Tech's Most Powerful women

Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corp, Anne M Mulcahy tops the list of the most powerful tech women. She became CEO of Xerox in August 2001, and chairman on January 1, 2002. Mulcahy is credited of having pulled Xerox out of a near-fatal slump in 2002. Her ideas include colour printing, eco-friendly technologies and lucrative consulting services. To compete with rivals like Canon and Hewlett-Packard, Mulcahy doubled Xerox's software R&D budget to $1.5 billion. She began her Xerox career as a field sales representative in 1976 and assumed increasingly responsible sales and senior management positions. From 1992-1995, Mulcahy was vice president for human resources, responsible for compensation, benefits, human resource strategy, labor relations, management development and employee training. Mulcahy became chief staff officer in 1997 and corporate senior vice president in 1998. Prior to that, she served as vice president and staff officer for Customer Operations, covering South America and Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Mulcahy earned a bachelor of arts degree in English/journalism from Marymount College in Tarrytown, NY. In addition to the Xerox board, she is a board director of Catalyst, Citigroup Inc, Fuji Xerox Company, Ltd, Target Corporation, The Washington Post Company, and is the chairman of the corporate governance task force of the Business Roundtable.










Co-President of Oracle Corporation, Safra A Catz ranks at no. 15 on the list. An Oracle veteran, she served as an Executive Vice President from November 1999 to January 2004, and as Senior Vice President from April 1999 to October 1999. Safra A Catz has served as a President since January 2004, as Chief Financial Officer since November 2005, and as a Director since October 2001. The magazine praises Catz for overseeing Oracle's numerous acquisitions -- the company's stock was recently trading near its five-year high. An Israeli, Catz held a key role in $10.3 billion takeover of software rival PeopleSoft. Prior to Oracle, Catz was at Donaldson and Lufkin & Jenrette, global investment banks. A bachelor's degree holder from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, she later pursued law from the University's Law School.

Head of Hewlett-Packard's $38 billion division, Ann Livermore ranks at no. 33 in the list of Forbes list of most powerful women. Among the 25 highest-paid women, her group includes servers, storage, software, and services for corporate clients. The products and services from this organization reach business and public sector customers of all sizes in more than 170 countries. Livermore rose through the ranks in sales, marketing and research and development. She was on the short list of possible HP chiefs to replace Carly Fiorina. For more than two decades, Livermore has been involved with building solutions to help HP customers manage and transform their technology. Livermore was elected a corporate vice president in 1995 after holding a variety of management positions in marketing, sales, research and development, and business management. She joined the company in 1982. Livermore holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's degree in business administration from Stanford University. In 1997, Livermore was elected to the board of directors of United Parcel Service.

A first timer on the list is President of Yahoo Inc, Susan Decker. Ranked at no. 50 on the list, according to the magazine, Decker has used the turmoil caused by Microsoft Corp's attempted acquisition of Yahoo to reorganise her company. As the president of Yahoo Inc, Decker is a key participant in determining Yahoo's business strategy and vision. She is responsible for all of the global business operations of Yahoo, including sales, product marketing, product, and distribution across the three major customer groups of audience, advertisers and publishers. Prior to that, from December 2006 -- June 2007, she served as the head of one Yahoo's two major business units, the Advertiser and Publisher Group (APG). Prior to her APG role, Decker was executive vice president and chief financial officer from June 2000 -- June 2007, managing all aspects of the company's financial and administrative direction within key functional areas, including finance, facilities, investor relations (and human resources and legal through December 2006). Before Decker joined Yahoo in June 2000, she was with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) for 14 years. Most recently, she served as the global director of equity research, a $300 million operation, where, among other things, she was responsible for building and staffing a non-US research product based on global sector teams. Before serving as DLJ's global and domestic head of research, she spent 12 years as an equity research analyst, providing coverage to institutional investors on more than 30 media, publishing, and advertising stocks. In this capacity, she received recognition by Institutional Investor magazine as a top rated analyst for ten consecutive years. Decker holds a Bachelor of science degree from Tufts University, with a double major in computer science and economics, and a master of business administration degree from Harvard Business School.

At no. 97 on the list is the senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services, Virginia Rometty. The division encompasses IBM’s consulting, systems integration and applications businesses, with 2007 revenues of $18 billion and a workforce of more than 100,000 professionals worldwide. During her tenure, Rometty led the integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting -- the largest acquisition in professional services history -- creating the industry's largest team of business consultants and services experts to help clients apply information technology to optimise business performance. Prior to this, she was general manager of IBM Global Services, Americas, where she led a team of more than 75,000, and was responsible for strategic leadership, operations and client relationships. Rometty has also served as the general manager of strategy, marketing and sales operations for IBM Global Services worldwide. Before joining IBM's services business, Rometty was general manager of IBM's Global Insurance and Financial Services Sector, where she led IBM's business strategy for the worldwide insurance marketplace, with responsibility for marketing, sales and consulting. She also supervised the operations of IBM's Insurance Research Centers in New York, Switzerland and Japan, and was in charge of IBM's insurance solutions development worldwide.