Erica Lockheimer LinkedIn It can be downright horrible to be a woman working in the tech industry these days. It's an industry that can't seem to cure itself of sexism.

Then again, it can be absolutely wonderful.

There's a huge push these days to encourage more girls to learn to code and to hire more women engineers once they graduate. The tech industry knows it can't fill all the jobs it has while discouraging half the population from joining the industry. It also knows that it can't do a good job of designing new tech products for women if women aren't part of the design process.

Because women are vastly outnumbered by men in technical jobs (about 3:1), they are even harder to find in leadership roles. But they do exist.

And once a year, we like to give a shout-out to these women.