Women in IT - Ory Okolloh

   Today our woman crush Wednesday in the IT industry is the Kenyan lawyer activist and blogger Ory Okolloh.
   She has been covered extensively by the press both locally and globally in the financial, technological and business niches, primarily as a co-founder of the website Ushahidi.com, which as the site explains was "developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election violence in 2008" and strives "to create technology that solves global problems". The website has also been described as a "tech company that specializes in developing free and open software for information collection virtualization and interactive mapping" by IT News Africa.

   She is also the co-founder of Mzalendo, a parliamentary watchdog site that sought to increase government accountability by recording bills, speeches, standing orders and so on, systematically. She has also held the position of policy manager for Africa within Google.

   Ory Okolloh has been ranked second place in ITNewsAfrica's Most Influential Women in Science and Technology feature list, is described by Forbes as "a Harvard-trained lawyer activist and blogger... widely acknowledged as one of the most influential women in global technology" and has been profiled by Forbes.

   Lastly, Ory Okolloh lives in Kenya with her three children and runs a personal blog known as  Kenyan Pundit which was featured on Global Voices Online.

Women in IT - Florence Seriki

Have you ever heard of Omatek Computers Limited? It is an indigenous Nigerian-based company, one of the first companies to locally assemble notebooks and laptops in Africa. It was founded by one of Africa's very own women, Engr. Mrs. Florence. O. Seriki in 1986 and she's our WCW in IT for today.

  Mrs. Seriki holds a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University and a Master's degree in Business Administration from Lagos Business School. Her foray into programming however began early in her career as a chemical engineer. As a result of obtaining poor results when running a set of simulations using old FORTRAN software, she was faced with the task of learning a new mathematical modelling language to complete the task which she did learn.

   During her NYSC service year, she created a demand for her computer training skills when she took up teaching some directors in the company where she worked how to use the computers that "just decorated their tables" and this lead her to set up a company to provide training on the use of computers to executives within the banking and oil sectors. That company branched out to supply of branded computers to banks and multinational companies and eventually it grew into a company that handled full assembly of computers and accessories.

   Today, 30 years later, Omatek is still a widely known indigenous brand holding an enviable market share in the production and assembly of computers as well as related accessories. In fact, Omatek is known to own the first completely knocked down computer factories in Nigeria and Ghana and has been recognized as the Best Systems Builder Partner by Microsoft for East, West and Central Africa.

   Mrs Seriki has received so many accolades for her innovation in the IT industry and her contributions towards the improvement of IT awareness in Nigeria. She is recognized today for seeing where a need was glaring and making moves to fill in that gap and for that reason we have made her a part of our list of women in IT and hope that the younger generations learn from her.

Women in IT - Laura Gomez

Who is she?
Laura Gomez is a Latina woman who is listed in Glamour's 35 women under 35 changing the Tech Industry for her outstanding performance in the tech industry. She worked at Twitter where she managed Twitter en Espanol and was a founding member of their international team. The team was responsible for managing the social network to 28 languages. She also worked at Jawbone where she played a similar role.

What has she done?
She now has her own company, named Vyv, which according to their AngelList profile "is a content discovery platform powered by user-centric technologies which validate the accuracy of breaking news, surface diverse and relevant perspectives from around the web and create a radical way for content creators to monetize their work". Users will publish content and get paid for it according to its popularity using Bitcoin, a virtual currency.

She's proud of being active and trying to make sure that the gap between technology and public policy is bridged.

Laura I Gomez.
Photo Credit: Google Images.

Women in IT- Ada Lovelace

Our woman in IT today is going to be an unusual one. For one thing she has been dead for centuries now.😭 Also she wasn't originally involved in the Information technology directly at first. But the part she played in the computer development, however little as some historians may argue, is quite worthy of remembering. So our woman in IT for today is #drumroll Ada Lovelace.

Who was she?

An aristocratic girl who grew up in the 1800s born to the poet George Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke on the 10th of December 1815. Unlike most aristocratic girls born in that era who were likely trained on how to attend balls and engage in other frivolities common at that period, Ada had an unusual upbringing. 

   Her mother insisted that her tutors taught her maths and science although for a seemingly amusing reason. Her mother insisted because she believed that engaging in rigorous studies would prevent her from developing her father's moody and unpredictable temperament. 

