Obama’s New CTO Pick Is a Massive Win for Women in Tech

Megan Smith speaks during “Google’s Made With Code” launch event.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic for Google

The United States has appointed a new chief technology officer and, in turn, women across the country have gained a new role model as they attempt to break through the gender bias in the tech industry.

On Thursday, the White House announced the appointment of Google veteran Megan Smith, who was most recently vice president of the company’s Google[X] “moonshot lab.” In replacing the outgoing Todd Park, she becomes the United States’ first female CTO.

It’s a fitting appointment. In addition to being a gifted programmer and technologist, Smith has been one of the country’s leading advocates in the movement to get more women into tech jobs. Just this summer, Smith led the team behind Google’s Made with Code initiative, a new campaign aimed at getting more young girls interesting in coding. The MIT graduate was also a driving force in recruiting more women to Google’s I/O conference this year, where 20 percent of the audience was female, up from just 8 percent last year.

In an interview with WIRED earlier this summer, Smith explained that one reason so few young women pursue careers in tech is that they lack visible role models. “There are 2 to 3 million women programmers in the world. We need to see them more,” she said.

Now, Smith is about to step into one of the most visible roles there is. It’s also one of the most amorphous roles in government. The responsibilities that accompany this position, which was created just five years ago, have varied greatly in just a short amount of time. Smith’s predecessor Todd Park’s tenure, for instance, was largely defined by his hands-on efforts to salvage the botched Healthcare.gov rollout, whereas Aneesh Chopra, the country’s first CTO, fulfilled more of an advisory role.

According to The White House blog, in her new role, Smith “will guide the Administration’s information-technology policy and initiatives, continuing the work of her predecessors to accelerate attainment of the benefits of advanced information and communications technologies across every sector of the economy and aspect of human well-being.”

Smith joins the White House at a time in which there is renewed focus on using technology to improve government. The most recent example of this is the establishment of the U.S. Digital Service unit. In all likelihood, Smith’s time will be more than occupied leading this effort to modernize government. That means encouraging more diversity in tech may well become a secondary mission.

And yet, having a woman fulfill one of the top roles in tech will likely have its own halo effect. As Smith told a room full of young girls at an event this summer introducing Google’s Made With Code initiative, what women really need are more “heroes.” “Nobody’s encouraging you. Nobody’s showing you the value of why you’re doing this and why it’s so impactful on the world,” Smith said at the time. “We want to show you that you have incredible heroes who already do this work.”

With this new role, Smith certainly solidifies her position among those heroes.