Meet the Women of Our Engineering and Maker World

Today is International Women's Day! March 8th, 2025, we take time to honor women, their contributions, and their influence on the world. Here at Hackster, we've curated a roundup of our favorite makers and engineers in our community.

Alex Glow

Alex Glow, a passionate advocate for ethical tech and open source innovation, has made a profound impact on the maker community through her work at Hackster in the past decade. As a maker and storyteller, she inspires and empowers creators worldwide by sharing hands-on knowledge and championing inclusivity in hardware development. Her flagship interview series Hackster Café documented 200 episodes of maker journey. She helped take Hackster on a hackathon tour of the USA - the famous DeLorean project. She created Archimedes the owl and helped kick off the fast-growing companion bots movement; designed and produced open source circuit boards. Keep following all her awesomeness at Hackster!

Anouk Wipprecht

Dutch hi-tech fashion designer and innovator Anouk Wipprecht has set the stage for futuristic clothing. She's well-known for her work combining fashion with engineering, science, and interaction/user experience design. Her garments feature sensors, robotics, and AI for wearer-environment interactivity. Wipprecht's Spider Dress features sensors and robotic arms that respond to the wearer's breathing rates and the nearness of people. If it detects an invasion of personal space, the arms extend outward in defense. Her designs have systems that approach AI, with the human body acting as the host. Check out Wipprecht's's Hackster profile here, her kitty ear wearable tutorial is one of our all-time favorites.

Joan Horvath

For 16 years, American aeronautical engineer Joan Horvath worked for NASA's JPL. During her time there, she focused on technology transfer, flight operations, and research, assisting with various projects, including TOPEX/Poseidon. Horvath later established Takeoff Technologies before co-founding Nonscriptum, concentrating on 3D printing and maker technologies with partner Rich Cameron. Since 2000, Horvath has judged FIRST robotics competitions. We love her books on calculus, trigonometry, and geometry from Make:. Be sure to check out all of their LinkedIn learning courses on additive manufacturing here.

Kelly Heaton

An innovative artist-engineer, Kelly Heaton combines visual art with electrical engineering to create interesting projects. While attending Yale and MIT, Heaton completed her master's thesis by creating "physical pixels," freeing computer graphics from flat screens. She also worked at Roche Diagnostics and co-authored patents for continuous glucose data visualization. Additionally, she designed life-like circuits with analog components that replicated the sound of birdsong, showcasing the creative possibilities of continuous waveforms in electronics. She serves as an adjunct professor of electronic art at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering/IDM.

Kitty Yeung

Versatile engineer Kitty Yeung obtained her applied physics PhD from Harvard. Currently, Yeung is the CEO and Co-founder of Wear It — an AI company that democratizes fashion and slashes waste. Wear It uses AI, allowing anyone to wear clothing virtually. She worked for Microsoft as a senior quantum architect, and her role involved producing quantum computing learning materials and expanding the developer community. When working for Intel as a Research Scientist, Yeung worked on silicon photonics and made contributions to Intel's 100G Optical Transceivers. In addition, she focuses on fashion tech and founded a STEAM fashion brand called Art by Physicist. Yeung collaborated with Hackster in hosting the Techfashion Contest.

Helen Leigh

Helen Leigh is the head of community at Crowd Supply. She is a hacker and created MINI.MU glove — a wearable instrument that allows kids to learn about electronics and music. She authored "The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics" and continues developing DIY musical instruments.

Carlotta Berry

Carlotta Berry serves as a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She developed the Robotics for the Streets initiative to make free open source hardware and software accessible for mobile robotics education. Berry and her students created the Flower∞Bots series, which includes the Lily∞bot, Daisy∞Bot, and Rosie∞Bot. In 2022, she was named an Open Source Hardware Trailblazer Fellow and won the 2023 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award.

AnnMarie Thomas

Mechanical engineer AnnMarie Thomas founded the Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas. She created Squishy Circuits — electronics with conductive and insulating dough — at this lab, allowing children to feel more engaged in electronics. She is an expert in human-robot interaction, educational mobile robotics, and engineering pedagogy. Thomas wrote "Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of Innovation" and won the 2020 LEGO Prize for her playful learning contributions. She also co-founded OK GO Sandbox, promoting STEM education through creative projects. She's now working with the incredible OceanX team on ocean education!

