Anita Borg
Encyclopedia
Anita Borg was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 computer scientist
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology (now the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is a nonprofit organization founded by computer scientist Anita Borg. The institute’s primary aim is to recruit, retain, and advance women in technology. The institute’s most prominent program is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing...

) and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. She was born Anita Borg Naffz in Chicago, Illinois. She grew up in Palatine, Illinois
Palatine, Illinois
Palatine is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is a northwestern residential suburb of Chicago. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 65,479, making it the sixth-largest community in Cook County and the 16th-largest in the state of Illinois at that time...

, Kaneohe, Hawaii, and Mukilteo, Washington
Mukilteo, Washington
Mukilteo , which means "good camping ground", is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 20,254 at the 2010 census. It is on the shore of the Puget Sound, and is the site of a Washington State Ferries terminal linking it to Clinton, on Whidbey Island.Mukilteo is...

.

Career

Anita Borg got her first programming job in 1969. Although she loved math while growing up, she did not originally intend to go into computer science and taught herself to program while working at a small insurance company. She earned a doctorate in computer science from New York University in 1981. Her dissertation was on operating system synchronization efficiency.

After receiving her Ph.D., Anita Borg spent four years building a fault tolerant Unix-based operating system, first for Auragen Systems Corp. of New Jersey and then with Nixdorf Computer in Germany.

In 1986, she began working for Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

’s Western Research Laboratory, where she spent 12 years.

While at Digital Equipment, she developed and patented a method for generating complete address traces for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems. Her experience running the ever-expanding Systers mailing list, which she founded in 1987, lead her to work in email communication. As a consultant engineer in the Network Systems Laboratory, she developed MECCA, an email and Web-based system for communicating in virtual communities. She developed and patented a method for generating complete address traces used for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems.

In 1997, Anita Borg left Digital Equipment Corporation and began working as a researcher in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer at Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC
PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....

. Soon after starting at Xerox, she founded the Institute for Women and Technology, having previously founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 1994.

Advocacy for Technical Women

Anita Borg passionately believed in working for greater representation of technical women. Her goal was to have 50% representation for women in computing by 2020. She strove for technical fields to be places where women would be equally represented at all levels of the pipeline, and where women could impact technology and benefit from technology.

Systers

In 1987, Anita Borg founded Systers®, the first email network for women in technology. While attending the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
The Symposium on Operating Systems Principles , organized by the Association for Computing Machinery , is one of the most prestigious single-track academic conferences on operating systems....

, she was struck by how few women were present at the conference. She and six or seven other women met in the ladies’ room and talked about how few women there were in computing. A dozen of the women at the conference made plans to eat lunch together, and that is where the idea for Systers was formed.

Systers was established to provide a private space for its members to seek input and share advice based on their common experiences. Systers membership was limited to women with highly technical training and discussions were strictly confined to technical issues. Anita Borg oversaw Systers until 2000.

Systers occasionally tackled issues that were not highly technical but pertained to its members. In 1992, when Mattel Inc. began selling a Barbie doll that said math class is tough, the voices of protest that started with the Systers list played a role in getting Mattel to remove that phrase from Barbie's microchip.

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

In 1994, Anita Borg and Telle Whitney
Telle Whitney
Telle Whitney is currently CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. A computer scientist by training, she cofounded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Anita Borg in 1994 and joined the Anita Borg Institute in 2002.-Education and Early Career:Telle...

 founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. With the initial idea of creating a conference by and for women computer scientists, Borg and Whitney met over dinner, with a blank sheet of paper, having no idea how to start a conference, and started to plan out their vision. The first Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was held in Washington, D.C., in June 1994, and brought together 500 technical women.

Institute for Women and Technology

In 1997, Anita Borg founded the Institute for Women and Technology (now the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is a nonprofit organization founded by computer scientist Anita Borg. The institute’s primary aim is to recruit, retain, and advance women in technology. The institute’s most prominent program is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing...

). Two important goals behind the founding of the organization were to increase the representation of women in technical fields and to enable the creation of more technology by women.

When founded, the Institute was housed at Xerox PARC, although it was an independent nonprofit organization. The Institute was created to be an experimental R&D organization focusing on increasing the impact of women on technology and increasing the impact of technology on the world’s women. It ran a variety of programs to increase the role of technology, build the pipeline of technical women, and ensure that women’s voices affected technological developments.

In 2002, Telle Whitney took over as President and CEO of the Institute, and in 2003, it was renamed in honor of Anita Borg. Since its foundation, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology has increased its programs in the United States and expanded internationally, more than quadrupling in size.

Awards and Recognition

Anita Borg was recognized for her accomplishments as a computer scientist, as well as for her work on behalf of women in computing.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Presidential Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology. She was charged with recommending strategies to the nation for increasing the breadth of participation fields for women.

She received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing for her work on behalf of women in the computing field in 1995.

In 1996 she was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

.

Anita Borg received the EFF Pioneer Award
EFF Pioneer Award
The EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Until 1998 it was presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., USA. Thereafter it was presented at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference...

 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was recognized by the Girl Scouts of the USA, as well as listed on Open Computing Magazine's "Top 100 Women In Computing."

In 2002, she was awarded the 8th Annual Heinz Award
Heinz Award
The Heinz Award is an award currently given annually to ten honorees by the Heinz Family Foundation. The Heinz Awards recognize outstanding individuals for their contributions in the five areas of: Arts and Humanities, the Environment, the Human Condition, Public Policy, and Technology, the Economy...

 for Technology, the Economy and Employment.

Anita Borg was also a member of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association
Computing Research Association
The Computing Research Association is an association of more than 220 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional...

 and served as a member of the National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...

's Committee on Women in Science and Engineering.

Legacy

In 1999, Anita Borg was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She continued to lead the Institute for Women and Technology until 2002. She passed away on April 6, 2003.

In 2003, the Institute for Women and Technology was renamed to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, in honor of Anita Borg. A number of the Institute’s awards are also named in her honor, including the Anita Borg Social Impact Award, the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award, and the Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award.

Several other awards and programs honor Anita Borg’s life and work. Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 established the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004 to honor the work of Anita Borg. The program has expanded to include women in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East http://www.google.com/anitaborg/us/winners.html. The UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering
UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering
The UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering , also known as UNSW COMPUTING, is part of the UNSW Faculty of Engineering and was founded in 1991 out of the former Department of Computer Science within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. It is now one of the largest...

offers the Anita Borg Prize, named in her honor.

External links

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