Megan Smith

Megan J. Smith (born October 21, 1964)[1] was the third Chief Technology Officer of the United States (U.S. CTO) and Assistant to the President, serving under President Barack Obama. She was previously a vice president at Google, leading new business development and early-stage partnerships across Google's global engineering and product teams at Google for nine years, was general manager of Google.org,[2] a vice president at Google[x] and the former CEO of Planet Out.[3][4] She serves on the boards of MIT[5] and Vital Voices, was a member of the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid[6] and co-founded the Malala Fund.[7][8] On September 4, 2014, she was named as the third (and first female) U.S. CTO, succeeding Todd Park,[9][10] and serving until January, 2017.[11]

Megan Smith
3rd Chief Technology Officer of the United States
In office
September 4, 2014 – January 20, 2017
PresidentBarack Obama
Preceded byTodd Park
Succeeded byMichael Kratsios
Personal details
Born (1964-10-21) October 21, 1964
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse(s)
​
(
m. 2008; div. 2018)
Children2
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of
Technology

Early life and education

Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario,[12] and spent many summers at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, where her mother, Joan Aspell Smith, was director of the Chautauqua Children's School.[13] Smith graduated from City Honors School in 1982.[14] She went on to receive her S.B. in 1986 and an S.M. in 1988, both in mechanical engineering, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed her Master's thesis work at the MIT Media Lab. She was a member of the MIT student team that designed, built and raced a solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback in the first cross-continental solar car race.[15]

Career

Following MIT, Smith worked at a variety of start-ups, including Apple in Tokyo and General Magic located in Mountain View, California, as product design lead on nascent smartphone technologies[16] before she got involved with the launch of Planet Out in 1995. She joined formally in 1996 as COO and from 1998 she was Planet Out's Chief Executive Officer, where she presided over that company's merger with Gay.com.[17][18]

In 2003, she joined Google,[19] where she rose to the vice president of business development, leading new business development and early-stage partnerships across Google's global engineering and product teams. She led many early acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps), and Picasa, and later also took over as general manager of Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org.[20] Smith co-hosts Google's Solve for X think tank.[21] In 2012, she started Google's "Women Techmakers" diversity initiative.[22]

In 2014, she left Google to become the 3rd U.S. CTO. After leaving the White House in 2017, she helped launch the Tech Jobs Tour, which aims to promote diversity in the technological sector.[23]

Smith serves on the board of MIT,[24] as well as on the advisory boards for the MIT Media Lab, DRAPER, and Technology Review and serves on the board of Vital Voices. She is also a member of the Award Selection Committee for the distinguished Carroll L. Wilson Award at MIT.[25] Smith has contributed to a broad range of engineering projects, including a bicycle lock,[26] space station construction program, and solar cookstoves.

She is an active proponent of STEM education and innovation.[27]

Her appeal for technologists to work in public service at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing inspired several Harvard University students to create the national non-profit organization Coding it Forward which creates data science and technology internship program for undergraduate and graduate students in United States federal agencies.[28]

As of March 2018 she is the CEO and Founder of shift7 which offers consulting services in tech-forward innovation and inclusive collaboration for faster, scaled impact.

Recognition
  • World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2001, 2002[29]
  • Listed by Out magazine in 2012[30] and 2013,[31] as one of the 50 most powerful LGBT people in the United States
  • Reuters Digital Vision Program Fellow at Stanford, 2003-2004[32]
  • Top 25 Women on the Web, 2000[33]
  • Upside Magazine 100 Digital Elite, 1999 and 2000[34]
  • Advertising Age i.20, 1999[35]
  • GLAAD Interactive Media Award for Internet Leadership, 1999[36]
  • Charging Buffalo Award, 2015[37]
  • Business Insider 23 Most Powerful LGBTQ+ People in Tech, 2019[38]

Personal life

Smith married technology columnist Kara Swisher in Marin County in 1999[39] (before same-sex marriage was legal in California). They have two sons, Alexander and Louis,[15][17][40][41] and are divorced.[42]

gollark: So just take the image feature outputs and run them through a classifier thing?
gollark: Mine mostly don't share templates, actually, but that's a reasonable idea anyway. I'll look into it.
gollark: I wouldn't expect it to be able to understand hugely abstract things or whatever but just approximately match my tastes.
gollark: I want to make something to automatically classify memes as worth adding to my meme collection or not. I have several thousand already in there which are in it and so "good", and could probably crawl tons from Reddit which are probably "bad". Is this practical?
gollark: Is few *really* an adjective?

