I often get asked to suggest awesome female speakers, so I thought let’s make a list on my blog so it is easy for me to help people out that are looking for great women for their panel/conference/event. The list was compiled based on my memory and a shout out on Twitter.
I have mainly included women that could use some help to get more well-known as speakers. So if you are not on my list, it is probably because you have more followers on Twitter than I have so I deem you too famous 🙂
One note though, please do not fill your entire program with men and then add a few women ‘for diversity’. A great conference considers a well balanced lineup as core part of their process, and not as some whipped cream you put on the cake afterwards! And diversity of course is more then gender. Consider age, race and speaker experience too.
Ow and one more note: these ladies, like all speakers, want to have their travel and expenses covered!
Without further ado (in two fields, both in alphabetical order). All links in these tiny bios are to videos of talks so you can try before you buy 🙂
Tech
Patricia Aas (@pati_gallardo) is a C++ programmer working on the Vivaldi Browser. She is an amazing programmer that can talk about C++, but also code reading (a previous version of this talk had 11.000 views!) and privilege in programming (video link upcoming).
Jennifer Bland (@ratracegrad) can speak on JavaScript, graphql, flexbox, npm, but also hiring programmers. She also does keynotes and workshops.
Kate Carruthers (@kcarruthers) is a Chief Data Officer & Senior Lecturer. She can talk about data governance, cyber security, digital & data ethics.
Ramona de Wit (@RamonadeWit) is Test Lead at AH Digital Development. She can give talks about testing.
Eva Ferreira (@evaferreira92) is a web developer at Aerolab and professor at Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. She talks about frontend and accessibility.
Christin Gorman (@ChristinGorman, Tumblr) is a programmer who’ll happily talk about software development, from technical details like hibernate to process. Her talk on Hibernate is the most watched JavaZone video with 15k views!
Tatiana Kolesnikova (@unicorn_job) is a UX designer with background both in IT and design. She can talk about implementing good Design systems or Lean UX in practice of IT development or about style driven development. PS She has background in TV so is right at home on stage!
Jean Leggett (@JeanLeggett) is a standup comedian who now runs a video game studio helping authors young and old create narrative video games. She talks about why STEAM>STEM and how to change games to be more meaningful.
Claire LeGoues (@clegoues) is a professor at Carnegie Mellon. She can talk about genetic programming and automatic bug repair. I blogged about her great work a long time ago 🙂
Georgie Luhur Cooke (@georgiecel) is a user interface developer who cares about accessibility, maintainable code, documentation. She can talk about blogging in an amazing way!
Lucy McGowan (@LucyStats) is am a biostatistician excited to talk about causal inference and rstats.
Mieke van Heesewijk (@miekevh) is program manager at SIDN Fund, and a committee member at the Internet Society Netherlands. She can talk about the importance of an open internet (video in Dutch).
Linda McIver (@lindamciver) is Executive Director and Founder of the Australian Data Science Education Institute and she is on a mission to get data science education into schools. She talks about CS Ed, and the importance of data literacy.
Amelia McNamara (Twitter) is a data scientist/statistician, who can talk about spatial aggregation, algorithmic accountability and lots more! She is also a person that I just really appreciate and form which I have learned a lot.
Maryse Meinen (@lean_architect) is an architect at Ordina, and she can speak about the gender gap
Hilary Parker (@hspter) is a data scientist at StitchFix and a host of the Not So Standard Deviations podcast. She can talk about data science or the most poisoned baby name in US history <- seriously watch this 5 minute video I guarantee you that it is the best 5 minute talk about statistics you have ever seen!
Sarah Phelps (@mrsphelpscodes) is an elementary school STEM educator and runs a kids tech conference alongside KCDC. She does workshops for kids and speaks on how devs can teach their own kids and eg involved with their local school and help other kids as well. I could not find a video but women speaking about programming for kids have a special place in my heart!
Jamie Riedesel (@sysadmin1138) is a DevOps engineer who works in startups and focuses on monitoring and observability. She can talk about observability and DevOps.
Michelle Sandford (@msandfor) talks about diversity and inclusion, design thinking, building personal brand, employee advocacy and humorous 101 tech talks.
Silvia Schreier (Twitter) is a product owner at metronom.com and talk about web architecture, DevOps in the wild, or microservices.
Amanda Sopkin (Twitter) is a developer who will talk about technical topics in computing or mathematics! For example computationally secure randomness in Python. <- I really learned a lot from this talk it is deeply technical but also understandable. A great example of how to do a technical talk.
Margaret-Anne Storey (Twitter) is a professor at the University of Victoria. She can talk about social media, software engineering or bots.
Katarzyna Szymielewicz (@szymielewicz) works on the intersection of human & technology. She can talk about surveillance and data protection. She does keynotes too!
Jennifer Wadella (@likeOMGitsFEDAY, website) is a software engineer at Fire Engine Red who has started several charities around learning to code (Coding and Cupcakes and Coding and Cocktails). She can talk about JewelBots and awesome set to teach girls programming.
Laurie Williams (@lauriewilliams) is a professor at NC State. She can talk about lots of topics, such as pair programming, software security and continuous deployment.
Nina Zakharenko (@nnja) is a Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft with a solid engineering background. She can speak about Python, git & source control, & clean code best practices for several years.
Education/Teaching
Michelle van Dijk (Twitter) is a school teacher and manager who can talk about write about literature and education. (can also speak in Dutch)
Limor Raviv (Twitter) is a researcher studying language and cultural evolution. She can talk about statistical learning <- this is a really great 5 minute intro into learning!
Dylan Hyman (@DylanHyman) is a teacher trying to change education. She can talk about higher-order thinking in the classroom. (can also speak in Dutch)
Some other resources
I know there are a lot of other resources for people to use when they are looking for female or non-binary speakers. The reason I chose my format is that I organized a conference myself for 6 years, and I know the most effortless way to invite speakers is when you know what they can speak about and can easily check an online video.
Recourses for conferences:
But there are other more extensive lists you can check out if you have time to Google and do more background research! For example:
- Women Working in Openness
- Speakerinnen
- SheSource
- CfPWomen List of Lady speakers
- Techworlds’s 500+ UK women to speak at your conference
Recourses for women:
If you are a woman and you want to submite to a friendly conference, check out this list:
If you want to learn how to get more successful at speaking, check out the work of Holly Chessman.
Recourses for everyone:
If you want to diversify your Twitter feed, you might want to check out:
- Fempire list of 300 women to follow
- 100 Women in Tech to follow on Twitter
- And me of course of you don’t already 🙂 Felienne
