Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the world’s first computer programmer and to share inspiring stories about women working in science, technology and math. Surely some of the most significant technical work done by women since this day last year includes the creation of what is said to be the fastest-growing social network in history, Google Plus.
Launched on June 28th and just opened to the public at large late last month, Google Plus is a feature-rich social network with variable privacy and sharing settings at the core of its experience. Who were the women involved in building such a big, important technology? We asked, on Google Plus, and were told about twenty two of them profiled below. They are an incredibly accomplished group of people and a great source of inspiration for young women interested in science and technology – or for anyone else who could use some powerful role models. You should share this list of women with the girls in your life, though, that’s what Ada Lovelace Day is all about.
The following are twenty two engineers and web designers identified as integral to the making of Google’s new social network. Not included are a number of Community Management and marketing types, most notably site CM Natalie Villalobos, just because this is a day about computer programmers. Villalobos is included in the Circle below you can follow though.
There were far more people, and far more women, who helped build Plus than those below, of course. And the features keep coming, too. Please feel free to add suggestions of Engineers and Designers and as they come in, I’ll add them to this sharable Google Plus Circle that anyone can subscribe to all at once.
(For example, after puting up this post Tammy McLeod pointed out that she contributed code to Plus as well. Tammy, it just so happens, is the reigning US Sudoku Champion!)
Ana Ulin has been a developer at Google since 2005, after she graduated from the Chalmers University Of Technology in Sweden. She’s lived in Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Palo Alto. She loves to knit and was educated in Electrical Engineering. Ulin is in the picture above in the top right.
Frances Haugen is the Google Plus Profiles and Search Product Manager. She’s been at Google since 2006, has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Olin and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Haugen takes interest in design and data. Haugen is in the bottom left of the photos above.
Denise Ho is a Stanford grad in Computer Science and a product manager at Plus, with a particular interest in the photos product.
Brynn Evans is a UX designer on Plus. We covered Brynn’s joining Google earlier this Summer.
Shimrit Ben-Yair is a Product Manager, and has an undergrad degree in Computer Science, Statistics and Operations Research from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
Olga Wichrowska is an MIT educated computer scientist and software engineer. She’s pictured above on a mountain in Utah.
Kelly Ellis is a software engineer on the Google Plus team. Her life is awesome and she correctly notes on her profile that bubble tea is disgusting. Ellis is the one wearing sunglasses above.
Mimi Sun does software and data visualization for Plus, and comes from Nvidia and Rapleaf.
Lea Kissner is a cryptographer formerly of NASA, Xerox PARC and AT&T.
Tammy Capistrant is an Engineering Programs Manager, has degrees in music performance and education and an MBA and has been at Google since 2003.
Janice MyintG is a Cornell-educated test engineer for Google Plus.
Emily Chang likes to use the feature in Google Plus where you only post things to your approved circles, not publicly, and I can’t find out anything more about her. Chang’s photo is in the bottom right above.
Sigalit Bar is in Israel and is a software engineer.
Jenny Murphy is a software engineer specializing in Developer Relations, which was what she did at Ning, too. Murphy’s the one with the green hair above.
Ye Kim is the UX Lead on Google Plus Mobile and Games; she got a Masters of Design at Carnegie Mellon but began doing design for Google before then. She’s been at Google since the very beginning of the company, in 1997. 2007. (Funny typo in Kim’s bio – oops!)
Jen Hsieh is a Google+ Mobile Photos Software Engineer, coming to the company from Research In Motion and Morgan Stanley. Hsieh’s photo is in the top left.
Roshni Malani is a software engineer with a PhD. in Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego. Malani’s photo is the second from the left on the bottom.
Karen Liu is a software engineer who started at Google last year. She went to Carnegie Mellon University.
Joanne McKinley used to work on the Gmail mobile team, now she’s an engineer on the Google Plus Mobile team.
Shailu Chauhan has been a test engineering manager at Google for 7 years.
Madoka Hayashi has been doing visual design for Google since June.
Irene Chung, Tech Lead & Manager on Google Plus, leads the stream feature of Plus, is widely admired on the team and has been at Google for 5 years, after working at Amazon and IBM.
Thank you, everyone above, for building such a compelling platform for people to share their thoughts with each other. Lives have no doubt been changed by Google Plus already and your work pushing forward the future of social networking is an inspiration.
