Audrey Tang
A Taiwanese open-source programmer and digital democracy advocate whose non-linear path led from self-directed learning to public-sector technology leadership.
Stories
Role Models & Stories
Explore real paths into STEM and IT through people with different backgrounds, experiences, and challenges. Each story highlights not only achievements, but also the personal journeys, turning points, and perspectives behind them.
Chieko Asakawa
A blind Japanese computer scientist whose accessibility research helped make the web and physical navigation more usable for blind people.
Ellen Ochoa
An engineer, inventor, astronaut, and NASA leader who became the first Hispanic woman in space and later directed Johnson Space Center.
Fei-Fei Li
A Chinese-born AI researcher whose path from immigrant student to Stanford professor helped shape modern computer vision through ImageNet and human-centered AI.
Joy Buolamwini
A computer scientist and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League who exposed racial and gender bias in facial-analysis systems.
Katherine Johnson
A Black mathematician at NASA whose trajectory calculations supported major U.S. space missions and became a symbol of hidden contributions in STEM.
Kimberly Bryant
An African American electrical engineer who founded Black Girls Code to create more welcoming pathways into technology for Black girls and girls of color.
Lynn Conway
A pioneering computer engineer and trans woman whose work helped transform modern chip design after she rebuilt her career following discrimination.
Sundar Pichai
An Indian-born engineer and product leader whose path from Chennai to Google shows how technical careers can grow through education, product thinking, and calm leadership.
Timnit Gebru
An Ethiopian-Eritrean computer scientist whose work on algorithmic bias and power structures helped make AI ethics a central public issue.