Today we celebrate Dr. Anuranjita Tewary, who continues to make significant contributions to the tech world. In 2010 she partnered with Iridescent to launch Technovation, a program that encourages girls to take an interest in STEM fields, specifically entrepreneurship in the tech start-up world. In the video above, she speaks about the importance of mentorship and how women can help other women to both grow and better the technology sector.

Dr. Anuranjita Tewary graduated from MIT with a BS in Physics & Mathematics w/ Computer Science in 1998 and continued her education at Stanford, completing her PhD in Applied Physics in 2006. She worked at Microsoft, AdMob, and Linkedin before becoming a founding partner at Level Up Analytics and launching Technovation.

TechCrunch covered the launch of the program back in 2010:

The Technovation Challenge is the Bay area chapter of Iridescent (a non-profit education group that links mentors to students) in partnership with Girls in Tech. Over the course of an eight week program, 45 high school girls and 25 mentors worked in teams to create an Android app from scratch and build out a marketing plan. The program culiminates in “Pitch Night,” an event held this evening at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View. The teams presented their apps and business plans to a panel of business leaders, consisting of Katherine Barr of Mohr Davidow Ventures, Mendel Rosenblum co-founder of VMWare and Adeo Ressi of The Funded. It’s a small program with grand ambitions: to close the huge divide between women and men in Silicon Valley.

“We wanted to expose them to high tech, connect them to mentors, and help them understand what opportunities are out there,” says Technovation Challenge’s founder, Anuranjita Tewary. “It’s about confidence.”

October 11th is Ada Lovelace Day! Today the world celebrates all of the accomplishments of women in science, art, design, technology, engineering, and math. Each year, Adafruit highlights a number of women who are pioneering their fields and inspiring women of all ages to make their voices heard. Today we will be sharing the stories of women that we think are modern day “Adas” alongside historical women that have made impacts in science and math.

Please promote and share #ALD16 with your friends and family so we can promote and share with all of the world wide web!