Lucy Sanders

Lucy Sanders is co-founder and chief executive of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), and also serves as Executive-in-Residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ms. Sanders has an extensive industry background, having worked in R&D and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication, and customer relationship management).

In 1996, she was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she holds six patents in the communications technology area. She serves on several high-tech startup and non-profit boards, and frequently advises young technology companies. She has served on the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) Board of Trustees at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as on the Information Technology Research and Development Ecosystem Commission for the National Academies and the Innovation Advisory Board for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Ms. Sanders is a recipient – along with NCWIT co-founders Robert Schnabel and Telle Whitney – of the Computing Research Association’s 2012 A. Nico Habermann Award. In 2004, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at CU, and in 2011 was recognized with the university’s George Norlin Distinguished Service Award. She has been inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame and is a recipient of the 2013 U.S. News STEM Leadership Hall of Fame Award. She received her BS and MS in computer science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively.