Megan Smith
Megan Smith | The 2019 MAKERS Conference
Megan Smith
WSB Exclusive Speaker
CEO shift7, Former U.S. Chief Technology Officer (2014-2017), National Academy of Engineering Member
Catalytic and innovative visionary Megan Smith believes that the future of technology is already here.
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Megan Smith is CEO and co-founder of shift7, a company working collaboratively on systemic social, environmental, and economic problems — finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution makers and engage proven tech-forward, open, shareable practices to drive direct impact, together.
An award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist, Smith served as the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President from 2014-2017 — working on issues from AI, data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship, structural inequalities, government tech innovation capacity including recruiting top tech industry talent to serve across government, STEM/STEAM engagement, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. Her teams often collaboratively drove 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.
Smith spent over eleven years at Google, where she served as vice president of new business development, managing early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations and technology licensing across the global engineering and product teams. She led acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, and Picasa, and guided Google.org toward greater direct engineering impact, adding Google Crisis Response, Google for Nonprofits, and Earth Outreach/Engine. She later co-created Women Techmakers and Solve for X at Google X.
Smith serves on the boards of MIT, Vital Voices, LA28, Think of Us, PlanetRead, the Algorithmic Justice League, and Earth Conservation Corp, and co-founded the Malala Fund and the United Nations Solutions Summit. She advises USC Viterbi and Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, and was selected as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. In 2025, she joined Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center as a fellow. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, where she completed her thesis work at the MIT Media Lab and was a member of the student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2,000 miles across the Australian outback in the first World Solar Challenge. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Engineering.
*In partnership with CAA*
Featured Videos
Megan Smith
Megan Smith on Bringing in Experts to Drive Innovation
Megan Smith
Megan Smith on Why Tech Experts are Critical for Successful Teams
Megan Smith
Megan Smith on How to Overcome Challenges by Building Inclusive Teams
Megan Smith
Infinite Future: Infinite Roots – Megan Smith
Megan Smith
Megan Smith | The 2019 MAKERS Conference
Megan Smith’s Speech Topics
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Innovation Nation: How to Creatively Source and Accelerate Solutions to Our Most Significant Challenges
Can we scout and scale technology solutions to the biggest challenges our society faces using the venture capitalist model? Can we capacity build the American people? Megan Smith argues that we can—in fact, she shows that we already are. At Google, General Magic, and Apple Japan, she brought deeply cross-functional teams together to solve significant challenges. Smith adopted that same approach in the federal government, identifying patterns and best practices that are making a difference in towns and cities across the United States, and then exploring how to reproduce them in other parts of the country. From retraining and building confidence in their colleagues in Eastern Kentucky to reducing prison populations in Miami-Dade County, Smith’s examples will illustrate how your organization can identify what’s already working and how best to replicate that success.
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How to Build a Creative, Confident, Inclusive, and High-Impact Workforce
Megan Smith believes that, in order to fully unleash your organization’s economic potential and competitiveness, you have to include a broader team in problem-solving. She refutes the notion that diverse voices haven’t always been part of the story, pointing to significant contributors from America’s “missing history.” Smith also explains how we can move much faster to retain and recruit inclusive teams, mitigate unconscious and institutional biases, and foster “ecosystem thinking”—bringing more people to the table, inspiring creative confidence, and solving our biggest problems.
Megan Smith Topics & Types
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Speakers
- Business Speakers
- Business Executive Speakers
- Business Growth & Trends Speakers
- CEO Speakers
- Change Management Speakers
- Diversity & Inclusion Speakers
- Education Speakers
- Employee Engagement Speakers
- Entrepreneur Speakers
- Environment Speakers
- Gender Equality Speakers
- Innovation Speakers
- Keynote Speakers
- LGBTQ Speakers
- Leadership Speakers
- Motivational Speakers
- Productivity Speakers
- STEM Speakers
- TED Speakers
- Teamwork Speakers
- Tech Leader Speakers
- Technology Speakers
- Thought-Provoking Speakers
- Virtual Speakers
- Visionary Speakers
- Women Speakers
- Women Leadership Speakers
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