Today Fast Company released their annual feature of the 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology. Fast Company broke their list into six categories, with five women awarded in each: The Entrepreneurs, The Gamers, The Brainiacs, The Advocates, The Media, and The Executives.
We looked into each of the thirty ladies honored to find the ones with ties to Boston. With the exception of one woman who founded the personal robotics group in the MIT Media lab, none of the other thirty women highlighted are actually currently based here in the Boston area.
Many of the women, however, have academic ties here: 30 percent (9) of the women honored by Fast Company earned degrees in the Boston area. Three graduated from Emerson College (10 percent of those honored), four graduated from Harvard (13 percent of those honored), and two earned degrees at MIT (7 percent of those honored).
Most notably revealed as we dug into these influential women in technology: four of the five women honored in The Entrepreneurs category on the list graduated from Boston area schools, and all moved to NYC to launch and build their companies.
Limor Fried
Fast Company Award Category: The Entrepreneurs
About: Fried graduated from MIT, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s in electrical engineering and computer science. While at MIT she built an audience around her hobby of “hardware hacking.” She turned that hobby into a company, Adafruit Industries, which provides DIY electronic kits under what Fried dubs “open source hardware.” The company is now based out of New York.
Company: Adafruit Industries
Alexa Hirschfeld
Fast Company Award Category: The Entrepreneurs
About: Fried graduated from Harvard in 2006. Born and raised in NYC, she moved back after graduating and launched her company a year later. Paperless Post has the tagline “stationery on your computer screen.” It is a place to send formal, digital invites to things like bridal showers, baby showers, weddings, and other more formal events.
Company: Paperless Post
Jennifer Hyman & Jennifer Fleiss
Fast Company Award Category: The Entrepreneurs
About: Hyman and Fleiss met while at Harvard Business School and quickly became friends. The idea surfaced when Hyman was with her sister, wanting to bring a dream closet of the high fashion world to people with modest salaries. The two embarked (without technical backgrounds) on a plan while at HBS to launch RentTheRunway, which officially launched out of New York City and offers rentable fashion for 90 percent off retail prices.
Company: RentTheRunway
Julia Kaganskiy
Fast Company Award Category: The Entrepreneurs
About: Kaganskiy graduated from Emerson College in 2007 and has spent a lot of time in Boston’s digital media scene. She’s worked for local media outlets like the Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine, and Motion Affair Planner (MAP). Journalist turned digital strategist, she moved to NYC and after working at the Museum of Modern Art and as of last summer became Editor for The Creators Project, a media outlet and community of digital artists across the world.
Company: The Creators Project
Veronica Belmont
Fast Company Award Category: The Gamers
About: Belmont graduated from Emerson College in 2004, where she studied new media and video production. With a mother in the gaming industry, Belmont grew up loving the world gaming. After graduating she went on to work for CNET out of school as an Editor, has worked for startup Mahalo as a video host, and currently does work for gdgt, The Playstation Network, and Revision3 on the west coast.
Company: Revision3
Cynthia Breazeal
Fast Company Award Category: The Braniacs
About: Breazeal is an MIT graduate who opted to continue working at the school as a professor after she graduated with a Ph.D. She founded the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s prestigious Media Lab, a program that develops the techniques and technologies for personal robot development. The robot she built as part of her doctoral thesis was identified as one of the “50 Best Robots Ever” by Wired Magazine.
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Personal Robots Group
Heather Harde
Fast Company Award Category: The Media
About: Now CEO of TechCrunch, Harde’s ties to Boston are that she went to Harvard Business School, graduating in 1996. Harde is the business brain behind TechCrunch, having spent a decade working for News Corp. where she led their mergers and acquisitions department. She was critical to helping TechCrunch scale, eventually using her M&A knowledge and experience to recently sell the company to AOL.
Company: TechCrunch
Shira Lazar
Fast Company Award Category: The Media
About: Lazar graduated from Emerson College in 2004 where she studied communications and television and video. She has slew of experience working in the media industry, starting with an internship with MTV to being a host for the Disney Internet Group, an on-air personality and video host for media outlets like Fox, CBS, and MSN. She currently spread her time across a bunch of these outlets, and most recently launched her own company, Partners Project, a YouTube talkshow where she interviews viral video creators.
Company: Partners Project
Ory Okolloh
Fast Company Award Category: The Advocates
About: Okolloh’s ties to Boston are in that she graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005. During her time there she was a research assistant in the prestigious Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She went on to serve as Editor for Global Voices, an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world. In 2008 she launched her own non profit, Mzalendo.com, which means “patriot” in Swahili, and keeps tabs on the Kenyan parliament. She also launched Ushahidi, a site that allows citizens to report incidents through a variety of technologies and then using Google Maps visualizes the activity. Having spoken at places like TED, just this January Okolloh joined Google as policy manager for Africa.
Company: Google
Congrats to all the women honored! Who from the Boston area would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments!
