Technology has much promise, both in creating a new and more welcoming future and having a positive impact. On August 30, 2022, Women in Big Data Bay Area and Girls in Tech San Francisco chapters hosted Telle Whitney, Computer Scientist and world-recognized expert on women and technology, as she discussed the importance of risk-taking at key junctures. She talked about her journey and how the five Cs – Courage, Creativity, Curiosity, Confidence, and Communication – helped her navigate a constantly evolving landscape. She also covered how her entrepreneurial journey took a left turn when she became the founding CEO of the Anita Borg Institute and scaled the organization and the Grace Hopper Celebration to have global reach and impact.

Many of the attendees were impressed and inspired by this engaging talk, which included images from Telle’s most recent trip to Africa, and took away many tips and insights for themselves. The session moderators were Dio-Ann Valmores, WiBD and Sudeshna Sukla, Girls in Tech.

Check out the video of the session here.
And slides from the presentation can be found here.

Telle received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Caltech. She moved to Silicon Valley to work in the chip industry and held senior technical management positions at Actel and Malleable Technologies, as well as senior roles at several startup technology companies.^[3] Telle is also the former CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Anita Borg in 1994 and joined the Anita Borg Institute in 2002.

In 2004, Telle Whitney co-founded the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT).^[11] She has served as Secretary/Treasurer of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and is co-chair of the ACM Distinguished member committee. She was a member of the National Science Foundation CEOSE and CISE advisory committees, and she serves on the advisory boards of Caltech’s Information Science and Technology (IST),  and Illuminate Ventures. She is also a member of the Forbes Executive Women’s Board.^[3][12]

With numerous awards to her name, she is currently CEO of Telle Whitney Consulting, focused on bringing diversity to companies, sits on four boards including AI4ALL, and was nominated to the National Academy of Engineering.

For more details check out her Wikipedia page.

See also: https://www.nae.edu/270224/National-Academy-of-Engineering-Elects-111-Members-and-22-International-Members

Thanks to Sudeshna Sukla , Regina Karson, and Bay Area chapter co-directors Erika Lunceford and Soumyasree Vinod for their support.