Anita Borg was a technologist, mathematician, and advocate, whose aim was to get more women into information technology and development. Her goal was 50% representation by 2020, meaning half of all IT students and employees would be female.
Needless to say, that didn’t work out how she hoped, but the organizations Borg founded and led in pursuit of that goal have left a mark. The Institute for Women and Technology, founded to increase women’s participation in technical fields and better enable them to create, has quadrupled in size since its founding and has expanded its programs outside the United States.
Borg was awarded with the Ada Lovelace Award in 1995.
She died in 2003, after which the Institute for Women in Technology was renamed the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology in her honor. The institute has since been renamed AnitaB.org.