Steve Shirley

Dame Stephanie Shirley is a British computer entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded Freelance Programmers, a software company that recruited women to work flexibly.

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Freelance Programmers: A British software company founded by Stephanie Shirley in 1962, initially employing women working from home. The company Shirley founded made flexible software work its defining business model.
Remote work: Work performed away from an employer’s usual workplace, often using communications technology. Home-based work let the company employ skilled women constrained by conventional office arrangements.
Vienna: The capital of Austria, where Stephanie Shirley was born in 1933. Shirley’s childhood began in Vienna before she escaped Nazi persecution with her family.
Flexible working: Employment arrangements that vary working hours, location, or schedule from a fixed full-time workplace model. Shirley demonstrated that flexible arrangements could support professional software work.
Dame Stephanie Shirley Charitable Foundation: A charitable foundation established by Stephanie Shirley to support autism research, education, and related causes. It carries forward Shirley’s philanthropy, especially her support for autistic people.
Software contracting: The provision of software development or related technical services under contract to clients. Client contracts supplied the projects around which Freelance Programmers organized its workforce.
Kindertransport: The rescue effort that brought nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Nazi-controlled Europe to Britain between 1938 and 1940. Shirley arrived in Britain as a child through this rescue program.
Women’s rights movement: Organized efforts to secure equality and rights for women in law, work, and public life. Her company’s employment practices intersected with wider demands for women’s economic opportunity.
Autism: A neurodevelopmental condition involving differences in social communication, sensory processing, and patterns of behavior or interests. Shirley became a prominent advocate after her son Giles was diagnosed as autistic.
Systems analysis: The examination of an organization’s processes and information needs to design or improve computer systems. The firm’s early work included systems analysis, a major source of software-industry demand.