Park, California
They’re ahead of the curve again. Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s undisputed kingmaker venture capital firms (home runs among its 475 investments include Amazon.com, AOL, Google, and Sun Microsystems), currently stands out for two reasons: It’s making big bets on green technology to combat global warming, and seven of its 23 partners are female. Lee began her career at Morgan Stanley, working first on mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry and then on marketing and product and business development for employers like the Gap and North Face. At Kleiner Perkins, she’s played a part in the development of the online gem retailer Blue Nile, Tellme Networks (a voice-technology developer acquired by Microsoft in May), the social-networking site Friendster, and Segway, manufacturer of electric personal-transportation devices. In addition to her investment work, she serves as CEO of Danoo, a company in Kleiner Perkins’s portfolio that places advertising in coffee shops and restaurants. —BAP
Ann Livermore, 49
Executive Vice President of the Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard
Palo Alto, California
Evidently not one to quit when very public rumors don’t pan out—some thought she’d replace HP’s ousted CEO, Carly Fiorina—Livermore heads the company’s $34 billion Technology Solutions Group, which includes the hardware, software, and services divisions. Under her leadership the organization has been racking up a third of HP’s revenues, and it’s considered a critical force behind the recent jump in the Silicon Valley legend’s once-flagging stock price. Livermore has also been busy cutting costs, expanding the sales staff, and using partnerships with independent software vendors to open up new revenue sources. She has advanced steadily through the company’s ranks since she joined it in 1982 after graduating from Stanford University’s business school, on whose board she now sits. —KP
Directorship: United Parcel Service
Patricia B. Morrison, 48
Executive Vice President and CIO, Motorola Inc.
Schaumburg, Illinois
A master of postmerger challenges, Morrison joined mobile-communications giant Motorola in 2005, following a career in IT management at some of the biggest corporate names in America. She’d served as CIO of GE Industrial Systems, Office Depot, and Quaker Oats. Her hiring by Motorola coincided with a buying spree during which the corporation acquired more than 15 companies, most notably Symbol Technologies Inc. for $4 billion last year. In overseeing the merger of the two outfits’ tech systems, Morrison could call upon her experience at Quaker when that company was acquired by PepsiCo in 2001. “Our job at IT,” she has said about mergers, “is to make sure that the combination of two companies will allow them to grow the business in a way they couldn’t do alone.” —KP
Directorships: Jo-Ann Stores Inc., SPSS Inc.
Ji-Young Park, 33
President and CEO, Com2uS
Los Angeles and Seoul, Korea
Revenues from the worldwide mobile-gaming market are projected to hit $9.6 billion by 2011, and Park wants software developer Com2uS to take home a big share of the pot. The company, which has offices in China and India as well as the U.S. and Korea, has partnered with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to offer its games via their handsets and networks. Last year Park, who co-founded Com2uS with her husband in 1997 while they were both university seniors studying for their computer-science degrees, took the company public on the Korean stock exchange. “It’s good sometimes, bad sometimes,” she says, referring to her visibility as a female CEO in Korea. “I am too much highlighted in every movement and every word. Some people try to discredit me; they say my success has come because of luck, or because being a woman gives me an unfair advantage.” —BAP
Beth S. Perlman, 47
Senior Vice President and CIO, Constellation
Energy Group
Baltimore
Include her in any list of top power players. Beth Perlman oversees information technology for one of the nation’s largest wholesale power sellers, with 78 energy-generation plants throughout the U.S. Named Constellation’s first CIO in 2002, she was charged with standardizing technology among the company’s different businesses so that all the equipment (and the people inputting data into it) could work together. She hit her goals. Perlman volunteers on several nonprofit boards, including those of the American Technion Society, the Center for Women in Technology at the University of Maryland, and the Maryland/Israel Development Center. —KP
Radia Perlman, 56
Sun Fellow, Sun Microsystems Inc.
Santa Clara, California
Holder of 80-plus patents, author of two admired textbooks, and renowned network-security expert, Perlman is sometimes referred to as the mother of the Internet. Her contributions to Internet development are prodigious; most notably, she invented the spanning tree algorithm, used to route the flow of Web traffic. Since 1997 Perlman has been at Sun Microsystems, the publicly traded maker of servers, computers, and storage systems and developer of the Java programming language. She serves on the Subcommittee on Networking and Information of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. —KP
Sheri Graner Ray, 46
Video-Game Design Consultant
Austin, Texas
Conventional wisdom be damned: Industry figures say that 38% of video-game players are female. Ray, a tireless advocate for diversity in the game industry, deserves some credit for this. Working since 1989 at assorted companies like the Cartoon Network, Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, and Sony Online Entertainment, she has produced such hits as FusionFall, Nancy Drew, Star Wars Galaxies, and Ultima. She’s also written the how-to primer Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market, and she chairs Women in Games International, an organization she co-founded in 2005. —BAP
Carol Realini, 54
CEO, Obopay Inc.
