Slate & Tablets

I like to highlight awesome ladies in science and technology because the girls in my classes really need role models. They need them badly. If men in the science and tech industries are harangued by stereotypes, the women have it worse, and even more so when you look at media coverage of the biggest IPOs, announcements, and tech products. Each year, I pick one lady to highlight as the “Badass Chick of the Year”, a spinoff to the Z-100 radio station’s “Badass Chick of the Day”. Admittedly, most of this usually falls to Marie Curie, who was awesome, but I was happy to find one in the programming area for my computer science classes.

This years award goes to… (drumroll please) …

 Lyndsey Scott: Underwear model and…Software Developer?

I thought my professional combination was strange, but this one makes mine look pedestrian. Lyndsey Scott is not only an underwear model and a software developer, she’s a damn good software developer. I’ve interacted with her on Stackoverflow numerous times: her insight to problem solving is typically concise, informed, and efficient. What I love about Lyndsey is she’s turned her second passion, development, into a valuable trait for her modeling career. She’s able to develop her own websites and encrypt her photo assets, amongst other technologically important things.

I know many are about to ask, “do we really want to encourage our girls to become underwear models?” The answer, perhaps not so obviously, is “only if they’re truly passionate about it,” but that’s what Lyndsey represents. She pursued both of her passions, modeling and programming, to extremely successful and lucrative ends. Just this last piece is the true definition of success: pursuing one’s passions to lucrative and successful ends, be it financially or emotionally. To me, a role model is anyone who has identified one of their passions and within five seconds of talking to them, you immediately know it. For girls, this is incredibly important, since high school is a time when young ladies are particularly vulnerable to peer pressure. While young men generally have their time of self discovery towards the end of their high school or beginning of college careers, the girls generally develop sooner, and high school is the time when they come into their own. Demonstrating real ability to stay true to oneself and follow one’s passions is of vital importance in my opinion, and that’s why this highlight exists. This, combined with the obstacles facing women in the tech industry today, is more than enough to warrant selecting Lyndsey Scott as the badass chick of the year.