Susan Joy Fowler Rigetti (; born April 17, 1991) is an American writer and ex-
software engineer
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...
known for her role in influencing institutional changes in how
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
and
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
companies treat
sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...
. Her business celebrity led to book and
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood ...
film deals based on her experience.
She worked at two technology
startup companies
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...
before joining Uber in late 2015. In early 2017, her
blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...
post on sexual harassment at the company was widely shared and ultimately led to the ouster of Uber founder and CEO
Travis Kalanick
Travis Cordell Kalanick (; born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was th ...
.
Following her career in software engineering, she served as editor-in-chief of a quarterly publication by the
payment processing
A payment processor is a system that enables financial transactions, commonly employed by a merchant, to handle transactions with customers from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards or bank accounts. They are usually broken dow ...
company
Stripe
Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to:
Decorations
*Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface
*Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration
* Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military
Entertainment ...
, as a technology opinion editor at ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', and as the editor of
''Slate'''s "Future Tense" column.
Early life
Rigetti was raised in rural
Yarnell, Arizona, the second of seven children. Her father was an
evangelical
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...
Assemblies of God
The World Assemblies of God Fellowship (WAGF), commonly known as the Assemblies of God (AG), is a global cooperative body or communion of over 170 Pentecostal denominations that was established on August 15, 1989. The WAGF was created to provi ...
preacher and
pay phone
A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone or pay telephone or public phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting coins or tele ...
salesman, and her mother
homeschooled
Homeschooling or home schooling (American English), also known as home education or elective home education (EHE) (British English), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted ...
their children. Rigetti 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
*
Culture of ancient Greece
Culture of ancient Rome
Ancient Greek biographical works
Ethics literature
History books about ancient Rome
Cultural depictions of Gaius Marius
Cultural depictions of Mark Antony
Cultural depictions of Cicero
...
'' and the
Stoics
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient ...
, which encouraged her to focus on the parts of her life she could control. She worked as a
stable hand and
nanny
A nanny is a person who provides child care. Typically, this care is given within the children's family setting. Throughout history, nannies were usually servants in large households and reported directly to the lady of the house. Today, modern ...
to make money for her family.
Rigetti prepared herself to take college entrance exams without high school and was accepted with a full scholarship to
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...
, 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
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
, where Rigetti faced similar opposition until she appealed to
the university president.
She worked as a physics research assistant during her time at Penn, but was forced out after befriending a fellow student named Tim. When Tim turned suicidal, Rigetti tried to seek help, but the university put the blame on her and tried to remove Rigetti from classes they shared. The university also rescinded her master's degree. She considered suing, but decided to move on with her life. This incident later helped Rigetti make the decision to blow the whistle on
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
.
She graduated with a degree in physics.
Career
Technology industry
Rigetti was a platform engineer at financial technology company
Plaid in early 2015, where she learned her male peers were being paid $50,000 more than she was.
Later in 2015, she joined data infrastructure company
PubNub
PubNub is a real-time communication platform and infrastructure-as-a-service company based in San Francisco, California. The company makes products for software and hardware developers to build real-time web, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT ...
as a
DevOps
DevOps is the integration and automation of the software development and information technology operations. DevOps encompasses necessary tasks of software development and can lead to shortening development time and improving the development life ...
engineer, where her boss made statements that led Rigetti to believe he "truly, deeply, passionately hated women".
Uber
Rigetti joined
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
as a
Site Reliability Engineer in November 2015.
In February 2017, Rigetti wrote a 3,000-word
blog post
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appe ...
on sexual harassment at Uber. Rigetti's post outlined a hostile work culture for female employees of Uber. She recounted how the company's
human resources
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...
refused to punish her former manager, who had propositioned her for sex, based on his productivity. The story was shared 22,000 times on
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
. External probes confirmed her account and led to multiple firings. The fallout ultimately forced Uber founder and CEO
Travis Kalanick
Travis Cordell Kalanick (; born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was th ...
to resign, and a subsequent backlash against sexual harassment in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
, including the removal of tech investors
Dave McClure
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups (now 500 Global) and served as its CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Ventur ...
and Justin Caldbeck.
Rigetti'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
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
to consider her experience in
its decision on whether employees can forfeit rights to collective litigation in their employment contracts. ''
Vanity Fair'' named her among their 2017 list of top business and cultural leaders.
Rigetti was one of five women featured on the cover of ''Time'' magazine's Person of the Year issue for 2017, as representative of "The Silence Breakers", for reporting on the sexual harassment she experienced at Uber. She was also named
Financial Times Person of the Year
The ''Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the ...
by the British business newspaper ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
''.
Journalism
In 2017, Rigetti joined the payment processing company
Stripe
Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to:
Decorations
*Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface
*Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration
* Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military
Entertainment ...
as the editor-in-chief of a new quarterly publication called Increment. She also started a science book club and published a book on
microservices
In software engineering, a microservice architecture is an architectural pattern that organizes an application into a collection of loosely coupled, fine-grained services that communicate through lightweight protocols. This pattern is characterize ...
. In 2018, Rigetti became an opinion editor for ''The New York Times'' writing
op-ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
pieces on tech subjects.
Rigetti was the editor of
''Slate'''s "Future Tense" column from 2023–2024.
Personal life
Susan married Chad Rigetti, founder of
Rigetti Computing
Rigetti Computing, Inc. is a Berkeley, California-based developer of Superconducting quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers. Rigetti also develops a cloud platform called Forest that enables programmers to write quantum algorith ...
, in 2017.
Works
* Susan Fowler, ''Production-Ready Microservices'' (2016)
* Susan Fowler, ''Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber'' (2020)
* Susan Rigetti, ''Cover Story: A Novel'' (2020)
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fowler, Susan
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
American software engineers
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Uber people
People from Yavapai County, Arizona
Time Person of the Year
1991 births
21st-century American women writers