Just to add a couple obvious ones (and happy to share more if you want to contact me – I have a long list):

Judy Estrin – former CTO of Cisco, founder of 3 companies, board member at Disney & FedEx
Katie Mitic – EIR at Kleiner (formerly Yahoo, Four11, founder/CEO of Desktop, Zazzle)
Julie Farris – founder of Scalix (was EIR at Mayfield Ventures)
Krisztina Holly – Vice Provost at USC and head of the Stevens Institute (former entrepreneur)
Laurie Baird – New Product Technology Platform Strategy at Turner New Media
Susan Ehrlich – GM of Sears Financial
Robin Abrams – Firefly Mobile (formerly Palm, Verifone, HP, Apple)
Peg Jackson – Managing Director at NeoCarta Ventures (formerly at NBC)
Aliza Peleg – N. American Labs, SAP
Jennifer Fonstad – Managing Director at DFJ
Robin Wolaner – founder of TeeBeeDee (formerly founded Parenting, was at CNET, Sunset)
Sonia Arrison – PRI

not really, we already have a solid group of men/women consultants already and not enough women executives from public companies. It’s not balanced – we found that we have tons of male executives willing to speak but can’t seem to find many women executives in senior positions willing.

So your criteria ruled me out, because I’m a consultant. I work with all kinds of interesting companies. I have great stories. I’m a dynamic speaker. But I don’t meet your criteria because I’m a consultant. (I became a consultant because it afforded me more personal freedom and because I’m too impatient to work inside companies. My impatience is a feature as a consultant.)

Why do you think you need people who work for a company? The real key is to find people who are great at what they do, can articulate why, and won’t sell from the platform. Plenty of us (female and male) out there.

At my conference, Supernova, close to 20% of the speaker list is typically women. I’d like it to be still higher, but I don’t know of any general tech conference that regularly does better. It requires a commitment from the organizer, and I just don’t think most event planners see gender balance as a priority. Clearly, Debbie does, which is wonderful.

As has been mentioned, there is no shortage of great women out there. Many of those mentioned in this thread have spoken at Supernova in recent years. And there are people like Deborah Schultz (a great marketing expert) who are not necessarily executives at big companies, but are really savvy with a lot of knowledge to relate. I try to find places for people like that at my event, even if it’s not a traditional speaking role, to bring them into the community — having smart women on stage is only part of the equation.

Amen Jeremy – there are a ton of good women speakers – why do we need to limit to the inner inner sanctum of web 2.0 land – too much self referential stuff – fresh perspectives are great!

Kathy Sierra? http://headrush.typepad.com/about.html

You look around the large corporations in technology, and there are more than plenty of competent, REAL business women (none of the Web 2.0 stuff) that are out there. I can think of quite a few off the top of my head.

Ping me, and we’ll catch up.

And don’t forget Europeans. There’s

Me – Suw Charman, social software consultant, and Exec Dir of the Open Rights Group UK
Stephanie Booth, social software consultant, Switzerland
Dr Jo Twist, community expert, currently at IPPR, UK (not sure of her job title)
Paula le Dieu, MD, Magic Lantern, UK
Becky Hogge, Open Democracy, UK
Jo Walsh, UK
Alice Taylor, was BBC in the UK but now in Los Angeles

Just a few off the top of my head. (I run more in entreprenuer circles than big business, but you shouldn’t dismiss the knowledge held by people outside big business.)

From the Israeli hi-tech scene:

* Dr. Orna Berry, Venture Partner with Gemini Israel Funds
(http://www.gemini.co.il/about_venture.html, former former Chief Scientist of Israel, succesful
entrepreneur and chairperson of several start-ups.

* Yael Elish, CEO, eSnips (start-up) – http://www.esnips.com/

Mary Coleman from Waldent International is both savvy and has some authority.

… Even if Walden Internetional declined to invest in RadioTime when they last had the chance

Julie Palen, Founder and CEO www.internoded.com

Further to Renee Blodgett’s plug on June 5, Wf360 would like to offer more information on our CEO, Susan Willett Bird, Esq. Susan speaks on a variety of business leadership issues and is on top of the latest word-of-mouth marketing craze with her “Brandversation” tool. An overview can be found here: http://www.wf360.com/wwdo/susan.htm

I would also highly recommend Sarah Pate, CEO of AdMission, a mulitmedia ad creation/marketing firm. Sarah has been a speaker at multiple newspaper conferences and shows on local search I planned for The Kelsey Group when I was there. She’s excellent and sees the big picture, especially in terms of the predicament of traditional media and its relationship to the Internet. But she can also speak on purely Internet-related subjects. She also has a very pragmatic orientation and can speak about viable business models, which is often missing from a lot of new and emerging technology events.

