Susan Rigetti

Rigetti was raised in rural Yarnell, Arizona, the second of seven children. Her father was an evangelical Assemblies of God preacher and pay phone salesman, and her mother homeschooled their children. Rigetti recalled having little direction in her education, and would often visit the library and try to teach herself topics. She was influenced by ''Plutarch's Lives'' and the Stoics, which encouraged her to focus on the parts of her life she could control. She worked as a stable hand and nanny to make money for her family. Rigetti prepared herself to take college entrance exams without high school and was accepted with a full scholarship to Arizona State University, where she wanted to pursue astronomy. However, her lack of high school prerequisites prevented her study of math and physics, so she transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where Rigetti faced similar opposition until she appealed to the university president. She worked as a physics research assistant during her time at Penn, but was forced out after befriending a fellow student named Tim. When Tim turned suicidal, Rigetti tried to seek help, but the university put the blame on her and tried to remove Rigetti from classes they shared. The university also rescinded her master's degree. She considered suing, but decided to move on with her life. This incident later helped Rigetti make the decision to blow the whistle on Uber. She graduated with a degree in physics. == Career ==

Technology industry Rigetti was a platform engineer at financial technology company Plaid in early 2015, where she learned her male peers were being paid $50,000 more than she was. Rigetti's post outlined a hostile work culture for female employees of Uber. She recounted how the company's human resources refused to punish her former manager, who had propositioned her for sex, based on his productivity. The story was shared 22,000 times on Twitter. External probes confirmed her account and led to multiple firings. The fallout ultimately forced Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick to resign, and a subsequent backlash against sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, including the removal of tech investors Dave McClure and Justin Caldbeck. Rigetti's role in changing Uber made her into a business world celebrity. She has received book and Hollywood film deals Rigetti was one of five women featured on the cover of Time magazine's Person of the Year issue for 2017, as representative of "The Silence Breakers", for reporting on the sexual harassment she experienced at Uber. She was also named Financial Times Person of the Year by the British business newspaper Financial Times. Journalism In 2017, Rigetti joined the payment processing company Stripe as the editor-in-chief of a new quarterly publication called Increment. She also started a science book club and published a book on microservices. In 2018, Rigetti became an opinion editor for The New York Times writing op-ed pieces on tech subjects. Rigetti was the editor of Slate's "Future Tense" column from 2023–2024. == Personal life ==

Susan married Chad Rigetti, founder of Rigetti Computing, in 2017. They have two children. ==Works==

• Susan Fowler, Production-Ready Microservices (2016) • Susan Fowler, Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber (2020) • Susan Rigetti, Cover Story: A Novel (2020) == References ==