Women Pillars of the Wearables Industry in technology

A study conducted by CCS Insight regarding growth of the wearable market segment predicts this market to be worth $25 Billion in the next five years.

There was a time, when wearable were an untapped sector. Now, we can see many companies emerging in this segment. Indeed never forgetting that women also have an extensive history in the wearables field, let’s explore some of these women below:-

Aditi Chadha : Founder, CEO and Product Architect of Gurgaon-based Company, DAZL that manufactures wearables which combine Fashion with Intelligence. DAZL is a collection of luxe smart jewellery that sends location-based safety alerts to your loved ones with a single click. So DAZL is a perfect combination of Fashion, Hardware, Software and Data Analytics.

Bethany Koby

Bethany Koby is a mom, CEO, designer, art director and artist interested in creating brands, businesses and experiences that help imaging a more positive and collaborative future.Technology Will Save Us-this London-based company, co-founded by Bethany along with her partner Daniel Hirschmann in 2012, makes DIY kits and worked on the BBC micro:bit, a codeable computer given away free to one million schoolchildren. Koby’s latest device is the Kickstarted Mover Kit, a wearable that encourages kids to really play.

Billie Whitehouse

Billie Whitehouse is the co-founder, designer and creative director of Wearable Experiments. Since 2013, Wearable Experiments specializes in the combination of hardware, software and apparel for wearable technology products. Forbes recently compared Billie and her co-founder Ben Moir to Steve Jobs and Jerry Seinfeld. As director and designer Billie is invigorating the fashion industry and transforming it into a business focused on improving the quality of our lives.

Christina Mercando d’Avignon

She is the Founder and CEO of Ringly, a US-based company founded in 2013; that creates smart jewelry that pairs with your phone and allows you to stay connected to the people, messages, and notifications that are most important to you. Whether it’s at the dinner table, out with friends, or at an important meeting, you can keep your phone tucked away and set your mind at ease. Designed with precious and semi-precious stones and a beautifully crafted setting, its smart jewelry that keeps technology discreetly integrated into your life.

Corinne Vigreux

This woman from Amsterdam, Netherlands is the co-founder of Pune, India-based TomTomand Managing Director of its consumer business. Together with her fellow co-founders, she grew TomTom from a small start-up into the global player it is today.

Being a leader in technology innovation, TomTom is playing a major role in creating the cutting-edge technology that will empower consumers in the future of mobility through autonomous driving, smarter cities and health & wearables. TomTom wearables include the TomTom Touch Fitness Tracker, Golf GPS Watch, TomTom Runner 3 GPS Watches and many more.

Dr. Rosalind Picard

Professor Rosalind W. Picard, ScD is founder and director of the Affective Computing research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and co-director of the Media Lab’s Advancing Wellbeing Initiative. Also, she is the co-founder of Empatica, Inc. that creates wearable sensors and analytics to improve health.

Ekta Sharma

This Indian lady is the Head of Wearables Software Test Engineering & Quality at Google. Previously she was the Sr. Test Engineering Manager of Google’s Project Aura & Beyond. Besides, she has also worked with big companies like Intel and Virginia Mobile, USA.

Kate Unsworth

As Founder and CEO of VINAYA, previously Kovert Designs, Kate combines her knowledge of technology, her eye for design and her understanding of the fashion consumer to create collections of designer jewellery with hidden embedded electronics. Since 2013, this London- based VINAYA creates designer wearable technology to improve digital balance and mental wellness.

VINAYA’s ALTRUIS X is the connected bracelet that syncs seamlessly with your smartphone, via the VINAYA app – offering you curated inspiration, tools plus insights. Their first product line is ALTRUIS, a collection of designer wearable technology that helps you find digital balance. The Bluetooth-enabled jewellery filters notifications and sends subtle vibrations for the most important things, while you keep your smartphone out of sight.

Leah Buechley

This lady is a designer, engineer, and educator whose work explores intersections and juxtapositions–of “high” and “low” technologies, new and ancient materials, and masculine and feminine making traditions. Her contribution to the wearable industry includes the LilyPad Arduino toolkit.