What was she known for?

   With such encouragement, her talent for numbers shown early on was given room to develop. She was introduced to Charles Babbage by one of her tutors and they became friends with Babbage serving as a mentor to her.

   It was during the course of this friendship she got to see a prototype of Babbage's difference machine and was captivated by it. Subsequently, Babbage created plans for a new machine called the Analytical Machine which was meant to perform more complex mathematical calculations and an article was written by an Italian engineer for a Swiss journal. Ada was called to translate that article to English.

   In the translation of that text, she added her own notes which made the document 3 times longer. Her notes contained descriptions of how codes could be could be created to handle letters and symbols along with the numbers. She also theorized a method for the engine to repeat a series of instructions which we know as a process called looping. Her notes are recognized as the first algorithm to be carried out by a machine and as a result she is often considered to be the first computer programmer although some people disagree. 

   Her program though was never tested. However the notes she made are important in early history of computer. Unlike many others including Babbage who focused on the number crunching capabilities of the computer, she was also said to have developed a vision of the capabilities of computers to go beyond calculating which we see is happening today.

   She died on the 27th of November 1852.

   In 1980, the US Department of Defense named a newly developed computer programming language after her i.e.  the "Ada" programming language.

Women in IT- Sara Haider

   If you search for the name Sara Haider on Google you would likely see a female musician's Wikipedia profile. Stop right there. That is not the IT personality we are talking about.

So who then is this Sara Haider?

   She's a 28 year old woman listed in glamour.com as one of  35 women under 35 who are changing the Technology industry. According to Glamour, she and her sister have been coding since they were 9 years old making websites for things that interested them like the Backstreet boys.

   Although this name might not be so common to most people she has accomplished a lot of things in the Technology industry.

What has she done?
   She has worked at Twitter as a staff software engineer  and has helped built Vine app for android. She has also worked as the first lead engineer for Secret, a relatively new social networking site.

   Currently she works at Periscope Tv as a staff software engineer.
   She is also an advisor at Girls Who Code which is a non profit organization that is aimed at bridging the gender gap in the computer science and technology industry.
She is most proud of getting sponsorship and seed funding for the organization when it was starting up.

Here's a photo of her after the cut:

Sara Haider
Image credit: Glamour.com

Women in IT - Zhou Qunfei

 Around the world, Wednesdays are usually known for what we call the #WCW- Woman Crush Wednesday whereby a woman is celebrated for whatever reason best known to the individual. So I decided to do a #WCW series. However it is going to be on women who have made an impact or ar currently making waves in the IT industry.

  Growing up, I didn't know many females to look up to in the Information technology industry. Even now, the IT field is still seen as a man's world sparsely populated with female innovators which explains why in my department in school there are fewer female students than males. Hence I am making it my aim to educate girls, ladies women and whoever reading this out there that ladies too have a part to play in this field. To achieve that we need mentors and that is what this feature will be addressing. Female mentors in the IT field that have played an important role in that field.

   Today, our focus is on a Chinese innovator known as Zhou Qunfei.
Who is she?
   From an early age she was a poor girl who grew up with a blind father and without a mother from the time she was 5. She became a migrant worker in Shenzhen at age 15, working in companies close to Shenzhen University so that she could take part time courses. She took a lot of classes and eventually got certified for accounting, computer operations and customs processing.
   She got a job working for a firm making watch parts and when the business folded up, she started her own business in 1993. It was in 2001 though that she got her first big break making mobile phone screens for a big company called TLC coporation.
   What is she known for?
   Although this name is not quite familiar but she might just be the reason you are scrolling so easily on your android or Apple device. In 2003, she founded the company Lens Technology. Lens Technology is a company that makes touch-screens. Lens Technology supplies touch-screens to leading electronics makers like Apple, Huawei and Samsung Electronics. The new Apple watches are said to use her company's glass and sapphire crystal screens
   In 2015, she was known as the most richest woman in China worth about 10 billion dollars. Now she's currently worth6.4 billion dollars.
Her biggest regret?
   Not learning English. 

   So next time you hold your android or Apple device in your hands scrolling through whatever, have in mind that she, Zhou Qunfei might just be part of the whole team that put made that device function for your use.

   Did you like that article? Should the series be a regular feature of this blog? Let us know through your comments.