Join us as we sit down with Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen, Founder and CEO of Openwater. Jepsen is acclaimed for her work at Google [x], Facebook, Oculus, and One Laptop per Child in consumer electronics, computers, TV, VR, software and web services. She'll share her professional journey and her experiences as a leader in the tech industry. This event will also provide a space for Black software engineers to learn about /dev/color's A* Program.
The Fireside Chat will be led by Kamilah Taylor, a Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn, author, and member of /dev/color.
All interested Black software engineers, as well as members of diversity teams, senior managers, and engineering managers of any race, are welcome to join us for this exciting event!
*We kindly ask that recruiters refrain from attending this event*
What to expect?
6pm - Light Dinner and refreshments
6:30pm - /dev/color Presentation
7pm - Fireside Chat with Mary Lou Jepsen
8pm - Post event mingling
9pm - Event wrap up
Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen is a technical executive, inventing and leading groups in the fields of display, imaging and computer hardware.
Her most recent endeavor is OpenWater, a startup aiming to make fMRI-type imaging inside the body practical at the price level of consumer electronics and in wearable form factors.
She was previously an executive at Facebook / Oculus VR. Among her objectives at Facebook was leading a concerted effort to bring Virtual Reality to the next level. Prior to Facebook, Mary Lou was Head of the Display Division at Google X where she led more than one "Moon Shot" program, reported to Sergey Brin, and advised and directed display and consumer electronic programs throughout Google.
Mary Lou is also founder and former CEO of Pixel Qi in Taipei, Taiwan, focused on innovative opto-electronic architectures and the manufacturer thereof. Pixel Qi delivers high performance, low-power, sunlight-readable screens for mobile devices. She was the co-founder and the first chief technology officer of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) a non-profit that generated more than $1B in revenue and helped create $30B in revenue for its for-profit partners. There she architected the $100 laptop with new screen architectures, new very low power management architecture, new battery technology, new mesh networking protocol, and new user interface all in record time – and shipped millions of them in an effort to start to transform education opportunities for children in the developing world.
She holds a PhD in Optical Physics and an Sc.B in Electrical Engineering both from Brown University, as well as an Sc.M. in Computational Holography from the MIT Media Lab. She is an inventor on over 100 published or issued patents.
Mary Lou has been recognized with many awards including: TIME magazine’s “Time 100” as one of the 100 most influential people in the world; a CNN top 10 thinker; and by the leading global professional societies in optics, display and electronics.
Recently named one of the 43 most powerful female engineers of 2017 by Business Insider, Kamilah Taylor is a rising tech superstar.
She’s worked on multiple projects, most recently the new LinkedIn Learning app, an online learning platform. Other projects include the complete rewrite and redesign of LinkedIn’s flagship app, the new messaging experience, accessibility of the flagship app, and winning hackday projects that have become features, such as member to member blocking and Coursera – LinkedIn integration. Previously she did robotics at Wolfram Research and in graduate school at UIUC.
Kamilah is a co-author of the recently released “Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories”, and helped organize the inaugural Tech Beach Retreat in Jamaica.
Kamilah is also an active speaker and a regular panelist at technology events and conferences, where she often presents on diversity and inclusion, programming in Swift, building at scale, and working collaboratively. Originally from Jamaica, she speaks openly about the immigrant experience, sharing an interesting and much-needed viewpoint beyond just being a black woman in tech. She volunteers for many organizations aimed at encouraging more women and people of color to choose STEM as a career field, including BlackGirlsCode, Technovation, MEDA, and the Palisadoes Foundation.
She earned her M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and her B.S. in both Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus (in Jamaica)
/dev/color is a non-profit organization whose mission is to maximize the impact of Black software engineers. We empower Black software engineers to help one another achieve ambitious career goals. We provide one another with the connections and skills needed to start and stay in the industry and advance into leadership roles. We work with members throughout their careers, from junior engineers to engineering managers, through peer coaching, mentorship, and events.
