Women today can be anything they wish.  From a loving mother to a hardworking employee, a nurse, doctor, teacher, lawyer, judge, or even a CEO of a company they built and nurtured like it’s their own baby.  The tech sector has been especially benefitted by the growing number of women leaders, overcoming the challenges that the female gender faces in a traditionally male-dominated sector.

To celebrate the empowerment of women, we here at SiliconANGLE drummed up a number of astonishing women in tech to impart their knowledge and wisdom of how they are changing the world.

The following is a collection of interviews from our Senior Managing Editor Kristen Nicole’s CEO Series.  See the full collection here.

The right position

Sudha Varadarajan is the founder of mobile development firm Skava.  Often times, founders take the position of CEO but in Varadarajan’s case, it’s not the position her heart desires.  Varadarajan is the CTO of Skava and when asked why she took this position instead of becoming CEO, she simply stated that she’s a proud builder at heart, and she believes that her decision has contributed greatly in the success of the company.

“I carry with me a lot of passion for building great products and building them to high quality standards. I am very exacting on my team about how something must be built and what standards it must adhere to.

“Over time, this passion has carried forward to my team, and now I see that same exacting attitude flow from the senior members of my technology team to the more junior members. We have a superior product because I have succeeded in transferring to my team the same passion for product quality and customer service in everything we do,” Varadarajan said in an interview.

Read the full feature here.

Facing pitfalls

How can one say that a company is strong?  It is when it is faced with adversity but is able to stand up to it, flow against the current, and continue providing the same service it did before.  This perfectly describes LiquidPlanner, an online project management software, that’s been able to survive the recession, the mobile revolution and the transition to data-driven business methods.

So how did LiquidPlanner do it?  It’s all because of CEO Liz Pearce’s tenacity and unwavering belief in the company, plus the fact that it found a simpler way to manage complex projects, appealing to the early adopter crowd.

“It was our early customers’ feedback, word of mouth, and loyalty that gave us the runway to continue to improve the product by adding important features like analytics, mobile apps, integrations, and a robust API. We’ve also kept a focus on simplicity, usability, and performance. There’s a huge sense of urgency about getting new features to customers, but we have a high quality bar for what goes out the door. Most people don’t realize that the entire LiquidPlanner team is under 20 folks, with a rock star development team of only six people. We’ve stayed very lean,” Pearce stated.

Read her full interview here.

The on-the-go Mom

SugarSync CEO Laura Yecies has been at the company since 2008, long before smartphones became an integral part of a person’s life, especially when it came to accessing and sharing files on the go.  She sees their service as the perfect tool for women on the go, who didn’t let life interfere with their goals.

“As mobile technology further develops there will be literally no task that requires someone to be on a desktop computer.  As we have full availability of our data and applications we will gain even further flexibility in how and where we do our work.

“Of course the work must be done and it is a long day for moms who work full time, but having flexibility on time and geography can help us be available to our children during key times of the day or important events,” Yecies stated.

Read her full feature here.

Building it right

FirstRain is a company that extracts Twitter data for marketing professionals to drive a new form of market research and business intelligence.  But it’s not enough that they have the right tools to do it, the company has the right team that makes everything work.

“Building FirstRain, I have consciously recruited a team that, while they are not all engineers, are all trained in and comfortable with technology and a logical approach to problem solving.  This means we are smart when listening to customers and can quickly translate customer business problems into innovative technology solutions,” Penny Herscher, President and CEO of FirstRain, stated.

See the full interview here, along with a clip from her TED X Talk.

Bridging the gap

In this day and age when print media seems to be a withering industry,  Zinio, dubbed the “Netflix of magazines,” has managed to bridge the gap between print and digital media.  But according to Zinio Global EVP and CMO Jeanniey Mullen, there’s more to it than that.

“We are the pioneers who must not just bridge the gap between two generations of readers, but we must do so in a manner that is compelling, accountable and innovative,” Mullen says.

“As a partner to the publishing world, we hold tight to traditions and historical strategies that maintain a business model perfected over thousands of years. Yet, we clearly see our responsibility resting on the forefront of consumer fascination with gadgets and gizmos that make our lives easier. We carefully integrate a curated and highly personal reading experience with the fun and entertaining stage of the tablet device, testing the limits of innovation about engagement and business models along the way.”

Read the full feature here.

Bringing Big Data to the Forefront

For Anjul Bhambhri, the world can be changed through Big Data. And as IBM’s Vice President of Big Data Products, she’s in a great position to do just that.  What’s astonishing about Bhambhri is her unique perspective regarding Big Data.  In an interview she stated that for her, “balancing the future” means developing technology that would deliver meaningful changes in the future.

“As IBM looks at its second century, we are going to help our society analyze and consume the massive amount of information created today in real-time. People, cities and organizations are challenged by the proliferation of information and making smarter decisions.

“‘Balancing the future’ means creating the big data tools to focus on the long-term needs of our society versus the short-term expectations. We will achieve that balance through inventing core technologies, defining key architectures and maintaining our commitment to research,” Bhambhri stated.

See Bhambhri’s entire interview here.

Helping startups get started

Enloop is a web-based tool designed to help people better plan their business by helping business owners envision and plan the startup, project quarterly earnings, auto-create written business plan and ultimately helping people determine if they should go forth with their “great idea.”

Cynthia McCahon, the CEO and founder of Enloop stated that it is not enough for you to have a great business idea or go to business school, and this is the reason she created Enloop.

“I believe this is this missing link in why our small business failure rate is so high in the US. There’s never been a systematic approach that anyone can use to evaluate their risk of failure, either for a startup or an existing business.

“Unlike other software that helps users create static business plans, I created an easy-to-use app that automatically generates customized business plans with bank-ready financial forecasts, in real-time. Enloop then forecasts the businesses odds for success with an interactive FICO-like score. Most importantly, Enloop explains the difficult concepts of financial forecasting to users so they can really understand their financial risk and make better decisions,” McCahon stated.

See the full feature here.

These are just some of the women who are taking the tech industry by storm, leading by example.  Many ailing companies like Yahoo! and Hewlett-Packard now have women CEOs who are doing their earnest to turn things around.  Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had been busy in acquiring companies to fortify their mobile and social offerings while HP CEO and President Meg Whitman has been busy cleaning up the mess left behind by Leo Apotheker.

photo credit: kaneda99 via photopin cc