Women in STEM Spotlight: Clara Shih

Jun 13

Clara Shih is a technology pioneer, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. She currently leads artificial intelligence efforts at Salesforce and is also the Founder and Chairwoman of Hearsay Systems, a client engagement SaaS startup backed by Sequoia and NEA. She has been named one of Fortune’s “40 under 40” and “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs,” Fast Company’s “Most Influential People in Technology,” “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and TIME's 100 most influential people in AI.

Clara was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the US when she was four, spending most of her childhood growing up in Chicago, Illinois. In college, Clara founded Camp Amelia, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides tech literacy training for high school students and teachers in global, underserved communities. Clara received her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford and also earned an M.S. from Oxford University, where she studied as a U.S. Marshall Scholar. Clara lives in Oakland, California with her husband Dan, their two sons, and cat.

You’ve had an incredible career in Silicon Valley, starting as an engineer and now serving as CEO of Salesforce AI. Did you know at a young age that you wanted to be in technology? What sparked your interest in STEM?
Thank you—that is very kind. In grade school, I aspired to be a teacher and grocery checkout clerk. In middle school, I wanted to become a lawyer. In high school, I was convinced I’d become a physicist. Arriving at Stanford University in the early 2000s exposed me to an entirely new world of technology and startups. I was instantly smitten. My biggest takeaway is that life often takes us in unexpected directions if we keep an open mind and allow it.
You’ve done almost everything: you wrote a bestselling book, founded a tech literacy nonprofit for K-6 education in emerging markets, founded a company, and are on both nonprofit and for-profit boards. What’s the north star driving you every day?
I'm driven primary by three things: learning, building things/having impact, and working with people who inspire me. These are the common threads across everything I've done and probably will do, and why I've been drawn to major tech disruptions from the Internet to social media and now AI. Technology disruptions create the best opportunities for learning and building, and to do this, you have to bring together diverse teams of people who each bring a unique perspective and superpower.
What is most exciting and most worrying to you about today’s emerging technologies?
AI today is like the Internet in 1998, full of exciting possibility but also new risks, many of which are still unknown.
Five hundred years ago, the Renaissance brought about a widespread cultural, societal, and economic rebirth, unleashing incredible progress in virtually every aspect of humanity. Today, we’re on the cusp of a modern-day Renaissance powered by AI, and it will be another step change in human progress. The new wave of generative AI will give rise to great thinkers and innovators, this time enabled by machines.
It’s exciting to think about how generative AI will transform education and healthcare, where we’ve struggled to provide consistent and equitable quality access to all. Across sectors, the potential applications and value creation are immense, and every field will be transformed in the coming decades. Yet, as we’ve witnessed with social media spreading disinformation and polarizing society over the last decade, there are downside risks. I sum these up as the “four D’s”: data privacy, disinformation, discrimination, and (job) displacement. These are all areas which require much more thoughtful dialogue and probably legislation to mitigate the most harmful risks and ensure the benefits of AI are shared with all of society.
As an immigrant from Hong Kong, and as a founder of a nonprofit that spread literacy through technology in emerging markets, how did your experience in Asia and elsewhere shape who you are today?
I think being an immigrant has always helped me be curious about the world, think about the bigger picture, and not take anything for granted. It's always in my consciousness that whatever I'm currently experiencing is different than what many others are experiencing around the world, and also that everything around us was once not there and could change or disappear for better or worse, depending on our actions.
Can you describe some setbacks that you have faced and share how you have overcome them?
As a startup founder, every week there is a setback. You get used to it, and it's no longer a bad thing, just valuable fast feedback that you need to pivot and try something else. Before founding Hearsay, I experienced many setbacks that helped develop my ability to persist and bounce back--being rejected for jobs and fellowships, I even got fired in my early 20s, which was devastating and mortifying at the time but turned out to be just what I needed to get better.
What is something you hold close or true now that you may not have held close or true earlier in your career?
There's more to life than academic and career achievement. For many years, I told myself family comes first but my actions didn't reflect this. Now, they almost always do. I think that's pretty natural as we grow older and wiser and take on more important roles at home like becoming a parent or taking care of an aging parent.
And what’s next for Clara?
I think I have one of the most personally interesting roles right now that plays to my strengths and keeps me learning, inspired, building, and working with incredible people. So I'm not anticipating my next play just yet!