Interviewer: The Y2K was a moment where a large number of women were heading these projects…
Margaret Anderson: I was mostly familiar with the federal government agencies, and I was a woman in technology, and really aware that there weren’t many around me. And what I found with Y2K was all of a sudden I’d be in meetings, and so many of the program managers and the project managers were women. And they were there because it was not a good career move to be in Y2K. It was short term. If there were problems, you were going to get blamed for them. You didn’t have the authority to really make the changes. So many people wouldn’t take the responsibility, so all of a sudden there were a lot of women around, and I saw an unprecedented level of cooperation and information sharing… really. It was beautiful. (audience laughs/claps).