Betsy Aoki: One of my mentors gets honorable mention
I’ve followed Betsy from the day I arrived at Microsoft in ‘92. Long known as the “Microsoft Blog Queen”, she connected, she is giving, friendly, and fun. Here’s ZDnet’s Mary-Jo Foley’s read on this Microsoft superstar.
In the 25-plus years I’ve written about technology, I’ve interviewed fewer than 50 female Microsoft employees (by my rough estimate). In part, this is because there are less of them. Microsoft officials say women comprise 25 percent of the company’s total workforce. It’s also because many of the women who do work at Microsoft are in marketing, sales and support roles and aren’t among those who are “authorized” to talk to us press/blogger types.
There are a handful of women employees dotting Microsoft’s executive ranks, including two Senior Vice Presidents (Lisa Brummel,head of Human Resources, and Mich Matthews, head of the Central Marketing Group). But I wanted to meet some of the less-public techies — the engineers, product managers and programmers who work at Microsoft to find out how and why they’ve managed to buck the continuing trend of women not entering math/science careers. The women I’ve interviewed for this series have joined Microsoft via a wide variety of paths. Some knew since they were kids they wanted to be involved in technology. Others came to the Empire via a more circuitous route (master of fine arts in poetry, anyone?). Some are Microsoft lifers. Others are recent hires.
On March 24, Ada Lovelace Day — which is dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women in science and technology — I kicked off a new series profiling some of these Microsoft women worth watching. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be running profiles of ten of them on my blog.”