Megan J. Smith (born October 21, 1964) is an American engineer and technologist. She 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, a vice president briefly at Google where she co-created WomenTechmakers, is the former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of Planet Out and worked as an engineer on early smartphones at General Magic. She serves on the boards of MIT and Vital Voices, was a member of the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid and co-founded the Malala Fund. Today Smith is the CEO and Founder of shift7. On September 4, 2014, she was named as the third (and first female) U.S. CTO, succeeding Todd Park, and serving until January, 2017.

Early life and education

Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, and

Fort Erie, Ontario Fort Erie is a town on the Niagara River in the Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. It is directly across the river from Buffalo, New York, and is the site of Old Fort Erie which played a prominent role in the War of 1812. Fort Erie is one of N ...

, 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. Smith graduated from

City Honors School City Honors School at Fosdick-Masten Park, known colloquially as City Honors, or CHS, is a college preparatory school in Buffalo, New York, United States. It is part of the Buffalo Public Schools system. The school was founded in 1975 for acade ...

in 1982. 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

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

in the first cross-continental solar car race.

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 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 expanded partnerships, built new business models, grew revenue and global users, raised venture funding, and later presided over that company's merger with Gay.com. In 2003, she joined Google, where she rose to the vice president of new

business development Business development entails tasks and processes to develop and implement growth opportunities within and between organizations. It is a subset of the fields of business, commerce and organizational theory. Business development is the creation of ...

, leading early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations and technology licensing 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. Smith co-created and co-hosted Google's Solve for X solution acceleration programs 2012-14. In 2012, she started Google's "Women Techmakers" diversity initiative to expand visibility, community and resources for technical women globally. In 2014, she left Google to become the 3rd U.S. CTO. In that role, Smith recruited top tech talent to serve across government collaborating on pressing issues, from AI, data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship, structural inequalities, government tech innovation capacity, STEM/STEAM engagement, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. Her teams focused on broad capacity building by co-creating all-hands-on-deck initiatives, including the public-private program TechHire, the Computer Science for All initiative, and the Image of STEM campaigns. In addition, she launched the campaign to #FindtheSentiments, which is an effort to find the Declaration of Sentiments, a piece of history from the Seneca Falls Convention. After leaving the White House in 2017, Smith became CEO and Founder of shift7 which works on tech-forward, inclusive innovation for faster impact on systemic economic, social, and environmental challenges. At shift7, the team continued co-creating the United Nations Solutions Summit and other programs; in 2017 Smith helped launch Tech Jobs Tour, aimed at promoting diversity in the technological sector, traveling to over 20 U.S. cities to help empower and connect local talent to their nascent tech sectors. Smith serves on the board of MIT, Vital Voices,

LA2028 LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...

, Think of Us as well as on the advisory boards for the MIT Media Lab and the Algorithmic Justice League. She is also a member of the Award Selection Committee for the distinguished Carroll L. Wilson Award at MIT. Smith has contributed to a broad range of engineering projects, including a bicycle lock, space station construction program, and solar cookstoves. She is an active proponent of

STEM Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

education and innovation. 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. Smith was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017 for leading technological innovation teams and efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM industries both nationally and globally, and elected a member of the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...

in 2018.

Recognition

* World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2001, 2002 * Listed by ''

Out Out may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Out'' (1957 film), a documentary short about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 * ''Out'' (1982 film), an American film directed by Eli Hollander * ''Out'' (2002 film), a Japanese film ba ...

'' magazine in 2012 and 2013, as one of the 50 most powerful LGBT people in the United States * Reuters Digital Vision Program Fellow at Stanford, 2003-2004 * Top 25 Women on the Web, 2000 * ''Upside Magazine'' 100 Digital Elite, 1999 and 2000 * ''Advertising Age'' i.20, 1999 * GLAAD Interactive Media Award for Internet Leadership, 1999 * Charging Buffalo Award, 2015 * Matrix Hall of Fame, 2015 *Business Insider 23 Most Powerful LGBTQ+ People in Tech, 2019

Personal life

Smith married technology columnist

Kara Swisher Kara Anne Swisher ( ) is an American journalist. She has covered the business of the internet since 1994. As of 2022, Swisher was a contributing editor at ''New York'', the host of the podcast ''Sway'', and the co-host of the podcast ''Pivot.'' ...

Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

in 1999 (before same-sex marriage was legal in California). They have two sons, Louis and Alexander, and are divorced .

References

External links

Official biography
at

Office of Science and Technology Policy An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific dut ...