Fresh Take ft. Megan Smith
Capital Region CATALYZE
English - June 08, 2021 15:00 - 35 minutes - 24.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsBusiness washington baltimore richmond dmv capital Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This week’s interview features Megan Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of shift7 and former US Chief Technology Officer. JB and Megan discuss innovation/collaboration, human-centered solutions, and how they tie into the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Hosted by JB Holston. Produced by Jenna Klym, Justin Matheson-Turner, Christian Rodriguez, and Nina Sharma. Edited by Christian Rodriguez.
Learn from leaders doing the work across the Capital Region and beyond. These conversations will showcase innovation, as well as history and culture across our region, to bridge the gap between how we got here and where we are going.
About our guest:
In 2014, President Obama named Megan Smith the United States Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this role, she served as an Assistant to the President. As U.S. CTO, Smith focused on how technology policy, data and innovation can advance the future of our nation.
Megan previously served as CEO of PlanetOut, a leading LGBT online community in the early days of the web, where the team broke through many barriers and partnered closely with AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, and other major web players. Megan was part of designing early smartphone technologies at General Magic and worked on multimedia products at Apple Japan.
Over the years, Megan has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects, including an award-winning bicycle lock, space station construction program, and solar cookstoves. She was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback.
Megan has served on the boards of MIT, MIT Media Lab, MIT Technology Review, and Vital Voices; as a member of the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid; and as an advisor to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Malala Fund, which she co-founded. She holds a bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, where she completed her master's thesis work at the MIT Media Lab.