Women (and men) of Vision! Tuesday night, October 18th, the Anita Borg Institute brought together 520 of our sponsors, supporters, colleagues and friends to honor and celebrate the achievements of three remarkable women at the Inaugural Women of Vision event held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. This event honors and recognizes the achievements of women in areas that represent qualities that are important to the Anita Borg Institute: Innovation, Social Impact, and Leadership .
The Women of Vision 2005 winners are:
Innovation: Radia Perlman who received the award for her fundamental contributions in routing protocols and security.
Social Impact: Pamela Samuelson for her work in bridging technology, the law, and our community to ensure the positive impact of technology on society.
Leadership: Janie Tsao for her leadership work and vision in creating Linksys and to its continuing success.
The event was spectacular, starting with a reception that included entertainers lit with fluorescent lights, two twirling around the crowd on roller skates and one greeting the guests on stilts. Inside the ballroom illuminated by purple and turquoise lights, contortionists’ twisted, curled and weaved their bodies into mind boggling positions, a metaphor for the potential of what technology has to offer and a promise of what the night ahead would offer.
Stanford University President, John L. Hennessy, a longtime friend and colleague of Anita Borg, gave the keynote address with a provocative, inspirational and informative talk about women and technology. Susan Goldberg , Executive Editor of the San Jose Mercury News emceed the event, adding elegance to the evening with her thoughtful commentary and grace.
It is important to take a few minutes and recognize the sponsors for the evening . Without their support the evening wouldn’t have been possible:
• Sun Microsystems – gold sponsor
• Cisco Systems – silver sponsor
• EMC, NASA, Google, HP and Guidant – Bronze sponsors
We are also grateful to our many table sponsors and share the vision sponsors. And of course we also had and amazing and dedicated awards and nomination committee .
We had over 100 students present at the event, with 40 of them sponsored through the share the vision program, and 60 sponsored by their University. We received great comments from students including:
Congratulations on a spectacular event! It was really inspiring from a student perspective
We all came out with a smile and couldn’t stop discussing the event on our way back home!!
As we listened to the stories from our Women of Vision award winners, it reminded me yet again that anything is possible. Each of these women had a vision, and they took the risk, and created their vision, each in very different and unique way. You can too. At the Anita Borg Institute we believe that an important way to change the culture of technology is to tell the stories of those who are changing people’s lives. I encourage you to look at and share the photo album , and the award winner’s speeches and winner videos located on their winner pages. You can download the print program and press coverage too.
I know that in each of your lives, there is someone who inspires and motivated you, and we want to hear your story. Please take the time to tell us Who Inspires You.
In other Anita Borg Institute news we’ve recently had three exciting new additions to our Board of Trustees in James Beck – Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director, Alan Eustace, Ph.D., – Vice President, Research and Systems Engineer, Google, and Cheryl Shavers, Ph.D., Former Undersecretary of Technology, Clinton Administration, & CEO of Global Smarts, Inc. The Board of Trustees as well as our committed Advisory Board are critical to the success of our Mission .
Once again, from all of us at the Anita Borg Institute, thank you.
Share the Vision!
Telle Whitney, PhD
President & CEO
To view this online go to http://www.anitaborg.org/newsletter/womenofvision_letter.htm
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology