Diane Bryant is the executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group, one of the most powerful people at the Silicon Valley tech behemoth and, according to Fortune's 2016 list, one of the 50 most powerful women in business. Yet, at the age of 18, she was homeless and seemingly destined for a career in hairdressing.

“My dad kicked us out of the house because he said that at 18 you’re legally an adult, and he didn’t want any more financial responsibility for us.”

The same applied to Ms Bryant’s older sister. Unfortunately, Diane’s February birthday meant she was was out on her ear four months before her high school graduation. After couch-surfing at friends’ and relatives’ houses, she enrolled at a community college, which were free to attend at the time.

“At community college, I was sat next to a guy in my Calculus II class, who told me I should be an engineer because it was the highest starting salary you could make with just a Bachelor’s four-year degree. The one thing I knew in life was that I was not going to be poor, I was never going to be reliant upon anyone for money. So I thought that sounded like a fabulous career, even though I had no idea what an engineer was.”

From there, she converted her major to engineering, transferred to UC Davis, graduated with an engineering degree and joined Intel. Not bad for someone who had been expected to get married and have kids right out of high school.

Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Show all 13 1 /13 Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Ida Wells An African-American journalist and activist born in Mississippi in 1862, she wrote prolifically on the fight for women’s suffrage as well as the struggle for civil rights. She documented the practice of lynching black people in the southern states showing how it was often used as means of controlling or punishing black people who competed with whites rather than as a means of “justice” for crimes. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Lotifa El Nadi Egypt’s first female pilot born in 1907 in Cairo. Although her father saw no need for her to pursue secondary education, expecting her to marry and have a family, she rebelled and worked as a secretary and telephone operator at a flying school in exchange for lessons as she had no other means to pay for the training. Her achievements made headlines around the world when she flew over the pyramids and competed in international flying races. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Frida Kahlo A Mexican painter and activist born in Mexico City in 1907, her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for its honest depiction of female experience. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Lina Bo Bardi A Brazilian architect, born in Italy in 1914, she devoted her life to the promotion of the social and cultural potential of architecture and design. She is also celebrated for her furniture and jewellery designs. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Olga Skorokhodova A Soviet scientist born into a poor Ukranian peasant family in 1911, she lost her vision and hearing at the age of five. Overcoming these difficulties in a remarkable way, she became a researcher in the field of communication and created a number of scientific works concerning the development of education of deaf-blind children. She was also a teacher, therapist and writer. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Miriam Makeba A South African singer and civil rights activist born in Johannesburg in 1932, she was forced to work as a child following her father’s death. She became a teenage mother after a brief and allegedly abusive marriage at 17, before she was discovered as a singer of jazz and African melodies. After becoming hugely successful in the US and winning a Grammy, she became involved in the civil rights struggle stateside as well as in the campaign against apartheid in her home country, writing political songs. Upon her death, South African President Nelson Mandela said that “her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.” Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Sally Ride An American astronaut and physicist, she was born in Los Angeles in 1951 and joined NASA in 1978 after gaining her PhD. She became the first American woman and the third woman ever to go into space in 1983 at the age of 32. Prior to her first space flight, she attracted attention because of her gender and at press conferences, was asked questions such as, “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?” She later worked as an academic at the University of California, San Diego. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Halet Cambel A Turkish archaeologist born in 1916, she became the first Muslim women to compete in the Olympics in the 1936 Berlin games as a fencer. She declined an invitation to meet Adolf Hitler on political grounds, and after the conclusion of the Second World War, she trained as an architect and later worked as an academic in Turkey and Germany. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Ada Lovelace An English mathematician and writer born in 1815, she became the world’s first computer programmer. The daughter of poet George Byron, she is chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine, and was the first to recognise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, creating the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Rukmini Devi An Indian dancer and choreographer credited with reviving Indian classical dance, she was born in 1904 and presented her form of dance on stage even though it was considered “low” and “vulgar” in the 1920s. She features in India Today’s list of “100 people who shaped India” having also worked to re-establish traditional Indian arts and crafts and as an animal rights activist. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Cecilia Grierson An Argentine physician, reformer born in Buenes Aires in 1859, she became the first woman in Argentina to receive a medical degree having previously worked as a teacher. Women were barred from entering medical school at the time, so she first volunteered as an unpaid lab assistant before she was allowed to train as a doctor. She was acclaimed for her work during a cholera epidemic before going on to found the first nursing school in Argentina. The harassment she experienced at medical school helped make her a militant advocate for women’s rights in Argentina. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Lee Tai-young Korea’s first female lawyer and judge born in 1914 in what is now North Korea, she was also an activist who founded the country’s first legal aid centre and fought for women’s rights throughout her career. Her often mentioned refrain was, “No society can or will prosper without the cooperation of women.” She worked as a teacher, married and had four children before she was able to begin her legal career after the Second World War, becoming the first woman to enter Seoul National University. She also fought for civil rights in the country and was arrested in 1977 for her beliefs, receiving a three-year suspended sentence and a ten year disbarment. Google marks International Women's Day with 13 amazing women Suzanne Lenglen A French tennis champion born in 1899, she popularised the sport winning 31 championships and dominating the women’s sport for over a decade. She was the first female tennis celebrity and one of the first international women sports stars, overcoming a childhood plagued with ill health including chronic asthma – which continued to plague her in her adult life. At 15, she became the youngest ever winner of a major championship and lost only seven matches during her entire career. She received widespread criticism for her decision to turn professional, but defended her right to make a decent living in the days when the grand slam tournaments paid a relative pittance to the winners.

