Women in IT to Watch in 2026

Programming was created by a woman.

(Ada Lovelace)

WI-FI, Bluetooth and GPS technology were invented by a woman.

(Hedy Lamarr)

Even the first computers were operated by women.

(ENIAC programmers and Grace Hopper)

Without the work of these women, today’s IT landscape would look completely different.

As we have already accustomed you, at NewTech Academy we dedicate the month of March to women in technology. If last year we presented those female figures who made history in our industry, this year we stay in the present and look at the women in IT who are making a mark, in Romania and internationally – women who inspire us and whose initiatives make the world a better place, here and now.

The female personalities we present in this article were selected primarily for the operational scope of their work (either by holding executive positions in top companies, or by a portfolio of technical excellence in complex fields such as software engineering, system architecture or deep-tech). Second, all members of this unofficial top have a public discourse assumed, being actively present on prestigious international stages – such as TED conferences or global keynotes – or are authors of landmark works. They are also voices that constantly promote a progressive, egalitarian and inclusive perspective on how technological innovation influences society and human life.

Here are the pioneers worth taking inspiration from this year, both globally and on the Romanian innovation scene.

Global Female Technology Leaders

Lisa Su

As AMD’s chairman and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su has transformed the company into a high-performance computing giant (growing revenue from $5 billion to nearly $25 billion). Her vision for 2026 focuses on “yotta-scale computing” (1 yottaFLOPS = 10²⁴ floating-point operations per second) and a fundamentally accessible, human-centric AI infrastructure. Lisa Su is investing heavily to bring AI resources to underserved communities, demonstrating that innovation and equity can coexist.

Lisa chose industry over academia because she wanted to build real, tangible products that reach consumers. Her leadership philosophy is based on the idea that leadership skills are learned through experience, not innate. She emphasizes the importance of betting on often underappreciated talent and giving them real opportunities, recalling the moment she herself was given a huge opportunity at IBM to become a technical assistant to then-CEO Lou Gerstner.

Fei-Fei Li

Known as the “godmother of AI” and the inventor of ImageNet, Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Stanford Professor and co-founder of World Labs) is currently leading the transition to “spatial intelligence” (Large World Models). Author of the bestselling “The Worlds I See,” she strongly argues that AI is a cultural artifact that reflects our values. Through AI4ALL, she advocates for diverse developer teams, arguing that inclusion is a critical safety issue to prevent algorithmic bias.

In her roles as mentor, teacher, or CEO, she looks for one fundamental trait in young people: “intellectual fearlessness” – the courage to tackle an extremely difficult problem and dedicate yourself completely to solving it, ignoring the fear of failure.

Anne-Marie Imafidon

A distinguished mathematician and social entrepreneur, author of She’s In Ctrl, and co-founder of Stemettes, Dr. Imafidon is a radical voice for the democratization of technology. She has exposed over 50,000 young women to STEM fields and argues that “tech literacy” is essential for all citizens, not just the elite. She actively promotes the re-emergence of women’s history in technology (“herstory”) to inspire a new generation of creators and decision-makers.

She highlights how a lack of diversity negatively impacts product quality, with a few examples:

• Voice recognition: Early versions of voice assistants (like Siri) did not understand regional accents or female/child voices because they had been trained on a homogenous dataset.
• Automotive safety: Seat belts and airbags were originally designed for the “50th percentile man,” leading to the accidental injury or death of women and children.
• Health Apps and Image Algorithms: Ignoring menstruation in general health apps or algorithms that can’t correctly identify people of color demonstrate that exclusion leads to flawed technologies.

To succeed and positively impact the industry, Anne-Marie offers a series of tips for women in IT:

• Adopting a growth mindset: Constantly stepping outside of your comfort zone helps us get to where the “magic” happens.
• Visibility: The importance of owning and controlling your own life story (both internally, within the company, and externally).
• Experimentation: Treating failures as simple opportunities to measure data and learn.
• Mentoring vs. Sponsoring: A mentor gives advice, but a sponsor gives you opportunities to apply that advice.

Inspiration and Female Power in Romania

Elisabeta Moraru

As CEO and Country Director of Google Romania, Elisabeta Moraru, a leader with a background in communication sciences, approaches digitalization as a vital tool for social mobility. She has orchestrated programs through which thousands of public employees have been trained in the ethical use of AI and advocates for an empathetic leadership model that creates a safe environment for innovation and constructive mistakes.

In a podcast on the topic of measures against fake news, Elisabeta Moraru talks about digital education as a shield against manipulation. Although platforms like YouTube can put filters to eliminate harmful content, she emphasizes that Romania’s main vulnerability comes from the lack of education. In a society with a basic level of digital literacy, vulnerability to fake news is maximum. The CEO draws attention to the fact that Romania has the lowest percentage of adults in the EU who engage in lifelong learning. True digital literacy doesn’t mean swiping on screens, but knowing how to verify the veracity of a site, being able to make secure transactions, and comparing information from multiple credible sources.

Diana Țarfulea

Director of Engineering at Adobe Romania and leader of the Women in Tech® Romania organization, Diana Țarfulea is a living example of the synergy between top expertise (Machine Learning, multi-cloud) and activism for gender equity. She coordinates institutionalized mentoring programs and advocates against the authoritarian leadership model, instead supporting the empowerment of teams and the development of human capital as the main source of performance.

Diana says that she started as a software developer; being satisfied with her work, she could not imagine doing anything else in her career. Everything changed when her manager called her into the office and, without asking her, announced that she would take on a management position, arguing that he had noticed her leadership skills. Although she was initially frustrated, years later, during a leadership program in Germany, she had an epiphany: it wasn’t her technical skills that turned her into a leader, but the fact that someone noticed her, believed in her talent, and invested in it.

Ana-Maria Stancu

Founder of the E-Civis Association and RoboHub, Ana-Maria Stancu has dedicated her career to demystifying robotics. She was instrumental in bringing the first autonomous robot with UVD technology to a Romanian hospital (Matei Balș) and promotes inclusive programming education for all demographics. Her speech emphasizes that robots are collaborative assistants meant to enhance our quality of life, not a threat.

Ana-Maria Stancu clarifies a key difference in the modern world: today, completely new things are rarely invented, because we have reached a very advanced technological level. What we are doing now is innovating – that is, taking existing technologies and components (sensors, processors, motors) and integrating them into new business models that meet a real need. For example, she points out that it is not difficult to build a robot using off-the-shelf parts; the really difficult part is selling it and adapting it to the customer’s needs.

The above personalities are not just writing lines of code or management plans, they are actually drafting the policies, architectures, and philosophies that will govern our interaction with the digital environment for decades to come. From the development of spatial intelligence and state-of-the-art hardware infrastructures, to mass digital education and the democratization of access to resources, their impact is profound and lasting. Following their work and vision throughout 2026, we find inspiration and confidence in a bright direction in which our digital future is heading.