20 Inspiring Women in Tech

Marko Bijelic, designer at Hipinspire, recently published this article on Medium title Web design legends: where are they now?. The article was a look back at Cameron Moll’s who’s who of web design in 2004, exploring the 20 individuals’ influence on the web today. While it was interesting to read Marko’s post and reflect on the undeniable influence of many of these leading figures, it was impossibly to notice the distinct absence of women from the original list. In fact, only one woman (Donna Driscoll) gets a mention, and in Marko’s article she is only referred to with a footnote in her ex-husband’s entry:

Donna is his ex-wife.

To the author’s credit, he does suggest two women who should have made the cut. It’s hard to imagine such a male-heavy list being published now, not least because of the sheer number of incredible women at the forefront of web design and development. But it’s a reminder of how hard it must have been to those starting their careers all those years ago, with very few visible role models to look up to and to lean on.

To further redress the balance, here in no particular order are 20 (in my opinion) current web design (and development) legends who happen to identify as female. I’m forever grateful to them for blazing a trail and inspiring me in my work. I look forward to reflecting on their incredible careers in 15 years time!

  1. ###Sarah Drasner Incredibly skilled developer, writer and speaker on SVG, Vue, web animation and much more
  2. ###Sara Soueidan CSS and accessibility-focused front end developer, author and speaker. I cannot emphasise enough how much I’ve learned from Sara’s articles!
  3. ###Una Kravets Director of Product Design at Bustle, also known for her great articles, podcast and fun CSS experiments
  4. ###Jen Simmons Designer Advocate at Mozilla, web layout and CSS Grid pioneer and creator of Layout Land YouTube channel
  5. ###Rachel Andrew The other person integral to the current CSS Grid revolution, as well as being a developer, writer and editor in chief at Smashing Magazine
  6. ###Nicole Sullivan Literally invented OOCSS, one of the early methodologies for scaling CSS
  7. ###Jina Bolton Jina has been banging the drum for Design Systems since before they were cool, and runs Clarity, a design systems conference
  8. ###Jessica Hische Designer, typographer and hand-letterer extraordinaire
  9. ###Meg Lewis Multi-discipliary designer and quarter of NYC studio Ghostly Ferns, with a bold, fresh style
  10. ###Mina Markham Creative front end developer and design systems advocate, including for Hillary Clinton’s campaign
  11. ###Val Head Web animation expert, speaker and author, currently at Adobe
  12. ###Ire Aderinokun UI designer and front end developer who also writes super useful articles on her blog bitsofcode
  13. ###Rachel Nabors Award-winning cartoonist and specialist in web animation
  14. ###Lara Hogan Engineering and leadership coach
  15. ###Saron Yitbarek Founder of the Codenewbie community
  16. ###Ana Tudor Builder of incredible, creative, UI components that showcase the incredible power of CSS and Sass
  17. ###Anna Debanham Product manager, and early advocate for front end style guides
  18. ###Leonie Watson Web standards and accessibility expert, and W3C board member
  19. ###Laura Kalbag Designer, accessibility advocate and author of Accessibility for Everyone, published by A Book Apart.
  20. ###Lea Verou No ‘who’s who’ would be complete without Lea Verou, web standards advocate and CSS legend

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