Carol Reiley

Carol Elizabeth Reiley (born 1982) is an American business executive, computer scientist, and model. She is a pioneer in teleoperated and autonomous robot systems in surgery, space exploration, disaster rescue, and self-driving cars. Reiley has worked at Intuitive Surgical, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric. She co-founded, invested in, and was president of Drive.ai, and is now CEO of a healthcare startup, a creative advisor for the San Francisco Symphony, and a brand ambassador for Guerlain Cosmetics. She is a published children's book author, the first female engineer on the cover of MAKE magazine, and is ranked by Forbes, Inc, and Quartz as a leading entrepreneur and influential scientist. Early life and education Carol Elizabeth Reiley was born in Flint, Michigan, in 1982. Her family soon moved to Vancouver, Washington. Her father is an engineer and her mother a flight attendant; Reiley credits both for her interest in technology and global humanitarian work. She has a younger brother who is also an engineer. Reiley's parents are from Taipei and she grew up in a Mandarin-speaking household. Reiley's first invention was a humane mousetrap she fashioned at age eight to catch her runaway pet hamster. She started her first business at age ten, inspired by the Babysitters Club book series. Her first professional job was at age 15 as a television personality on Homework Helpline, a local cable show geared toward K-12 graders, answering math and English questions on the air. Reiley received her B.S. degree in computer engineering from Santa Clara University in 2004 with a concentration in robotics research, and an M.S. degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, specializing in haptics. She then enrolled in a Ph.D. program (ABD) specializing in computer vision/artificial intelligence. She spent a year at Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab with her Ph.D. advisor, who was on sabbatical there. She dropped out to move to Silicon Valley while writing her dissertation because she had a startup idea to pursue.