Women are (relatively) few and far between in the tech industry.
They make up less than 10% of venture capitalists, and they leave the industry at twice the rate of men, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation.
There's also a shortage of women pursuing engineering, particularly software engineering.
But the women who do choose to enter the tech industry in one way or another are doing incredibly important work.
Over the last couple of weeks, Business Insider accepted nominations for the most important women 30 years old or under in tech. We combined those nominations with our own research to give our readers a definitive list and ranking.
We were truly blown away by the number of young, successful women in the tech industry. These women hold a variety of roles in the industry: founder, CEO, engineer, venture capitalist — you name it.
30. Ruzwana Bashir
Co-founder, Peek
Age: 29
About: Ruzwana Bashir is a rising star in the startup industry. Her startup Peek attracted investments from two top-notch tech execs: Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt.
Bashir started her career at Goldman Sachs, and then went over to Blackstone. She got her first taste of the startup world when she joined Gilt Groupe, working under Kevin Ryan. She later went to Artsy where she was a member of the founding team.
29. Samantha John
Co-founder, Hopscotch
Age: 26
About: Samantha John founded Hopscotch Technologies in 2011. The startup recently launched its flagship app, where kids program their own games and animations. Before Hopscotch, John worked as a developer at Pivotal Labs.
What people are saying about her: Samantha John is "a generally badbass programmer and advocate for people of all ages learning to program."
28. Callie Schweitzer
Director of Marketing and Communications, Vox Media
Age: 24
About: Callie Schweitzer oversees corporate brand management and awareness, and audience growth for SB Nation, The Verge, and Polygon. Prior to joining Vox Media, Schweitzer worked as deputy publisher at Talking Points Memo. While at Talking Points Memo, Schweitzer played a key role in the company's efforts to increase traffic through distribution deals with Google and Yahoo. Last month, Time magazine named her Twitter feed one of the world's best last month.
What people are saying about her: "I don't think I'm overstating things when I say Callie will likely be running the media world by the time she is thirty (or whatever the 'media world' looks like by that point). She is literally the future of media."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider