I had to add another. My dear friend, Ceil, who passed away at the end of 2008 was a huge inspiration to me and mentor as I was "growing up" in IT.

Ceil was a big part of the FoxPro developmnet community, ran her own user group in Westchester County, NY, participated in many FoxPro conferences, wrote articles and columns in publications and taught me about community. When I was in my 20's and knew very few programmers, Ceil took me under her wing. I was very fortunate to not just have mentors in IT, but to have a female mentor. This skewed my perspective in a way that helped me to not feel like an anomaly in the industry.

You can read Ceil's blog including the last few posts by her daughters at http://theceiljournal.blogspot.com/.