Geek Feminism Wiki


"List of women keynote presenters at technical conferences" article likely out of date.

Due to the Geek Feminism Wiki being in archival mode, this article is likely out of date, reflecting the state of the world circa 2009–2013.

You can copy this content elsewhere and update it, see Wikia:Licensing for details of the license.

This list is of women who have given keynote presentations or invited talks (that is, especially invited as a drawcard talk, not competing with other streams) at Technical conferences.

This list is publicly editable, if your event or your talks are missing you are welcome to add them! No event is too small or niche to include. We interpret "technical" fairly broadly; use your best judgement.

Names are sorted by surname within each field.

Uses of this list include:

  • finding experienced women speakers for your technical event
  • finding women leaders to learn from or emulate in your technical field
  • finding technical events with a history of featuring women keynote speakers in their program

This list is very incomplete, so don't use it for quantitative statements, eg don't use it for "X% of conferences have a woman keynoting" or "there have been N women giving technical keynotes in the last 5 years" or "field N has more women in it than field M".

Creative Commons and open knowledge[]

Computer science[]

Main article: Computer Science

  • Fran Allen, PACT, 2007
  • Carliss Baldwin, FSE 2008
  • Lynda Chin , IEEE BioVis, 2011
  • Corinna Cortes, ICML, 2009
  • Véronique Cortier, STACS, 2011
  • Rina Dechter, CP 2002
  • Susan Dumais, ACL-HLT, 2008
  • Mary Fernández, ECOOP, 2003
  • Kathleen Fisher, ICFP, 2014; HCSS, 2004, 2008, 2009
  • Sally Floyd, SIGCOMM 2007
  • Stephanie Forrest, OOPSLA 2011
  • Adele Goldberg, IFIP Congress 1986
  • Carla Gomes, CP 2009
  • Patricia Johann, ACM SIGPLAN Haskell Symposium, 2014
  • Monica Lam, VEE 2010
  • Barbara Liskov, OOPSLA, 2009
  • Maja Matarić, FCRC, 2011
  • Sheila McIlraith, CP 2007
  • Michela Milano, CP 2013
  • Radia Perlman, ICICS, 2007
  • Jennifer Rexford, POPL 2012
  • Francesca Rossi, CP 2005
  • Barbara Ryder, CC (Compiler Construction) 2003
  • Margo Seltzer, USENIX 1997 and 1999
  • Mary Shaw, ESEC/FSE 2009
  • Barbara Smith, CP 2009
  • Audrey Tang, POPL, 2007
  • Stephanie Weirich, ICFP, 2014
  • Elaine Weyuker, ESEC/FSE, 2007
  • Jennifer Widom, VLDB 2000, SIGMOD 2007
  • Jeannette Wing, SEA, 2006
  • Kathy Yelick, ISCA, 2009

AI and Machine Learning[]

  • Leslie Kaelbling, AAAI, 2010
  • Monica Rogati, H2O World, 2015
  • Elizabeth Shriberg, COLING, 2008
  • Nell Watson
    • COFES 2013
  • Hanna Wallach
    • SciPy 2016
    • SocInfo 2016
    • Women in Machine Learning 2015 (opening remarks)
  • Bonnie Webber, ACL-IJCNLP, 2009

Education and technology[]

Engineering, hardware, electronics etc[]

FLOSS[]

Main article: FLOSS, List of women in FLOSS

  • Karin "kyrah" Kosina, FSCONS, 2010
  • Dawn Nafus, OSCON, 2008
  • Julia Nguyen, Open Source Bridge 2016
  • Karen Padir, MySQL Conference and Expo, 2009
  • Julie Pagano, Open Source Bridge 2014
  • Karen Pauley, OSDC, 2009
  • Stormy Peters
    • linux.conf.au, 2008
    • SCALE, 2008
    • Ohio LinuxFest, 2010
    • PyCon 2012
  • Christine Peterson, OSCON, 2008
  • Leisa Reichelt, GUADEC, 2008
  • Irene Ros , OSCON 2012
  • Karen Sandler
    • OSCON 2011
    • linux.conf.au 2012
    • FSCONS 2013
    • LibrePlanet 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016
    • Texas LinuxFest 2014
    • SeaGL 2014
    • Campus Party Ecuador 2014
    • FOSDEM 2015
    • Linaro Connect 2015
    • UK Open Source Awards 2015
    • Debconf 2016
    • Openwest 2016
    • BroCon 2016
    • Nexcloud Conference 2016
    • OSCON EU 2016
    • SCaLE 15x
    • Campus Party Brasil 2017
  • Kathy Sierra, linux.conf.au, 2007
  • Audrey Tang, Open Source Open Society, 2016
  • Miriam Tuerk, MySQL Conference and Expo, 2009
  • Pia Waugh, OSDC, 2008, 2009
  • Kimberlee Weatherall, OSDC, 2007
  • Marina Zhurakhinskaya, FOSSETCON, 2015

