ECE alumna ranked tenth on list of "Most Powerful Women Engineers"

ECE ILLINOIS alumna Jana Messerschmidt (BSCompE ‘01) has been named among the “most powerful female engineers of 2017” by Business Insider. She is ranked tenth on the list, accompanied by CS @ Illinois alumna Kamilah Taylor who is ranked number 42.

Messerschmidt is vice president of Twitter's Global Business Development & Platform. She has been at Twitter since 2010. Her team orchestrated most of Twitter's huge partnerships, including deals with Apple, Google, IBM, Salesforce, and Comcast.

Messerschmidt oversees a huge organization beyond partnerships including enterprise sales, developer relations, marketing and technical program management, and data science. Messerschmidt is also a founding partner in #Angels, a team of senior women business leaders, mainly from Twitter, who are investing in early stage startups.

Kamilah Taylor is a senior software engineer at LinkedIn (which was recently acquired by Microsoft). She has been involved in all sorts of major projects at LinkedIn, including the rewrite of LinkedIn’s major app, messaging, as well as infrastructure and the LinkedIn Learning iOS app. 

Taylor is known for her work in advocating for women and people of color in the tech industry. She is the author of "Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories". Taylor also volunteers her time for organizations like BlackGirlsCode, she organized the “Tech Beach Retreat” in Jamaica and she speaks at many conferences.

Learn more about Jana Messerschmidt and Kamilah Taylor in the original Business Insider article.