At this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Houston, I had the opportunity to sit down with Telle Whitney, the CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

A computer scientist by training, Whitney cofounded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing with Anita Borg in 1994. This year’s event welcomed a record 12,000 attendees — a 50 percent jump from last year — and included women from academia, government and tech industries.

Samantha Parent Walravens: Tell me why you decided to name the Grace Hopper conference a “celebration” of women in tech?

Telle Whitney: We founded the Grace Hopper Celebration in 1994. At the time, there was a lot of angst about the issues of women in technology, and we purposefully wanted it to be a celebration — celebrating the work women are doing in the computing area.