I’ve been all over the world: from large cities such as London and Hong Kong, to remote destinations such as Jodhpur, India. No matter where I go, I’m always excited if I see horses.

Horses have been part of my life since birth; my Mom owned race horses (note: I’m opposed to horse racing, but it was the 70s) and I owned a small horse property outside of Seattle, WA where I looked after PMU babies and horses I rescued right before they were loaded on the slaughter truck.

I’ve been away from horses for a few years, but recently I moved near to Griffith Park in LA, the largest urban park in the US, and it’s flanked by a bunch of horse barns. My hope is that I’ll be back in the saddle again soon.

My Mom and I have lived far apart from each other since I was 5, and whenever we discuss Mom and Daughter vacations together, horse riding undoubtedly gets brought up.

I was perusing Instagram photos last week, and I came across Andrew Hyde’s photos of Black Mountain Ranch and they took my breath away. I immediately looked up their website and sent an email to my Mom telling her that’s where I wanted to vacation with her this year. The scenery is gorgeous, we can ride horses (of course), hangout with other like-minded people and river raft which is another favorite activity we have always enjoyed together.

It will be an expensive trip for my Mom because she lives in Northern B.C. and just the plane ride to get to the ranch will be pricey, but I know that our time there will be fun and well worth it.

Here’s hoping we make it there this year!

Checkout my pal RJ’s new collaboration with Aaron Livingston plus some favorites.

jams by i am rjd2

One day my friend Susannah Breslin DM’d me on Twitter and asked if I’d be interested in blogging for ForbesWoman about women in tech. Obviously I said “Helllz Yes!” Susannah writes the hilarious but true column “Pink Slipped.” I love her writing so I was very honored that she would read anything I wrote let alone try and help me reach more people.

She put me in touch with ForbesWoman editor Caroline Howard and I got the green light to blog about women in tech.

It’s such a great opportunity to extend my reach when discussing women in technology.

Thanks to Susannah for deeming my posts worthy to intro me to Caroline and for Caroline to have trust in me to do ForbesWoman proud.

Here’s my first post “ Positive Role Models Needed to Increase Number of Women in High-Tech

Please have a read and share it.

This is for you Techie Ladies!

HAPPY ADA LOVELACE DAY!

In this video I provide a brief overview of Ada Lovelace and talk about some of the lady mentors in my life!

Please take a moment to tell the women mentors in your life that have influenced you over the years in science, technology, engineering and math.

Finding Ada

Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike.

The inspiration for Ada Lovelace Day came from psychologist Penelope Lockwood, who carried out a study which found that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male role models. “Outstanding women can function as inspirational examples of success,” she said, “illustrating the kinds of achievements that are possible for women around them. They demonstrate that it is possible to overcome traditional gender barriers, indicating to other women that high levels of success are indeed attainable.”

The day begins in Kiribati, the easternmost country in the world, and continues for a mindbending 50 hours, ending in American Samoa. Ada Lovelace Day is on 7th October 2011 and we encourage you to talk about women in stem that you admire and add your story to our directory so that others can find and read it.

The world is heartbroken over the passing of Steve Jobs. Men, women, young, old…it’s an equal opportunity loss for Apple fangirls and fanboys.

My focus is on women in tech, so I thought it would be appropo to look into some of the women who worked with Steve Jobs. These ladies aren’t all techie per se, but I thought we could get some more insight into the man from a woman’s perspective. It was pretty easy to find this list from back in the day, and I’m finding it harder to find a more current list (I Googled, Quora’d, searched Twitter profiles. HALP!).

–> Did you work with Steve or know someone that did? Please feel free to add more women to the list! <–

Joanna Hoffman

Joanna Hoffman was the fifth person hired by Jef Raskin to be part of the original Apple Macintosh developer team. She acted as the team’s only marketing person for more than a year; among her contributions was writing the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines.

Before joining Apple, she was a physicist and archaeologist. She married another Macintosh team member, Alain Rossmann, and is the mother of two children. She is the daughter of Polish director Jerzy Hoffman.

Susan Kare

Susan Kare (born 1954) is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT (the company formed by Steve Jobs after leaving Apple in 1985), working as the Creative Director.

