I recently represented Intuit, along with 8 other women engineers, to attend Women of Vision(WoV) Awards by Anita Borg Institue (ABI). This was my first WoV event and I was very impressed with the number of companies that were present. I managed to meet engineers from Pure Storage as well as connect with former co-workers at eBay prior to the event. However, the biggest impact of this event was the inspiration you get from awards winners. I felt very priviledged to be there to see them get recognized and listen to their acceptance speech first hand.

For those not familiar with WoV awards, this evening recognizes women in the forefront of computing with a gala dinner honoring women who are making significant contributions in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Vision and Leadership. The event also features a keynote speech by an industry luminary. This year, this event was held in Santa Clara Convention Center on May 5 and it was a full house.

Here are the winners and links to their impressive contributions -

While I’m energized by the passion in learning and progress in award winners, I also took alot back from the keynote speaker Mary Lou Jepsen @mljmljmlj, a former executive director at Facebook and at Google. She demonstrates and leads by example on breakthroughs that can come from outsiders in creating Oculus and Chromebook respectively. She explains that outsiders bring diversity of thoughts and shared historic examples in the past from Newton, Faraday, Fourier, Curie, Einstein, and Rosalind Franklin. “If we let one gender, race or age group create tech, those solutions won’t benefit everyone.”. Her fearlessness in blazing the trail, be the first to do it that could benefit a whole new generation is deeply inspiring.

Here are more details as well as tweets during the event, and I hope you can attend and witness such an energizing evening yourself.