Joining the company, however, was quite the culture shock.

“Silicon Valley in the mid-80s was very rough-and-tumble. We call it the Wild Wild West of Silicon Valley. Lots of cursing and slamming your fist on the table in order to get your way and having that real bravado. The first thing I learned to do was swear, to get really angry, even if I’m not angry - just act angry and swear to make sure the people hear you and recognise that you’re serious.

“I’m a ‘girly’ girl, so being surrounded by men all day at work, you certainly have those lows. I think you always wish you had more people like yourself around you. You think, ‘Oh, I wish there was someone like me I could really talk to’. It can be sort of isolating or lonely in that regard, but I ended up becoming one of the guys, so that was the solution.

“I always get people who say ‘You’re not being yourself, you sold out’, but it’s like, you’re the minority. You either sense your environment and figure out how to adapt to the norm or you resign yourself to being pushed to the outskirts of the conversation.”

Susan Fowler's account of her time spent working as an Uber engineer suggests that the culture hasn't change too much.

In the early days, Ms Bryant would typically be the only woman engineer in meetings, and says that trying to adapt and fit in was a very uncomfortable experience. She was never going to back away from the challenge though, as that would have meant changing occupation.

“As a minority in any industry, there’s always those moments when you think ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Is this really for me? Should I try something else? Should I move on?’ No, let’s figure it out and make it happen. I guess I’m gritty.”

She recommends watching Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk on grit, which she believes is severely lacking in the younger generations. However, she’s not sure how to fix it.

What Ms Bryant does know is that engineering is suffering from a lack of diversity.

“When I graduated from college, the proportion of women in engineering was 18%. Today, the latest stat we heard is that figure’s down to 14%. I am mystified that the number of women getting into engineering remains so low, because I can’t think of a more rewarding occupation.

“It is an occupation that continues to suffer from a lack of diversity on two fronts. It’s a rewarding career and you would want others to join in, and diversity of thought and diversity of opinion is incredibly important for innovation.

“You can’t innovate and have an impact on the world’s population if your organisation isn’t reflective of the world’s population. You can’t have singular opinions, singular backgrounds, singular race, gender, ethnicity, religion. You can’t have this homogeneous environment and expect to innovate for the world at large. Diversity is extremely critical.”

Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich made a commitment at CES 2015 to invest $300 million to bring the company’s population on par with the world’s population when it comes to tech by 2020. Ms Bryant is driving the change.

“When I became a vice president at Intel it was 2004, and at that time women were 4% of the VP population. We would fit very nicely in a 5x7 photo. There were only 13 of us! I still have that photo on my desk - the 13 women who made it to VP!

“Our head of HR, who was also a VP, said ‘This is ridiculous. We have to change this. We’ve got to get to parity so the VP population matches the population at large’. So we sat down and we vowed to become advocates for the next tier of women inside of Intel.

“We’re going to advocate for that next tier until they become VPs, and then they’ll grab the next tier, and we’re going to literally invest in getting them into the position they need to be in, in order to get promoted and excel at Intel.”

So Intel’s Network of Executive Women (INEW) was formed.

“Fast-forward 13 years and today, the women population of VPs matches the overall population. 21% of all VPs are women, consistent with the overall population. We’ve closed that gap strictly through advocacy.

“Strictly through reaching down to that next high-performer and saying, ‘I’m going to know you, I’m going to know what you’re good at and I’m going to make sure your next job at Intel is a job that fully takes advantage of whatever your strength is and gets you to that next opportunity. And I’m going to put my credibility and my reputation and my job on the line. I’m going to stand stand up there and fight for you, for that next opportunity’.

“Because it is a pyramid. There are fewer next opportunities as you move up the ranks. Getting to the next ranks, you need to have someone up there advocating for you. Without an advocate, it’s just easy to swim around and never find your roots, never find that opportunity.”

Ms Bryant points me towards a particular passage in Decoding Diversity, an Intel-sponsored study exploring why, after so many years, the technology industry still suffers from a lack of diversity.

“The key differences between a mentor and a sponsor? A sponsor advocates for someone to be more visible, more recognized, and engaged in a way that suits their unique skills. A mentor provides guidance, advice, and wisdom, but does not necessarily advocate on one’s behalf.”

Ms Bryant believes that men naturally advocate for other men like them in the tech industry, while women tend to be mentored.

“They say a woman on average will have 23 mentors in their career, but never an advocate. There’s just a very different approach in many businesses where the legacy of the profession is traditionally male or traditionally white male. You see it too with underrepresented minorities.”

However, Ms Bryant believes there are reasons to be positive.

“I do think there is change afoot. I do think it is driven by recognition that technology can have a true impact on people’s lives. Women want to change the world, men want to rule the world. So if you can show women and girls how they can actually change the world for the better, we can pull them into the world of technology.