SCWIST | EE Times’ Top 10 women in microelectronics

Posted Jan 8, 2010 by coordinator | Category:News

by Anne-Francoise Pele

EE Times has compiled an international list that celebrates women who are business and technology leaders in microelectronics.

There is no better time than a global economic recession to examine the keys to successful corporate governance, and EE Times is honored that the ten selected women called a brief halt to their frantic business schedules to share in their diverse experiences.

The discussions below paint a vibrant picture of the ecosystem and are an assessment of conventional business wisdom. They also deliver a powerful message of hope that could awaken scientific vocations in the coming years.

Editor’s note: Each executive was asked the same questions, and names are listed in alphabetical order.

Reynette Au, vice president of corporate strategy and alliances at Atheros Communications, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.)

A conversation with EE Times
EE Times: What is the greatest accomplishment, pride in your career?

Reynette Au: Every job I have held has brought certain challenges, situations of great fulfillment, and times when I felt I had made a major mistake. Every step has given me something to learn. But, in terms of singling out just one achievement that brought me singular pride, I’d have to say it was leading a marketing campaign at ARM to evangelize the semiconductor IP licensing business model, and create and promote a brand for semiconductor intellectual property (IP). This was accomplished while I was vice president of worldwide marketing at ARM.

Prior to our achievements, the IP-licensing model was not well-respected and unfeasibly implemented by others. Why? It is because in the semiconductor business, the destinies of commoditization and price erosion are considered inviolate. Casting this rule of thumb aside, we created a brand of such notable value that we were able to set a new standard for a sustainable, growth-oriented licensing model that continues to lead the market today. During this time, we created the “Architecture for the Digital World” tagline. This work integrally established the ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) as the de facto standard for low power embedded applications. Underlying this achievement was the premise that good business models enable and accelerate adoption of technology; without appropriate and sensible models, and technology —even great technology— can disappear.

Our work to promote and reinforce the viability of the semiconductor IP licensing model stimulated broad industry support for the ARM technology. But to me, the more significant impact was how this model influenced related industries such as fabless semiconductors, EDA, semiconductor foundries, library suppliers, ASICs, application providers and system OEMs. Semiconductor IP licensing is now a well established and thriving business model that fuels a phenomenal amount of innovation and addresses a multitude of market segments. When you think of the paths that have been opened for other technologies to proliferate with this business model, you can start to appreciate the necessity of the “vision” to understand the close ties between business models and technology adoption.

EE Times: You are what we call a “Woman of Vision”. Can you describe the “vision” that has motivated your professional decisions and choices? Are you still implementing it or have you changed direction?

Au: I insist on viewing technology from a practical and user-focused perspective. This is both an intellectual strategy as well as an emotional sticking point. If I cannot convince myself of the usage, application, or benefit that a technology brings to people, I cannot put my strategic or tactical momentum behind it. This “formula” drives my vision, as well as my decisions. Technology is great when it enables people to be creative and productive at the same time, when it makes them more fulfilled, more functional, and happier. People pay a lot of money for things that bring them happiness, so if even the most mundane product can tap into those values, there is greater likelihood of financial success for that product. It sounds obvious, but it’s not always that way in the technology industry, nor is it an easy goal to achieve. I continue to reference this view in all of my endeavors and it influences how I perform my work, my career, and how I balance my personal life with my business life.

EE Times: Would you say that the visibility of women in technological fields has been improving, albeit slowly?

