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Profile: Anita Borg By Cate T. Corcoran December 1998 issue A black-and-white poster of a flying pig hangs in Anita Borg's office at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). "It means if pigs can fly, anything is possible," says Ms. Borg, a computer scientist whose personal flying pig is the Institute for Women and Technology, a nonprofit organization that operates independently of PARC. She founded the institute in 1997 with the goal of transforming technology research and development by involving more women. "It drives me crazy when companies develop and market stuff strictly to 18- to 30-year-old male early adopters," she says. "Any company that goes only for that demographic is conservative and not thinking about how to break into really big markets." The institute's goal is particularly pertinent for the computer industry today -- tech companies are reaching beyond their traditional market of people already comfortable with technology. So far the institute has organized three workshops that have brought technical and nontechnical women together to consider how new technologies can meet women's needs. In the first, held in October in Bothell, Washington, 26 women ranging in age from 13 to 72 talked about how technology could improve their lives. Ideas included a computer that several members of a family could use simultaneously. Another was an electronic calendar built into the refrigerator that could "talk" to each family member's personal digital assistant and synchronize daily activities. In addition to the workshops, Ms. Borg is developing an online community that will let nontechnical women and scientists keep in touch throughout product development processes. This is a departure from typical market research, in which customers are consulted only briefly, in focus groups at the end of the process. FEMALE CONNECTOR Ms. Borg is developing partnerships with international and U.S. research organizations, like the Pacific Institute for Women's Health, which is exploring how technology can better connect women's organizations in Africa. The institute has already received $150,000 in funding from Xerox and Sun, as well as personnel and resources from Lotus (now a division of IBM), Boston University, and Carnegie Mellon University. Xerox is acting as an "incubator" for the institute, which is otherwise independent. Friends of Ms. Borg's describe her as passionate and energetic. She mountain-bikes, flies small planes, and kayaks in the rare moments when she's not working. In January she threw herself a big 50th birthday bash with a loud rock band. She says she has always loved math and science, an interest she attributes to her mother. "My mother taught me that math was fun, so I thought it could be," she says. Ms. Borg is one of a relatively small group of female computer scientists at the Ph.D. level. After getting her doctorate in computer science from New York University in 1981, she worked for several computer companies and then spent 12 years in Digital Equipment's labs. She is well known among other female computer scientists for having created a list server for female engineers, called Systers, and for founding a technical conference for women, called the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. ANITA MIRACLE "I have never been good at listening to people who say 'can't,'" says Ms. Borg. Her tenacity is one reason that Xerox PARC director John Seely Brown decided the institute deserved funding. "It's hard to change any culture, especially engineering culture," Mr. Brown says. "We're not going to solve the limitations of technology R&D overnight, but we need a focused effort that is sustainable in part because of the passion and dedication of its leader." The institute is part of a growing movement to diversify engineering, says PARC's chief technology officer, Mark Weiser. "In the bigger sense, what Anita is doing fits directly into the participatory design movement, where more and more companies are trying to get everyday people involved in the project design cycle," he says. Or, as Ms. Borg puts it, "If all you do is ask Ph.D. computer scientists what they want, all you'll get is stuff that's good for Ph.D. computer scientists."
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