Information security[]

  • Kelly Lum, LASCON 2015

Programming[]

  • Nadia Amin, Strange Loop 2014
  • Rachel Appel
    • CodeStock 2010
    • GRDevDay 2014
    • CodePaLOUsa 2015,
    • Boise Code 2016
  • Leila Boujnane, RubyFringe, 2008
  • Amber Brown
    • PyCon CZ, 2015
    • PyCon TW, 2016
  • Mary Rose Cook
    • JSConf 2011
    • !!Con 2015
  • Katherine Daniels, Codemania 2016
  • Julia Evans
  • Jenny Finkel, Strange Loop 2013
  • Camille Fournier, !!Con 2014
  • Jessica Frazelle, Github Universe 2016
  • Mary Gardiner, PyCon AU, 2011
  • Adele Goldberg PyCon, 2007
  • Katy Huff, PyHPC 2015
  • Allison Kaptur, Kiwi PyCon, 2015
  • Jessica Kerr
    • ElixirConf 2015
    • Codemesh 2014
    • Scala eXchange 2015
  • Hilary Mason
    • Strange Loop 2010
    • Strata NY 2011
    • PyCon 2011
  • Jessica McKellar
    • DjangoCon Europe 2012
    • PyCon Canada 2012
    • PyCon 2013
  • Sarah Mei, RubyConf 2012
  • Jen Myers, Strange Loop 2013
  • Rachel Myers, ScotRuby 2013
  • Rachel Reese
    • PrairieDevCon 2016
    • PolyConf 2016
    • CodeMotion Dubai
  • Audrey Roy, PyCon AU 2012
  • Catt Small, !!Con 2016
  • Audrey Tang
    • PyCon TW 2016
  • Brenda Wallace, Kiwi PyCon 2015

Systems administration / SRE / DevOps[]

Main article: System administration

  1. ChefConf, 2014

Technology (general)[]

Note: this section is for conferences that cross several of the fields on this page.

  • Danah Boyd:
    • John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society, 2009
    • ETech, 2007 (paper)
  • Rebecca Garcia , Ladies Who Code, 2012
  • Christa Hockensmith, ETech, 2009
  • Liz Keogh, ACE! 2015
  • Mary Lou Jepsen, ETech, 2009
  • Anita Kuno, FutureRuby, 2009
  • Kati London, ETech, 2009
  • Rebecca MacKinnon, ETech, 2009
  • Jane McGonigal, ETech, 2009
  • Katherine Daniels,
    • Berlin Buzzwords, 2014
    • DevopsDays Minneapolis, 2015
  • Linda Rising:
    • Roots 2012
    • Agile 2011
    • ACE! 2015
  • Kathy Sierra:

Web2.0 and social media[]

Main articles: Web2.0, Blogging

  • Mitchell Baker, Web 2.0 Expo, 2008
  • Genevieve Bell, Web 2.0 Expo New York, 2008
  • Danah Boyd, Web 2.0 Expo, 2009
  • Suw Charman-Anderson, Web 2.0 Expo, 2008
  • Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Web 2.0 Expo, 2008
  • Caterina Fake, Web 2.0 Expo, 2009
  • Shana Fisher, Web 2.0 Expo New York, 2008
  • Heather Gold, Web 2.0 Expo, 2009
  • Irene Greif, Web 2.0 Expo New York, 2008
  • Arianna Huffington, Web 2.0 Expo New York, 2008
  • Beth Noveck, Web 2.0 Expo, 2009
  • Leisa Reichelt, Web 2.0 Expo, 2008
  • Deborah Schultz, Web 2.0 Expo New York, 2008