In 2012, Pittsford started Lesbians in Tech. In 2015 she got Edie Windsor, a former manager from IBM, to speak to the organization, and started a scholarship in her name. Lesbians in Tech is now an international organization with 20 chapters from Berlin to Vermont. It has 10,000 members. In two years, they had over 200 events in 22 cities. Every year they have summits in New York, San Francisco, and Berlin. In 2015 they had their first summit in Tel Aviv.
In 2015, Lesbians in Tech received a $165,000 award from the Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation. They wanted to create more inclusion in the technology sector. The money will help start two programs: Bring a Lesbian to Work Day, for mentoring, and the Coding Scholarship Fund, for tuition.
In 2015, U.S. President Obama had an LGBT Pride reception at the White House for prominent member of the LGBT tech community. The event was attended by former Google executive and U.S. chief technology officer Megan Smith, Lesbians Who Tech founder Leanne Pittsford, and others.
Pittsford also helped support five other organizations for diversity in tech: AllOut, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, CODE2040, Chicana Latina Foundation, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Deaths in 2017
The following is a list of notable deaths in 2017. For notable deaths for a selective month during the year, please see "Months". Per month, names under each date are reported in alphabetical order by last name or pseudonym. Deaths of non-humans are reported here also if notable.
Deaths in January 2017
The following is a list of notable deaths in January 2017. For notable deaths of other months in 2017, please see "Months".
Ramanuja Devnathan
Ramanuja Devanathan (2 April 1959 – 7 January 2017) was an Indian educator. He was the head of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan at Jammu and the former Vice Chancellor of Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University. He was the Registrar of Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi.
In 2013, Devanathan was the recipient of Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation (MMCF)'s 32nd annual award. He is also the editor of 2007 edition of English-Sanskrit Dictionary.
Devanathan died on 7 January 2017 in Mumbai while traveling on work of a heart attack, aged 57.
Miriam Goldberg
Miriam Harris Goldberg (May 18, 1916 – January 8, 2017) was an American newspaper publisher. She was born in Chicago. From 1972 to 2017, she was the editor and publisher of the "Intermountain Jewish News" in Denver, Colorado. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1987. She turned 100 in May 2016.
Goldberg died on January 8, 2017 in Denver at the age of 100.
Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman (19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish-British sociologist and philosopher. He had been living in England since 1971.
Bauman was born to a Jewish family in Poland.
After World War II, he rose in the ranks of Poland's military and by the early 1950s he had become one of the youngest majors in the Polish army, but was driven out of Poland by a political purge in 1953 engineered by the Communist government of the Polish People's Republic.
He was the Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds. Bauman was one of the world's most eminent social theorists writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.
Ali Shariatmadari
Ali Shariatmadari (1924 – 9 January 2017) was an Iranian academic and educationist. He was Minister of Culture in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979. He was President of the Iranian Academy of Sciences from 1990 until 1998. He was also a Professor of Education at the Teacher Training University in Tehran and a member of High Council of the Cultural Revolution from 1982 until his death.
Shariatmadari died in Shiraz, Iran on 9 January 2017, aged 93.
Bayezid Osman
Bayezid Osman, also known as Osman Bayezid Osmanoğlu with a surname as required by the Turkish Republic, or known by the Ottoman imperial name as Prince Şehzade Bayezid Efendi (; 23 June 1924 – 6 January 2017), was the 44th Head of the Imperial House of Osman, which ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1281 to 1922. The monarchy was abolished in 1922, with the modern Republic of Turkey replacing it.
Osman died in New York on 6 January 2017, aged 92.
Progressive supranuclear palsy
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP; or the Steele-Richardson-Olszewski syndrome, after the doctors who described it in 1963) is a degenerative disease involving the deterioration and death of specific volumes of the brain.
Males and females are affected the same equally and there is no racial, geographical or occupational predilection. Approximately 6 people per 100,000 population have PSP.
It has been described as a tauopathy.
Peter Sarstedt
Peter Eardley Sarstedt (10 December 1941 – 8 January 2017) was an English singer, instrumentalist and award-winning songwriter. He was the brother of musicians Eden Kane and Robin Sarstedt. His music was traditional folk music rather than traditional rock and roll.
He was best known for writing and performing the single "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?". It topped the UK Singles Chart in 1969 and won the Ivor Novello Award along with "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. Sarstedt remained a one-hit wonder, despite having released numerous successful albums and singles beginning from the late 1960s and releasing two singles a year from 1967 until 1987, with the popular track "Frozen Orange Juice" and the novelty song "Take off Your Clothes" entering the top ten.
Sarstedt had progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) since 2015. He died on 8 January 2017 in Sussex at the age of 75.
Buddy Bregman
Buddy Bregman (July 9, 1930 – January 8, 2017) was an American arranger, television producer, and composer. He was born in Chicago, Illinois.
He worked with many of the greatest musical artists of 20th Century popular music, including: Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., Peggy Lee, Bobby Darin, Anita O'Day, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Jerry Lewis, Paul Anka, Buddy Rich, Eddie Fisher, Annie Ross, and Carmen McRae. He became Ethel Merman's personal arranger.
In the early 1960s Bregman became a television producer and director. After producing several TV specials in Europe, he was hired by David Attenborough for BBC 2 in 1964. In 1966, he was appointed head of light entertainment for the weekday ITV company Rediffusion London.
Bregman wrote "Jump Jim Crow" – a musical for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It moved into London-based independent TV and movie production.
Bregman died in Los Angeles, California from complications of Alzheimer's disease on January 8, 2017, aged 86.
Rauda Morcos
Rauda Morcos, Arabic: روضة مرقص , (born 1974) is a well-known Palestinian lesbian activist. She started Aswat (أصوات), the first Palestinian group for lesbian rights. In 2006, she received the Felipa de Souza Award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (Now called OutRight Action International).
In 2002, Morcos joined the first online group for Palestinian lesbians in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In 2003, she was outed after she gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper. Morcos asked that her sexual orientation not be published. But the newspaper wrote “lesbian” in the headline and printed her photograph. After Morcos's sexual orientation was made public, she was harassed and physically assaulted. Her car was vandalized many times. She lost her job. She volunteered her time at Aswat until the organization had enough money to hire her.
Temple Run 2
Temple Run 2 is a video game for Android. It was released in January 17, 2013 by Imangi Studios. It was produced, designed and programmed by Keith Sheperd and Natalia Luckyanova. The art was by Kiril Tchangov. As of June 2014, Temple Run and Temple Run 2, it has been download over 1 billion times.
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