Susan J. Fowler is an American software engineer known for her role in influencing institutional changes in how Uber and Silicon Valley companies treat sexual harassment. Her business celebrity led to book and Hollywood film deals based on her experience. Originally homeschooled in rural Arizona, Fowler studied physics at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at two technology startup companies before joining Uber in late 2015. In early 2017, her blog post on sexual harassment at the company was widely shared and led to the ouster of the company's CEO. Fowler works at the payment processing company, Stripe. She runs a science book club and wrote a book on microservices.

Susan Fowler 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. Fowler 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. Fowler 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 Fowler faced similar opposition until she appealed to the university president. She worked as a physics research assistant during her time there and graduated with a degree in physics.

Fowler was a platform engineer at financial technology company Plaid in early 2015 and a DevOp engineer at data infrastructure company PubNub later in the year before joining transportation company Uber in November 2015.

In February 2017, Fowler wrote a 3,000-word blog post on sexual harassment at Uber, which led to the ouster of its CEO, Travis Kalanick, and a subsequent backlash against sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, including the removal of tech investors Dave McClure and Justin Caldbeck. Fowler'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. Fowler's role in changing Uber made her into a business world celebrity. She has received book and Hollywood film deals and continues to work towards legislation and workplace protections for women. In August 2017, she petitioned the United States Supreme Court to consider her experience in its decision on whether employees can forfeit rights to collective litigation in their employment contracts. Vanity Fair named her among their 2017 list of top business and cultural leaders.

Fowler 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 .

In April 2017, Fowler 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, published a book on microservices, and married Chad Rigetti in 2017.

Susan Fowler is widely known as one of the foremost experts on personal empowerment.

Her extensive experience and knowledge gained through over 15 years of advertising, sales, production and marketing across the United States, has fueled her quest to help individuals achieve their highest levels of success.

Susan Fowler is a catalyst for change through compelling evidence, humor, accelerated learning, next steps, global perspective, and emotional connections.

Fowler got married to Chad Rigetti, Founder and CEO of Rigetti Computing, on February 10, 2017. ^[21]