Rana el Kaliouby and Tracy Chou's Formative Moments

As a belated celebration of #WomenInSTEM day, I wanted to share a couple of really great videos (and below explanation) shared with me. Enjoy!

Expanding the number of women pursuing careers in computer science is an ongoing challenge, partly because female tech leaders are underrepresented in the media. But Reddit and Google Cloud Platform are working to highlight the achievements of high-profile female tech pioneers, through a new web series called Formative.

The premise is simple: Formative invites tech innovators to share the one “formative” moment behind their success. The guests are nominated by Reddit’s Entrepreneur community, a group of over 170,000 members, who suggested innovators not just in business, but also in education, the arts, and science.

The series’ second episode features Rana el Kaliouby, the Chief Strategy & Science Officer at Affectiva. El Kaliouby shares the personal journey behind her start-up success—leaving Egypt to attend Cambridge and MIT, where she worked on developing wearable high-tech glasses for individuals with autism.



In the fifth episode, Tracy Chou, a software engineer at Pinterest, shares the story behind her decision to pursue computer science, and how she brought Silicon Valley hiring practices to the center of a national conversation about diversity in tech.



All episodes of the Formative series are available now on Reddit’s YouTube channel.