Donna is a serial entrepreneur best known for her work as CEO of Palm Computing and then Handspring, pioneers of the first successful handheld computers and smartphones. Previously, Donna spent 10 years in a multitude of sales, sales support, and logistics functions—both at Apple and at Claris, an Apple software subsidiary. In 2005, she founded machine intelligence neuroscience company Numenta with her long-time business partner, Jeff Hawkins. She is still the acting CEO of Numenta today. 

Donna earned a B.A. from Yale University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In addition to chairing Numenta’s board, she currently serves on the boards of Stanford Health Care (Palo Alto, CA), and public company Twilio (which is valued at over $60B). Donna also served on the board of Yale from 2006-2018.

This episode was originally a live fireside chat.