It’s so wonderful to see all these posts. Our business is Outstanding Women Speakers Inc., an all-women’s bureau representing women keynotes, motivators, experts and entertainers from across Canada and the United States (we’re based near Toronto). We currently have over 150 women online (with diverse talents and areas of expertise) and are really excited about the growth potential (we’re the first of this kind in Canada and third in the world). We have a blog too – we’d love to interact with everyone.
Susan

You can find them! Here’s a keynote I heard just a few days ago who might be related to your interests:

Mitchell Baker
“Chief Lizard Wrangler” and president of Mozilla Corp. (www.mozilla.com), widely known for its Internet applications Firefox and Thunderbird.

If there were a dictionary entry for “business savvy – female,” you would no doubt find listed there the name Sarah Pate. Sarah is the President & CEO of AdMission Corp,a leader in enhanced ad creation, display and distribution. I can think of few women more knowledgeable about the Internet and advertising in the 21st century than Sarah. In addition, she is a charming and engaging speaker, and well-deserves to be on your list. Find out more about Sarah and her company at www.admissioncorp.com.

better yet – call re:invention.
We connect corporations (our clients) with enterprising women (women executives and CEOs).
We’ve worked with Genworth, Springboard, iDC, Phatnoise and more….

kindly,
kirsten

Are you kidding me?

Begin with BlogHer (For Fun).

Then contact Amy Millman at Springboard Enterprises (www.springboardenterprises.org) for access to her Springboard alumni database
of women CEOs leading VC-backed biotech and tech firms.

Connect with the Exec Directors at the Women’s Technology Cluster and Northwestern’s Center for Women Entrepreneurs
in Technology. Or the good women at NCWIT.

Check out the women’s speaker wiki (hosted by the boys at socialtext)
and outstanding women speakers, inc. (www.outstandingwomenspeak.com)

Finally, if all else fails – try NAWBO (they have an excellent speakers bureau although I admit to being a bit biased —
I serve on the NAWBO National Leadership Council).

kindly,
kirsten

What about Deborah Schultz, one of the early women on the web, early WWWAC organizer, recently of SixApart and Glam.com?

There were a few women, many Canadian, that presented at the mesh conference (http://www.meshconference.com/).

Tara Hunt, Pinko Marketing
Malgosia Green, Nuvvo eLearning
Leila Boujnane, idee
Amber MacArthur

Regarding mesh, it was duly noted that there were in total not that many women though. See http://chrisnolan.ca/ID/952 or http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/lisawalker/archive/2006/05/17/2914.aspx

I would add Lucinda Holt, CEO of Commerce360 (http://www.commerce360.com/). Lucinda is an accomplished technology CEO and has led a number of successful startup companies. Dynamic and thoughtful speaker.

Couple more names for you.
Christine Herron, Omidyar Network
Ann Winblad, Hummer Winblad
Chris Shipley, Guidewire Group
Anne Grimes, WSJ

You might also find this list of interest:

http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/women_tech_culture.html

What about:
Susan Bird, CEO of wf360
Janice Fraser, CEO of Adaptive Path
Theresia Ranzetta, Managing Partner with Accel Partners
Maggie Canon, advisory board of Glam, founding Editor of four magazines, co-host of the weekly television show Twenty-First Century Home on HGTV, and the editor of book series America 24/7.
Heidi Roizen, Mobius Ventures
Linda Stone, former Apple
Rebecca Lieb, Jupiter/ClickZ, etc.
Susan Bratton – on the board of AdTech, sits on a bunch of boards, great speaker
Amy Wohl, Wohl Associates
Kara Swisher, WSJ

I would also put forward the name of Deborah Scharfetter, VP of Products at Above All Software – she is bright, extremely articulate and has had significant start-up and enterprise experience, and has talked at multiple conferences. Full disclosure – she is a colleague of mine.

Heidi Roizen – Mobius Venture Capital Association, Chairwoman elect for the NVCA.

Lucy Sanders – CEO of National Center for Women & Information Technology (www.ncwit.org).

Marie Alexander – CEO of Quova

Andrea Baptiste – CEO of Atreus

Jean Kovacs – CEO of Comergent

Feel free to drop me an email if you want an intro to any of them.

