Cathy Edwards (software engineer)

Cathy Edwards is an Australian computer scientist, and she is the only female computer scientist to have sold startups to both Apple and Google. Edwards currently works at Google as the Vice President of Engineering.

Early life and career

Edwards has stated that she became interested in programming because, at age 9, attended a school that had compulsory computer science classes, something she admitted was “rare for a school” back when she was growing up. She took a special interest in maths from a young age, and even participated in “national and international math competitions”.

Edwards started attending the University of Western Australia in 1999, where she majored in Pure Mathematics, Computer Science and Linguistics. In her junior year, Edwards attained a national scholarship from the Australian telecommunications company Telstra, where she interned in their research lab in the summer. Following her graduation, Edwards received a full-time offer from the same company, and she worked there until her move to the United States in 2007.

Early career in the US

Edwards stated she wanted to "make a career change" after working at Telstra for a few years, so she started applying to companies in the US. Upon receiving a job offer from a telecommunications company 3jam, Edwards made the move from Melbourne to San Francisco. She worked in 3jam as a product manager until December 2008, before moving to work as a senior product manager in social gaming company Friendster.

By October 2009, Edwards stated she had been in Silicon Valley for a "year and a half" and wanted to "start something" on her own. She worked with a friend who had experience in the mobile industry, and together they founded a company called Chomp. As part of this company, Edwards and her cofounder built a search engine that would work for apps, citing the reason for developing this as the "huge potential for an app discovery business" at the time.

Later career in big tech

Edwards' startup caught the attention of Apple, who offered to buy Chomp from her and her cofounder. A deal was made in early 2012, and Chomp was sold to Apple for approximately $50 million. Following this, Edwards started working at Apple as a Director of Engineering, a position she stayed in until April 2014.

Edwards decided to leave Apple in 2014. She re-entered the startup space and began a new startup, Undecidable Labs, with a former colleague. Edwards continued to work on this until 2016, when the startup was sold to Google. Edwards then began working at Google, and started off as being the Director of Engineering. In November 2019, Edwards was promoted to the Vice President of Engineering at Google, and she has held this position ever since.

References

• https://daniellenewnham.medium.com/meet-cathy-edwards-the-only-w%CC%B6o%CC%B6m%CC%B6a%CC%B6n%CC%B6-founder-in-the-world-to-sell-her-startups-to-apple-and-a82e2fd58fbb
• https://daniellenewnham.medium.com/meet-cathy-edwards-the-only-w%CC%B6o%CC%B6m%CC%B6a%CC%B6n%CC%B6-founder-in-the-world-to-sell-her-startups-to-apple-and-a82e2fd58fbb
• https://daniellenewnham.medium.com/meet-cathy-edwards-the-only-w%CC%B6o%CC%B6m%CC%B6a%CC%B6n%CC%B6-founder-in-the-world-to-sell-her-startups-to-apple-and-a82e2fd58fbb
• https://daniellenewnham.medium.com/meet-cathy-edwards-the-only-w%CC%B6o%CC%B6m%CC%B6a%CC%B6n%CC%B6-founder-in-the-world-to-sell-her-startups-to-apple-and-a82e2fd58fbb
• https://daniellenewnham.medium.com/meet-cathy-edwards-the-only-w%CC%B6o%CC%B6m%CC%B6a%CC%B6n%CC%B6-founder-in-the-world-to-sell-her-startups-to-apple-and-a82e2fd58fbb