2020
Women Making It Happen
Alpha Girls
Julian Guthrie
Audience:
Adult
Alpha Girls is the untold story of pioneering women in Silicon Valley. Described as "Hidden Figures" meets "The Social Network," Alpha Girls is the story of the real unicorns of Silicon Valley -- the women who bucked the system and found ways to survive and thrive in this high-stakes, male-dominated world. The book explores the rise of such companies as Facebook, Tesla, Oracle, Trulia, Imperva, F5 Networks, Acme Packet, ForeScout, Salesforce and more – all through the eyes of trailblazing "alpha girls" of Silicon Valley. The book is being adapted for a television series by Academy Award-winning producer Cathy Schulman and TriStar.
About the Author
Julian Guthrie is the author of four books, including two national bestsellers. As a journalist for 20 years at the San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Guthrie won numerous awards, including the Best of the West Award and the Society of Professional Journalists' Public Service Award. Her feature writing and enterprise reporting were nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize.
Ms. Guthrie's New York Times bestseller How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight released in 2017, tells the story of an unforgettable cast of characters who dreamed of getting to space without the government's help. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson wrote the foreword, and the late Prof. Stephen Hawking wrote the afterword. This cast includes aviators, test pilots, engineering school dropouts, plucky entrepreneurs, NASA retirees, billionaires, and a particularly determined space geek named Peter Diamandis who refused to give up on his outsized dream.
Ms. Guthrie's second book, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup, was published in 2013 and was a national bestseller. It was one of Forbes Magazine's top 10 nonfiction books of 2013. Ms. Guthrie spent over a year interviewing Larry Ellison.
JulianGuthrieSF.com
"I'm honored that Alpha Girls was chosen for the 2020 Silicon Valley Reads program. I can't wait to share the inspiring, untold stories of incredible women who helped build some of the foremost companies of our day. I'm eager to talk in actionable terms about how women can succeed in male-dominated industries; how men can be great allies; and what this means for boys and girls who want to be next generation leaders and innovators. My belief is that the story of Alpha Girls will make you look at the world differently." - Julian Guthrie