Lila Ibrahim

Ibrahim studied electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, and remains on their board of advisors.[1] She earned her bachelor's degree in 1993.[2] She was a member of the sorority Phi Sigma Rho.[3]

Ibrahim started her working life in 1993 at Intel, where she was as an engineer on the Pentium processor.[4] During 18 years at Intel she held various leadership roles, including serving as Chief of Staff for Craig Barrett, leading the Digital Village initiative which delivered education and e-governance from the Amazon to Africa,[4] leading Intel's Developer Forum, and leading the Emerging Market group based in China developing the classmatePC business. Earlier in her career, Ibrahim ensured DVD standard were enabled in the PC industry.[2]

She is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, having previously held a Braddock scholarship in 2012.[1] In 2000 she took a two-month sabbatical to build a computer lab in the Lebanese orphanage her father grew up in.[5] She took her experience back to Intel, where she built technology for K-12 education.[5] Working on a national initiative with Portugal, she delivered 400,000 computers and trained 30,000 teachers in one year.[6]

In 2007 she was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.[7] As part of her Aspen Institute fellowship, in 2009 she created Team4Tech with Julie Clugage, a program which partners volunteers with educational projects in the developing world.[5][8] She was featured on the cover of ForbesWoman.[3] In 2010 she was awarded the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Social Impact.[4][9] She was appointed Purdue University's Outstanding Electrical & Computer Engineer in 2010.[6] She sat on the Global Council of Thunderbird School of Global Management.[2] She is on the board of the American news corporation Gannett Company.[10]

She was appointed Chief of Staff at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2010. Through Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers she began to work with Coursera. Ibrhaim was made President of Coursera in 2013, later Chief Business and Operating Officer, and remained there until 2017.[11][8] During this time she was appointed to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.[12][13] She was a keynote speaker at the 2016 Pioneer Summit, and the 2017 South by Southwest conference in Austin.[14][15]

In April 2018 Ibrahim was appointed Chief Operating Officer of DeepMind.[16][17] Here she is responsible for managing the company's growth.[18] She continues to mentor young entrepreneurs.[19] Ibrahim is an advocate for increasing women's representation in technology.[20]

Ibrahim is featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards.[21] In 2019, Ibrahim was named to UK Business Insider's lists including Most Influential Leaders Shaping Business Tech (#13) [22] and the Most Interesting & Impactful Women in Tech (#5).[23]