Top 10 most powerful women in tech

What can we say about this legend who launches spaceships, propels research into life on Mars, does business with NASA, and manage the eccentric Elon Musk? She started off with an engineering degree, began working with The Aerospace Corporation in 1988 where she researched military space and development contracts; became the "director of the space systems division at Microcosm Inc; and in 2002 joined SpaceX as one of its first employees. More than 30 years later, she’s our top pick.

Ginni Rometty has held various positions at IBM ever since 1981. After a series of technical positions for a decade, she moved into management positions where she helped negotiate the acquisition of PricewaterCoopers for $3.5 billion—"largest in professional services history."

In 2012, she became the president and CEO of IBM, boosting its growth in the services industry. More recently, she led the acquisition of Red Hat, a move that will define her tenure and push IBM’s cloud services.

Like the above, Celine too has been with her company for nearly two decades. She has managed a number of markets. She brings together powerful team members, who have known to drive change and deliver growth. Currently her focus is the cloud services sector, that enables her to lead Microsoft’s business in the region where companies are undergoing a digital transformation.

Charged with leading Dubai to become the world’s leading aviation hub, Suzanne is seeing the multi-phase expansion of the Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai—set to become the largest in the world when fully operational in 2020. She has already seen the expansion of Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest airport.

No list of women in tech is complete without Sheryl being mentioned. She has led Facebook to its height of success, overlooking the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as the recently announced Project Libra.

Sheryl started her career in 1995 as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. After just a year there she worked for Larry Summers, the then serving United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton. Later she joined Google and led their online sales of Google. After meeting Zuckerberg at Christmas 2007, she became Facebook’s COO in March 2008, beginning the most successful decade for Facebook.

The only child of HCL’s founder, Roshni worked in various other companies before joining HCL; where she was promoted to Executive Director and CEO position after just a year in the company. She is also a philanthropist, chairing the company’s CSR Committee and trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation that has established some of India’s top colleges and schools.

Edith has more than a decade of experience in product, engineering and marketing with both consumer and enterprise startups. She previously worked at TripIT, Vignette, and a number of small consumer startups and IoT hardware companies.

She co-founded LaunchDarkly with John Kodumal, with the aim to help businesses improve the way they built their software. Currently they are in their growth period, whereby they are scaling up the startup.

Co-founder of Karma—one of Europe’s hottest companies at the ongoing 2019 Next Web conference for its social impact and company traction—Elsa has shown serious grit in establishing Karma. The startup that rescues unsold food now operates in 150 cities across Sweden, in London and Paris, and has saved hundreds of tons of food to date.

In August 2018, she raised $12 million in Series A. Prior to Karma, she founded Pop Fruits, a healthy ice cream alternative made from frozen fruit.

Belinda joined Airbnb’s General Counsel in 2011 and has played a key role in the startup’s success. Currently, she oversees three core areas of Airbnb’s business: first, the operating systems; second, the teams that enable Airbnb to function including Trust, Customer Experience and Payments; and third, the company’s legal, policy and communications teams.

Previously, she served as the Deputy General Counsel at Yahoo and during the first wave of the internet as well as the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary to Broadcast.com. She is also on the Board of Directors of PayPal. She is undoubtedly one of the most powerful women in tech.

Susan became the CEO of Youtube in 2014, since then the company has reached 2 billion logged-in users a month. Now a subsidiary of Alphabet, Youtube is worth more than $90 billion. Before Youtube, Susan worked at Intel and as a management consultant at Bain & Company.