Sophia Velastegui's process for overcoming shyness is a plan that can be used by anyone, shy or not, to boost their career.

Last year, Rwandan social entrepreneur Marie Claire Murekatete joined the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) to accept her Change Agent Abie Award. This Abie Award honors an outstanding international woman who has created or expanded opportunities for girls and women in technology, especially those in developing countries. Discover how Marie Claire's experience at GHC impacted her and her work, and learn how you can nominate someone for an Abie Award.

An article about group of teen girls who learned to code, solder, sew and 3D print to invent a solar-powered tent for the homeless.

A story about Burroughs Wellcome researcher Gertrude Elion who was back at work in the lab after being named a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine in 1988. Elion and coworker George Hitchings were chosen for the honor for their work in developing drugs to treat leukemia and AIDS.

Computer science is one of the few STEM fields in which the number of women has been dropping. But as the president of Harvey Mudd College, Maria Klawe has been able to boost the proportion of women in its CS program to an impressive 40 percent.

From the Golden Globes to this week's World Economic Forum in Davos, the topic on every group of leaders' agenda is ''women.'' Thanks to movements like -MeToo and -TimesUp, and given the prospect of a record number of women running for office, women's voices are being heard like never before. But if we want what's been dubbed ''The Year of the Woman'' to be more than a slogan, we also need significant numbers of women heading our biggest companies and institutions, the organizations that can drive real change. And that won't happen unless we recognize that the world still operates under a set of assumptions- we prefer to call them myths -that hold women back from reaching anything near parity in the upper ranks. These myths go something like this: If only women would be more assertive. If only they would raise their hands and take more risks. If we could just fix the women, then the leadership roles that have so long eluded women would be theirs.

Microsoft President Brad Smith says there were would fewer reports of sexual harassment if there were more females in leadership positions. Diversity is a major issue in tech industry, says Smith, also chief legal officer. Microsoft is taking ''concrete steps'' to address diversity issues, he argues.

Ten years ago, girls were so scarce in high school computer science classes that the number of female students taking Advanced Placement tests in that subject could be counted on one hand in nine states. In five others, there were none. Latino and African American students were also in short supply, a problem that has bedeviled educators for years and hindered efforts to diversify the high-tech workforce. Now, an expansion of AP computer science classes is helping to draw more girls and underrepresented minorities into a field of growing importance for schools, universities and the economy. Testing totals for female, black and Latino students all doubled in 2017, following the national debut of an AP course in computer science principles. It joined a longer-established AP course focused on the programming language Java. Racial and gender imbalances persist. But education leaders said the data show a significant advance in a quest to banish the stereotype that computer science is mainly for coding geeks who tend to be white or Asian American boys.