Here’s why female tech leaders gained so many followers overnight

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Overnight recognition is something we all think and dream about. All it takes is one person to acknowledge someone else’s hard work for things to really start taking off, as we’ve seen time and time again.

Though it’s more of a wish than reality for most, such was the case for hundreds of women in tech this month – and it all began with a female tech entrepreneur named Tracy Lee. Lee is the founder of This Dot Labs, a company providing teams everywhere with adept technical leaders to help businesses succeed.

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Lee uses platforms like her Instagram and Twitter pages to promote tech projects and conferences that she attends. Over the course of the past few months, Lee has met many other inspiring women in tech at these events as well as online. This past Saturday, Lee took to Twitter to release a list she’s compiled over the past few months of awesome women to follow in the tech industry:

Soon afterwards, the tweet took off as people of the Twittersphere passed Lee’s list along, adding their own suggestions of women to follow. The result was a snowball effect of women in the tech industry supporting each other, discovering one another and being seen for their contribution to the tech world.

Lee’s ‘fempire’ names approximately 300 women, including @codingCommander, who creates free programming tutorials:

The list also features @wisecobbler, editor of a Newsletter that familiarizes people with programs like GraphQL, React, and Flux:

Lee’s list contains people from students to teachers to moms to bloggers to CEOs. It is entirely inclusive and is not based on follower count or sphere of influence. She mentions that she formed the list over the course of a few months and did not discriminate based on pre-existing internet clout: “I started following all women I see in tech as a simple way of supporting them,” she tells Refinery29.

Damn, gotta love it.

The tech industry is one that is increasingly relevant with each passing day. We often affiliate people like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg with these industries, despite the fact that, like with every industry, women are an integral part of its success.

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Sometimes, though, women’s voices are obscured due to a  lack of representation. This is why what Lee’s doing is so crucial – using her own platform to shed light on other female tech leaders is something that’s already had an impact on women in the tech community. And that’s exactly what Lee, and so many others, have demonstrated.

To see Lee’s full list of women to follow in tech, click here.

Prepare to be inspired, and get to following (aka supporting) these fantastic women.

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