Redwood City, California
Listen up, cash customers. If Obopay has its way, American consumers will at last be able to do what their Japanese and Finnish counterparts have been doing for years: pay for purchases with their mobile phones instead of their wallets. Realini was twice the CEO of service-sector systems provider Chordiant Software, which she took public, and in 2005 became co-founder of mobile-payments developer Obopay. She is a trustee of two foundations and has served on nonprofit boards. —BAP
Rebecca R. Rhoads, 50
Vice President and CIO, Raytheon Co.
Waltham, Massachusetts
Her first career choice was to
be a rock star—but whatever the disappointment back then, she sure tops the charts these days in the profession she ultimately pursued. Recently named to CIO Magazine’s Hall of Fame, Rhoads has occupied the top technology slot at defense and aerospace-systems supplier Raytheon since 2001; in her first years as CIO there, she oversaw postmerger integration with Hughes, TI, and E-Systems. Before joining Raytheon, the world’s largest missile maker, Rhoads designed test systems for missile programs at General Dynamics and also worked at Hughes Electronics. —BAP
Virginia Rometty, 50
Senior Vice President of Global Business Services, IBM
Armonk, New York
Big change at Big Blue. In the words of one analyst, IBM has been morphing from International Business Machines to International Business Models—or divesting itself of its stagnant hardware units and becoming an IT-outsourcing and software superstar. Rometty heads up strategy for the company’s Global Business Services division. Most recently during her 24-year tenure, she has stoked IBM’s business-consulting capability—in 2006 the services divisions generated more than half of the company’s $91.4 billion in revenues. Rometty, who has a B.S. in computer science and electrical engineering, leads several diversity initiatives at IBM, including the Women in Technology Council and the Women’s Leadership Council. —BAP
Directorship: American International Group
Heidi Roizen, 50
CEO, SkinnySongs
Atherton, California
Here’s the skinny. Roizen announced in December that she was leaving her position as managing director of Mobius Venture Capital to start her own company, SkinnySongs. The plan: record and sell motivational weight-loss music for women via online retailers and her own website, Skinnysongs.com. A tech-industry veteran, Roizen co-founded PC software developer T/Maker Co. in 1983 and was its CEO until 1996, then put in a stint as an Apple executive. She has held senior positions at numerous industry organizations, including the executive committee of the National Venture Capital Association, and serves on several nonprofit and association boards. —BAP
Patricia Russo, 55
CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
Paris, France, and Murray Hill, New Jersey
A founding executive and board member with more than two decades at Lucent and its former parent, AT&T, Russo has guided the communications company through turbulent times, including a $13.4 billion merger with its French telecom competitor Alcatel in 2006. Credited with returning Lucent’s business-communications-systems unit to profitability in the 1990s, she left the company for two years to work for Eastman Kodak, rejoined it as CEO in 2002, and again pushed it back into the black by means of cost-cutting, better attention to clients’ needs, and—critically—an emphasis on wireless technologies. —KP
Directorship: Schering-Plough Corp.
Karen Salem, 46
Senior Vice President and CIO, Ingram Micro Inc.
