Isis Anchalee is a Canadian full-stack engineer.

Biography

Anchalee was born in 1993, and began teaching herself how to code in 2013. She was employed by

OneLogin OneLogin, Inc. is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) provider that develops a unified access management (UAM) platform to enterprise-level businesses and organizations. It was founded in 2009 by brothers Thomas Pedersen and Chri ...

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), packa ...

, and later Hustle, where she worked as a software engineer on its product team. She is also the founder of the #ilooklikeanengineer hashtag created in order to promote discussion of

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...

in tech after the OneLogin featured her face in an ad campaign. She has also given multiple talks, such as at Tech Inclusion New York in 2017 and at GHC15 in 2015. Anchalee is also on the Advisory Board of Women Who Code. Following being let go from Hustle, she started traveling the world and currently writes the blog Making Love With Life.

Creation of I Look Like An Engineer

Hashtag

Anchalee created #ilooklikeanengineer (an example of

hashtag activism Hashtag activism refers to the use of Twitter's hashtags for Internet activism. The hashtag, has become one of the many ways that social media contributes to civic engagement and social movements. The use of the hashtag on social media provides us ...

) when she received derogatory comments about her face being featured in an ad campaign for OneLogin. Anchalee feels that most people are "...well intentioned but genuinely blind to a lot of hingsthat those who do not identify as male have to deal with." The hashtag took off. In the first two months of it was used in 19,354 original tweets and 29,529 retweetsJohri, Aditya, et al. “How Diverse Users and Activities Trigger Connective Action via Social Media: Lessons from the Twitter Hashtag Campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer.” 2018. One year after the launch of #ilooklikeanengineer 250,000 plus people had used the hashtag. Both her hashtag and the accompanyin
Medium post
about her experiences received a lot of media coverage and her work was highlighted by celebrities such as

Chelsea Clinton Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is an American writer and global health advocate. She is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinto ...

and

Emma Watson Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson (born 15 April 1990) is an English actress and activist. Known for her roles in both blockbusters and independent films, as well as for her women's rights work, she has received a selection of accolades, includi ...

.Anchalee, Isis. “#ILookLikeAnEngineer: One Year Later.” ''Medium'', Startup Grind, 16 Aug. 2016, medium.com/startup-grind/ilooklikeanengineer-one-year-later-b599e0cae817. Her hashtag has been adapted for use in other professions not usually thought of as diverse (such as #ilooklikeasurgeon) and along with other organizations, such as

Girls Who Code Girls Who Code (also known as GWC) is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. The organization works toward closing the gender employment difference in computing. They h ...

and Women Who Code, has led to more societal awareness of the diversity in the field of computing.

Facebook

Her Facebook account was suspended due to similarities between her given name and the terrorist group

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...

, but her account was later reactivated.

References

Canadian women engineers Gender equality Canadian software engineers 21st-century Canadian women engineers Living people 1993 births {{Canada-engineer-stub