Megan Smith

Megan Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist. As the third U.S. chief technology officer, Smith helped the President and federal teams harness the power of technology, data, and innovation to advance the future of our nation and the world. Smith recruited top tech talent to serve across government collaborating on pressing issues, from data science, AI and open source, to inclusive economic growth 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.

For over a decade, Smith served as vice president of new business development at Google, managing early-stage partnerships globally, led acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, and Picasa, and co-created SolveForX and Women Techmakers. Earlier, Smith served as CEO of PlanetOut, an online LGBT community in the early days of the Internet, worked on early smartphone technologies at General Magic and at Apple Japan.

Smith is an advisor to the MIT Media Lab, Vital Voices, the Malala Fund, which she co-founded and a National Academy of Engineering member. Smith holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, where she now serves on the board. She was a member of the MIT student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2,000 miles across the Australian outback. Smith has recently co-founded a company, shift7, focusing on tech-forward networked innovation for impact and economic inclusion.

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