The paucity of women in STEM fields is well-documented. Everything from innate characteristics of the female brain to middle school gender biases have been given as reasons for the underrepresentation of ladies in science, technology, engineering, and math jobs; a Tumblr called “Tech  Companies That Only Hire Men” has another: the STEM job ads themselves.

At Manilla, we’ve been fortunate to add several new team members in the last month. The great news is that many are women who are new to technology careers. (In fact, three of the women are still going to college and working part-time.) I realized this was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about women who are just getting started with their careers in technology. How did they get here? What attracted them to a technology career? What challenges have they encountered? I talked to seven young women at Manilla to see what I could learn that might apply more broadly to the challenge of getting more gender diversity in tech. Here were the key takeaways.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with the smart and fascinating founder of Panorama Software, Rony Ross, who talked about taking her business from an Israeli-based consulting firm to a global product that was eventually acquired by Microsoft — all by herself.

Perhaps you are already an expert in careers in the sciences, but we suspect that there are plenty of organizations doing groundbreaking work in the sciences that most people have never heard of. Here are ten women with awesome jobs in a range of fields, proving that making a living as a scientist doesn’t have to be about being stuck in a lab.

My first experience at a “Women Who Code” meetup.