Kate Craig-Wood


Kate Helen Craig-Wood is a British IT entrepreneur and the co-founder and managing director of Memset Dedicated Hosting. She has received a number of awards, including being listed 4th among the 25 most influential women in UK IT in 2012. Craig-Wood is a transgender woman, and she is known for promoting energy efficiency in IT, women in IT, and transgender acceptance.

Career

Craig-Wood taught herself various programming languages and internet technologies, and after completing an MSc is in Biomedical Science joined Arthur Andersen business consulting as an IT consultant. She later became head of business development for Easyspace Ltd., one of the UK's largest web hosting companies.
In 2002, Craig-Wood left Easyspace and founded Memset with her brother, Nick. Memset has grown rapidly since its inception. Memset is Britain's first carbon neutral ISP. Memset has been voted best UK Web host six years running and has won a number of other awards for innovation, environmental awareness and IT strategy.
Craig-Wood is a proponent of energy-efficient computing and was a UK finalist in the 2008 BlackBerry Women and Technology awards for "best use of technology by a woman in a small to medium business". She is a director of Intellect UK, the UK's high-tech trade association, and chairs its climate change group. She is also involved with the British Computer Society's efforts on green IT via her committee membership of the Data Centre Specialist Group.

Personal life and trans activism

Craig-Wood was born in 1977. Craig-Wood was educated at the Royal Grammar School and attended the University of Southampton obtaining a 2:1 in Biomedical Science and a master's degree in the same field.
Craig-Wood married in 2000 and divorced in 2006. The divorce was a result of her beginning her male-to-female gender transition, which she undertook between October 2005 and November 2006.
In March 2008, she came out in the Sunday Times Magazine "in the hope that she might be the role model to younger transwomen that she never had, and also to try and dispel some myths about ."
She is an executive committee member and trustee of the Gender Identity Research and Education Society, and is working with the group with a focus on improving medical care in the UK for young trans people.