As the world navigates the intricate intersection of technology and human progress, tech women leaders are leading from the front, lending their expertise, creativity, and EQ to propel the AI industry into new frontiers.
Let’s delve into the stories and achievements of these trailblazers, demonstrating that the future of technology is not only diverse but distinctly female.
Mira Murati
Mira Murati, the CTO of OpenAI, is one of the most celebrated technology leaders of our time and how! Recently, when the entire OpenAI drama played out with the ousting of Sam Altman, it was Murati who helmed the company briefly for those tumultuous days. She ensured that productivity wasn’t hit.
As the CTO, Murati nurtured OpenAI helping it become the company it is today. She led the team to create path-breaking products such as ChatGPT, DALL-E and GPT-4. Mira is an Albanian engineer, who moved to Canada as a teenager to study at an international school in Vancouver. She graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in mechanical engineering and later moved to San Francisco.
Daniela Amodei
Daniela Amodei, the co-founder and president of Anthropic, stands tall in the artificial intelligence realm. Her commitment to developing AI systems that are reliable, interpretable, and controllable has steered her through a remarkable journey marked by numerous accomplishments and accolades.
She joined Stripe in 2013 when it was still a young company and quickly rose from a solo recruiter to lead recruiter, growing the team from 45 to 300 members. After working at Stripe, Daniela joined OpenAI, where she held various positions. After leaving OpenAI, Dario and Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic in 2021, aiming to make AI safer. They brought on board at least nine other talented individuals from OpenAI who shared their vision.
Lisa Su
Dr Lisa Su stands as a trailblazing figure in the technology industry, renowned for her exceptional leadership and contributions to semiconductor innovation. Serving as the president and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), she has revitalized the company, steering it towards remarkable growth and technological advancements.
Dr Su’s strategic vision, technical expertise, and commitment to diversity and inclusion have solidified her as a prominent leader, earning accolades such as being named among Fortune’s ‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’. Her impact resonates not only within AMD but across the entire semiconductor landscape.
Julie Sweet
With a blend of strategic insight and a touch of visionary leadership, Julie Sweet conquered complex landscapes of business, leaving a trail of innovation in her wake. In September 2019, as the CEO of Accenture, she not only navigated the intricate tapestry of global business but also painted the future with strokes of transformative ideas.
Julie’s multifaceted expertise extends beyond corporate realms; she served as Accenture‘s general counsel, secretary, and chief compliance officer for five years. Beyond her corporate duties, she actively contributes to global initiatives, serving on the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees.
Timmit Gebru
Timnit Gebru, a prominent computer scientist and ethical AI advocate, has significantly shaped the discourse on artificial intelligence. As a former co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, she was instrumental in highlighting the importance of responsible AI development. She has done some groundbreaking research and holds a PhD from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Gebru co-founded the Black in AI affinity group, and as the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), she has been a central figure in the field of ethical AI. She was named one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune and one of Nature’s ten people who shaped science in 2021, and in 2022, one of Time’s most influential people.
Daphne Koller
Daphne Koller, an esteemed Israeli-American computer scientist, has left an indelible mark on machine learning and probabilistic models, particularly in biology and human health. TIME recognized her as one of the 100 most influential people in 2013, a distinction that underscored her groundbreaking contributions.
Currently leading Insitro, a biotech startup merging machine learning and biology for drug discovery, Koller has played a crucial role in advancing graphical and temporal models. Her co-authored textbook on Probabilistic Graphical Models remains a definitive reference, and her introduction to Module Networks has revolutionised gene activity modelling.
Sandra Rivera
Sandra Rivera is a seasoned technology executive known for her impactful leadership in the semiconductor and technology sector. Currently, she serves as Intel’s executive vice president and chief people officer, overseeing the company’s global human resources and driving initiatives related to organisational transformation and talent development. With a strong technical background and an MBA from Arizona State University, Rivera led Intel’s efforts in network transformation.
She previously led the Network Platforms Group of over 3,000 employees that drove the transformation of network infrastructure to Intel-based solutions and enabled breakthrough ways to integrate Intel’s silicon and software portfolio to create greater customer value.
Lila Ibrahim
Lila Ibrahim serves as the chief operating officer at Google DeepMind, a prominent AI research firm dedicated to advancing science and benefiting humanity through solving intelligence challenges. In her role, she oversees various functions such as operations, governance and ethics, policy, communications, and people and culture.
Ibrahim, with a 30-year career, has contributed to major tech companies like Intel and Coursera, where she served as president and played a key role in global education outreach. She co-founded and chaired the non-profit, Team4Tech, and served on the Board of Gannett, helping it become the largest US print media company.
Bindu Reddy
Bindu Reddy is the CEO and co-founder of Abacus. AI. Before starting Abacus, she was the general manager of the AI verticals at AWS. This organisation created and launched Amazon Personalise and Amazon Forecast, the first AI services that enable organisations to easily build custom deep learning models.
Before that, she was the CEO and co-founder of Post Intelligence, a deep learning company that built services for social media influencers that Uber bought. Bindu previously worked at Google, where she was a product manager for Google applications, including Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Blogger. She holds a master’s degree from Dartmouth and a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
Sharon Zhou
Sharon Zhou, the co-founder & CEO of Lamini, is building the future of LLMs. Also a CS faculty at Stanford, Sharon’s mission is to make complex technology like generative artificial intelligence highly usable and accessible to everyone. At Stanford, she led over 50 PhD and undergraduate research groups in AI and published award-winning research at the world’s leading AI conferences.
Sharon created and continues to teach one of the largest classes on Coursera, Generative Adversarial Networks, which currently has over 250,000 students. She received her PhD from Stanford in generative artificial intelligence under Dr Andrew Ng and served as an AI advisor to key AI policymakers in Washington, DC.
