A little off topic but Lisa Su AMD CEO has become the first female IEEE fellow. She has also become the most sought after CEO in tech.
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When
Lisa Su became CEO of
Advanced Micro Devices in 2014, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Since then, AMD's stock has soared—from less than US $2 per share to more than $110. The company is now a leader in high-performance computing.
Su received accolades for spearheading AMD's turnaround, appearing on the
Barron's Top CEOs of 2021 list,
Fortune's 2020 Most Powerful Women, and
CNN's Risk Takers.
She recently added another honor: the
IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal. Su is the first woman to receive the award, which recognizes her "leadership in groundbreaking semiconductor products and successful business strategies that contributed to the strength of the microelectronics industry." Sponsored by
Intel, the Noyce Medal is considered to be one of the semiconductor industry's most prestigious honors.
"To be honest, I would have never imagined that I would receive the Noyce award," the IEEE Fellow says. "It's an honor of a lifetime. To have that recognition from my peers in the technical community is a humbling experience. But I love what I do and being able to contribute to the semiconductor industry."
CLIMBING THE LEADERSHIP LADDER
Su has long had a practical bent. She decided to study electrical engineering, she says, because she was drawn to the prospect of building hardware.
"I felt like I was actually building and making things," she says. She attended
MIT, where she earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, all in EE, in 1990, 1991, and 1994.
"It might surprise people that my parents would have preferred that I became a medical doctor," she says, laughing. "That was the most well-respected profession when I was growing up. But I never really liked the sight of blood. I ended up getting a Ph.D., which I guess was the next best thing."
Her interest in semiconductors was sparked at MIT. As a doctoral candidate, Su was one of the first researchers to look into silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, according to an
MIT Technology Review article about her. The then-unproven technique increased transistors' efficiency by building them atop layers of an insulating material. Today SOI is used either to boost the performance of microchips or to reduce their power requirements.
Su has spent most of her career working on semiconductor projects for large companies. Along the way, she evolved from researcher to manager to top executive. Looking back, Lu divides her career path into two parts. The first 20 or so years she was involved in research and development; for the past 15 years, she has worked on the business side.
Her first job was with
Texas Instruments, in Dallas, where she was a member of the technical staff at the company's semiconductor process and device center. She joined in 1994, but after a year, she left for
IBM, in New York. There, she was a staff member researching device physics. In 2000 she was assigned to be the technical assistant for IBM's chief executive. She later was promoted to director of emerging projects.
She made the switch to management in 2006, when she was appointed vice president of IBM's semiconductor research and development center in New York.
To better learn how to manage people, she took several leadership courses offered by the company.
"I remember thinking after every class that I had learned something that I could apply going forward," she says.
Su says she doesn't agree with the notion that leadership is an innate ability.
"I really do believe that you can be trained to be a good leader," she says. "A lot of leadership isn't all that intuitive, but over time you develop an intuition for things to look for. Experience helps.
"As engineers transition into business or management, you have to think about a different set of challenges that are not necessarily 'How do you make your transistor go faster?' but [instead] 'How do you motivate teams?' or 'How do you understand more about what customers want?' I've made my share of mistakes in those transitions, but I've also learned a lot.
"I've also learned something from every boss I've ever worked for.""
