Manal Al Sharif
Founder, Women2Hack Academy
At the start of the Arab Spring, Manal al-Sharif threw the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into disarray when she posted a video of herself driving on social media. She was thrown in jail for nine days but kicked off a movement that resulted in the conservative country reversing its laws to allow women to drive earlier this year. The computer scientist began her journey of breaking social norms when she became the only woman working as an IT security specialist at state-owned oil producer, Saudi Aramco. Al-Sharif is also the founder of the Women2Hack Academy, a program that aims to foster tech talent in Saudi Arabia, with a focus on information security.
Jasmine Anteunis
VP Product and Cofounder, Recast.AI
- Jasmine Anteunis founded her artificially intelligent chatbot company Recast.AI in 2015. It was this year acquired by software giant SAP.
- Recast.AI serves more than 20 high-profile customers including telecoms company SFR, construction group Bouygues and French rail firm SNCF.
Chantelle Bell
Cofounder, Syrona Women
- Chantelle Bell cofounded Syrona Women with fellow female founder Anya Roy while the pair were studying Bioscience at Cambridge University.
- The duo have developed a pregnancy-test like device that allows women to test themselves for cervical cancer at home.
- Syrona has won awards from bodies including AccelerateHER Scotland, Tata and Bethnal Green Ventures.
- Bell and Roy have led talks at Cambridge Wireless UK and the prestigious MEDICA conference in Dusseldorf, Germany.
- The startup has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to date.
Elina Berglund
Cofounder, Natural Cycles
- Swedish engineering physicist Elina Berglund completed her PhD at CERN where she was searching for the elusive Higgs boson particle.
- After its discovery in 2012, Berglund turned her attention to family life and sought to find an alternative to the contraceptive pill.
- Berglund created an algorithm to identify the fertile window in a woman’s cycle and cofounded fertility tracking app Natural Cycles in 2013.
- Natural Cycles is now used by more than 900,000 people in more than 200 countries.
- It has raised $37.5 million to date.
Sue Black
Founder, #techmums
- Sue Black is the founder of #techmums, a charity that empowers mothers through online and offline classes covering technology basics.
- This year Black partnered with Facebook to launch #techmumsTV, a web series that attracted 300k viewers and won a coveted BIMA Award.
- A computer scientist, Black is known for her campaign to save Bletchley Park (once home to the World War Two Codebreakers).
- Black went on to publish a book about the Bletchley Park campaign which became the fastest crowdfunded book of all time.
- Today Black is a Government Advisor, an associate at the all-female tech consultancy DSRPTN, and a mentor at Google Campus for Mums.
Danah Boyd
President and founder, Data & Society Research Institute
Since the publication of her groundbreaking book “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens,” Danah Boyd has been recognized as an authority on the intersection of technology and society. The Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder and president of Data & Society Research Institute legally changed her name to lowercase letters in 2000, for reasons she says are both personal and political. She adds her social expertise to humanitarian organizations as the director for both Crisis Text Line and Social Science Research Council. Currently, Boyd is a visiting Professor at New York University.
Joy Buolamwini
Founder, Algorithmic Justice League
Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist and digital activist based at the MIT Media Lab. As founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, she identifies bias in artificial intelligence and develops practices for accountability. Buolamwini’s TED Talk on algorithmic bias has been viewed over one million times. Her New York Times op-ed on the dangers of facial analysis technology galvanized lawmakers to investigate the risks posed by this technology. She received a $50,000 grant as the Grand Prize winner of a national contest inspired by the critically acclaimed film Hidden Figures.
Eileen Burbidge
Founding Partner, Passion Capital
- American venture capitalist Eileen Burbidge is a founding partner at Passion Capital.
- The London-based VC fund has made 70 tech investments worth $134 million since its launch in 2011.
- A Computer Science graduate, Burbidge has worked in roles at companies including Yahoo!, Apple, Sun, and Skype.
- Burbidge sits as Chair of Tech City UK (the part-Government funded body promoting Britain’s digital economy).
- She is also HM Treasury Special Envoy for Fintech and a Tech Ambassador for Mayor of London’s office.
Ursula Burns
Executive Chairman, VEON
A veteran of corporate evolution, Ursula Burns was named chairwoman of VEON in 2017, just as the international telecom expanded offerings to its more than 240 million customers to compete as a global online company. From 2010 to 2016, she served as Xerox CEO, managing to turn a company once only known for paper copies into a viable and profitable business. Burns is the first African-American woman to lead an S&P 500 company. In 2015, she helped generate $18 billion in revenue, with adjusted earnings per share of 98 cents, all down slightly from a year earlier.
After six years as Xerox CEO, she stepped down after the company split into two public companies: Conduent, a $7 billion business process outsourcing company within a tax-free structure, and the new Xerox, an $11 billion standalone company focused on document technology for which Burns was named chairwoman. She is a founding member of Change the Equation, a CEO-led non-profit program to boost STEM education, launched by the Obama administration in 2010 and a member of the Uber board of directors.
Emmanuelle Charpentier
Cofounder, CRISPR Therapeutics
- In 2012, French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier co-discovered CRISPR, a gene-editing method now widely used to edit DNA sequences.
- Charpentier went on to cofound the drug-discovery business CRISPR Therapeutics and the intellectual property firm ERS Genomics.
- CRISPR Therapeutics has raised over $500 million, it is valued at around $2.5 billion, and has offices in the US, Switzerland and the UK.
- Charpentier is now establishing her own research unit at the esteemed Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany.
- Charpentier has previously held senior posts at Humboldt University, Hannover Medical School and the University of Vienna.
