Kim Polese Index

Kim Polese

Kim Polese grew up in Berkley, studied at the

UC Berkley

The University of California, Berkley is a public, land-grant research university. Established in 1868, it was the first campus of the University of California system and a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Its 14 colleges and schools offer over 350 degree programs and enroll 31,000 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students. Berkley is ranked among the world’s top universities by major educational publications. Kim Polese did a

The Biophysics Graduate Group is an interdisciplinary PhD program hosted by the California Institute for the Biosciences (QB3). Our program trains graduate students for careers at the interface of the biological and physical sciences. This interdisciplinary group provides an opportunity for interested students to receive training leading to the PhD in Biophysics.

in 1984 where she studied a variety of sciences: physical, biological and computer science. At that time she didn’t knew what she wanted to focus on, but after taking one of her first computer class, she started to focus more and more on computer science. At the same time she started teaching computer programming at the Hall of Science to kids and adults

and then went to the

UW Seattle

Kim Polese studied computer science at the UW where she had an equivalent of a BA degree. The University of Washington (UW) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, it is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast. As the flagship institution of the six public universities in Washington state, it is known for its medical, engineering and scientific research as well as its extremely competitive computer science, engineering and business school.

Kim described herself as a “girl geek” when she was younger. She used to spend hours at the

Lawrence Hall of Science

Lawrence Hall of Science.

The Lawrence Hall of Science is a public science center in Berkeley, California that offers hands-on science exhibits, designs curriculum, aids professional development, and offers after school science resources to students of all ages. The Hall was established in 1968 in honor of physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901–1958), the University of California's first Nobel laureate. The Hall is located in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley campus, less than a mile uphill from the University's Botanical Garden. There, Kim played on computers, and more specifically using

ELIZA Interface

Eliza Interface

ELIZA is an early

AI standing for Artificial Intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, unlike the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals, which involves consciousness and emotionality. The distinction between the former and the latter categories is often revealed by the acronym chosen

of the 70’s, natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between humans and machines, Eliza simulated conversation by using a "pattern matching" and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no built in framework for contextualizing events

Right after school, she entered different companies of the

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a region in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States; other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino. The word "silicon" in the name originally referred to the large number of innovators and manufacturers in the region specializing in silicon-based MOS transistors and integrated circuit chips. It was in Silicon Valley that the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the microcomputer, among other technologies, were developed. The area is now home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, including the headquarters of more than 30 businesses in the

Today only 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women

such as Apple, Intel, Tesla and Netflix. The name also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similar named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with a comparable structure all around the world. There, Kim Polese worked at

Founded in 1980, IntelliCorp was one of the first company to market an early AI, called Expert System (Knowledge Engineering Environment – KEE) for development and deployment of knowledge systems on the Lisp machines that had several advanced features, such as truth maintenance. Kim was in charge to help Fortune 500 firms implement expert systems. The company was also one of the UML Partners, a consortium which helped develop the standards for UML, the Unified Modeling Language. In May 2019, IntelliCorp completed the sale of its assets including LiveCompare, LiveModel and LiveInterface to Tricentis.

and then spent more than seven years at

Founded on February 24, 1982, Sun Microsystem is an American company that sold computers, components, software and information technology services. They launched many famous technology such as

Java Team

In 1983, Kim Polese discovered a secret project called « Oak » inside the company. At the same time, Sun was looking for a project manager for this project. Kim joined the team and worked on this new programming language which future name would be « Java ». Java is a programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. The idea was to let application developers write once and run it anywhere. It was able to run on many platforms without any recompilation. Before going public, Java name was Oak. It had to be renamed, because in 1994, Oak was used by Oak Technology.

which Kim Polese was the project manager of, the Network File Systems, the solaris operating system, but also contributed to Unix, RISC processors and virtualized computing among others. On April 20, 2009, the company was sold to Oracle Corporation for $7.4 billion. When Kim Polese entered, she was working on Sun’s exploration of AI software possibilities. At some, she became the product manager of C++.

After the successful launch of Java Kim Polese saw the opportunity linked to the emergence of the web, so she founded

Marimba Team

Marimba Inc. pioneered Internet-based software management In 2004, Marimba was sold to

BMC Software, Inc. is an American enterprise software company which offers software as a service (SaaS)-based and on-premises software and services in areas including cloud computing, IT service management, automation, IT operations, and mainframe. BMC is a privately held multinational firm with multiple offices located around the world

for $239 million, nearly 15 times its venture capital reissued.

with ex-java teams members. Then she joined a friend and became the CEO of

SpikeSource is an open source focused, software certification company. Their platform provides ISV's with resources that ensure interoperability, scalability, and performance. They are currently partnered with Intel, and run the certification process for applications in the Intel Business Exchange.

and became soon one of the business leader. Todays she’s the chairwoman of

Kim Polese 2017

Crowdsmart is a collective intelligence platform that accelerates startup traction and funding by helping investors to identify promising startups. It use a technology called « Humain-empowered AI » which is a combination between human and AI that quantify data in the form of a score. This investment model helps to reduce the biases and give more visibility to start-ups who have few connection in the industry. 4 years ago, for the first time Kim used the platform, she discover that 42% of the higher-scores companies were founded or run by women. To evaluate the efficiency of this technology, the company did 28 seed-stage investments on different kinds of start-ups. The results proved an accuracy of 80% for profitable investments under 18 months. The technology is now sold as a subscription to companies and investors, helping the technology to evolve, as well as Crowdsmart.

Prior to that Polese was the Chairwoman of

ClearStreet Inc. was a company whose products and tools help employers and their employees reduce their healthcare spend.

In 1997 TIME magazine identified Ms. Polese as one of the

Time Magazine cover 1997

At that time she was the only computer industry executive on the list, right before Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Marc Andreessen, Steve Case or Jerry Yang

She has received numerous awards in recognition of her outstanding contributions and professional achievements in technology and software advancement. Polese is an

The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.The Institute and its international partners promote the creation of a free, just, and equitable society in a nonpartisan and nonideological setting through seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives.
The Henry Crown Fellowship Program, established in 1997, seeks to develop the next generation of community-spirited leaders, providing them with the tools necessary to meet the challenges of business leadership in the 21st century. Each year, a class of 20-22 leaders is chosen to engage in a thought-provoking journey of personal exploration—to move beyond success to a place of growing significance in the world.

At that time she was the only computer industry executive on the list, right before Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, Marc Andreessen, Steve Case or Jerry Yang

and serves on a number of boards, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, TechNet, the University of California President's Board on Science and Innovation, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, the Long Now Foundation, the Public Policy Institute of California and the Global Security Institute.