Person of the year: Susan Fowler

Leslie Hook:

When Susan Fowler joined Uber in late 2015, the company looked like an unstoppable juggernaut. It was expanding rapidly around the world and becoming the most valuable start-up of all time. For software engineers like Ms Fowler, there was exciting work to be done on the app that was changing transportation. Employees at San Francisco’s hottest company proudly wore their Uber sweatshirts around town.

But two years later, those sweatshirts are no longer visible and Uber is in crisis. Beset by one setback after another, the company has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the hard-driving tech world. In large part, that shift is due to Ms Fowler.

In February she published a blog about her time at Uber that lifted the lid on a company that was out of control. Ms Fowler described the sexual harassment she experienced, including her boss propositioning her for sex on the first day she joined his team. The human resources department turned a blind eye to her complaints, saying he was a “high performer”. When she wrote about this and other incidents, her post quickly went viral. Ms Fowler had pulled on a thread that would lead to a great unravelling.

In the process, the 26-year-old from rural Arizona who had to teach herself at the local library to get into university, found herself at the centre of three of the most important trends of the year. Her description of the reality of working at Uber generated a crisis that has raised questions about the very viability of the company. They also formed an early part of the growing backlash against the power and influence of the Big Tech companies.