There's an awful lot of hand wringing in the Valley over how few women are becoming engineers, particularly software engineers.
Less than 12 percent of computer science degrees earned in 2010-11 were awarded to women.
But here's the crazy thing. For those who do enter the field, the sky's the limit. There's ample opportunity to become a big power player, at big companies and at hot startups.
Linda Cureton, NASA, CIO
Linda Cureton has the coolest job. She's the CIO for NASA. And NASA has all the coolest technology in the world from the fastest computer networks to a bunch of stuff used to conduct experiments in outer space.
Before she landed at NASA she was a top technologist at other government agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Department of Energy; and the Department of Justice.
Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo
Mayer was employee No. 20 at Google and the company's first female engineer. She helped Google develop its search technologies and worked on a long list of other key products including images, maps, books, news, and the toolbar.
She also sits on the board of directors of Walmart.
Kimber Lockhart, director of engineering, Box
At Box, Kimber Lockhart leads the web application engineering team that builds most new features on Box. For instance, Lockhart was responsible for a major redesign and rebuild of the Box user interface.
Prior to Box, Kimber was co-founder and CEO of cloud computing startup Increo Solutions where she led the creation of a collaboration service called Backboard. She joined Box when it acquired Increo in 2009.
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