Podcast: Blank on Blank (LS 34 · TOP 5% what is this?)
Episode: Dame Stephanie Shirley on Survival Code
Pub date*: 2016-03-15

Notes from The Listener:

Narrated excerpts from a recently rediscovered interview with a major British tech pioneer. Stephanie Shirley left school at 18 in the early 1950s with an aptitude for mathematics, and soon found her niche in the growing field of computing. As she says here, in the early days the hybrid mechanical-intellectual work of maintaining a computer was often considered “women’s work”, since it was repetitive and considered akin to secretarial work like filing. She went on to found her own billion dollar company and pioneer the practice of working from home

“I have to make my life worth saving, and each day you spend as if it would be your last” – Dame Steve Shirley in 2010

Dame Stephanie Shirley might be the most successful tech entrepreneur you have never heard of. In the early 1960s, Shirley started a barrier-breaking, all-woman software company that would eventually be valued at $3 billion. From a rarely heard oral history at The British Library, Shirley takes us on the journey from fleeing Nazi Germany as a little girl to breaking through in the new world of computers despite not being taken seriously as a woman working from home.

Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/dame-stephanie-shirley

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