Martha Dennis reviews with NetSapien founders David Wang, left, and H-D Vo the newest version of the startup company’s V-Box broadband phone system. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

As a young woman, Martha Dennis wanted to attend college at Yale where her father was a professor. But Yale didn’t take women then, so Dennis attended the still impressive Smith, her mother’s alma mater. Yale’s loss, Smith’s gain, San Diego’s treasure.

In a technology realm where most of the royalty are men, Dennis the math major and art minor, with an applied math doctorate from Harvard, stands out. Solving software and telecom problems since the days of the vaunted Linkabit that spawned Qualcomm — “I held the door open for Irwin (Jacobs) when he left,” Dennis says with a laugh — she has helped found, fund and run two companies, Pacific Communications Sciences Inc. and WaveWare.

Her civic involvement is wide, ranging from serving in an emeritus capacity on the La Jolla Chamber Music Society board to keying the 1998 start of the San Diego Telecom Council, which today is arguably the region’s hottest professional organization and one which Dennis is serving as president. Her awards are many, including being recognized in 1983 with a YWCA Tribute To Women And Industry award while heading Linkabit’s software writing group.

Today, at age 61, she shares a spacious home blocks from the La Jolla beach with her husband, Edward, a pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry professor at the UCSD School of Medicine. Their three children, all Yale grads, are in their 20s, out of the house and on interesting career trajectories — computer sciences, chemistry and environmental anthropology.

Rather than slow down as WaveWare unwound following the successful settlement of a lawsuit two years ago, Dennis got involved with scouting investment opportunities, first for San Diego Padres owner John Moores. When the books closed on WaveWare, she joined Windward Ventures. One of Windward’s three venture partners, it is her job to find and nurture telecom startups. Again, she is one of few women in her industry. Blame, in part, the trickle-up theory. Women are under-represented in technology’s executive ranks and it is from there that VCs draw talent.

“I’m about to give a speech at my 40th college reunion on this topic,” Dennis says. “I happen to fall into a field that initially was mainly populated by men. Over the years, no matter how I try to change the environment, the number of women in technology seems to be 15 percent. The figures are that 25 percent of all companies in the U.S. are run by women. But in technology it is much, much smaller.”

Dennis is doing her part to change things, but knows it will go slowly. “I am beginning to network right now with other women in venture,” she says. “Eventually, we will try to do more mentoring of younger women. It is very difficult. Venture is very private, not like any public industry. And it is not accountable to the public.”

VCs are bottom line oriented, and her boss at Windward, David Titus, makes it clear Dennis was hired for her experience, intellect and breadth of contacts in the San Diego technology community.

“Martha has a wealth of contacts within our community and knowledge about the wireless communications space,” says Titus, who runs a firm with 24 companies funded and $100 million in capital. “We have a program here of venture partners, which are people who have had, or do have, extensive company experience and then spend a portion of their time working with us seeking out new investment opportunities. That is what Martha is doing. It is a program that has worked out very well for us.”

Titus has his own theory about the relatively few women in his industry, particularly the non-biotech sector. “Partially, it has historically been an engineering-driven industry and there are not a lot of women in engineering, particularly computer engineering,” he says. “If you look at the biotech side — and this is not a scientific statement — you would find more women in senior management roles and more women in VC roles.”

He is not expecting the situation to change soon. “I have a niece in college who started as a computer software major,” he says. “But 90 percent of her class are guys, most of whom are hard-core gamers. For the most part, young girls don’t seem to be hard-core gamers. She has changed majors because she doesn’t relate to hard-core gamers.”

Dennis’ efforts to encourage women go back to UCSD Connect’s Athena, an organization built to support and acknowledge women in technology. Dennis hosted Athena’s first meeting at her company in the late 1980s, was the group’s second president and remains active. “Athena supports entrepreneurship,” says Dennis. “It supports networking where women never had networking before. Networking is really a mainstay in doing business. Getting funding, getting customers, getting information and finding employees, all of it is the networking.”

Barbara Bry was the founder of Athena, first as essentially a committee of UCSD Connect then as a separate entity still under the university umbrella. She has known Dennis since the early 1980s when their children attended La Jolla Country Day. “She was always brilliant,” says Bry, now an executive with TEC, a worldwide organization that brings together CEOs from diverse businesses to work on common problems. “The things that her brain does my brain does not comprehend.”

Bry says Dennis’ success is inspiring to female entrepreneurs.

“She is an incredible role model,” Bry says. “She was a woman engineer at a time when, well ... there are still very few woman engineers.”

Feminism aside — part of this interview was conducted while Dennis was on her way to a Planned Parenthood fund-raiser — Dennis remains pragmatic when evaluating business for Windward. “I take all comers,” she says. “I have not specifically looked for women-owned businesses.”

During a visit to her home office, Dennis invited over the two principals of NetSapiens, a company she is counseling. NetSapiens’ product is a broadband phone network box about the size of a VHS tape that, using Internet technology, can serve a small business’ telecom needs at a fraction of a traditional system’s cost. Its two founders are men, David Wang and H-D Vo.

Still, Dennis continues to engage women entrepreneurs, and is sought for her counsel.

“I have had many conversations with women who have just started a company and are asking me what to do,” she says. “It gives me great pleasure to point them in the right direction. That is what it is all about. It is the networking. There are some women in venture who say ‘I don’t see any difference between men and women.’ But there is a difference in that women are often handicapped by the lack of networking.”

Succeeding in business, she tells women, is difficult.

“Business is tough,” she says. “Starting a businesses is tough and there are lots of disappointments along the way. And one of the things women do when something goes wrong is doubt themselves and blame it on themselves. If I could give any message to women it would be ‘Don’t blame it on yourself.’ It is the nature of the game. Business is tough. If somebody tells you it is easy, don’t believe them.”