Tech Pride

June is Pride month. Pride month has a long history; it started in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of spontaneous protests in response to a police raid at the popular LGBT bar in the West Village, New York.

On June 28th 1970, the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots was marked with an assembly on Christopher Street, along with simultaneous marches in Chicago and Los Angeles. By 1971 this had expanded to Boston, Dallas and Milwaukee in the United States; and become global with marches in London, West Berlin and Stockholm. Today, pride is a month-long celebration around the world. However, there are still places around the world where it is illegal to be yourself, and that's why Pride Month is still so important.

The LGBTQIA+ community has shaped the world we live in now, especially from a tech point of view. So we want to take a moment to celebrate seven individuals who have changed the world with their technology, people who the world would be much worse off without.

Tim Cook

Arguably the most prominent person in tech, let alone LGBTQIA+ tech! Tim is the current CEO of Apple, taking on the mantle in August 2011 after serving as the Chief Operating Officer.

Tim came out in 2014 through a personal essay for Bloomberg Business Week . After an internal struggle of keeping his personal life to himself, he felt an increasing sense of duty to the community to help in any way he could.

Jon "Maddog" Hall

"Maddog" Hall is a veteran programmer currently serving on the board of the Linux Professional Institute as the chair. He also serves as the president of Project Cau?, helping create millions of sustainable, private-sector jobs in dense urban areas of Latin America.

He came out as gay in 2012 in honour of the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. In his coming out piece for Linux Magazine , he said "computer science was a haven for homosexuals, transsexuals and a lot of other 'sexuals' mostly because the history of the science called for fairly intelligent, modern-thinking people."

Ana Arriola

Ana is the current Director of Product Design & Research, PhsyOps Studios General Manager at Microsoft. Her work exists at the intersections of human cognition, augmentation, and assistance between the physical worlds and their digital twin as they come together across our new topology.

She went through her transition over the last few years, saying the biggest reason for delaying it so long was because she was scared for her 26-year career and the financial implications for her family's future. In a 2016 TechInclusion conference she is quoted as saying: "Don't be persuaded. Don’t be told how or what you should be doing in your life. You define it yourself."

Megan Smith

Megan was appointed under President Obama in 2014 as the very first female US Chief Technology Officer. She was previously a Vice President at Google, helping launch the Women Techmakers initiative.

Before this, she served as the CEO of the LGBTQIA+ online media company Planet Out. She is recognised by both Out Magazine and GLAAD for her visibility as an LGBTQIA+ leader.

Leanne Pittsford

Leanne Pittsford is the founder of Lesbians Who Tech + Allies in 2012, the largest community of LGBTQIA+ technologists in the world. The group gives visibility to LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary individuals in the tech sector, with more than 100,000 members in the community.

Over the past few years, the Lesbians Who Tech + Allies summits have had some noteworthy speakers including; Black Lives Matter co-founder?Alicia Garza, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator?Tammy Baldwin, Marc Benioff and so many more. Out of their total on stage speakers, half are women of colour, 30% are Black or Latinx and 15% are transgender or gender-nonconforming.

Angelica Ross

Angelica runs TransTech Social Enterprises, an incubator for LGBTQIA+ talent focusing on helping to employ transgender people in the tech industry. She is a self-taught coder who also founded TransTech Summit to help transgender people foster their skills in the tech industry.

Angelica began her transition at age 19 and is quoted as saying "Most trans people are either violently removed or not welcome in many educational and workspaces" ... "[TransTech] gives people a place where there’s no question that they belong and are valuable."

Alan Turing

Finally, Alan Turing, who is most famously known as the codebreaker who saved millions of lives during the second world war. Thanks to the development of machines that would go on to crack 84,000 enigma messages a month.

In 1952, Turing started a relationship with Arnold Murray, when homosexual acts were an offence in the United Kingdom. He was later convicted and put on probation; this included hormonal changes to reduce his libido and the removal of his security clearance at the GCHQ. Two years later, he committed suicide.

Today people are still persecuted for who they are and who they love. This is why we celebrate Pride each June and the people who helped to shape the incredible world we all live in.