Hi Debbie,

Thanks to Dimitar, above, for already putting my name in front of you. I’d also point you toward the Speakers’ Wiki organized by Mary Hodder and Ross Mayfield last year in part to assist with just the issue you raise: http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi And here’s my page on the wiki: http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?denise_howell

I’d be happy to participate in one or more of your events. In fact, I was trying to schedule-juggle to make it up for Under the Radar next week, but it’s just not going to happen this time unfortunately. Hopefully next one.

A must add to the list: Amanda Reed, partner at Palomar Ventures (Palo Alto office).
Wicked smart and witty.

Fresh faces with dynamic speaking abilities are popping up at the WITI (Women in Technology International) Conference Series . Info at http://www.witi.com/center/conferences/

Again, to balance out the Pro-Google lobby, how about Patricia Schroeder president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers who in a notable public figure (former congresswomen and feminist doyen and all that) who could address questions of copyright and Goggle’s contempt thereof when such mundane matters interfere with its moneymaking activities.

Also, are there no women of Amazon?

I would second a whole bunch of these folks. In particular, Eileen Gittins would be fantastic.

Not yet on the list but an amazing speaker and thinker is Nicole Wong, Google’s Associate General Counsel.

Wow, this is an awesome list, thanks for sending these names over. This is incredibly helpful. It seems like I’m not the only one who’s having this issue. Although, I still feel like we are heavily weighted on the blogger/media/consumer types (is that because the folks reading are in bloggers?).

I’m trying to find more senior level executive/dealmaker types from companies like MSFT, AOL, NBC/Universal, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Cisco, Sun, Intel, MTV, IAC, Newscorp., Apple, Adobe….why is this so hard?

Well, I really enjoying speaking, especially about social media, web 2.0 and convergence on the web–but there are many good speakers. Some women who consistently wow
include Lisa Stone of Blogher, Top Ten Sources CEO and blogger Halley Suitt, OPML guru and local citizen journalist Lisa Williams, Forrester analysts Charlene Li,
and mobile media start-up maven Anita Wilhelm, whom I met through Mary Hodder. Ellen Simonoff, Anna Zornosa are both fabulous female entrepeneurs
running interesting businesses (disclosure: Anna is my boss at Y!Personals). Marnie Webb, VP TechSoup, is fascionating and impassioned, as is
my hero Rebecca KcKinnon of Harvard’s Global Voices Project. And then theres…lots of other women…just look around–they ARE there.

Debbie, you’ve got quite a list now….

Two not on there:
Rebecca Buckman, WSJ
Anne Mitchell, Partner, Fidelity Ventures

Denise Howell, intellectual property lawyer
Xochi Birch, Bebo
Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker
Anastasia Goodstein, Current TV
Anina, anina.net
Staci D. Kramer, Paidcontent
Daniela Waschow, openBC
Evelyn Rodriguez
Darla Mack, mobile technology
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2005/12/my-dream-media-team.html

VentureChicks
A directory of blogs from women in the venture community
- Christine Herron
- Esther Dyson
- Kara Nortman
- Sachi Gahan
- Sophie Forest
- Tali Aben
http://spacejockeys.blogs.com/venturechicks/

Just to keep the list fresh, Jeff Clavier just sent me his suggestions.

- Heather Harde, SVP M&A Fox Interactive Media
- Beatrice Taska, CEO Mobissimo
- Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
- Tali Aben, GP Gemini Israel Funds
- Heidi Rozen, GP Mobius
- Theresia Ranzetta, GP Accel
- Amanda Congdon, RocketBoom
- Clare Hart, Dow Jones

How about Tara Hunt?

Mary Hodder’s speakers wiki was created in large part for this purpose: https://www.socialtext.net/speakers/

Her explanation of the project is at http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000511.html

Good for you, Bradley!

Hope

First off, you’ve got to fix affiliations:

Caterina Fake should be Flickr, Yahoo Technology Development
danah boyd should be Yahoo Research Berkeley
Susan Mernit should be Yahoo Personals

In addition, please add the following Yahoos. They are all influential thought leaders and great speakers and presenters:

Sue Decker (Yahoo CFO)
Joy Mountford (Yahoo Design)
Irene Au (Yahoo Product Group)
Julie Herendeen (VP of Platforms, Yahoo)
Ellen Salisbury (Dir. Yahoo Research Berkeley)
Jennifer Dulski (Dir. Yahoo Autos)

Emily Chang of ehub? I have never heard her speak or seen her. But she sure does know Web 2.0!

Part of the problem for you in finding female speakers is that women are so notably absent from the ranks of A-list Web 2.0 bloggers. Emil Chang is about it, as far as I can tell, save for female librarians of the Library 2.0 variety. Where are the female equivalents of Steve Rubel, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Michael Arrington?

