I started this blog for Ada Lovelace Day in 2009 so this is my 5th ALD post. The idea is to write about a women in science that you admire, and this year, I’ve chosen Cate Huston.
When I met her in April (she spoke at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium) she was a Google Engineer who’s talk I missed, but I knew it got super feedback from our attending students, and we had a chat, and that was nice. Since then we’ve tweeted and emailed and met at conferences, and I’ve grown to respect her opinion hugely on matters from software testing to corporate culture. She’s an entirely honest person, which is something I admire a lot. She also gives a great talk.
She’s decided to go it alone, setting up her own company, but still puts lots back into the community. She told me she’d given up corporate feminism… but my suspicion is that she’ll never give up technofeminism (is that even a word? it should be). Most recently she live-tweeted the “men’s” panel at the Grace Hopper Colloquium (storify here: https://storify.com/catehstn/ghcmanwatch) which led to the guys organising a second panel where they listened to the women in the room, rather than standing on stage and telling them to, you know, lean in.
So here’s my #ald14 post – to Cate. Keep speaking truth to power.