Future Icons in Tech is the first article in the Women to Watch campaign, highlighting the accomplishments of RTC’s talented members. This is part 1 of 2.

The women of RTC are making moves, creating incredible projects that are making a difference in the tech industry. The following four women are trailblazers in their own right, icons who’ve made a difference in their niche. 

We’d like to introduce you to four future icons in tech: 

Meet Angela Cao, RTC Member Since 2023

Co-founder and board member of Women Who Do Data

As a child, math was my favorite subject and biggest passion. I not only loved it but excelled, which led me to take more STEM courses, especially advanced courses, in middle and high school where I thrived in them. In high school, I discovered coding through computer science classes and fell in love with it. With my growing interest in Computer Science and the rise of coding initiatives like “Learn to Code”, majoring in Computer Science in college was a natural choice. 

However, college wasn’t easy. The transition from high school to a much more competitive environment triggered impostor syndrome. I went from being a “big fish in a small pond” to a “big fish among even bigger fish in an ocean”. A friend, who I confided my impostor syndrome struggles to, advised me to focus on my strengths while working on my weaknesses. That advice led me back to my love for math, inspiring me to double major in Computer Science and mathematics, where I thrived, even while continuing to battle impostor syndrome and mental health challenges. 

As I planned for the future, I knew I wanted a career that blended both fields. My growing interest in AI, Machine Learning, and statistics – especially since junior year, thanks to the independent study and research projects I worked on outside of class, led me to pursue graduate school and eventually a career in Data Science. My experiences also fueled my advocacy for disability and mental health awareness, shaping another important aspect of my journey. 

What has been your biggest learning experience in tech so far?

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned working in tech so far is that while hard and technical skills like programming and AI/Machine Learning are essential for doing the job well, they aren’t enough to truly succeed. Soft skills like communication, teamwork, and domain expertise are just as important, if not more so, in making a real impact in the job. 

In my undergraduate and graduate studies, I focused heavily on mastering technical skills, thinking that would help me qualify and then do well in the job. However, once I started working in the industry, I quickly realized that my role wasn’t just about writing code for ETL pipelines or building models or creating dashboards but also collaborating with other Data Scientists and Analysts and teams across different functions like Marketing, HR, IT, Clinical, and Executive Leadership. I had to learn how to communicate complex findings clearly, present insights to leadership, and understand the nuances of the healthcare industry to build truly valuable solutions. I also aspire to climb up the career ladder and eventually attain a leadership role in the organization, which requires mastery of soft skills, especially communication and teamwork. 

As I continue growing in my career and working towards leadership roles, I recognize that excelling as a Data Scientist isn’t just about improving my technical expertise but also polishing and further developing my soft skills, deepening my domain knowledge, and learning how to drive real business impact.

What’s a project or achievement you’re particularly proud of?

Aside from my day job as a Data Scientist at Memorial Hermann Health Systems, I am also a co-founder and board member of Women Who Do Data (W2D2), a community-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women and underrepresented groups (and basically everyone interested or currently working) in Data and AI/ML fields. 

Women Who Do Data was founded in April 2024 in response to dwindling funding and the closure of key programs for women in technology. A group of us came together with a shared mission to fill the gap and create a supportive, inclusive space where diversity in tech can thrive (as a fun fact, I came up with the current name of the organization). 

Being a co-founder and board member of Women Who Do Data still remains as one of my greatest career achievements, if not the exact greatest. It has opened doors to other incredible opportunities, including serving as a Women in Data Science (WiDS) ambassador and volunteering with other similar non-profits like Women in Data^TM and AnitaB. 

What impact do you hope to make in the industry or your community?

I aspire to be a leader in Data, Analytics, and AI/ML, especially greatly contributing to work and initiatives to advance the industry, becoming a powerful voice in the industry, and being a role model to young girls and women who not only aspire to work in STEM, but also become leaders as well. 

Also, as a neurodivergent individual myself, I want to emphasize that individuals with disabilities are unfortunately severely underrepresented in the workforce (including STEM) due to the significant and unnecessary barriers we face when trying to break into the workforce and even inside workforce despite the great potential and qualifications we hold in not only doing well in the job, but also making great impact in the fields we work in.

What’s one piece of advice or encouragement you’d give to someone just starting out?

Always maintain a beginner’s mindset: don’t hesitate to ask for help and embrace a learning and growth mentality. What makes tech, especially data and AI/ML, so exciting is that no matter where you are in your career, there’s always something new to learn. Also, there’s always someone, like a mentor, willing to help you navigate and succeed in your job and your career. Skills evolve, so it’s crucial to stay updated on industry trends and continually refine your skills to stay relevant and advance in your career. I also recommend finding a mentor or joining a professional organization like Rewriting the Code to stay informed and grow. 

Also, having a long-term vision (e.g., a 5-year plan) for your career is essential. It helps you identify the skills you need to develop and the potential you can achieve, ensuring continuous growth and direction in your career.

