My Road to Microsoft

About the Book

My road to Microsoft is a chronicle of a young woman rise as an engineer in the male-dominated field of technology and how her concept became Microsoft Expedia, the first successful Internet travel site. Woven throughout this memoir is her personal story of coming out as a lesbian and sharing her life for almost 20 years with her partner.

The book starts in Brazil covering the struggle of becoming an engineer despite society’s limited ideas about what girls could achieve. Hitting the glass ceiling at age 23, she immigrates to America, works as a cleaning woman to survive until obtaining papers to work as an engineer. Eventually her idea became the nucleus of Expedia when her disillusion with Microsoft makes her leave in 1998, as a millionaire.

About the Author

Soraya Bittencourt former Microsoft executive and original creator of Expedia, was always a pioneer in her field. Prior to Microsoft she launched the first telecommunications satellite in Latin America. After immigrating to America, Soraya worked at Lotus Development where she introduced multimedia CD-ROM versions of Lotus products. She founded her own company in 1992 to deliver Brazil an Exotic Journey, the product that preceded Expedia. Paula Martinac is the author of three novels, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning Out of Time and the Lambda-nominated Home Movies. She has also published four nonfiction books, and is currently the editor in chief of Q Syndicate, a content provider to the gay press.