In the technology industry, and in computer science specifically, awareness of gender diversity is a hot topic. I was aware of the issue 10 years ago as I exited the academic world, where it was being actively discussed. Though I had a bit of a head start on awareness when I stepped into business, it wasn’t until I committed to making gender balance a priority and took specific actions toward that goal that I was able to truly make progress.

Our first attempt failed. In 2006, about five years into the life of my software development and design company, Atomic Object, I looked at my team and said, “We’re a bunch of guys, and we need to fix that. We need to hire women developers.” But mine was a young company at the time, and I didn’t do a good job of explaining why we needed to do that. So, facing push-back from others in the company, the issue stalled. We talked a lot about it, but we didn’t succeed in hiring even one woman as a developer. We remained at around 7-10 percent female employees for years.