Today, as AppNexus' chief data scientist, Williams is in a unique position — not only as a woman in a highly technical role, but also as a woman in the C-suite.

Sadly, today's technology landscape doesn't provide Williams with many female comrades at her level — though she says the sense of adversity has strengthened the bonds with fellow women who do work in tech.

"Part of the challenge is trying to ignore the feeling that, due to my level and relative scarcity, I have to represent not just myself and maybe data science, but also tech women generally," she says.

On top of this pressure, being an exec in the tech world comes with a great deal of tension and responsibility. It's a balancing act between attending to executive duties and keeping up with cutting-edge technologies.

"It's a challenge to stay fresh enough to be able to lead and strategize effectively without actually investing all the time to retain hands-on expertise," she says. "My partial solution is to have my team teach me things whenever possible."

Williams employs a hands-on leadership style, viewing her employees as people and not simply cogs within the company.

"There's an intricate intellectual challenge here, of figuring out how a person’s skills can best contribute to the organization, and then figuring out what he or she wants and [determining] the right intersection — and how to maneuver that person toward the sweet spot," she says.

As with Hazes, Williams' first career choice wasn't without its lessons learned.

"I do think that having taught undergraduate math classes for years helps," she says. "Being up in front of a room, trying to convince a class full of students that linear algebra is actually beautiful and necessary and they should dedicate hours of their lives to mastering it — it's not that dissimilar from convincing a team to work on a new project with a specific outcome."