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Meet Krystal Maughan, RTC Member Since 2021

Published Academic Researcher

I then moved to Los Angeles to continue honing my craft in this area, around the time that computers were becoming a part of live theatre, tours and digital filmmaking (including 3D movies) and 3D projection mapping were becoming more common. They were doing cool things like using programming robots with movies, and programming lighting boards. Architects like Zaha Hadid were hiring software engineers to design buildings and using Maths to build topology in computer aided design software. I chased learning these skills because of an interest, and quite by accident ended up in jobs where I (1) learned a digital high speed camera used for crash-testing and movies like Inception and Iron Man 2 (2) learned about plasma physics technology lighting used for high speed camera work in crash-testing, defense, auto, aerospace and the film industries (and used in movies like Star Trek, Transformers and Cowboys and Aliens, etc). The company I worked for manufactured them in-house and was a research and development facility where the owner of the company would sometimes draw new ideas on napkins at trade shows. They hired me freelance to even do a mock-up in Modo, a 3D Modelling software. 

Eventually, this led to my learning a bit about welding, woodworking, machining, and robotics, which led me to learning about programming via night classes and a local hackerspace called Null Space Labs in Los Angeles, which offered lessons in lockpicking. I began taking the Greyhound bus to San Francisco and back on the weekends to Pier 9 to learn how to solder printed circuit boards for fun and attend Haskell programming events, sometimes going straight to work after spending 8 to 13 hours on the bus. I began hanging out (via an open-source Linux meetup) with some scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and one began to mentor me and encouraged me to pursue grad school. By accident, a computer science conference was hosted in Los Angeles. I signed up to be a volunteer, and a professor there, Prof Ranjit Jhala, said that my background would be a great fit for a research scientist. After a brief stop interning at a couple of companies in the Bay Area, I haven’t looked back since.

What has been your biggest learning experience in tech so far?

When I first started, I thought that my creative background would be used against me; growing up, the dichotomy was always that one was either technical or creative. The truth is that in both technical and creative fields, you are problem-solving. I recently spoke to undergraduate physics students on a graduate panel at a physics conference called CU*IP in San Luis Obispo and met a wonderful professor there from Berkeley, Professor Frances Hellman. She was telling us that some of the best graduate researchers (or researchers in general) have creativity. It made me really happy to hear that, because it’s true. Some of the most enjoyable research projects I have participated in were just really fun and creative and reminded me of the joy I felt making things in the film industry or the Arts in general. I really enjoyed my most recent internship because the project was also really creative (we are still working on the publication).

What’s a project or achievement you’re particularly proud of?

I am very proud of our recent publication, which came out this year; it’s my first paper under the Number Theory category, which was a feat considering my major is Computer Science on paper, but also, it was really a joyful project. I’m excited to return again in Fall to work with the same group of researchers on another research workshop. I think in the beginning of grad school, I was so worried about whether I was a terrible researcher and internalized my flaws and lack of knowledge, and as I am closer to completing my degree (May 2026!), I care more about collaborating with people I like working with and having a joyful research experience. Coincidentally, it’s similar on film shoots or theatrical plays / live shows; there is a magic that happens when everyone gets along, is working hard together organically, and it is often reflected in the outcome of the project.

What impact do you hope to make in the industry or your community?

I think the area that combines Number Theory, Graph Theory, and Computation is really great, and I love that I get to interact with mathematicians (my main group of collaborators) and learn from physicists (through trying to understand what the constraints of quantum computing limitations and attacks are, and how that might affect the work we do in quantum-safe cryptography). I am from a country of 1.5 million people, and often, I am the only person (okay, there are two other cryptographers in the world I know of globally) who looks like me. I’d like to continue working in this area, but to be honest, it’s really been a series of doing things pretty much out of stubbornness and out of spite/to prove people wrong. I still sit in the first row of workshops to this day out of habit, expecting that no one will talk to me because even on technical film crews and other technical spaces throughout my life, I have often been the only female/black person. 

At technical trade shows, men would talk over me, assume I was in sales, and the only females there were “booth babes”. In scientific research, I’ve found a community, and it has brought me a lot of joy. So maybe my larger hope is that it will be “easier” for the next person, and they will find a place that doesn’t question that their community can be here from the beginning. More people in the field will be a bit more open to people who aren’t like them in some ways but share their interests. Longer-term, I  also would like to make it financially easier for people like myself to pursue research and find mentorship.

What’s one piece of advice or encouragement you’d give to someone just starting out?

My advice is, “what do you have to lose?”. I was at a crossroads where someone suggested that taking a cryptography class in Maths might be challenging for me, but at the time, and a bit out of spite, I took it anyway. I got an A+ in the class, and the professor of the class is now my co-advisor. Similarly, people often ask me how I fared “going into tech from a non-technical background”, but the truth is that I had little to no experience in filmmaking when I decided to study that in undergrad; I had taken classes in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Literature, and Art. I stood in an Intro to Photography class my first semester with one other student from Bulgaria, and we were the only students who had never developed black and white photographs before, and that is how we became paired together. That student and I became very good friends. We both graduated at the top of our classes; each of us got “best of major” awards, starting from little to no knowledge and every conceivable disadvantage. I’d like to think I’m really good at doing that; having the odds stacked against me and succeeding in spite of that. So, as someone who does that regularly, I’d like to say that if you really are dedicated to learning something and are persistent, I really believe that in most cases, you can learn a lot and carve a space for a career in a field. Also, have fun doing it (that’s the best part)!

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