ANITA BORG INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES
2009 WOMEN OF VISION AWARD WINNERS
Prominent Women in Technology to Be Honored for Outstanding Achievements
at April 30th, 2009 Awards Dinner in San Jose
PALO ALTO, Calif. — February 23, 2009 —The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today the winners of this year’s Women of Vision Awards. Three leaders in technology – Mitchell Baker, Mozilla, Yuqing Gao, IBM Research, and Jan Cuny, National Science Foundation. – will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions as women in technology at ABI’s fourth annual Women of Vision Awards Banquet at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on April 30th, 2009. The event will feature keynote speaker Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco and Sydnie Kohara, CBS 5 News Anchor as Master of Ceremonies.
The Women of Vision (WOV) Awards honor women making significant contributions to technology in three categories: Innovation, Leadership, and Social Impact. The three winners were selected from a field of highly qualified women all of whom are engaged in technology professions in industry, academia, NGO’s or government. Candidates for the awards are considered based on their records of (1) consistent, significant contributions to technology invention and application; (2) effecting positive changes in the ways in which technology impacts society; and (3) demonstrated leadership in the technology industry that extends beyond their place of work.
“The winners of this year’s Women of Vision Awards have earned this recognition because they have positively impacted the world through their work with technology and women in technology,” said ABI CEO, Dr. Telle Whitney. “These women are all leaders in their respective fields as well as strong role models for women of all generations.”
The Women of Vision Awards Dinner Host is Lockheed Martin. Silver Sponsors are Cisco, NetApp and SAP. Bronze Sponsors are Adobe, Career Action Center, Google, Intuit, and Juniper.
About the Women of Vision Award Winners
Mitchell Baker, Chairperson, Mozilla Corporation
Mitchell Baker is the Women of Vision Award winner in the Leadership category. Mitchell Baker is recognized for her work as the leader of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. Her work with the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox Web Browser has evolved the technology around web browsing with more than 200 million users worldwide. Her leadership in the Open Source movement has impacted millions of people, through her way of integrating and unifying the work of company employees and an international community of volunteers.
Yuqing Gao, Senior Manager, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Yuqing Gao is the Women of Vision Award winner in the Innovation category. Yuqing Gao headed the Laboratory for Speech to Speech Translation Systems at IBM. She was also the principal investigator of DARPA CAST and TransTac Programs at IBM and led the research and development of IBM MASTOR (Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator) systems which is leading the industry in automated speech translation. Her work in speech processing has led to the development of an English-Iraqi speech to speech translation system, which is widely deployed with the US military and enables personnel to interact directly with civilians in Iraq.
Jan Cuny, Program Director, National Science Foundation
Jan Cuny is the Women of Vision Award winner in the Social Impact category. Jan Cuny has been a passionate voice for women and under-represented minorities in her work with the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing Program. She has successfully created broader participation in computing programs. Her work has gone beyond funding programs to building an inclusive community for under-represented groups in technology, allowing them to use and create technology, ensuring they will be qualified for roles in our technology driven world.
About the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI)
The Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs to help industry, academia, and government recruit, retain, and develop women leaders in high-tech fields, resulting in higher levels of technological innovation. ABI programs serve high-tech women by creating a community and providing tools to help them develop their careers. ABI is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 charitable organization. ABI Partners include: Google, Microsoft Corporation, HP, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, SAP, Juniper Networks, NSF, NCWIT, IBM, Symantec, CA, NetApp, and Capgemini. For more information, visit www.anitaborg.org.
Media Contact:
Jerri Barrett
650-857-6095
jerrib@anitaborg.org