Meet Intel’s CIO, Diane Bryant
If the heart of every tech company is found in the research and development division, its brain is no doubt found in IT. Intel is no exception, and sitting at the helm of the IT organization is Diane Bryant.
Bryant has been with Intel for twenty-four years. She joined the company in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and has extensive experience in the engineering core of Intel with four patents to her name. “Back in 1988, Intel recognized that the mobile computing market might take off. They formed a mobile engineering group and I was one of those engineers. We truly invented mobile computing. That whole notion of putting a notebook into standby and then resuming it - we had to invent that. Three of my patents are around mobile computing.”
After rising through the ranks to become Director of Engineering of the Mobile Products Group, Bryant then held a couple of Director and General Manager positions before eventually becoming Chief Information Officer. She is now “responsible for Intel’s Information Technology organization”.
While some global companies choose to diversify their IT divisions, Intel chose to consolidate its organization all under one umbrella. “It’s a big charter,” said Bryant. “Everything from enterprise solutions to customer management solution to employee solutions. I get to set the overall strategy and direction and priority for the organization.”
Intel has over 5700 employees in IT, and Bryant said her main job is to clear roadblocks and enable her employees to be successful.
With such a large enterprise, I was curious about what Intel does to encourage more women to join their technical roster. Bryant mentioned “a three-prong approach: awareness (making the whole occupation of computers and technology a visible career choice for young women); attracting them into our company; and making sure we retain them once they’re here.”
She noted that back in 1985 when she graduated from U.C. Davis, 35% of Computer Science undergraduates were women. In 2008, that number had dropped to 17% after a slow decline over the years.
“We work with organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), the Anita Borg Institute, the Society for Women Engineers - organizations that have the mission of driving up the awareness of this occupation for young girls. Beyond my job in Intel, I get to invest in trying to drive up that awareness.”
Bryant stated that Intel actively targets women graduating from college. Once they’re in the door, Intel has mentoring programs and a women’s leadership exchange featuring all female VPs - all with the goal of retaining Intel’s technical women. “Intel has systems in place to make sure that the environment is as unbiased as possible.”
I mentioned that Bryant’s position in the company speaks to Intel’s commitment to that kind of equality. Bryant replied, “Our CEO is absolutely passionate about the situation, about the fact that there are not enough technical women inside of Intel. It takes that kind of tone at the top. We want to make this a place where women want to come and work.”
Over the last two years, Intel has selected two women - Genevieve Bell and Kelin Kuhn - as Intel Fellows, the highest technical position within the company. “It’s very encouraging to me as a woman in engineering to see women in the most senior positions in our technical ranks.”
In talking about the work of Genevieve Bell, and what it has to say about the way women utilize technology, Bryant had these observations. “Women are very good at recognizing that technology is to be used to provide value to the end-user as opposed to simply being used for technology’s sake. Women are the largest adopters of social networking and growing at a faster rate than men. Women see technology better from the end-user perspective, which is “how can I use this to be more productive?’”
When asked about the role of open source development at Intel, Bryant said, “There are two pieces of it - Intel the corporation and Intel IT. Intel, the corporation, has a very large software organization, with 5000 software developers. We’re the third largest corporate contributor to open source software development, including the LInux kernel. We just recently [2007] announced the creation of Moblin - Novell is partnering with us on it. We also have a big investment in Linux virtualization solutions.
“On the Intel IT side, we’re also a consumer. Seventy percent of our servers run Linux. We made that decision in the late 1990s based on a very rapid development model and a wonderful cost model. It’s been very good for us. We made a big decision 10 years ago, and it’s really paid off.”
At the close of the interview, I couldn’t resist asking Bryant if she’s a geek. “I think it would be pretty hard for me to escape the “geek” term. I spend 12 hours a day completely engulfed in technology.”
While she no longer has the opportunity to roll up her sleeves and dive into engineering, she’s still inundated with it. From “talking about server refresh strategy and how we’re going to drive down our carbon footprint, to how we’re going to virtualize client solutions. I’m very passionate about improving employee productivity through technology - there’s a lot we can do to make the 83,000 Intel employees more productive.”
Diane Bryant recently chatted briefly about the role that women play in using and shaping technology.
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May 20th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Great interview!
But Intel sure doesn’t actively target women in social science engineering that are graduating from college.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
@siggraph23 thanks for reading! Curious, though: why do you think Intel would be interested in hiring social science or political science engineers and how would those folks help in the innovation of tech? Or are you saying that you think Intel needs to focus more on those issues?
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 am
A nice interview. She’s well-spoken and confident. It’s good to see women in the tech field with this kind of experienced perspective. Thanks for posting, I didn’t know.