Susan Fowler
software engineer who kickstarted a reckoning on sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. In early 2017, she wrote a widely shared blogpost detailing her experience of sexual harassment at Uber, which eventually led to the ousting of the company's CEO. Previously, Fowler served as editor-in-chief of a quarterly publication by the payment processing company Stripe, and currently serves a technology opinion editor at The New York Times. She was chosen Time’s Person of the Year as one of the “Silence Breakers”
According to this Wired article, Fowler, who calls Epictetus her “guide to living a good, intellectually rich life,” found succour in the stoic teachings when she was considering publishing her explosive memo.
We live in circumstances that are so far beyond our own control, and so often we fight them relentlessly, only to lose and become bitter and miserable because they are beyond our control.
Epictetus offers freedom to every one of us:
determine for yourself, he says, what is yours and what is beyond your control, and then work and care only for the things that are yours, and you will always be free.
What is ours?
Our minds, our thoughts, our actions, our intellectual pursuits. If we cultivate those things, nobody can ever take away our freedom.