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Most powerful women in tech

Staff Writer

 ·23 May 2013

Forbes has listed the 100 powerful women in the world, revealing that Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, leads the ladies of tech.

The list, compiled by Forbes, looks at the 100 most influential women from seven categories or power bases: billionaires, business, lifestyle, media, NGOs, politics and technology.

Each candidate was weighted according to three meterics, namely, money, media presense and impact.

Politics dominated the upper-reaches of the listing, with German chancellor, Angela Merkel retaining the top spot as most powerful woman in the world.

Brazillian president, Dilma Rousseff, was listed as second – while richest man in the world, Bill Gates‘ other half and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation was listed third.

US political leading ladies, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton rounded out the top 5 – in fourth and fifth, respectively – before tech’s first showing in Sandberg at number six.

Sheryl Sandberg

Tech’s most powerful women

Sandberg is the only woman in tech to make it onto the top 10. Sandberg was fundamental in pushing out Facebook’s mobile ads, which brought in more mobile ad revenue than any other publisher, according to Forbes.

In March 2013, Sandberg also launched a book focused around feminism in the workplace, which sold over 150,000 copies in its first week.

Behind Sandberg are IBM and Xerox CEOs, Virginia Rometty (12th) and Ursula Burns (14th), Hewlett-Packard‘s CEO, Meg Whitman is listed at 15th.

Whitman, who took over as HP’s CEO last year, is behind the struggling firm’s turnaround strategy which saw the company’s most recent quarterly earnings beating analysts expectations.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who recently made waves with a hefty $1.1 billion acquisition of social blogging platform, Tumblr, also appears in the list at 32nd.

Top 10 most powerful women in tech

For the full list, see the 100 most powerful women on Forbes.

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