Megan Smith

Athlete, Business adviser, Business leader, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Explorer, Gay, Parent, Potential employer

Megan Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, technology leader and tech evangelist. Smith served as the 3rd United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President (Obama) in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2014-2017). As U.S. CTO, Smith focused her team on helping the President and the Administration harness the power of data, innovation and technology on behalf of the American people. Work included adding senior tech talent (with “TQ” - tech quotient) to policy tables for collaboration on topics from Artificial Intelligence and Federal Open Source to Precision Medicine; broad catalytic capacity building joint efforts in open data, open government, data science and supporting programs like the Presidential Innovation Fellows, GSA’s Tech Transformation Service, the U.S. Digital Service, the Open Government Partnership, and more. The team co-created many all-hands-on-deck public-private programs like TechHire, ComputerScienceforAll, Image of STEM, Data Driven Justice, Police Data Initiative, inclusive entrepreneurship and tech, local community solutions innovation, and ActiveSTEM. Prior to her role as U.S. CTO, Smith served as Vice President of New Business Development at Google managing early-stage partnerships across the company’s global engineering and product teams for nine years; led acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps and Picasa, and GM-ed Google.org’s engineering transition adding Google Crisis Response, Google for Nonprofits, Earth Outreach/Engine and increased employee engagement. Later she served in the leadership team of Google[x] where she co-created SolveForX and Women Techmakers. Smith focuses on innovative solutions for humanity's challenges. As CEO of PlanetOut in the early days of the web, Smith championed LGBTQ commericial and community inclusion, leading the team to break through many barriers and partner closely with AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, Google, and other major web players. Smith was part of designing early smartphone technologies at General Magic and worked on multimedia products at Apple Japan. She is an advisor to the MIT Media Lab, Vital Voices, Think Of Us, and the Malala Fund, which she co-founded. Over the years, Smith has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects, including an award-winning bicycle lock, space station construction program, and solar cook stoves. She was a member of the MIT student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback. 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. Today she serves as a life member of the Corporation (board) of MIT and has recently been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. @smithmegan

Initially came to TED with Tom Rielly and built many of the fun props to support Tom's early skits/roasts of the TED events in the 1990s. Long time member of the TED community.