Sun exec wants more girls to count in technology field

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 28, 2006 at midnight

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Barbara Bauer knows girls count, and she wants to see their ranks in the technology field multiply.

Bauer, Sun Microsystem's vice president of software engineering and development at the company's Louisville campus, last month was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame for her efforts to inspire young women to enter the field.

Bauer's initiatives include Girls Count, a nonprofit Colorado group that helps promote math, science and technology education. The Girls Count materials now are incorporated into the Girl Scouts, which gives the program a national platform.

She also co-authored a business book used by the University of Denver's business school and served on committees on women's issues when she worked at Bell Labs and U S West.

The Denver resident, who earned her undergrad and graduate degrees in physics, didn't intend for a career in computer science. But she became so intrigued with the computer technology she was using to do her physics calculations that her first job out of school was doing software engineering for IBM.

How to attract new blood into the technology field:

The data pretty visibly shows that U.S. enrollment in engineering, science and math programs have declined. A lot of that has to do with skepticism of young people who followed the technology burst and saw all of the jobs lost.

But particularly with regard to young women, we haven't done a good job of communicating just how much fun it is and how connected you can be to people and social issues. Young people think that you'll sit in front of a terminal all day, and that certainly isn't the case. You have all sorts of wonderful tools at your disposal that allow you to connect with people all around the world.

Her management philosophy:

I always get taken aback by that question because it sounds so profound. Really, you very simply have to understand what result you're trying to achieve, who or what can contribute and set in place the organizational structure so the goals stay aligned.

Management is all about communication and clarity, so people really understand what their objectives are. Because if there's ambiguity, there's inefficiency.

"You have to really work hard at articulating what you believe to be the aligned objectives and get that down in some sort of written way. It's important to have it written down because whatever you say can be interpreted a dozen different ways once you leave the room.

How her hikes have informed her world view:

When I moved to Colorado, I had the opportunity to experience hiking in the mountains and that got me thinking: Where are mountains in the rest of the world? And what would that experience be like if I were hiking in Nepal or Peru or Ethiopia or Greece?

When you actually have your feet on a trail or a path, you're seeing the country the way the people in the village see the country. If you're in a tour bus, there's an incredibly large mechanical device between you and any opportunity to interact with the country.

One of the things that you learn is that people rely on each other a great deal more in countries that don't have the wealth of the U.S. You really see what it means to be a community.

How that translated into her management style:

It has made me far more accepting of the diverse styles of people. Within every person there's a capacity to do work that they respect and that other people respect. And to figure out how to get a person into a job that matches - that's when management magic happens.

On Sun's partnerships with academic institutions, which she's involved with:

When you're looking for innovative technology, your lifeblood is smart people, and you need a steady stream of them coming out of academic institutions.

Young people want not only a living wage and good career potential, but they want to have an impact on the world. Again, this is a marketing question because there's nothing about our daily lives that doesn't use technology. We have to find more creative ways to get young people involved.

We have to change the way we use the curriculum so it looks like art class instead of icky class. If only we called it art class or P.E. and got them hooked on what they can do with it. We're having some success with music as young people start asking: How can I do this with my iPod?

In the U.S., the image of someone in this field is like Einstein - someone who is difficult to speak with and weird and geeky. Interestingly enough, India doesn't have this image. Their work force is young, and the focus on technology was created out of economic necessity. So their image is their own peer group.

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