News & Events
2016 Graduation Speaker: Gloria Chen
Gloria Chen (BSEE '87) is vice president and chief of staff to the CEO at Adobe, the leader in digital media and marketing software. During her 18 years with the company, she has held a variety of senior leadership roles in corporate strategy, worldwide field operations, and product management, and was deeply engaged in several transformational acquisitions, as well as the company’s e-commerce and enterprise sales strategies. Most recently she has been a member of the core executive team driving the company’s successful business, product and operational transformation from traditional desktop software to the cloud.
Before Adobe, Chen was an engagement manager with McKinsey and Company leading strategy and change management initiatives with clients in technology, consumer goods, financial services and manufacturing. She started her career as a software engineer at Cadence Design Systems where she developed physical layout tools for IC design.
A native of Seattle, Chen comes from an extended family of Huskies. After receiving her BSEE from UW in 1987, she earned a MS in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon (’90) and MBA from Harvard Business School (’94). She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and 10 year-old son. She serves on the board of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, and enjoys mentoring young women and men in technology and business.