It was designed by Leah Buechley for e-textiles and wearables projects, its microcontroller boards are designed to be sewn and help makers create interactive accessories and soft textile projects. Input from an accelerometer or light and temperature sensors can generate vibrations, LED lights or sound.

Lisa Lang

This woman from Germany is the Founder & CEO of ElektroCouture. Besides, she is also a Digital information technology and new media consultant for private sector, government and academic projects. ElektroCouture.is the first agency to pioneer bespoke,innovative electronic wearable technology for the fashion industry.

Liz Dickinson

This woman from Canada is the Founder & CEO of Mio Global. Named by wareable.com as one of the world’s most innovative influencers in wearable technology, Liz is a visionary who continues to drive forward her mission to positively change world health.

Since 1999, Liz has pioneered technology that gives people unique insights into their biology and physiological wellbeing. From creating the world’s first ECG accurate heart rate-tracking wrist wearable to launching the interactive online web-based portal for the assessment and remediation of lifestyle stress utilizing heart rate variability, Liz has been the industry leader in delivering accurate, continuous heart rate measurements that are still considered benchmarks today. Most recently, Liz has launched the AI based Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI), continuing her streak of changing the wearable industry, with PC Mag even calling it “the software platform that can save your life.”

Mary Lou Jepsen

Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen; well acclaimed for her work at Google [x], Facebook, Oculus, and One Laptop per Child in consumer electronics, computers, TV, VR, software and web services. Her breadth spans further into design, internet, automotive and medical devices. She is the Founder and CEO of US-based startup, opnwatr.io

She along with her startup opnwatr.io have a goal; i.e. to replace the functionality of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) with a consumer electronics wearable using novel opto-electronics to achieve comparable resolution to MRI.She believes that its implications could be broad; for detection and treatment of cancer, cardiovascular disease, internal bleeding, mental disease, neurodegenerative disease, and beyond.

Ruchika Sarma

This woman from Bangalore, India is a senior Software Engineer at Samsung, where works for the wearables team. Additionally she is an alumnus of prestigious Manipal Institute of Technology.

Ruchita Datta

Ruchita from Bangalore, India is the Senior Engineering Manager – Wearables, Android Apps and Cloud Experiences at Motorola, one of the world’s fastest growing smartphone providers. She has held various positions in the company; right from software engineer in 2002 to the present day position as Senior Engineering Manager. On the whole, she is a proven engineering leader with successful track record of building and launching high performance, scalable software solutions for customer facing products in Mobiles, Wearables, Cloud and embedded systems space.

Stacey Burr

She is the VP, Wearable Sports Electronics; Adidas. Lately we’ve seen Adidas buy Runtastic for a cool $240m as well as launch its Adidas Zone heart rate monitoring band to get kids moving. But we can’t help but think that there’s a big MiCoach product – be it a wearable or smart clothing range – to rival Under Armour’s heart rate monitoring band.

Urska Sršen

Urska from Slovenia has held numerous positions in the company, Bellabeat. Apart from being the Co-founder, she was once the COO and Creative Director of Bellabeat. At present, she is the CPO of the company. Founded in 2014, Bellabeatcreates beautiful, innovative products that help women easily track their overall health and wellness, and get connected to their body and mind throughout different stages in life.

Leaf by Bellabeat is a smart piece of jewelry that works with Leaf app and tracks woman’s activity, sleep, reproductive health and helps her relax with guided meditation exercises. Bellabeat.com Leaf Urban is the second edition in Bellabeat’s health tracking line and the first wearable that predicts stress. bellabeat.com/urban

Yasmine Mustafa

This woman from the United States, Yasmine Mustafa is a tech entrepreneur, community leader and Founder of ROAR for Good. This company creates Self-defense wearable technology that diminishes attacks against women and addresses the underlying source of violence.

Since 2014, they’re engineering safety accessories that disorient an attacker, alerts family and friends, calls for help, and cannot be used against the wearer. Their device called Athena is a simple device with a big mission – to protect women with the touch of a button. It has two modes – one for emergencies and another for discreet situations.

Pre order yours at roarforgood.com.

From the above examples, we see increasing participation of women in the wearables segment. It’s time to make best use of their technology and patronize their efforts.

Did you ever expect such growing participation from women in tech? What are your views? Please share them in the comments section below:

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