Women in science is always a hot topic in the engineering and manufacturing world. The UK has the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe, at less than 10%, while Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus lead with nearly 30%. The ongoing plight to involve more women in the sciences is one that every country in the world experiences. Many existing female engineers put the lack of women in engineering partly to the fact that girls are predisposed to the common female roles at a young age, such as cooking, cleaning and playing with dolls, while boys play with trucks and cars, and partly down to the idea that manual labour is the preserve of men. The statistics speak for themselves, however there are institutions such as WES (Women in Engineering Society) who are constantly trying to up the numbers of women in science and engineering. In this article, we will be taking a journey with famous female engineers and listing the top 10 women in engineering today!
Women in engineering
1. Diane Greene – Google
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Diane Greene has been a powerful engineer and tech entrepreneur for decades. She is on the board at Google and burst onto the scene when they bought her startup company for $380 million.
At Google, Greene is the senior vice president for the company’s cloud businesses. Google’s goal is to make its cloud business bigger than its ad business by 2020, and given that Google brought in $66 billion in revenue last year, mostly from ads, that’s a big, powerful job.
2. Peggy Johnson – Microsoft
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Peggy Johnson is Microsoft’s executive Vice President of Business Development and CEO Satya Nadella’s right-hand woman.
Johnson helped Nadella steer in a new collaborative culture, creating new partnerships with companies such as Salesforce, Dropbox, Uber, Yahoo, and AOL. What’s more, she represents the US on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council and serves on several boards, including AOL’s leadership platform for women, Makers, and Live Nation Entertainment.
3. Tara Bunch – Apple
When something goes wrong with your Apple device Tara Bunch is the woman for you! Bunch is vice president of AppleCare, Apple’s technical-service and support organisation. She joined Apple in 2012 after a 20-year career at Hewlett-Packard, where she was a senior vice president of global customer service and support operations. Since Bunch came into fruition, Apple’s customer satisfaction rates have soared and are now some of the highest in the tech world.
4. Jessica McKellar – Dropbox
Credit: Jessica McKellar Self Portrait by Jessica McKellar is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Jessica McKellar is a director at the Python Software Foundation and director of engineering and chief of staff to the VP of engineering at Dropbox. McKellar has written code for the kernel of Linux and has mentored others through Google Summer of Code, GNOME Outreach for Women and Hacker School. She is also the co-author of two books about computer programming, is a regular public speaker, and was one of the winners of Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Awards.
5. Sharon Frinks Chiarella – Amazon
Sharon Frinks Chiarella is a vice president at Amazon who runs an area called “Community Shopping”. She has also done stints at Microsoft, Yahoo and Presto before joining Amazon.
Sharon paved her way at Amazon when she became the vice president responsible for Amazon Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourced employment service.
6. Denise Dumas – Red Hat
Denise Dumas is vice president of operating-system engineering at Red Hat. She leads the team responsible for Red Hat’s flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Dumas heads a team of hundreds of developers worldwide and says that her job is to “keep the trains running on time, keep people connected, and recognize the implications that the team’s work has on other areas of the business, while also maintaining sensitivity to the team’s cultural differences.”
7. Helen Grenier – CyPhy Works
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Helen Grenier is one of the iconic figures in the world of robotics and CEO of CyPhy Works. She co-founded iRobot, a company that makes robots for industrial, consumer, and military markets.
Before founding iRobot, Grenier worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. In 2007, she was entered into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.
8. Noramay Cadena – Make in LA
Noramay Cadena has gained national recognition for her achievements in the aerospace industry and is a cofounder of Make in LA, a start-up accelerator focused on hardware projects.
Cadena spent 12 years at Boeing before establishing Make in La. She was leading a team that worked on Boeing’s capsule transporter for the International Space Station and also helped build satellites and aeroplanes.
Most importantly Cadena is the co-founder and executive director for the Latinas in STEM Foundation, a charity whose mission is to empower young Latin women to pursue careers in science and engineering.
9. Juliette McCoy – Ford
Juliette McCoy has been a loyal employee of Ford for 30 years, working her way up to become a global chief engineer for Powertrain control systems. Her work on these systems spans vehicles from Ford and Lincoln, touching the work of about 1,000 employees in nine countries.
McCoy has also spent time engineering Ford’s workplace, creating a global database where employees can report difficulties. As a result of this, Ford has made thousands of alterations for employees, and seen its employee satisfaction scores rise.
10. Lakecia Gunter – Intel Labs
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Lakecia Gunter is leader at Intel’s famous R&D labs. She started her career as an intern for Hewlett-Packard to then leave the industry to teach maths to high school children. Gunter then left teaching to work for the US Department of Defence before jumping to Intel.
Gunter has tirelessly worked on community efforts throughout her career, mentoring at-risk youths and founding an outreach program that brings more than 100 children to Intel’s campuses every year to learn about engineering careers.
This list of incredible women in engineering shows the youth of today that they too can work their way up to greatness within the science and engineering community. These famous female engineers are here to inspire this generation of aspiring female engineers and here at MGA Controls we support every endeavour they make.