If you have followed the issue of women in tech, you may have heard the name “Julie Ann Horvath” come up in the past few months. Ms. Horvath went public with what she felt was sexual harassment and intimidation at GitHub, a software development company where she worked as a developer.
Many credit Horvath with increasing the number of women that GitHub hired. While at GitHub, Horvath created a series called “Passion Projects,” which brings in women speakers from the tech community to talk about what they had been working on at events in San Francisco. Passion Projects speakers have included a senior engineer at Twitter and a developer who was named one of the most influential women in technology.
In the end, after Horvath left GitHub, the company conducted an internal investigation and while they first found there was no evidence of harassment, they later issued a lengthy apology, which Horvath accepted (though she added that she is happy the environment at the company “is no longer her problem”). She also accepted a job at &yet, another development firm.
“I’ll be postponing Passion Projects this year to explore new ways to help tell the stories of incredible women and people of color in the technology industry,” Horvath says in an e-mail.
Outside of the Bay Area, a similar organization is Ladies Who Code, which hosts events in Washington, New York, and overseas in London and other cities. Upcoming meet-ups include “How to Build Flappy Bird – an iOS workshop” and “Hack the Night Away.”
