NEW YORK, Oct. 09, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WAG Magazine featured Ritu Favre, CEO of NEXT Biometrics (Oslo Bors:NEXT), the global fingerprint sensor company, detailing how she leads NEXT and also encourages girls to study and young women to pursue careers in the opportunity-rich traditionally male-dominated science, technology, engineering and math, called STEM.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/036d959c-1a72-470d-a5f5-1ef3462024b7
WAG said while women comprise half of America’s college-educated workforce they hold just 29% of science and engineering jobs and only 11% of executive positions at tech firms worldwide. “The number gets lower when you climb the ranks to CEO, as Favre has done as the first woman to head a global fingerprint sensor company,” the lifestyle publication added in its October issue themed “Exploring Our Tech-Driven World.”
In the article headlined “Ritu Favre: Against the Grain,” WAG wrote, “Biometrics is the measurement and analysis of personal characteristics, like fingerprints and shopping habits. It’s one of the fastest-growing segments within the information technology sector and its increasing prevalence affects our future as a society. People who work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) are driving the progress.”
About Favre’s strategy WAG said, “The cornerstone of NEXT is to position the world’s first flexible fingerprint sensor that meets all ISO (International Organization for Standardization) requirements for smart card markets at a time when the biometric sector is exploding. Its advantage is a sensor size large enough for print readings and that’s durable, bendable and cost-efficient.”
The magazine recapped how NEXT’s large flexible fingerprint sensors are well positioned for growth in four main categories: Smart Cards, Government ID, Access Control and Notebook security. WAG added, “Favre’s enthusiasm for the technology is now focused on scaling up the distribution of the device and refining its simplicity, a goal that is catapulting NEXT to the forefront of the industry.”
WAG, voted New York’s best monthly magazine, commented that, “Favre’s story echoes what research suggests: It’s not that girls don’t have what it takes to excel in STEM; it’s that society tells them they can’t.”
Favre credits her parents for nurturing her science and technology studies and noted, “My father said it doesn’t matter if I have a girl or a boy. I want my children to be independent.”
WAG’s Jena Butterfield reported: “Favre serves as inspiration. If you were to take the measure of Ritu Favre’s lifelong behavior using some kind of biometric tool, you’d see a pattern of accomplishment that started early, long before the age of 12 when she entered high school, or 15 when she graduated and went to college, through the grueling years it took her to earn a master’s in electrical engineering (receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Arizona State University), and then a rapid ascent up the management ladder at several major tech companies before she became CEO at the Norwegian firm NEXT Biometrics.”
Favre and other advocates of women in STEM are looking to encourage girls at the high school level and beyond. WAG said, “Prior to high-school graduation, girls’ participation and achievement in math and science is on a par with that of boys. They perform equally well on standardized tests and enrollment in advanced science courses. These rates shift at the undergraduate level where only 11 percent of women earn bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering, according to the NGC (National Girls Collaborative) Project.”
WAG wrote, “Family/work balance is often cited as a contributor to the gender gap. Favre thinks that in order to succeed, she had little choice but to absorb the added pressure, not trade one responsibility for the other. She says that as a CEO, wife and mother of two, ‘I basically have three full-time jobs.’”
NEXT Biometrics is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and has sales, support and development subsidiaries in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Taipei, Prague and Shanghai. Favre travels extensively from her base in California, where she is also a busy married Mom of a son in college and daughter in high school.
ABOUT NEXT Biometrics: Enabled by its patented NEXT Active Thermal principle, NEXT Biometrics (www.NextBiometrics.com) offers high quality area fingerprint sensors at a fraction of the prices of comparable competitors. A wide range of product formats, including smartcards, notebooks, time & attendance, USB-sensors, smartcard readers, secure tokens and access control systems and many more are targeted. NEXT BIOMETRICS GROUP ASA is a publicly listed company headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Media and Investor contacts for NEXT Biometrics are CEO Ritu Favre, Ritu.Favre@NEXTbiometrics and CFO Knut Stalen, Knut.Stalen@NEXTbiometrics.com.
Contact: Brian Dobson, 203-613-2222, BD@DobsonPR.com