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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Libby Leffler.

Women are (relatively) few and far between in the tech industry. They make up less than 10 per cent of venture capitalists, and they leave the industry at twice the rate of men, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, says the Business Insider.

But the women who do choose to enter the tech industry in one way or another are doing incredibly important work, it says.

Let's take a look at 20 women who are not even 30 but are changing the tech world.

Source: Business Insider

Libby Leffler

Company: Partner, Facebook

Age: 28

About her: Libby Leffler served as Facebook COO Sheryl Sanberg's business lead for three years before becoming the social network's strategic partner manager. Currently, she's leading a division of partnerships at Facebook with an emphasis on causes, non-profits, advocacy groups, and public figures, according to Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Anastasia Leng.

Anastasia Leng

Company: Co-Founder, Makeably

Age: 28

About her: Anastasia spent five years at Google, working as a Product Marketing Manager on Google's monetisation products. She moved to London to work as a New Business Development Manager, where she led entrepreneurship efforts in EMEA and closed deals for early-stage technology partnerships for Google Voice, Google Chrome, and Google Wallet.

Anastasia graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a triple major in Psychology, Sociology and French.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Rachel Haot.

Rachel Haot

Company: Chief Digital Officer, City of New York

Age: 29

About her: Rachel Haot is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur who currently serves as the Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York, heading the NYC Digital programme funded by the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Lisa Falzone.

Lisa Falzone

Company: Co-Founder and CEO, Revel Systems

Age: 27

About her: Lisa Falzone is the genius behind the award-winning Revel Systems point-of-sale system for the iPad. Revel Systems is considered to be a leader in iPad POS solutions, with major retailers, restaurants, and grocery stores using Revel, according to Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Naomi Gleit, inset.

Naomi Gleit

Company: Senior Director of Growth, Facebook

Age: 29

About her: Naomi Gleit has worked at Facebook since nearly the very beginning. Joining the social network in July 2005, Gleit became Facebook's 29th employee, according to Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Roxanne Varza.

Roxanne Varza

Company: Startup Evangelist, Microsoft

Age: Under 30

About her: Roxanne Varza currently runs some of Microsoft's startup-related initiatives in Europe, specifically its BizSpark and Spark programmes. Prior to joining Microsoft, Varza worked as the editor of TechCrunch France, according to Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Adda Birnir.

Adda Birnir

Company: Founder and CEO, Skillcrush

Age: 27

About her: Adda Birnir first made a name for herself while working as an associate producer at MTV. She later went on to build a tablet publishing business called Balance Media. Now, she's working on Skillcrush, an online platform for teaching digital literacy, says Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Alexa von Tobel.

Alexa von Tobel

Company: LearnVest, CEO

Age: 29

About her: Alexa Von Tobel is the founder and CEO of LearnVest.com, an independent personal finance website for women.

Von Tobel came up with the idea for LearnVest in 2006 while a student at Harvard Business School when she realised and other women like her had never had any formal education about how to manage their personal finances.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Amanda Peyton, inset.

Amanda Peyton

Company: Co-Founder, Grand St

Age: Under 30

About her: Before co-founding Grand St, an invite-only, flash-sales site that curates the best gadgets, Amanda Peyton co-founded location-based site and app, MessageParty in 2010, according to Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Tracy Chou.

Tracy Chou

Company: Software engineer, Pinterest

Age: Under 30

About her: Tracy majored in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, but she was never quite sure EE was for her. While working towards her degree, she took a few computer science courses and discovered she loved it.

So after earning her Master's in Computer Science, she jumped right into the start-up world - and eventually made her way to Pinterest.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Angie Chang, inset.

Angie Chang

Company: Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, Founder, Director of Growth, of Women 2.0, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, Hackbright Academy

Age: 30

About her: Angie is currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Women 2.0. Aside from leading the editorial/content team at Women 2.0, Angie also manages Women 2.0′s online presence - from designing and building webpages for Women 2.0 conferences to managing social media marketing.

Previously, Angie held roles in product management and web UI design at various startups in the Silicon Valley. Angie holds a BA in English and Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Sarah Kunst, inset.

Sarah Kunst

Company: Retail Innovations Investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures

Age: 27

About her: Retail Innovations Investing at Mohr Davidow Ventures. Before becoming a retail innovations investor at Mohr Davidow Ventures, Kunst ran business development & product at fashion app Kaleidoscope, says Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Parisa Tabriz, inset.

Parisa Tabriz

Company: Chrome Security Engineering Manager

Age: 29

About her: Parisa Tabriz manages Google's information security engineering team at Google, which is responsible for improving Google's product security. This team of "hired hackers" conducts security design and code reviews, builds and enhances Google technology to make secure development possible and easy, conducts security engineering training, and does vulnerability response.

Parisa received her BS and MS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Meredith Perry.

Meredith Perry

Company: uBeam, Founder

Age: 24

About her: Meredith Perry is a first-time entrepreneur who recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in astrobiology. uBeam is a wireless charging device that can charge multiple devices at once, says Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Kathryn Parsons.

Kathryn Parsons

Company: CEO, Decoded

Age: 30

About her: Kathryn Parsons founded Decoded in 2011 to help people become digitally literate and learn how to code in just one day, says Business Insider.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Kristen Titus.

Kristen Titus

Company: Executive Director, Girls Who Code

Age: 28

About her: Kristen Titus is the Executive Director of Girls Who Code, leading the organisation's work to close the gender gap in technology and engineering.

She is a former consultant to non-profit organisations, foundations, and corporate partners working at the intersection of philanthropy and technology, and the former Managing Director of Jumo.com, the social network for the social sector from Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Heather Payne.

Heather Payne

Company: Founder, Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou

Age: 26

About her: She's the founder of HackerYou and Ladies Learning Code. Before that, she was ShopLocket's first investor and the founding director of Toronto's Mozilla-backed youth digital literacy initiative.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Kellee Khalil, inset.

Kellee Khalil

Company: Founder, Loverly

Age: Under 30

About her: She is the founder of Loverly, a network of wedding blogs. The network indexes photos for 35 wedding blogs and its members view 30 million images on the site every month.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Natalia Oberti Noguera.

Natalia Oberti Noguera

Company: Founder and CEO, The Pipeline Fellowship

Age: 29

About her: Natalia launched the Pipeline Fellowship, an angel investing bootcamp for women philanthropists, to increase diversity in the US angel investing community and create capital for women social entrepreneurs.

Natalia holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Economics from Yale.

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20 most important women under 30 in the tech world

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 20:26 IST
Sara Haider.

Sara Haider

Company: Engineer, Twitter

Age: Under 30

About her: Growing up, she studied ballet and figure skating competitively. But love for video games and the web pulled her towards computer science, and it led her to pursue Software Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Currently, Sara is a software engineer at Twitter.