Xerox CEO, others join #ILookLikeAnEngineer

• Female leaders and local engineers throw support behind hashtag challenging stereotypes in engineering.

Sexist responses to an ad featuring a female engineer have turned into a rare opportunity to highlight the contributions of women and people of color to the technology industry, and has since been promoted on social media by several female engineers and leaders.

Xerox Corp. CEO Ursula Burns, Monroe Community College President Anne Kress and several female engineers in the Rochester area posted support in recent days for Isis Wenger, who faced an unexpected backlash after appearing in her company's recruiting campaign.

They all used the Twitter hashtag: #ILookLikeAnEngineer. The Xerox Corp. account has been tweeting photos of its female engineers on Thursday.

"As a daughter of an engineer who always offered opportunity when hiring, I'm loving the #ILookLikeAnEngineer social media campaign," wrote Kress under her @MCCPResident Twitter account.

Wenger, a platform engineer at OneLogin, told TechCrunch she was not prepared for the reaction to the ads. She said she received attention simply for being a woman.

"I'm curious (if) people with brains find this quote remotely plausible if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like," one person remarked.

"At the end of the day, this is just an ad campaign and it is targeted at engineers," Wenger said in a post on Medium. "This is not intended to be marketed towards any specific gender — segregated thoughts like that continue to perpetuate sexist thought-patterns in this industry."

So Wenger launched #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag to challenge common misperceptions about engineers. It grew in popularity earlier this week as hundreds of women and people of color used it to illustrate the breadth of talent in the tech industry. None conform to the geeky, white male Mark Zuckerberg mold common in popular culture.

The tech industry is coming under growing pressure to address decades-long lack of diversity. Major technology companies are staffed and run mostly by white and Asian men. Xerox, for its part, announced a new strategy earlier this week requiring that at least one minority and one woman be among the final applicant pool considered for any leadership hire in the United States.

TCLAUSEN@DemocratandChronicle.com

Including reporting by USAToday reporter Jessica Guynn.