5 powerful women at the helm of large technology companies
Powerful women at the helm of large technology companies
Technology is becoming more accessible than ever, and more women are taking leadership roles in large technology companies. According to studies, women in the technology industry account for only 28% of professionals globally, but this disparity is gradually closing as more women assume leadership roles.
Numerous successful women in technology have repeatedly broken down barriers and built multimillion-dollar businesses that are thriving while also leaving a legacy for future generations. The traditionally male-dominated workforce is experiencing disruption as more women ascend to various top leadership positions within organizations or establish their own fortunes as entrepreneurs.
Here are five women who are currently reshaping the world of technology.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble
Whitney Wolfe is the co-founder and CEO of Bumble, a female-focused dating app with over 100 million users worldwide. Whitney was a member of the founding team at Tinder, a social dating app, prior to co-founding Bumble.
In April 2014, she resigned from Tinder. Shortly thereafter, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company. She reportedly received over US$1 million in cash and stock as part of a September 2014 settlement.
She founded Bumble in December 2014 with the assistance of Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, founder of MagicLab, the parent company of Badoo, a dating and social networking app. By the end of December 2015, the app had surpassed 15 million conversations and 80 million matches.
In February 2021, the 31-year-old became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire when she listed her company on the Nasdaq stock exchange at a $13 billion valuation.
Wolfe Herd owns 11.6% of Bumble. She is also the founder and CEO of Badoo. The two apps have a combined user base of 40 million, with 2.4 million paying subscribers. She is estimated to have a net worth of around $1.5 billion. At the age of 31, she also became the youngest woman to take a company public.
Susan Diane Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube
Susan Diane Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube, a video-sharing website with more than 2 billion monthly users. She has worked in the technology industry for more than two decades. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, rented Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park, California, in 1998 and developed Google's search engine there. She was later hired as Google's sixteenth employee in 1999. She has worked on a variety of projects, including AdSense and Google Analytics, as well as Google Books and Google Images.
After witnessing YouTube's success, she advocated for Google's acquisition of the company in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Since 2014, she has served as CEO of YouTube, which has grown to become the most popular social network among teenagers. YouTube has launched a variety of products during Wojcicki's tenure as CEO, including YouTube Gaming, YouTube Music, YouTube Premium, and YouTube TV. In 2018, Wojcicki was ranked No. 7 on Forbes' list of Power Women, with an estimated net worth of $580 million.
Prior to joining Google, Wojcicki worked at Intel in the marketing department and at Bain & Company as a management consultant.
Melanie Perkins, Canva's CEO
Melanie Perkins is the CEO and co-founder of Canva, an online platform that enables anyone to create beautiful graphics. Melanie founded the company in 2013 in Australia with the goal of integrating the entire design ecosystem into one page and making it accessible to the entire world – whether for logos, business cards, or presentations.
Bill Tai, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, introduced her to Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps, during a brief meeting at a Perth conference. Melanie and Cliff Obrecht founded Canva in 2013, and they were soon joined by former Google executive Cameron Adams. Within five years, she became one of the youngest female CEOs in technology. Canva has grown to 55 million active users, three million of whom are paid, and is now valued at $15 billion. The company has aided in the creation of nearly two billion designs across 190 countries.
Jessica Livingstone, Ycombinator's co-founder
Jessica Livingstone is a co-founder of Ycombinator, a seed funding accelerator for startups. Accelerators have long been a staple of the high-tech ecosystem, which is why Jessica Livingston founded the company with her husband, Paul Graham, a Silicon Valley-based computer scientist, to assist early-stage startup founders.
Since its inception in 2005, the company has aided in the establishment of hundreds of businesses, including Dropbox, Airbnb, Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, Instacart, and Reddit. As of January 2021, the combined value of the top YC companies exceeded US$300 billion.
Jessica studied English at Bucknell University and began her career in finance, eventually becoming the vice president of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness. Additionally, she is the organizer of Startup School, a large annual startup conference, and the author of Founders at Work, an interview collection with successful startup founders.
Julia Hartz, Eventbrite's co-founder
Julia Hartz is a co-founder of Eventbrite, a global self-service ticketing and experience technology platform that serves nearly one million event creators in over 180 countries. Julia and her husband, Kevin Hartz, and Renaud Visage, co-founded Eventbrite. Under her leadership, the company has grown into a global ticketing and event technology platform that has won numerous awards for its work environment. Additionally, the company generated over $3 billion in gross ticket sales in 2020, with over 200 million tickets distributed to over 4 million experiences and events.
Eventbrite was founded in 2006 and has been at the forefront of the experience economy, revolutionizing the way people organize and attend events. with the goal of creating a self-service platform that allows anyone to create and sell tickets to live experiences. On September 20, 2018, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, having raised a total of $557.3 million in funding.
