Susan J. Fowler is a software engineer known for her role in influencing institutional changes in how Uber and Silicon Valley treat sexual harassment. Her business celebrity led to book and Hollywood film deals based on her experience. Originally homeschooled in rural Arizona, Fowler studied physics at the University of Pennsylvania and computer science at Stanford University. She worked at two tech start-ups before joining Uber in late 2015. In early 2017, her blog post on sexual harassment at the company was widely shared and led to the ouster of the company's CEO. Fowler works at payment processing company Stripe. She runs a science book club and wrote a book on microservices.

Early life

Susan Fowler was raised in rural Yarnell, Arizona, the second of seven children. Her father was an evangelical Assemblies of God preacher and pay phone salesman, and her mother homeschooled their children. Fowler recalled having little direction in her education, and would often visit the library and try to teach herself topics. She was influenced by Plutarch's Lives and the Stoics, which encouraged her to focus on the parts of her life she could control. She worked as a stable hand and nanny to make money for her family. Fowler prepared herself to take college entrance exams without high school and was accepted with a full scholarship to Arizona State University, where she wanted to pursue astronomy. However, her lack of high school prerequisites prevented her study of math and physics, so she transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where Fowler faced similar opposition until she appealed to the university president.^[1] She worked as a physics research assistant during her time there and graduated with a degree in physics. Fowler later received a computer science degree from Stanford University.^[2]

Career

Fowler was a platform engineer at financial technology company Plaid in early 2015 and a DevOp engineer at data infrastructure company PubNub later in the year before joining transportation company Uber in November 2015.^[2]

Uber

In February 2017, Fowler wrote a 3,000-word blog post on sexual harassment at Uber, which led to the ouster of its CEO, Travis Kalanick,^[3] and a subsequent backlash against sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, including the removal of tech investors Dave McClure and Justin Caldbeck.^[4] Fowler's post outlined a hostile work culture for female employees of Uber. She recounted how the company's human resources refused to punish her former manager, who had propositioned her for sex, based on his productivity.^[3] The story was shared 22,000 times on Twitter.^[1] External probes confirmed her account and led to multiple firings.^[3] Fowler's role in changing Uber made her into a business world celebrity. She has received book and Hollywood film deals and continues to work towards legislation and workplace protections for women. In August 2017, she petitioned the United States Supreme Court to consider her experience in its decision on whether employees can forfeit rights to collective litigation in their employment contracts.^[4] Vanity Fair named her among their 2017 list of top business and cultural leaders.^[5]

After Uber, Fowler moved to payment processing company Stripe. She also started a science book club, published a book on microservices, and married Chad Rigetti in 2017.^[1]