How These Women Are Effecting Big Change Online

The world’s economy continues to evolve. The same can be said for technology, which has advanced in the past decade tremendously. Alongside these developments is the influx of women into business and non-business organizations. In fact, there has been a 29% growth in the proportion of women holding a senior management position last year. (1)

The most recognized brands online may have chief executive officers (CEO) who you might not have heard of before. However, check their names, and the most obvious thing you’ll notice is the greater number of men than women on the list.

Women game-changers in business deserve to be recognized for their talent. That’s why we’ve listed some of them below, including their contributions to the online world.

1. YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki

If there’s one video platform out there that practically everyone knows about, it’s YouTube. Over the years, YouTube has exploded in popularity, and its success can be attributed to its simplicity. The video content sharing platform gives content creators the most straightforward way to share their content on the web with an enormous audience.

Last year, YouTube’s user base worldwide already has 2.1 billion people. It has grown significantly that many content creators now make a decent living by maintaining their own YouTube channel. (2)

The woman behind YouTube’s Success

At the helm of one of the best video distribution sites in the world is a woman in Susan Wojcicki. A true-bloodied entrepreneur, Wojcicki saw YouTube’s potential when she was still Google’s Senior Vice President of Advertising and Commerce. She paved the way for Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006.

With Wojcicki’s leadership, YouTube managed to achieve the following:

Becoming the second-best search engine
Acquiring one billion daily users
Becoming a valuable tool for businesses’ online marketing campaigns

Those are only some of the many things that show how YouTube has impacted the online world. (2)

The market may see a couple of new video-streaming platforms that will try to rival YouTube in the future now that developing applications for enterprise level have become more accessible for businesses of all sizes. However, it’s unlikely that YouTube will fade away any time soon, considering its dominance and market penetration.

2. IG Group’s June Felix

IG is one of, if not the biggest, contract for differences (CFD) brokers in the world. The company was established in the UK but is regulated and trusted in many countries across the globe. Some of its top-tier regulators are Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and the UK’s FCA or Financial Conduct Authority.

The online trading provider offers the ultimate trading and research tools package to its clients. IG also provides industry-leading education for its extensive list of tradeable products. IG’s competitive pricing is the icing on the cake for the fantastic online trading experience that clients can expect from the company.

The woman behind IG Group’s Success

IG has come a long way since its establishment in 1974. Today, it’s already a global online trading leader. It provides its clients fast and flexible access to thousands of financial markets through its multiple award-winning platforms/apps. From indices to shares to forex and commodities, it’s, no doubt, the world’s number one in CFDs.

Behind the company’s success is June Felix, IG Group’s woman Chief Executive Officer. She’s also an Edison awardee for Innovation. Under Felix’s leadership, IG introduced innovative new products and services as well as made revolutionary alliances and acquisitions possible. All of these things were achieved while still implementing the rigor of strategy consulting.

3. Darktrace’s Nicole Eagan

A global technology company, Darktrace has been at Cyber AI’s cutting edge for several years now. More and more businesses pick the company for their cybersecurity needs because of more coverage and faster detection.

But what really sets Darktrace apart from other companies in the cybersecurity landscape is its Autonomous Response technology called Antigena. Darktrace’s Antigena is the world’s first Autonomous Response technology that’s really proven to work. It operates as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision-making framework. The system’s primary function is to neutralize unpredictable fast-moving attacks in seconds.

The woman behind Darktrace’s Success

In the movies, it’s the superheroes’ job to save people from secret, malicious threats. In an increasingly digital world, these threats exist, albeit in the form of cyberattacks. Also, in the current era, these cyberattacks wreaking havoc in business and non-business organizations is inevitable. The problem is that it’s no longer possible to find in-progress attacks just by pre-conceiving of anything that might go wrong. It’s where Darktrace comes in and offers significant help. These cyber intelligence experts are our real-life heroes.

The brain behind Darktrace is a woman in Nicole Eagan, the company’s Co-Chief Executive Officer. With Eagan at the helm, Darktrace transformed into a global AI cyber defense leader. As an AI thought leader, Eagan is widely recognized for introducing disruptive machine learning to enterprises regardless of size.

Darktrace utilizes the analogy of the immune system of humans in providing cybersecurity services. As you know, a person’s protective defenses know about all historical attacks and learn from them. That’s also how Darktrace works. That’s why despite its villain-sounding name, the company is the only cybersecurity service provider that really learns on the job. It’s no surprise that Darktrace has detected never-before-seen cyberattacks consistently that other tools simply can’t.

Nicole Eagan is on the lead for Darktrace since 2014. She has helped the company garner a loyal customer base, increasing the brand’s value significantly.

4. Oracle’s Safra Catz

Oracle’s database solutions have received the highest industry ranking for many years. In fact, it’s the only database vendor whose results came out with numbers between four and five in a Gartner analysis in 2019 that gave databases’ critical capabilities a 1-to-5 ranking. (3)

Businesses use Oracle for their database needs because of the following reasons:

Highest availability: Oracle’s availability includes its converged single instance database, Oracle Sharding/RAC, Oracle Multitenant/pluggable databases, and Oracle Active Data Guard.
Scale-on-demand: Oracle database can be scaled according to the needs of a business.
Security: Oracle has robust security capabilities consisting of a complete architecture that offers technologies that users can use to build an integrated analytics warehouse.
Cost optimization: Oracle allows its clients to optimize costs through its multitenant-based consolidation.

The woman behind Oracle’s success

The success of Oracle’s database solutions can be attributed to its president, Safra Catz. The acquisition of PeopleSoft, one of Oracle’s fiercest rivals, is Catz’s most significant achievement with the company. That move also made her Oracle’s CFO.

Today, Safra Catz is the highest-paid woman CEO in the US.

Final Thoughts

There are positive signs for women leaders heading into 2022. For instance, experts see a talent-led transformation post-pandemic. It’s especially true in the online world. It means that there will be global competition for talent. Add to it the well-developed women’s leadership initiatives and the increasing solidarity and confidence among women.

When women are lifted up, they become more determined and are able to reach their utmost potential. The significant contributions of the female leaders mentioned and discussed here are only the beginning.

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