Au: Yes, over the past 25 years I have seen an improvement in the visibility of women in technology. The number of women leading business meetings has been one indicator. However, it has been slow —too slow— and the number of women in leadership positions still does not correlate to the societal gender balance in university technical fields. More change is needed. Change starts with how we raise our daughters. It also is influenced strongly by how we raise our sons. I could go on about this topic for days, but to try to distill the concepts down to a few comments: Parents need to refrain from inadvertently erecting barriers to their children in what they can accomplish; they need to release their children from the shackles of convention and tradition. Then as kids grow up, they can see that the possibilities are limitless that they are not defined by their gender, but by their dreams, abilities, and hard work. Their natural curiosities can be explored. It is possible that men and women see things differently, but this is a good thing. Becoming a math whiz, a great builder or an inquisitive discoverer may have been traditionally ascribed to “male” propensities, but this was only because people valued perspectives in math, building, and discovery from the male perspective. Change the perspective, alter the approach, impact the value, and, voila, different personalities and a greater variety of skill sets come to bear on solving problems. Already, we have seen how women have changed and impacted “male” dominions with unique and complementary value-adds. If you change the rules of the game, different players can play, and more often than not, better things can happen.

EE Times: What should be done to encourage more women to become masters of technology and science and take on greater roles in tech in general?

Au: I certainly believe that applying a broad and multi-faceted perspective to how technology is developed and deployed spawns new avenues for innovation and growth. Technology gets “bigger” with every passing generation. By bigger, I mean more complex, more variables and unknowns, more functionality, higher performance. This reality means technologists and their leaders have to be more collaborative, more interdependent, and even more trusting as their work becomes part of an unimaginably variegated whole they may never fully understand. Just look at what it takes to put out an animated short film these days! So, to the extent that new ideas, resiliency against failure and adversity, incisive analytical abilities and intuition, collaborative tendencies, alternative capabilities to see bigger pictures and farther out in the future, well, these skills become immensely valuable. I think women throughout history have shown these abilities to a great degree. Not that men don’t embody these traits, but on anthropological and societal scales, we sure miss out on a lot of talent if we ignore the abilities on the distaff side of our species. Women should be valued for their ability to bring different perspectives to this process. Leaders of technology companies should also proactively encourage, support, and acquire talent in this vein.

Au’s biography
Reynette Au has served as Atheros’ vice president of corporate marketing and alliances since November 2008.

Prior to joining Atheros, she served as vice president and general manager of the Portable Navigation Products group at Nvidia Corp. from 2006, and as vice president of the company’s Business Licensing program from 2005.

Late 2002, Au was named president and CEO of Triscend Corp., a fabless semiconductor company developing field-configurable System-on-Chip (CSoC) devices and customizable microcontrollers.

Au joined Triscend from ARM where as president of ARM Inc. she helped build its network of licensees for the company’s core processor technology and established ARM’s market position as ‘The Architecture for the Digital World’. Prior to joining ARM, Au held engineering and management positions at Advanced Micro Devices, AT&T Microelectronics, Arrow Electronics and IBM.

Au earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from University of Denver.

Elke Eckstein, executive vice president and COO of Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH (Munich, Germany)

A conversation with EE Times
EE Times: What is the greatest accomplishment in your career?
Elke Eckstein: There is not only one accomplishment I am most proud of when I look at my career so far. It is the whole career path and all the different experiences I was able to make that give me a feeling of pride. The semiconductor industry offered me lots of challenges in many different areas, cultures and continents. With those experiences and the constant challenges and learnings I was able to extend my knowledge, to develop my personality and management capabilities. And I am looking forward to many more challenges to come in the years ahead in this exciting, fast-moving industry.

Eckstein: The idea of breaking new ground or setting foot on new areas is still fascinating to me. The semiconductor industry today is the driver for almost all other industries. It stands for innovation, progress and also movement and speed. Though we are basically at the end of the food chain we are determining the performance of the others.

My extensive semiconductor experience, especially in manufacturing, was a good basis to step into the LED business at Osram, one of the market leaders with the most advanced technologies and production lines – an area with lots of potential and a bright future. Making light is exciting and there is still a good piece of that pioneering spirit left in the industry and within me that I had experienced in the beginning of the semiconductor industry back in the 80ies. And that’s why my vision is to see LED and OLED lighting up the future.

