Women Who Made History in 2023
Women Who Moved the Needle in 2023
Across the landscape, there were some incredible women who made history in 2023. From Taylor Swift being named Time’s Person of the Year following her record breaking Eras Tour to Beyonce becoming the most honored artist in Grammy’s history by winning her 32nd award, there were plenty of moments across all fields that deserve to be praised for the impact that they made not only on this generation but the generations to come. Built By Girls wanted to highlight five women who are making a difference in the world of STEM and the historic contributions they made in 2023, here they are in no particular order.
Recently named to Time’s Most Influential People in AI 2023, Gebru has made a name for herself as one of the loudest voices for diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence. She is the former Co-Lead of Google’s Ethical AI team but left after authoring a paper that questioned the ethics of the AI language model at large, citing a desire for speed over safety. Since this event Gebru has become an icon in responsible AI. She is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) as well as the co-founder of Black in AI, a community of Black researchers working in the field.
This year Harvard professor Claudia Goldin became just the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in economic sciences and the first ever to win solo rather than sharing the honor. Goldin, 77, received the award for advancing the world’s understanding of women’s progress in the workforce. Her meticulous research delved into women’s participation into the job market over the last 200 years as well as the future. Showing the gains that women have made over time in the gender wage gap, Goldin illustrates that progress has recently stalled with women in the United States today making little over 80 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Last October Col. Nicole Mann became the first Indigenous woman astronaut in space. As mission commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission, Mann, a registered member of the Wailacki Tribe of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, spent 5 months aboard the International Space Station including becoming the first Indigenous woman to perform a space walk in January of this year. For her part in inspiring the next generation of women to reach for the stars Mann was named USA Today Women of the Year.
Being the Chief Technology Officer at Open AI, the company that develops AI products like ChatGPT and DALL-E has elevated Mira Murati to be one of the highest profile and most powerful people in the tech world. She was recently named to the TIME100Next list as well as the Fortune list of the Most Powerful Women of 2023. In November of 2023 Murati was briefly installed as the interim CEO of Open AI after Sam Altman was removed and then reinstated, returning Murati back to her role of CTO.
In 2023 Founder and CEO of Air Protein, Lisa Dyson, may have found a way to save our planet from both climate change and food insecurity in one miraculous discovery. Using work done previously by the NASA space program Dyson developed a method to create a meat alternative called Air Meat, using just microbes, water, renewable energy and elements found in the air to make food. “We make food without agriculture” as she elegantly puts it and may be saving our planet in the process.
