Inspiring women in the tech industry

It’s no secret that the tech industry is mostly dominated by men. However, more and more inspiring women in the tech industry are taking on important roles, leading diversity and inclusion movements, and sharing their expertise with the community. 

Here´s a list of some women who inspire us with their work in the industry:

Carola Lilienthal

Carola Lilienthal is a Senior Software Architect with over 26 years of experience in the software architecture industry. She is now Managing Director of WPS – Workplace Solution GmbH in Germany and has under her responsibility the software architecture department. Carola wrote the book ‘Sustainable Software Architecture’ and co-authored the book ‘Software Architecture Metrics: Case Studies to Improve the Quality of Your Architecture’ together with other leading architects in the industry.

She is an active member of the International Software Architecture Quality Board e.V and regularly shares her knowledge at conferences. Recently, she participated as a speaker at the Global Software Architecture Summit that took place in Barcelona, to give a talk about how to improve architecture with the Modularity Maturity Index (MMI.)

Marnie McCormack 

Marnie McCormack is an experienced Software Engineer with over 20 years of experience in a variety of technical roles. She works at JPMorgan as an Executive Director in Global Technology Infrastructure, where she oversees the delivery of software to a global audience of 40 thousand technologists. 

She is passionate about technology and growth and participates in conferences to share her knowledge and best practices. Marnie is also a member of the Scotland Technology Operating Council and other diversity groups at JP Morgan.

Anna Shipman 

Anna Shipman is a software developer from the United Kingdom with over 15 years of experience in the technology industry. She is currently the Financial Times’ Technical Director for Customer Products, where she oversees the website as well as the FT iPhone and Android apps. Anna is well-known for being pretty active in the community! She regularly participates in conferences as a speaker and also writes articles for her personal blog.

Sonya Natanzon

Sonya Natanzon is an Engineer leader and Solutions Architect at Guardant Health where she leads enterprise software development and engages in many cross-functional software projects. She has worked in a number of different industries but leans towards healthcare as she is passionate about helping patients. 

Sonya loves to share her experiences to shed more light on this very complex industry and show how rewarding this work is. She has participated as a speaker in different conferences including the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference 2020 and most recently the Global Software Architecture Summit where she gave a talk about ‘Pragmatic Approach to Architecture Metrics’ together with Vladik Khononov.

Maria Gutierrez 

Maria Gutierrez started her career as an eCommerce Analyst Programmer and now she is VP of Engineering Strategy and Operations at Twitter. Throughout her career, she has held various technical positions at well-known companies such as LivingSocial, Adobe, and Free Agent.

Maria is actively involved in the community, she is one of the Directors of Women Who Code Edinburg, a non-profit organization launched in 2016 that inspires women to excel in technological careers, and also participates as a speaker in tech conferences.

Pranjal Bathia 

Pranjal Bathia is a software architect expert with over 12 years of experience in designing and developing solutions and products for challenging business problems. She holds a Master’s degree in Information Security from NIT Warangal, one of India’s premier engineering institutes.

In her current role as a Principal Architect at Red Hat, Pranjal has architected the Master Data Management solution for the company. Before this, she developed enterprise middleware solutions that handle millions of events on a daily basis.

In her free time, she likes using her creative skills to paint and do crafts. She also participates in software architecture conferences, most recently she attended the Global Software Architecture as a speaker along with Sonya Natanzon, Carola Lilienthal, and Jacqui Read to talk about Quantitative measures for software Architecture quality evaluation.

Katrina Clokie

Katrina Clokie is a General Manager of Engineering at Xero, a tech company that specializes in cloud-based accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. She is the author behind A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps, the founder of Testing Trapeze magazine, a bi-monthly testing magazine that features testers from Australia and New Zealand, and the co-founder of the WeTest New Zealand, a testing community known as Ministry of Testing NZ.

Jacqui Read

Jacqui Read is an experienced hands-on Architect and Founder at Read The Architecture. She has gone through many different roles throughout her career including software developer, technical architect, and solution architect.

She is known as a thought leader in the documentation and communication of design, outlining technical solutions to different audiences. Jacqui is involved in user groups, workshops, and conferences. Most recently, she participated in the Global Software Architecture Summit in Barcelona to talk about the importance of Mastering Visual Communication for Software Architecture. 

Rebecca Parsons

Rebecca Parsons is an experienced software engineer currently working at Thoughtworks as a Chief Technology Officer. Before her current role, she was an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida where she taught diverse courses related to the industry. She is known for being a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech and is committed to increasing the number of women in coding and STEM fields. 

Rebecca has also co-authored books including “Domain-Specific Languages”, “The Thoughtworks Anthology” and “Building Evolutionary Architectures.”

Charity Majors

Charity is an experienced software engineer and entrepreneur, who´s co-founder and CTO at honeycomb.io – a fast analysis tool that reveals the truth about how users experience code in complex and unpredictable environments. Charity actively contributes to the tech community by writing articles and speaking at conferences worldwide. In addition, she is co-author of O’Reilly’s book “Observability Engineering and Database Reliability Engineering” together with Laine Campbell.