Born Vera Buchthal in 1933 to a Jewish family in Dortmund, Germany, Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley’s life began amidst rising persecution. She was the daughter of a Jewish judge who lost his position under the Nazi regime. In 1939, aged five, she and her nine year old sister, Renate, were sent to Britain on a Kindertransport train, escaping the Holocaust as unaccompanied child refugees. She was raised by foster parents in the Midlands and this traumatic uprooting instilled in her a deep gratitude for her adopted country and a lifelong drive to make her life “worth saving”. She developed a passion for mathematics, a subject her all-girls school didn’t teach, forcing her to study it at a local boys’ school.
She worked at the Post Office Research Station, where she built and coded computers from scratch, . She took evening classes for six years to obtain an honours degree in mathematics. In 1959, she moved to CDL Ltd, designers of the ICT 1301 computer. Shirley grew frustrated with the rampant sexism and “glass ceiling” that blocked her progression. In 1962, with just £6, she founded a software company, Freelance Programmers, from her dining room table. Her vision was revolutionary for its time: to provide high-level employment for talented women who had been forced to leave their careers due to marriage or motherhood. The company offered flexible, home-based work decades before it was common practice. To get her foot in the door in the male-dominated business world, she adopted the masculine name “Steve” in her business letters, noting that it helped get her proposals read rather than immediately discarded.
Her company, which eventually became the F.I. Group (and later Xansa), flourished, taking on major projects such as programming the black box for the supersonic Concorde jet. A true innovator in corporate culture, Shirley pioneered co-ownership, eventually transferring a significant portion of her company to the staff, making many of her predominantly female employees millionaires. She challenged the notion that women couldn’t be coders, leaders, or entrepreneurs, and she proved that a business built on trust, flexibility, and female talent could thrive. Her legacy paved the way for generations of women in computing, software and technology.
Shirley’s personal life was marked by a profound challenge: her only son, Giles, was severely autistic. His condition was profoundly disabling, and she cared for him until his tragic death from an epileptic seizure at the age of 37. This deeply personal experience fueled her second career in philanthropy. Upon retiring in 1993, she established The Shirley Foundation, a grant-giving charity dedicated to pioneering projects in the field of autism spectrum disorders. Her foundation has initiated and funded groundbreaking medical research and practical projects using IT to improve the lives of autistic people. Dame Stephanie Shirley’s legacy is that of a tenacious entrepreneur who shattered conventions, a trailblazer who created a new paradigm for women in technology, and a philanthropist whose work has had a lasting impact on autism research and support.
Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley was a pioneering force in the world of computing, a fierce advocate for women in tech, and a philanthropist whose life was shaped by resilience, innovation, and compassion. She died in 2025. In 2013, appearing on BBC radio, Shirley discussed why she had given away more than £67 million of her personal wealth to different projects. She said “I do it because of my personal history; I need to justify the fact that my life was saved”.