Telle Whitney

Co-Founder of Grace Hopper Celebration & Former CEO of AnitaB.org

Lifespan 1956–

Technical Depth beginner

Key Breakthrough Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing & FPGA Chip Architecture

Focus Areas

hardware design semiconductors workforce inclusion

Topic Keywords

#semiconductors #fpga #grace-hopper #anitab-org #diversity-in-tech

Source: Historical Biographical Archive / Wikimedia Commons

Telle Whitney

Co-Founder of Grace Hopper Celebration & Former CEO of AnitaB.org

Biographical Overview

Semiconductor engineer and computer scientist who co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Anita Borg in 1994. As CEO of AnitaB.org from 2002 to 2017, Whitney built the gathering into the largest technical conference for women in history, while engineering programmable semiconductor hardware.

"When Anita Borg and I started Grace Hopper in 1994, people told us there weren't enough women in tech to fill a room. We proved them wrong."
— Telle Whitney

Lifespan 1956–

Technical Depth beginner

Key Breakthrough Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing & FPGA Chip Architecture

Focus Areas

hardware design semiconductors workforce inclusion

Topic Keywords

#semiconductors #fpga #grace-hopper #anitab-org #diversity-in-tech

Source: Historical Biographical Archive / Wikimedia Commons

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Historical Context & Impact

In short

In 1994, Whitney and Anita Borg met for dinner, frustrated that women were isolated in technology companies. Over a napkin, they drafted the plans for a dedicated conference where women could showcase technical research. Thirty years later, it is the largest technical recruiting event in computing.

Key Technical Breakthroughs & Inventions

Co-Founding the Grace Hopper Celebration (1994) Co-founded GHC with Anita Borg, scaling it from an inaugural gathering of 500 women into a global convening of over 30,000 technologists annually.

Semiconductor Hardware Engineering Led silicon engineering teams as Vice President of Engineering at Actel and Malleable Technologies, designing programmable logic devices (PLD) and DSP communication chips.

AnitaB.org Leadership (2002–2017) Grew the Anita Borg Institute into an international force, launching the Top Companies for Women Technologists benchmark and the Systers online community.

Advocacy for Workforce Representation Partnered with Fortune 500 technology leaders to publish transparent retention, promotion, and salary data across technical engineering departments.