Santa Ana, California
Have tech skills, will travel. Salem joined Ingram Micro in 2005 after nearly 20 years of overseeing technology systems for the supermarket chain Winn-Dixie Stores, the fiber-optics manufacturer Corning Cable Systems, and AFC Enterprises, a fast-food franchiser that formerly owned Cinnabon and Seattle’s Best Coffee. Ingram Micro is the largest wholesale computer-products distributor on the planet, with a client roster that includes mega-retailer Office Depot. —KP
Nancy Schoendorf, 53
General Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
Menlo Park, California
A deliberately low-profile dealmaker, Schoendorf is the second-most-senior partner at venture capital firm Mohr Davidow, targeting the software and services sectors for investment. Like the firm’s other partners, she’s active in advising and monitoring her start-ups, and while few of those companies are household names, they have provided solid paydays. Among her investments, Onvia had a $168 million public offering in 2000, Shutterfly went public in 2006 for $87 million, and Agile Software was acquired by Oracle for $495 million in May of last year. Before joining Mohr Davidow in 1993, Schoendorf worked for Hewlett-Packard, Software Publishing Corp., and Sun Microsystems. —BAP
Directorship: Shutterfly
Darlene J. S. Solomon, 49
Vice President and CTO, Agilent Laboratories
Santa Clara, California
Solomon is the keeper of Agilent’s crystal ball. As head of the research and design arm at this manufacturer of high-tech measuring equipment, she is charged with formulating the company’s long-term technology strategy. Solomon previously spent 15 years at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and joined Agilent when it was spun off from HP in 1999. She serves on several advisory boards, including the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium, the Joint Venture Technology Convergence Consortium, and the National Science Foundation Nanobiotechnology Center. —KP
Shari Steele, 48
President and Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
San Francisco
Help is on the way. Sometimes described as the ACLU of cyberspace, the Electronic Frontier Foundation leads the fight to protect personal freedoms and consumer rights from abuse in the digital world. Steele took the EFF’s reins in 2000, and its membership, budget, and staff size have all since quintupled. Its key issues are the hottest in e-politics: online privacy, intellectual property, and free speech. Under Steele’s leadership, the EFF has won high-profile legal victories defending online journalists’ right to confidential sources and challenging the use of hidden spyware on compact discs. She’s not afraid to tangle with the big kids, either. During her tenure, the EFF has filed lawsuits against the likes of AT&T, Diebold Inc., and Sony BMG, in addition to the Justice Department. —KP
Nancy Stewart, 60
Senior Vice President and CTO of the Information Systems Division, Wal-Mart Stores
Bentonville, Arkansas
The top tech woman at the world’s top retailer, Stewart is in charge of Wal-Mart’s internal infrastructure and technology, as well as the technology for the company’s worldwide operations, facilities, and systems. Wal-Mart is widely lauded for its cutting-edge ways with tech. And just as the retailer’s buying decisions can make or break the suppliers of its 6,700-plus stores, its IT shopping list is of critical interest to Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and other major vendors. Before joining Wal-Mart in 2004, Stewart was at GM and IBM. —BAP
Directorships: DreamWorks Animation SKG, Procter & Gamble
Meg Whitman, 51
Chair and CEO, eBay
San Jose, California
No gender qualifier necessary: Whitman is one of the most powerful CEOs in technology, male or female. A veteran of various consumer-oriented companies, including Florists Transworld Delivery, toymaker Hasbro, Procter & Gamble, and Walt Disney Co., she joined eBay in 1998, about three years after the online auction house launched. She took it public six months later for $63 million. Today the company’s market cap is $46.1 billion; it operates in 38 countries, including the U.S., China, and India; and it has approximately 248 million registered users around the world, who trade more than $1,800 worth of goods on the site every second. Whitman has presided over numerous acquisitions, including those of PayPal, StubHub, and the Internet-based telephone-services firm Skype. The stock dipped in October after eBay posted a $935.6 million third-quarter 2007 loss, thanks to write-down charges related to overvaluing Skype, but with revenues up 30% from third-quarter 2006, the company still beat analysts’ expectations for the quarter. Whitman’s March 31 retirement as CEO—she’ll remain as chair for a while—could leave her time for service on an additional board or two. But move fast. —BAP
Directorships: DreamWorks Animation SKG, Procter & Gamble
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XX Chromosomes at Xerox |
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It’s official. The longtime heir apparent to chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy, Burns was named as her successor last year and given the title of president; no date has been announced for the transfer of CEO power. Burns, who has been a crucial player in Xerox’s turnaround, oversees its global R&D, engineering, marketing, and manufacturing as well as several administrative units. Not bad for someone who joined the company straight out of college as a mechanical-engineering intern in 1980. —BAP |
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Anne M. Mulcahy, 55 She took her critics from shock to awe. An English and journalism major at Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, who began her career at Xerox as a field sales rep in 1976, Mulcahy was dubbed “the accidental CEO” when a desperate board tapped her for Xerox’s top spot in 2001. The new chief, previously president and chief operating officer, surprised Wall Street (and the world) by doing what many thought was impossible: not only saving Xerox from fading into bankruptcy but giving it new heart. Aggressively restructuring the Norwalk, Connecticut-based technology company’s $17 billion debt and shuttering whole divisions, Mulcahy took it from a $94 million operating loss in 2001 to a very impressive $91 million net operating profit in 2002. For the nine months that ended September 30, 2007, net income was $753 million. —BAP |
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CEO Anne Mulcahy and president Ursula Burns brought Xerox back from the brink of death. Vandebroek’s job is to push the company forward with innovative new products and technologies (one in the pipeline: reusable paper. Print on it today and tomorrow it’s blank again). Vandebroek, who holds 12 patents, has spent the bulk of her career at Xerox, with a one-year break as CTO of Carrier Corp. The Innovation Group she supervises is made up of research centers in Palo Alto, California; Rochester, New York; Toronto; and Grenoble, France. The researchers do not travel for group meetings. They meet up in Second Life, a multiplayer online world. Now that’s technologically innovative. —BAP |
Ursula M. Burns, 49