Tara Calishain of Research Buzz and Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Services are both smart and savvy analysts of search technology. I think Calishain is the more deeply knowledgeable, but she is isn’t as engaging a speaker as Bates is. They both are part of the lineup at many of the search and/or librarianship conferences sponsored by Information Today. They are not big time executives, but they know search inside and out. I also heard an outstanding presentation at the 2006 Online Northwest Conference by a young librarian named Rachel Bridgewater, Washington State University Vancouver. She can give a bang-up presentation on how to use Firefox like a demon.

Marshall Kirkpatrick who knows a huge amount about Web 2.0 seems to think a lot of Beth Kanter:

http://www.bethkanter.org/about.htm

and probably could name quite a few women as potential speakers, as he is well connected in the Web 2.0 sphere.

I heard Elizabeth Lane Lawley speak at Internet Librarian 2005. She is a knowledgeable and capable speaker on the matter of social software. Comes across as a bit pompous and self-important, but oh well. She knows her subject.

That list is way too heavily weighted with Google gals. You should approach the competition for suggestions.

Hope

Jackie Fewell, founder of FatCow.com – founded FatCow Web Hosting in 1998, sold it to Endurance International Group, Inc. in 2004.

Suzie Reider – SVP of CNET Networks – recently promoted to head our entertainment group, including GameSpot, TV.com and MP3.com. Smart as hell and very nice to boot.

Susan Bratton – CEO of Cendara and chair of Ad Tech. Very knowledgable about online advertising and media. Great presenter and a very good person.

Hi Deb – I met Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb this morning. She’d make a great speaker – approachable, articulate, interesting, passionate – and her company is a perfect profile for UTR.

Great rant btw.

These are such great suggestions, thanks a bunch.

Hi, Here are some startup savvy women from Europe. The first two are founders of fast growing startups and the other two are VCs.

Kelly Richdale: Founder of facial recognition startup A4Vision, and Managing Director EMEA (www.a4vision.com)
Ann Louise Palm: Co founder and CEO of Appear Networks, a wireless netwrk software co.(www.appearnetworks.com)
Maisy Ng: Founder and Partner of Add Partners ( a London-based VC)
Anne Glover: Partner at Amadeus (a UK VC firm)

To add to that, it’s difficult to stay away from the same people who you always see at “every” conference. Not to say that seeing them again is a bad thing, mind you. We had a few women speakers at last year’s Gnomedex, too – not as many as I would have liked to have had, however.

ok, this is a rant…so forgive me.

As you all know, we produce the Under the Radar conference and several others as well. I’m proud to say that we are able to attract some really smart, influential executives, VCs and journalists to participate in many of them. Unfortunately, 95% of them are men. Incredibly bright, articulate men, but still…men.

Over the years, I’ve had many women ask me why I don’t have more women on my panels….For every person who says that to me, I ask them to think of 3 women I should invite and they are usually left standing quietly, thinking…hmmm who’d be good for that, gee, that’s pretty tough. The reality is, I’m picking from a pretty small group of women and in this business, you’re up against the travel schedules of the executive – the higher level they are, the harder they are to track down. So if 50% can’t do it due to scheduling, 20% just don’t respond to the invite and 20% of the marketing people try to push a male executive they want to give “exposure” to, I’m back to my slim pickin’s.

I’ve done a little poking around at some other conferences just to see, here’s a list of a few recent ones from O’Reilly, SuperNova, IBDNetwork, Gnomedex, PC Forum and “D”:

Esther Dyson
Caterina Fake, Flickr
Tina Sharkey, AOL
Lili Cheng, MSFT
Ellen Warms, IBM
Kim Polese, SpikeSource
Mary Hodder, Dabble
Beth Comstock, NBC Universal
Marissa Myer, Google
Jennifer Feiken, Google
Megan Smith, Google
Danah Boyd
Susan Mernit
Halley Suitt
Mena Trott, Six Apart
Charlene Li
Diane Greene, VMWare

Pretty short list huh? Ok, so here’s what I need help with…..please send me names, or introduce me to, smart women executives, VCs, journalists etc. that should you think would be a fit for our conferences – or any of the big conferences for that matter (we produce others people’s as well). BUT, don’t send me names of women just because they’re women and work at a company – they still have to have some level of influence or decision making power.

We are interested in the dealmakers, women who are in charge of acquiring, investing in, partnering with, analyzing or writing about private companies. As well as successful entrepreneurs who can talk about their experiences running companies. It would be great if they were dynamic and outspoken as well…but not a requirement