Woodruff School alumna and advisory board member Sophia Velastegui recently gave a talk to the Georgia Tech ASME chapter about life after Tech and her career. The Woodruff School communications team conducted a short interview with Sophia after her talk. Here are a few excerpts from that interview:
Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Why did you choose Georgia Tech and what have you been up to since getting out?
Thank you so much for having me here at Georgia Tech. Why I picked Georgia Tech... I was in the highest tier in my high school and I actually ended up graduating a year early because I did so well. I got into all of the seven schools I applied to but because of various situations with my family, they were no longer able to pay for my college. I made a statement to all of the different universities saying this is what happened, my family ended up filing for bankruptcy, and I have to differ college for a year unless there's something else we can work out. They all said, “well, you’ve received a performance scholarship that’s more than most” and I said, that's not the situation and if I don't get further assistance, I will not be able to attend. Georgia Tech came back and said, “You're an exceptional person and we know this is an exceptional situation. You have the highest scholarship for merit based, and we'll pay for the rest.” I was really blown away because that was very different from the other six universities and so because of that I’m very loyal to Georgia Tech. I had the opportunity to be on the board for The Woodruff School as well as the Berkley Mechanical Engineering department. I picked Georgia Tech because when things were incredibly hard - one of the hardest times I've ever had in my life, Georgia Tech was there for me. Of course, I also met my husband so there's other benefits - but really it set me up in my career, in my life - my husband, my family - the least I can do is give back to the university. So that's one of the reasons I picked Georgia Tech.
I'm an immigrant from Korea - I came when I was one year old to New York City and grew up there and have always been interested in science and technology and Georgia Tech really fit into those interests that I had.
So since you've graduated from Tech - can you touch on the trajectory in your career that's gotten you to where you are now?
So I continued on my education getting a master's in mechanical engineering/materials science at Berkley. My research was more into chemical vapor deposition which is semiconductor processing so I ended working at Applied Material which is the leading company in that area. And then my parents asked me “what do you do?” I stated that I’m at Applied Materials and I’m the lead researcher for chemical vapor deposition which is a tool that makes the chips that are the brain of a computer. They asked me to send a picture. So I sent them a picture, which was me in a clean room wearing a white gown with safety glasses, and they interpreted that as me aspiring to be the first Korean/American astronaut. As funny as that is, because I try to explain how I'm not an astronaut - they didn't understand. They love technology but they are not tech savvy. So I want to be able to give technology to all those individuals like that. So I decided to go into consumer electronics. I ended up going from Applied Materials to a startup that was more in between consumer electronics and semi-conductor and ended up working at Apple as a product manager for desktop lines and was promoted to laptop and special projects. From there I had the opportunity to work in hydrophobic coding, work with the R&D group of Apple, and I met their platform architect program management team and got to work across advanced technologies that supported all of Apple from advanced communication protocol, materials, biometric sensors, to Siri, to so many other things that I cannot even talk about because those domains are not usually associated with Apple. And then because of some of the work I did there, I was approached by Nast, which is a smart home company, and ended up being their head of silicon architecture roadmap and then expanded to do other advanced technology product management and program management for IOT as well as for wearable. They got purchased by Google and I had an opportunity to be the chief product officer at a startup that used wearables and AI to personalize experiences for the individual taking into account the environment they are in. That was a wonderful journey and then I found that it was not viable - I was exploring other options and I had a chance to grab coffee with the executive VP at Microsoft and became the GM in the AI group of Product Knowledge and Conversation.
So what does that job entail?
It's a product definition program - the relationship of different things in the world and how they correlate to each other. Sometimes I say it's like the common sense of things. You know where things are in relationship to each other - what a mother needs, what a father needs, in relation to each other, to the child and so forth, amongst other things. The features of the knowledge graph and computation is based on natural language and how to determine that - we support things, a lot of the natural language queries, as well as relationships of other related searches or similar searches or images that are being pulled together -that's actually being provided by the Microsoft knowledge graph. We also recently, last month, launched a feature that has different world knowledge that has been brought into excel and then it can self-populate information.
You were listed as one of Business Insiders top 43 powerful female engineers in US technology, what does that mean to you and are there any female engineers in that group that have influenced you or that you admire?
I was completely surprised. Actually, someone texted me about it and I thought they were joking. Is it April Fools? No, it's February! Maybe someone is still joking - I didn't believe it. It was actually for some of the work that I did at Google and so it was an incredible honor. I looked at the list of the women there - some of them I know personally and I’m like wow! It was very heartfelt and I’m very appreciative. Some of the women I have such admiration for - Peggy Dawson of Microsoft, she's the executive VP of Business Development there, to Rossa Romana Qua – who’s at Bank of America. It's a wide host - a lot of them based in Silicon Valley. It's actually surprising that I had personal relationships with at least a dozen of them. That was interesting.
We really appreciate you spending time inspiring our students with your experiences. Do you have any advice you’d like to share with ME students that couldn’t be at your talk today? Undergraduate and graduate?
Two things. Stay curious. By staying curious you'll explore things that are outside of what you are doing foundationally and you'll be able to see trends in the edges of what is maybe the peripheral of your job. Also, by staying curious you are more likely to play and learn and that can be great - that's one of the things that you'll see is that I changed careers in the main job function and it's because of my curiosity that I've been very successful in doing - successful in the things that I've accomplished there. Number two is networking. Every single job that I've received or opportunity was because of networking.
You also provide thought leadership through your advisory board involvement with the Woodruff School and the College of Engineering. What has inspired you to stay so involved with Georgia Tech, particularly as you are so far away from Atlanta?
My family and I were in the bay area in California and I had opportunities at Georgia Tech to get on their board as well as Berkley and other universities. I chose Georgia Tech. As I had said, during the hard times in my life, Georgia Tech was there for me and I met my wonderful husband here. But it's also because Georgia Tech gives me a different perspective and that's really important because the world is not silicon valley. Silicon valley does not represent the world. It's variation and perspective and perspective is not just about your ethnic background or your sex, or even the region of where you grew and there's a culture around all of that too. And Georgia Tech provides that richness that I can think differently. That I can be able to put myself in different shoes and I think that's a great skill set especially as a product manager because the people who purchase your product or your services they are not all from silicon valley.
You’re being inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni on Saturday evening. What does it mean to you to receive this award?
It means that I made the right choice in coming to Georgia Tech. The lessons I've learned here have lead me to this success. That the volunteer work as well as the board work I do for Georgia Tech is appreciated and I feel it's such a great honor to be part of the institution as a whole. It's pretty amazing, from Create-X to the online education opportunities to really help all individuals that are interested in getting higher education to have that. It is also recognition of the work I've done in the industry - there are so many ways that I'm very humbled.
So what's next for you?
I don't know. I’m now concentrating very much on AI and the work I'm doing with Microsoft and how important it is in technology development. And that it will enrich our lives just like the computer has enriched our lives. Like my parents, as I stated, they love technology but they didn't understand it. Now I was able to be part of that wave that gave them consumer electronics that they can use. My grandmother uses and loves music shuffling. This is the best invention since sliced bread! And AI can help do that too.
What does Mechanical Engineering - what does that mean to you?
Mechanical Engineering, at least to me, is understanding the physical world and applying engineering. That’s how I see it. It has changed over time but that's where I think it’s so important - that in this digital world we are still human, we are still in this environment and we interact with it. We interact with physical things and physical things have matter in how we feel and how we see the world and understanding that. Mechanical Engineering is very well situated in that. It's a foundation - that we are not isolated from the environment we are in.