Diane Greene

“The world will be a better place with more female founders/CEOs.”

Before Google Cloud, before billion-dollar valuations, Diane was designing ocean-going vessels as a naval architect.

Then, one day, she pivoted.

She co-founded VMware in 1998, pioneering x86 virtualization and changing the way businesses run software.

Under her leadership, VMware went public at a staggering $19.1B valuation.

The biggest tech IPO of 2007.

But just a year later, she was fired (from her own company) as CEO.

But Diane didn’t slow down.

She co-founded and sold two more startups: VXtreme (acquired by Microsoft) and Bebop (acquired by Google for $380M).

In 2015, she took the helm at Google Cloud, creating Google’s first “enterprise-capable business unit”.

By the time she stepped down, it had hit $8B in annual revenue.

Her impact goes beyond the boardroom.

A champion for women in tech, Diane believes “the world will be a better place with more female founders/CEOs.”

Now, she’s focused on mentoring, investing, and helping female founders.

Especially those with engineering or science backgrounds.

“I want to encourage every woman engineer and scientist to think in terms of building their own company someday.”

She sits on the boards of SAP, Stripe, Wix, and A.P. Moller - Maersk, and was recently appointed chair of the MIT Corporation.