Jeanette Symons Dies In Fatal Plane Crash

Jeannette Symons was more than just a technology dynamo. Mother of two, entrepreneur, gifted athlete, sister and daughter, Symons was an inspiration to women in technology everywhere. Symons was not the only victim of this fatal crash. Her young son Balan, 10 years old and already a promising athlete in his own right, was also killed. Symons was picking Balan up from ski camp in Maine, piloting her Cessna back to their home in Colorado. The plane hit an ice storm before leaving Maine, and crashed, killing both. Symons leaves behind her other child, a 7 year old daughter named Jennie, as well as her parents and two brothers.

Symons got her start in hardware, pioneering the tools that eventually became the industry standard for connecting personal PCs to the internet. She was the co-founder of Ascend Communications, Inc (the company that first allowed users to connect to more than one internet site at a time) and also of Zhone Technologies, Inc. (a telecommunications infrastructure company). Ascend made a name for Symons in the late nineties when it was bought out by Lucent Technologies.

Eventually she decided to leave the hardware side of technology and focus on social applications and Web 2.0 instead. She co-founded Industrious Kid, Inc with Tim Donovan. In 2006 they launched the kid-safe social web site Imbee. She conceived of Imbee while watching her kids enjoy the internet. She wanted to create a place that was safe for them to blog, surf and interact with their friends without fear of predators, and she succeeded.

By using credit card authentication and other tools, the site is able to verify the identity of the kids' guardian and that the guardian knows their child was online. After the no cost idenitity verification, the parent or guardian is also required to perform an additional verification for extra insurance. Kids aren't allowed to sign for the site without this parental process. Even after a kid signs up, the parent consistently has full access to the site to monitor how their child is using the internet.

The site draws in children by offering them a place to blog and socialize. It keeps them by making it fun. Kids can create their own trading cards and other fun things on the site that they can then share with their friends.

Symons and Donovan created a groundbreaking site that truly provides a safe place for kids to play online, but in the end Symons was more interested in living life for her own children than for others. Relocating her family to Steamboat, Colorado from San Francisco so they could participate in the sports she loved so much, she always put her kids first. A success in all of her endeavors, from athletics to technology and software and parenting, Symons' death leaves a void in the industry. She and her son will be missed.

From our source regarding the accident and its cause:

The cause of the plane crash is still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Weather conditions were reported as icy rain in Maine at the time of the crash. Symons and her son departed from the Augusta, Maine, State Airport on Friday night about 5:45 p.m. in a Cessna Citation twin engine plane.

Within a few minutes, the pilot radioed air traffic controllers with a request for emergency assistance, when the plane was at about 3,000 feet. But the plane crashed soon thereafter into woods 12 or 14 miles from the airport, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, which responded to the scene. McCausland said the pilot and passenger were dead upon impact and the plane erupted into flames.