Photo by Shift7
Photo by Chuck Kennedy, White House photographer

Megan Smith

Founder & CEO

Shift7

POSITION

Founder & CEO

COMPANY

Shift7

COUNTRY

USA

Website

Shift7

SCENE

Business

SOCIAL

LinkedIn

Twitter

What makes Megan Smith a Global Shaker?

Megan Smith was the third chief technology officer of the United States (US CTO), the first woman to assume the position. She also served as assistant to the president, serving under President Barack Obama.

As the chief technology officer, she worked within the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which covered issues such as patent reform, copyright, big data, privacy, student privacy and the Consumer [Privacy] Bill of Rights.

Prior to her position as CTO, she worked at Apple in Tokyo, General Magic in Mountain View, California, and Google, where she rose to the position to vice president of business development. In addition to her work in acquiring early business acquisitions for the company, she also created Google’s “Women Techmakers” diversity initiative.

“We need to know that women have always done these [technical] jobs at all levels, even if they’ve been written out of the story,” she said in an interview with Makers. “We just lose our history all the time, and it’s really debilitating to young girls and minorities, and to young boys who don’t realize that women should be there, or that girls should be there, too.”

In 2019, she founded shift7, a company that connects “diverse and non-traditional tech talent” with companies in need and works “in partnership on complex, systemic problems, finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution-makers, and to apply sustainable models for investing resources, talent, tech and capital, especially across under-resourced spaces.” She’s also a co-founder of the Malala Fund, a nonprofit that supports education programmes to help girls attend school.

Megan is a board member at her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Vital Voices.

Tags: Diversity and Inclusion, Government and Politics, LGBTQ+, STEM, Women in Tech

Last updated: June 12, 2020