References
  1. "Megan Smith". Computer Hope. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  2. "The Women at Google". Marie Claire. March 12, 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  3. Lehoczky, Etelka (October 26, 2004). "Six who see the future". The Advocate. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  4. Boss, Suzie (Fall 2010). "Do No Evil". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  5. "Corporation elects new members". MIT News. June 3, 2011. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  6. "ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON VOLUNTARY FOREIGN AID MEMBERS". USAID. 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  7. Smith, Megan (November 10, 2012). "Introducing: The Malala Fund". The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  8. "Board of Directors". Vital Voices. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  9. Scola, Nancy (September 4, 2014). "White House names Google's Megan Smith the next Chief Technology Officer of the United States". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  10. Howard, Alex (September 4, 2014). "Google[x] VP Megan Smith busts Silicon ceiling as first female US CTO". Tech Republic. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  11. "Megan Smith". LinkedIn.
  12. Mabbett, Andy. "File:Megan Smith voice.flac". Retrieved 21 June 2015 – via WikiMedia Commons.
  13. Anderson, Dale (September 4, 2014). "Obama names City Honors graduate U.S. chief technology officer". The Buffalo News. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  14. "Distinguished Alumni". City Honors School. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  15. McCluskey, Eileen (November–December 2007). "Megan Smith '86, SM '88". Technology Review. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  16. Langway, Lynn; Pamela Kruger; P. B. Gray (March 1, 2001). "25 Women Who Are Making It Big In Small Business". CNN. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  17. Hopkins, Jim (June 21, 2000). "PlanetOut CEO taps gay market Exec becomes power player in elusive $450B industry". USA Today. p. 7B. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  18. Kuczynski, Alex (16 November 2000). "TECHNOLOGY; 2 Companies In Gay Media Plan to Merge". The New York Times. p. 4. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  19. Hafner, Katie (September 3, 2003). "3 succeed in computer field, but women still lag". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  20. Hardy, Quentin (24 February 2009). "Re-engineering Google.org". Forbes. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  21. Woollacott, Emma (February 7, 2012). "'Solve for X' to tackle world's biggest problems". TG Daily. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  22. "Women Techmakers". www.womentechmakers.com. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
  23. Arnold, Jenna (2017-11-08). "First Female CTO Of The U.S. Megan Smith Hopes Tech's History Can Repeat Itself". Forbes. Forbes Media. Archived from the original on 2013-08-19. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  24. "Corporation elects new members". MIT News Office. June 3, 2011. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  25. Smith, Megan (November 10, 2014). "'Distinguished Fellowships - Carroll L. Wilson'". MIT. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  26. McNichol, Tom. "Wired 8.06: Must Read". Wired News. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  27. Smith, Megan (October 11, 2013). "'Passion, Adventure and Heroic Engineering'... and Talent Inclusion". The Huffington Post. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
  28. Kelman, Steve. "Students recruiting students into federal tech". FCW. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
  29. McCluskey, Eileen (2007-10-15). "Megan Smith '86, SM '88 | MIT Technology Review". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
  30. "The Power List: MEGAN SMITH". Out. 17 April 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  31. "The Power List: MEGAN SMITH". Out. 10 April 2013. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
  32. "Digital Vision Fellowship". tow.com. 2003-09-11. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
  33. Mayfield, Kendra (February 1, 2000). "Women Geeks Honor Their Own". Wired News. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  34. "Press Release: Steve Jobs Edges Out Bill Gates for Top Billing Among UPSIDE's 1999 Elite 100; ..." November 15, 1999. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  35. "i.20: PlanetOut's Megan J. Smith". Advertising Age. November 1, 1999. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  36. "Cruisin' The Web - AMBUSH Mag 2000 - Gay America". 173.227.131.45. Archived from the original on 2012-11-29. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
  37. "SAVE THE DATE: 37th Annual Buffalo Nite to Honor Megan Smith Sept. 16". WashingtonExec. Retrieved 2016-03-16.
  38. Leskin, Paige. "The 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  39. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/07/kara-swisher-silicon-valleys-most-powerful-snoop.html
  40. "Google working on social, news reader". San Jose Business Journal. September 16, 2011. Retrieved 2 June 2012.
  41. "Susan Ann Ventre". Scranton Times. Legacy.com. 2012-01-24. Retrieved 2018-03-01.
  42. "Kara Swisher Biography and Ethics Statement". re/code. Retrieved July 31, 2018.

Further reading
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