According to the magazine Forbes, only about 8% of CEOs of cloud technology companies on the Cloud 100 list are women. Another report by Fortune The Global 500 – which ranks 500 companies by revenue – shows that only 5% of CEOs of major companies across all industries are women.
Despite the gender gap in technology leadership positions, there are actually more and more prominent and influential women in every field: media, social networks, semiconductors or programming.
CEO Twitter Linda Yaccarino
Nearly a year ago, billionaire Elon Musk appointed Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter (now X), in charge of business operations at “blue bird” so that he has time to focus on product design and new technology. He hopes to work with the new CEO to transform Twitter into X, “the app for everything”.
Previously, Yaccarino was Marketing Director at NBC Universal. She began her media career as an intern here and spent two decades at Turner Broadcasting before returning to NBC Universal in 2011. She is the boss of the station’s $13 billion advertising business and is famous with the “soft and tight” negotiation style.
She took office in the context of a series of advertisers turning away from this social network. From April 1 to the first week of May 2023, Twitter’s US advertising revenue decreased by 59% compared to the same period in 2022, according to NYT. X has also encountered countless problems since being owned by boss Musk. Therefore, many people consider Yaccarino to have “the hardest job in the technology world”.
However, analyst Dan Ives commented that few people are as fully equipped as her to take on this position. “She is not someone who easily backs down from challenges,” Ives said.
CEO Canva Melanie Perkins
Melanie Perkins is the founder and CEO of design software maker Canva, which was valued at $40 billion in September 2021. Canva was born in 2013 at the hands of Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams in Sydney, Australia. She holds about 18% of the company’s shares, but she and her husband (Obrecht) have committed to transferring more than 80% of their shares to the Canva fund for charity.
Despite initial skepticism, Canva attracts more than 60 million monthly users. 500,000 teams from companies like Intel and Zoom also pay to use this tool. Canva’s software allows users to create engaging images simply, in a variety of situations.
According to Fortune, Perkins was rejected by 100 venture capitalists and founded Canva when she had no relationship with Silicon Valley. However, Canva is currently the most valuable startup in the world founded and led by a woman.
Perkins said Canva’s ambition is “Empowering every person in the world the ability to design anything they can imagine in any language on any device.”
