When you break down the barriers to code, you build the foundation for innovation at scale.
Dee Dee Walsh has spent over three decades opening doors for developers who never got the VIP badge. From her groundbreaking work on the Visual Basic team at Microsoft in the early ’90s to her current role as VP of Developer Marketing at Growth Acceleration Partners, Dee Dee has made it her life’s work to ensure innovation is no longer reserved for the few.
She was there when building a Windows application required mastering complex APIs. Visual Basic changed that, letting people drag and drop their way into software development—no computer science degree required. By 1999, over five million developers were building with VB. Half of them had never written a line of Win32 code.
“Innovation isn’t scarce—opportunity is,” she says. “Let’s ship crowbars, not gatekeepers.”
That philosophy continues to guide her today as she leads cloud modernization efforts, helping businesses migrate thousands of legacy applications and billions of lines of code from outdated platforms to the cloud. More than just a technical feat, it’s a campaign to unlock creativity and preserve years of intellectual capital that would otherwise be lost.
Dee Dee’s three principles for impact? Make the right friends, put people over products, and build partnerships that outlast the code.
Her legacy is clear: empower the builders, remove the barriers, and let the next generation of innovators thrive.
About #empowHER50 campaign
This campaign celebrates women leaders at Microsoft, past and present, who have been instrumental in democratizing access to technology, opportunity, and growth. By honoring their contributions over the last half-century, this campaign highlights stories of resilience, innovation, and inclusivity. Through digital spotlights, a commemorative coffee table book, live recognition events, and more, the campaign inspires collective action toward achieving equitable societal goals. To learn more about empowHER50, please visit https://womenincloud.com/empowHER50
To learn about Microsoft 50th celebrations: https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-50/
