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Melody Meckfessel, Google Engineering Manager, Is A Woman You Should Know

The Woman At Google You Should Know About
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Melody Meckfessel is joining the ranks of fabulously inspiring women in tech.

Meckfessel is "a part-time wine maker and a single mother," as well as an engineering manager at Google. Cade Wetz at Wired interviewed Meckfessel about her work at Google, and what it's like to work in such a male-dominated profession. According to the New York Times, women earn just 18 percent of computer science degrees, and an April 2013 NPR report found that only 20 percent of American programmers are women.

Meckfessel, whose LinkedIn profile shows that she has worked at Google for at least nine years, told Wetz that in her early career she had two wardrobes -- the jeans and hoodies she'd wear to work to fit in with the other engineers, and the feminine clothing that she wore the rest of the time.

She also told Wired that changing her sartorial tastes was only one way she fit in in a male-dominated industry.

“I began working at startups in my early twenties, and then I worked at bigger software companies, and I’ve now been at Google,” she said in the same interview. “Over the years, I was generally the only woman in room, and I adapted, in many ways, to be one of the guys.”

Kelly Studer, a friend and colleague of Meckfessel's at Google, told Wired that Meckfessel earned her place at Google based on merit. “She’s not on a crusade to prove that women deserve to be in that place. She just knows she deserves to be in that place.”

Here's to more women finding their place -- and being themselves in it.

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Before You Go

The Most Buzzed About Female-Led Tech Startups Of 2013
Alexandra Chong -- Founder and CEO of Luluvise(01 of08)
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Chong is the founder and CEO of Luluvise, which The Good Web Guide described as a “male database which allows female users to shame or praise potential dates, exes or simply men they know." It's more colloquially known as a "Yelp for Men" and, according to Time, has been downloaded over 75,000 times. (credit:Twitter)
Poornima Vijayashanker -- Founder and CEO of Bizeebee(02 of08)
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Bizeebee helps fitness studios and other membership based businesses across the world grow. According to Bizeebee's website, Vijayashanker was inspired to start the company after consulting with local businesses looking to improve their management practices. She is also a dedicated athlete -- she practices Bikram Yoga and runs half-marathons. (credit:Twitter)
Leah Busque -- Founder and CEO of TaskRabbit(03 of08)
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Busque describes TaskRabbit as a service "for automating your most annoying errands and outsourcing your chores. Whether it's getting groceries, putting together furniture, or picking up a Craigslist purchase, Task Rabbit's network of reliable do-ers will take it off your hands." According to TaskRabbit's website, "since bootstrapping TaskRabbit in 2008, Leah has expanded the company nationally, grown the team to more than 60 employees, raised nearly $40 million in venture funding." (credit:TaskRabbit.com)
Amy Sheng -- Co-Founder of CellScope(04 of08)
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According to its website, “CellScope builds disruptive hardware and software systems for mobile disease diagnosis." According to INC.com, CellScope "also gives doctors the ability to capture a patient’s visual history over time…[it] ultimately aims to build a digital first aid kit for the home." (credit:CellScope)
Dr. Michal Tsur -- Co-Founder and Presidentof Kaltura(05 of08)
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Kaltura, according to its website, is "the world's first and only Open Source Online Video Platform." Tsur has also written for The Huffington Post about employing women in the tech industry and how video technology is the new frontier for schools. (credit:Kaltura)
Shikoh Gitau -- Founder of Ummeli(06 of08)
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Ummeli is "a mobile network that helps communities create their own employment opportunities." Kenyan tech blog iHub called Gitau, "passionate about technology especially mobile phones and their possible catalyst effect in empowerment and development," and wrote that, "Shikoh provides mentorship and support to various start-ups and research efforts in Africa both in the academia and industry that strive to make technology relevant, usable and useful in the everyday life of African users." Gitau was also the first African to win the Google Anita Borg award. (credit:LinkedIn)
Mary-Alice Brady -- CEO of MosaicHUB(07 of08)
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A graduate of Boston College and Boston College Law School, Brady worked as an attorney and in a venture capital firm before founding MosaicHUB. The Boston Business Journal described MosaicHUB as "an online community created to help entrepreneurs find the people and resources they need to succeed." (credit:Twitter)
Prita Uppal -- Founder and CEO of Hooked(08 of08)
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Hooked is a game recommendation app which, according to Forbes, "uses machine-learning algorithms to suggest apps with the highest potential relevance to users up to an exact percentage." Hooked has an impressive 24 percent conversion rate of apps suggested to its users (as compared to the more typical 3 percent response rate of mobile ads). (credit:LinkedIn)
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