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= Paula Hawthorn = Paula Hawthorn is a former tech executive and start-up consultant. She has contributed to the pioneering research of relational database management systems and to the establishment of major initiatives for women in computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.

Early Life
Paula Hawthorn was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1943. After her parents divorced when she was two years old, Hawthorn and her mother moved to California. At age nine, Hawthorn moved in with her father and stepmother in Indiana, due to her mother's alcoholism. At age twelve, her family moved to Dallas, Texas where Hawthorn spent the remainder of her adolescence.

University of Houston
Hawthorn earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Houston in 1965. Growing up, Hawthorn was skilled at math and shared an appreciation of math with her father, so she intended to become a math teacher. However, Hawthorn was not allowed to complete her student teaching with the Houston Independent School District, because she had been arrested for participating in sit-ins as part of the Civil Rights Movement. Subsequently, on recommendation from a friend, Hawthorn took a course in computing and found the subject fascinating.

Hawthorn worked at Texaco debugging software for three years before returning to the University of Houston to pursue a master's degree in computer science, which she completed in 1974. With encouragement from one of her professors, she applied to Ph.D. programs and chose the University of California at Berkeley due to its proximity to her family.

University of California, Berkeley
As a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, Hawthorn's excellence in her coursework earned her a recommendation to work on the INGRES Project. The INGRES Project was an initiative started by Michael Stonebraker and Eugene Wong to develop a relational database management system called Interactive Graphics Retrieval System, or INGRES. In 1979 Hawthorn completed her dissertation comparing the performance of INGRES on hardware specialized for database system performance to its performance on general-purpose hardware, with Stonebraker as her advisor.

Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WISCE)
While completing her doctoral program at UC Berkeley, Hawthorn befriended fellow computer science graduate student Barbara Simons, and they bonded over a common goal of supporting fellow women in computer science. Together they worked with Sheila Humphreys from the UC Berkeley Women's Center to hold programming for women in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department including regular lunches which began to function as a support group for women in the department.

In 1977 the group became an official student organization know as Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WISCE) to be eligible to receive university funding. The founding members include Paula Hawthorn, Diane McEntyre, Barbara Simons, Mary Ann Niemat, Susan Eggers, and Deborah Estrin. Hawthorn served as the organization's first president and returned to speak at WISCE's fortieth reunion in 2018.

Re-entry Program for Women and Minorities in Computer Science
Hawthorn and Simons observed that as overall enrollment in the UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate program increased, the number of female graduate students decreased, because the department adjusted the admissions prerequisites to require a greater amount of engineering education. Hawthorn, Simons, Humphreys, and others collaborated to develop the Re-entry Program for Women and Minorities in Computer Science which would allow women and under-represented minorities with bachelor's degrees to take computer science classes at UC Berkeley to prepare them to apply to graduate programs. Although re-entry students earned credit from the University of California Extension, Hawthorn thought it was important that the students experience the same classes and environment as other UC Berkeley computer science students. In 1983 the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department approved the Re-entry Program for Women and Minorities in Computer Science. The program served more than 150 students before it was discontinued in 1998, due to the passage of Proposition 209 which disallowed the consideration of students based on race or gender.

Career
After completing her Ph.D. Hawthorn worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory continuing research into the effect of hardware on database system performance before working for Hewlett-Packard. Then, along with Bob Epstein and Michael Ubell, Hawthorn became a founding member of Britton-Lee Inc., which developed specialized hardware for database systems. Hawthorn briefly returned to Hewlett-Packard before becoming a cofounder of Illustra Information Technologies Incorporated, along with Michael Stonebraker. Informix bought Illustra and Hawthorn continued to work there before joining another start-up, Andromedia as vice president of product development. Hawthorn has since worked as a consultant for various start-ups.

Awards and Honors
In 1996 Hawthorn was awarded the Computer Science Distinguished Alumni Award from the U.C. Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department.

Hawthorn is a past member of the Berkeley EECS Industrial Advisory Board.