Data Heroines: 5 Women Who Changed the Way We Understand the World
The data world owes a huge debt to women, many of whom broke barriers and built the foundations for how we work with data today. Here are five trailblazers who inspire me:
Florence Nightingale – Not just a nurse. She used data visualizations to change how healthcare was delivered in wartime.
Grace Hopper – A computer science pioneer who made programming accessible and logical.
Katherine Johnson – Her calculations literally got us to the moon. Enough said.
DJ Patil – One of the first Chief Data Scientists of the U.S., shaping national data policy.
Cathy O'Neil – Author of Weapons of Math Destruction, calling out bias in algorithms and data misuse.
These women didn’t just crunch numbers — they told stories, changed systems, and made data mean something. And that’s what I try to do every day.
We’re in a field that’s often perceived as cold or mechanical, but these women infused it with insight, ethics, and vision. Their legacies remind me that data isn’t about the tools — it’s about the change it can drive. And women have been at the forefront of that transformation all along.
If you’re a woman in data today, you’re standing on some seriously powerful shoulders. Let's keep climbing.