Interview about Kare’s experience working with Steve:

He was running Apple when I met him, but he was interested in the Macintosh at every level. It seemed to me that he was a person capable of making meaningful contributions in hardware, software, advertising, icons, fonts. Sure, he’s a well-known and controversial figure, but I had a lot of respect for him because I never knew anybody who had such a broad band of ability to contribute good ideas in many realms. Not that every single idea was The Idea, or the best idea, or even good, or that he wouldn’t listen to others. I think he definitely has a style of pushing back and being critical, to push you to see if you had explored every option. I remember him as great to work with, being excited over things that were new that we had done that we could show him, and it being a very motivating factor, because when he’s happy and pleased with an idea he can make you feel great.

But he used to say, “We’ll all look back on this project, and it will have been a really great moment in time of working on this great project together.” He was right about that: I look back on it and think about what terrific colleagues I had, and we had great work experiences, and great offsites. Of course, you look back on your life and there definitely were moments when you were bleeding, or had bad things that happened to you, or you were sick; but you don’t look back and think about the times you were in bed with the flu. You think of the good things, and I can just think of so many positive, positive things with the Mac.

I am still friendly with, and work with, a number of people from the Mac group. One person I worked with who I thought was brilliant was Joanna Hoffman. She focused on international marketing, and she was great to work with, and always had ideas. She was a person who wasn’t in software, but who made great contributions. I could name a long list of people like that.

Susan Kare’s website.

Susan Kelly Barnes

Susan Kelly Barnes was Controller of the Macintosh Division at Apple Computer. When Steve Jobs left Apple Computer in 1985, she joined Jobs and other Apple managers to cofound NeXT Computer, Inc. She served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NeXT Computer from 1985 to 1991. As NeXT’s Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Barnes helped raise a huge amount of money that helped NeXT weather its slow start. The most notable transaction was a $100 million investment by Canon Inc. in 1989 for a 16.7 percent stake in NeXT. That gaveNeXT an implied valuation of $600 million, astonishingly high for a company that was not yet shipping any products.

Caroline Rose

In 1982 she joined Apple to write the technical documentation for the Macintosh. Inside Macintosh, which she co-wrote and edited, was used by countless Macintosh software developers. She left Apple in 1986, and became head of publications at NeXT. In 1991, she returned to Apple to edit develop, The Apple Technical Journal. Since 1997 she has been a contract writer and editor, and has worked with Adobe, Netscape, Marimba, and Apple, among others.

Stanford Interview on Women at Apple

Pang: Many of the descriptions of the Mac group — as “pirates”, for example — have a macho twist to them. Did women have trouble find a place in — or being accepted into — the group?

Rose: No. The engineers were always treated as the big heroes, and they were all men, but they were very accepting of me and the other women who worked there. Everyone had a respect for people who did great work, whatever the nature of the work or the worker’s gender. Steve always said he hired only the best, so if you made it into the group at all, you were highly accepted.

Sandy Miranda

Miranda joined Apple in 1980, where, she worked as a technical writer on the Lisa and Macintosh projects.

Stanford Interview on Women at Apple

“So there was this whole sense of us being empowered and being responsible for the empowerment and doing something with it, and especially– I mean, it was a great group, all of us, but especially for the women it was this revolutionary empowerment with not being a part of the old system, and that’s part of what still goes on there. It’s like we’re not going to take, we’re not going to accept the old way of doing things. We’re going to be whatever we want to be, and be empowered.”

Andrea Jung

Chairman and CEO Avon

In 2008 Andrew joined the Apple Board of Directors.

From 8 Stars Speak Out on Steve Jobs

“All of us like to think that we’re as focused on the consumer and the end-user experience as Steve is — that maniacal passion for the best phone, the best MP3 player, the best PC, the best retail experience.

He does it in a very black-and-white way, while the rest of the world gets caught up in the gray — or caught up in themselves. He makes it sound so simple, but he’s taking on things that are extraordinarily complex and arguably risky. He’s laser-focused on getting it right. It’s a great lesson in this quarter-to-quarter world.

With seven directors, the Apple board — which I am on — is smaller than most, including Avon’s. There’s an extraordinary openness in the boardroom. Any board member would feel free to challenge an idea or raise a concern.

It’s not only been gratifying, it’s been great. I feel like I’m part of history being made. I leave Apple board meetings thinking, “I’ve got to do a better job.”

Laurene Powell-Jobs

The most important woman in Steve’s life is his wife of 20 years, Laurene Powell-Jobs.