Dr. Lisa Su

Dr. Lisa Su, the CEO and Chair at AMD—the semiconductor company that she led from near-bankruptcy to claiming a spot on the Fortune 500 list

Dr. