I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.
I've actually started a number of businesses in my career. So I'm 28 currently, but when I was about 16, I started building Websites, and that's how I put myself through school. I went to Duke with a degree in electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering, and then to Princeton.
In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay?
Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you're given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In computer science, you give the computer the rules, and it creates the world.
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
My brother is an electrical engineer and went to computer science grad school at Stanford, and he'd tell me stories about the happy hours he'd organize.
Until Systers came into existence, the notion of a global 'community of women in computer science' did not exist.
I went to study electronic engineering and computer science because I was good at math and my father told me it is a very good profession. And so I did it, although it wasn't really my passion. Then I went to work at Texas Instruments.
I learned that despite having years and years of experience in math and computer science and so on, I didn't really know how to code until I formed a company.
Starting early and getting girls on computers, tinkering and playing with technology, games and new tools, is extremely important for bridging the gender divide that exists now in computer science and in technology.
