Kim Polese

Kim Polese is chairman and co-founder of CrowdSmart, a software company that uses collective intelligence and AI to help teams transform decision-making and improve outcomes while reducing ingrained bias. She has co-founded and led multiple technology companies, including Marimba, one of the world’s most widely used software management platforms, which delivers three billion endpoint updates annually to a wide range of devices, appliances, and vehicles. Early in her career, she led the launch of Java at Sun Microsystems as its founding product manager. She serves on the PPIC Higher Education Center Advisory Council and has been a member of PPIC’s board of directors since 2011. She is an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Information Week’s “Top Technology Executives” and Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans.” She received her bachelor’s degree in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, completed post-baccalaureate study in computer science at the University of Washington, and holds an honorary doctorate in business and economics from California State University.