Happy Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day! This past Tuesday, March 1, marked the beginning of 2022’s Women’s History Month, a time dedicated to acknowledging powerful women worldwide and in our everyday lives. Many of us are already familiar with some influential women who changed the tech industry today as we know it, such as Ada Lovelace, Katherine Johnson, Adele Goldberg, and more.
Today, there are a plethora of women making waves within the industry. As important as it will always be to honor the women of the past who have shaped the industry, this Women’s History Month we’re celebrating some women of the modern age. Below are six women in technology who are leading the industry today.
Erica (Ewing) Lockheimer
Erica (Ewing) Lockheimer is vice president of engineering at LinkedIn Talent Solutions and LinkedIn Learning. Lockheimer has been with the company for nearly 12 years. She began as senior engineering manager of growth for LinkedIn in 2010, and held various leadership roles at the company, leading up to the current position she has held for about one year.
As VP of engineering at LinkedIn, Lockheimer connects talent with opportunities. She is passionate about building solutions to help professionals gain the skills they need to develop themselves and their careers and brings it all to fruition by connecting employers with top talent.
“I love the challenge of starting with something nascent and carving out the right strategy, hiring the best people, and plotting a course to drive results,” Lockheimer stated.
Throughout her career, Lockheimer focused on building strong technology teams to grow successful companies and products. An active advocate for women’s careers in technology, Lockheimer also headed Women in Tech at LinkedIn and has been a TechWomen Mentor for nearly 10 years.
Lockheimer earned her Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from San Jose State University, where she is currently a member of the Innovation Advisory Council. There, she advises students, faculty and staff on growth solutions for innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization support.
Find out more about Lockheimer on her LinkedIn.
Ebony Beckwith
Ebony Beckwith is the chief executive officer at Salesforce Foundation, as well as chief business officer and chief of staff to Marc Benioff, who is chair, co-CEO, and co-founder of Salesforce.
As CBO and chief to staff, Beckwith is responsible for actualizing Salesforce’s core values, aligning the company, and leading all strategic projects, relationships, and initiatives of the Office of the Co-CEO. As CEO of the Salesforce Foundation, Beckwith oversees the company’s global philanthropic strategy.
Beckwith has been at Salesforce for over 13 years, where she began as senior director of technology business operations and chief of staff and worked her way up to the current position she has held for nearly three years.
Beckwith has over two decades of experience in technology and operations under her belt. Incorporating her expertise in environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), and philanthropy, Beckwith also serves as a board member for Poshmark, Warriors Community Foundation, and Hamilton Families, and is an advisory board member for PagerDuty.
In 2021, Beckwith was recognized as one of the San Francisco Business Times’ Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.
Beckwith earned her Bachelor of Science in computer and information sciences at Golden Gate University. Additionally, she holds an honorary doctorate of humane letters from her alma mater and was also the keynote speaker for the university’s 2019 graduation commencement.
Find out more about Beckwith on her LinkedIn.
Maria Zhang
Maria Zhang is vice president of engineering at Instagram, where she has supported the Sharing Experience team for over a year. Additionally, Zhang serves as a venture partner at IDG Capital, where she leads investment with a focus on technology-driven disruption in the areas of AI, machine learning-based applications, IoT and developer tools.
Throughout Zhang‘s career, she held leadership positions at companies such as LinkedIn, Yahoo, Microsoft and Tinder. Maria is passionate about building great teams, instilling them with proactive missions, and pushing the delivery of exacting, satisfying experiences.
“I believe in the power of software to change people’s lives. Great software is a change agent. It has the power to make people infinitely more productive, to entertain them, to free them with information, and connect them to other people, new opportunities and ideas everywhere,” Zhang said. “I believe in engineering with purpose. Everything we do, every line of code we write, needs to be instilled with purpose: Every pixel should be perfect, and every byte of data needs a reason to exist.”
Zhang earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics, computer science, and economics, as well as her Master of Science in computer science at Eastern Michigan University. Zhang also attended Tsinghua University, where she studied computer science.
Find out more about Zhang on her LinkedIn.
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki has been in the tech industry for over 20 years and has been chief executive officer at YouTube for over eight years. Today, YouTube has about 2 billion monthly users.
In the past, Wojcicki worked in the marketing department at Intel, as a management consultant for Bain & Company, and also became Google’s first marketing manager.
Wojcicki was hired by Google in 1999, where she worked on everything from AdSense and Google Analytics to Google Books and Google Images. In 2006, Wojcicki advocated for Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.
Wojcicki earned her Bachelor of Arts in history and literature at Harvard University, her Master of Science in economics at University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Master of Business administration in economics at University of California, Los Angeles.
Find out more about Wojcicki on her LinkedIn.
Yamini Rangan
Yamini Rangan is chief executive officer and board member at HubSpot, a position she has held for about seven months. Rangan has been with the company for over two years and began as chief customer officer, overseeing the marketing, sales and services teams.
Rangan has over 25 years of experience in the tech industry. Before HubSpot, she was chief customer officer at Dropbox, a Vice President of Sales Strategy and Operations at Workday, and held several customer-facing leadership roles in strategy, pre-sales and value-based selling at SAP.
Rangan is passionate about customer-centric growth and scaling high-performance teams and is a frequent speaker at software as a service (SaaS) and customer-centric conferences, as well as a guest lecturer at her alma mater, Berkeley.
“I am focused on driving innovation and creating a cohesive experience for our customers to help fulfill our mission of helping millions of companies grow better,” Rangan said. “I am committed to leading with curiosity, empathy, vulnerability and customer-centricity.”
In 2019, Rangan was recognized as one of the San Francisco Business Times’ Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.
Rangan earned her Master of Science in computer engineering at Clemson University, her Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering at Bharathiar University, and her Master of Business Administration at University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Find out more about Rangan on her LinkedIn.
Kate Bergeron
Kate Bergeron has been on the leadership team at Apple, Inc. for over 10 years and has been vice president of hardware engineering for over seven years. She began as senior director of Macintosh product design in 2011 and held the position of senior director of ecosystem products and technologies for a short while in 2014.
In her current position, Bergeron is responsible for the development of Apple audio hardware such as AirPods and the HomePod, SoftGoods, Packaging, with an emphasis on sustainable fiber initiatives, Retail Product Display, and the Product Realization Laboratory.
Bergeron has nearly 20 years of industry experience in high-volume consumer electronics and manufacturing both domestically and abroad. Beginning at Apple in 2002, she worked in the mobile manufacturing and designing wing. Bergeron has experience working with international design teams, OEMs and vendors in Asia.
Bergeron is also a lecturer in MIT’s D-Lab, which deals with drafting technologies to help the poverty-stricken population. Her extensive experience in the commercial world and bringing products to market brings an industry viewpoint to D-Lab.
Bergeron earned her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), her Master of Science in mechanical engineering at University of Colorado Boulder, and her Master of Business Administration through MIT’s Executive MBA program at the Sloan School of Management.
Find out more about Bergeron on her LinkedIn.