EE Times: Would you say that the visibility of women in technological fields has been improving, albeit slowly?

Eckstein: When I started working in microelectronics in the early 80ies, women were an exotic experience in that industry. Over the years this has changed, as more and more women are entering technological professions. Also the understanding among men that women can deliver excellent performance has deeply changed. Especially in the US and in Asia women in top management positions are common today. Germany is lagging a bit behind; we have a lot to catch up when it comes to giving women power and visibility.

EE Times: What should be done to encourage more women to become masters of technology and science and take on greater roles in tech in general?

Eckstein: It all starts with politics creating a social environment that is encouraging women to step into technology. This starts in education at schools and universities. But it also includes greater efforts to allow women to combine career and family through integration programs, daycare institutions and many more.

Companies themselves can foster this by giving women equal opportunities. As a technology company we support newcomers and women in the organization with diversity or mentoring programs and help as role models in the organizations. We also offer daycare facilities on our Regensburg site.

At “Girls Day” we introduce schoolgirls to products, technologies and a technological working environment to transport the fascination of our industry at a very early stage in their professional career. Another example is a company-wide program for young women who combine university education with first working experiences.

Eckstein’s biography
Elke Eckstein was named chief operating officer at Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH in August 2008. Previously, she was vice president, Manufacturing, at AMD in Dresden, Germany, where she was responsible for day-to-day operations at the F30/38 semiconductor factory.

Elke Eckstein, a native of Franconia, began her career with Siemens’ semiconductor division, which later became Infineon. From 1996 to 1998, she was in charge of the R&D department for Siemens’ fab in Dresden. Eckstein was vice president of the product and technologies group at ProMos Technologies Inc., a joint venture between Infineon and Mosel Vitelic in Taiwan, before returning to Europe to become CEO of Altis Semiconductor, a joint venture between IBM and Infineon.

Judith Estrin, CEO of JLABS, LLC (Menlo Park, Calif.)

A conversation with EE Times
EE Times: What is the greatest accomplishment, pride in your career?
Judy Estrin: I have been fortunate to have a career full of interesting endeavors including co-founding multiple companies, being CTO at Cisco during the height of the growth of the Internet, sitting on the board of directors of several large corporations and writing a book about innovation. I would have to say that the two highlights were starting our first company, Bridge Communications and writing my book, Closing the Innovation Gap.

Estrin: I would not say that I have been driven by a single vision, but that each company was motivated by a passion. In each case we had a vision, seeing the potential to help people or companies to improve the way they operated through use of new technology. Writing the book was driven by a similar passion – the desire to communicate challenges we face and how they can be addressed.

EE Times: Would you say that the visibility of women in technological fields has been improving, albeit slowly?

Estrin: I do think it is improving slowly, but partly because of a shift of emphasis to life sciences and consumer technology, both of which are fields that have attracted more woman that traditional IT.

EE Times: What should be done to encourage more women to become masters of technology and science and take on greater roles in tech in general?

Estrin: I believe that it starts with changing our education system, keeping girls engaged and excited about science and technology. We need to make sure that we communicate how important science and technology is to our quality of life – that it really makes a difference.

Estrin’s biography
Judy Estrin is CEO of JLABS, LLC, formerly known as Packet Design Management Company, LLC. She is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap, published in September, 2008.

Prior to co-founding Packet Design, in May 2000, Estrin was chief technology officer for Cisco Systems. Beginning in 1981 Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices, and Precept Software. In 1998 Cisco Systems acquired Precept, and she became Cisco’s chief technology officer until April 2000.

Estrin has been named three times to Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful women in American business. She sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corporation as well as the privately held Packet Design, Inc. She also sits on the advisory councils of Stanford’s School of Engineering and Stanford’s Bio-X initiative.

She holds a B.S. degree in math and computer science from UCLA, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

See the profiles of the other 7 selected Top 10 at http://www.eetimes.eu/design/221400157?pgno=4