Blake Irving is the CEO and Board Director of GoDaddy, the world's largest platform for small business. Under Mr. Irving’s direction, the company has sharpened its focus on helping the world’s 200 million small, independent ventures to grow and thrive online—tapping a global-scale machine learning platform that powers their digital presence, communications, marketing, commerce, back-office administration and peer/community support.

Prior to Go Daddy, Mr. Irving was EVP and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!, a role in which he grew active users from 550 million to nearly one billion users—positioning Yahoo! to surpass Google and Facebook as the world’s most popular online destination today.

Before Yahoo!, Mr. Irving spent 15 years at Microsoft in various senior roles, most recently as head of the Windows Live Platform where he was responsible for research, development and operations of Microsoft’s global cloud services. While at Microsoft, Mr. Irving created and grew MSN Messenger into the world’s most successful instant messaging platform with more than 70% global share, re-architected and grew Hotmail to 270 million users worldwide, and deployed their first billion dollar advertising system, adExpert.

A technology pioneer for more than 30 years, Mr. Irving began his career at Xerox in 1981 during the heyday of PARC labs. He has since been at the forefront of innovation, having been involved in numerous products and services that are now staples of the internet, including typography, communications on the personal computer, subscription services, online advertising and global-scale services platforms known collectively today as “the cloud.”

Mr. Irving is a graduate of San Diego State University and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University, where he later served as a professor of business in the same graduate school. He is an avid cyclist, surfer and golfer—and currently resides in San Luis Obispo, CA. with his wife and two sons.

Jane Margolis is a Senior Researcher at UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies who focuses her work on structural inequality, segregation, STEM, and the democratization of computer science. She has published two award-winning books on the subject of women and racial minorities in computing: “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women and Computing” & “Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing.”