Claire Danielle Cassidy

Claire Cassidy is a creative technologist and open source advocate. She works on unique LEDs, laser-cut jewelry, and open hardware initiatives. She forges "U Glow" initiative in the welcoming sandbox of Oregon’s Regional Burning Man Event, SOAK. The initiative first emerged as a dynamic theme camp and has since transcended boundaries, evolving into popular annual experience and a trailblazing online knowledge hub, and made a significant mark on it’s local Portland Oregon maker and artist communities to foster technical interests in “non-technical” and traditionally marginalized groups.

Christina Cyr

Christina Cyr invented the Cyrcle Phone — winner of the CES 2023 Innovation Award. She's used Altium, Eagle, and Fusion 360 to design circuit boards and taught over 200 people how to build their phones through workshops and events, like Hackaday SuperCon. In addition, Cyr has designed IoT devices for Cambridge Mobile Telematics, focusing on PCB design for RF signal (2G, 3G, 4G, LTE, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth) communication devices.

Kathy Giori

Electrical engineer and technology leader Kathy Giori is the Tricyrcycle CEO — a company dedicated to affordable privacy technology. She's also MicroBlocks' Head of Global Partnerships and Outreach. In addition, she was involved with three startups and worked for Arduino, Mozilla, ZEDEDA, SRI International, and Qualcomm. Giori created IoT solutions, emphasizing open source hardware and software. She also volunteers as a mentor for the TechWomen program and organizes IoT and physical computing workshops to promote STEM education.

Jen Fox

Engineer and educator Jen Fox founded FoxBot Industries, transforming STEM education with interactive, arts-based approaches. She has previously developed educational technologies, designed custom kid-safe maker spaces, and created project-driven STEM programs. Fox also worked on dark matter detection research and renewable energy tech projects. She works for Microsoft as a principal technical program manager, overseeing human-AI interaction initiatives across the company. She focuses on multimodality AI/agentic UI/UX and automation tooling. Fox wrote a project-based intro to electronics book called "Beginning Breadboarding." Her research expands into embedded systems, IoT, and wearable technology, making STEM education more accessible and engaging.

Alicia Gibb

Currently, Alicia Gibb serves as the executive diirector of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), a nonprofit that educates about open source hardware. She's an advocate for open hardware with expertise in IP and business applications. She also leads the Blow Things Up (BTU) Lab at CU Boulder, teaching computing and IT. As part of her work, Gibb promotes open source hardware principles, community building, and encouraging innovation in the field. Her OSHWA leadership has helped progress the open hardware ecosystem while supporting entrepreneurs and makers with open source hardware project development across different industries.

Katherine Scott

Katherine Scott is a developer relations engineer at Intrinsic, Developer Advocate at Open Robotics, and a board member of the Open Source Hardware Association. She co-founded Tempo Automation (rapid PCB prototyping) and worked at Planet and 3Scan, where she led image analytics teams. Scott also helps progress open source robotics technologies as a ROS 2 Technical Steering Committee member. She works in computer vision, satellite imaging, medical imaging, and manufacturing for almost 20 years, focusing on sustainable open source projects in robotics interfaces.

Katya Echazarreta

Katya Echazarreta is an electrical engineer and citizen astronaut from Mexico. She's the very first Mexican woman to launch into space aboard Blue Origin's spacecraft — achieved on June 4th, 2022, via Space for Humanity's Citizen Astronaut Program. While at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she worked on five missions, including Europa Clipper and Perseverance Rover as the Electronics Lead and Test Lead before departing in September 2021 for science advocacy and education. She's currently studying at John Hopkins University to earn her M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In February 2023, Echazarreta founded Fundación Espacial Katya Echazarreta to support Latin American citizens with their space career ambitions and created Latin America's first air and space training camp, focusing on robotics, planetary science, and analog Mars missions. She also led Mexico's constitutional reform to regulate the space industry. Echazarreta runs a YouTube channel called KatVoltage, sharing engineering topics and STEM content with her audience.

These are only a few of the millions and billions of women achieving greatness. Have a few people in mind you'd like to see us feature in the future, let us know!