Career
Anita Borg got her first programming job in 1969. Although she loved math while growing up, she did not originally intend to go into computer science and taught herself to program while working at a small insurance company. She earned a doctorate in computer science from New York University in 1981. Her dissertation was on operating system synchronization efficiency.
After receiving her Ph.D., Anita Borg spent four years building a fault tolerant Unix-based operating system, first for Auragen Systems Corp. of New Jersey and then with Nixdorf Computer in Germany.
In 1986, she began working for Digital Equipment Corporation’s Western Research Laboratory, where she spent 12 years.
While at Digital Equipment, she developed and patented a method for generating complete address traces for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems. Her experience running the ever-expanding Systers mailing list, which she founded in 1987, led her to work in email communication. As a consultant engineer in the Network Systems Laboratory, she developed MECCA, an email and Web-based system for communicating in virtual communities.
In 1997, Anita Borg left Digital Equipment Corporation and began working as a researcher in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer at Xerox PARC. Soon after starting at Xerox, she founded the Institute for Women and Technology, having previously founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 1994.
Read more about this topic: Anita Borg
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)