Women in Technology
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18 Mar 2021 |
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 Brookline
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In recognition of Women's History Month, Barbara Adler
How did we get from computers the size of walk-in closets with special room requirements -- to hand-held cell phones which are exponentially more powerful ? How did we get to land on the Moon and plan to land on Mars using computer technology to solve the enormous challenges of doing so? When and how did the world notice that women also could and would solve all kinds of business problems (including space flight) using technology? When did technologist stop being an exclusively male profession? Why did this happen?
I plan to introduce you to some women technology pioneers you may not know about, as part of Women’s History Month. I also plan to tell you more about what the life of a female technologist is really like and the kinds of real business problems that I have encountered in my own career. I hope to show you also how much fun this sort of satisfying problem solving can be for either gender, Finally, I would like to talk about what is coming in the next few years. Prepare yourselves, your daughters and granddaughters!
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I have been privileged to work as a female technologist during the birth of a true technology era. My career has spanned from the time of computers which took up the space of a walk in closet and whose instructions were typed one line at a time on card stock and then fed in to the computer sequentially to the widespread availability of computers of exponentially greater power which are disguised as cell phones containing apps. We have walked on the Moon and sent Perseverance to Mars. And I am not that old!
At various times I have worked as a programmer, systems analyst, and project manager for both large and small technology projects. I worked at a pet food company (Hartz Mountain), an international paint company (International Paint) , a huge supermarket chain (Shop-Rite Supermarkets), a prominent stock trader and investment house (Merrill Lynch), and a boutique investment firm for very high net worth clients. Varied experience solving business problems with information technology, wouldn’t you say?
Meanwhile, (as Steven Colbert would say,) I have been married to the same man for many many years and have raised two children to successful adulthood. I am the proud grandmother of five boys.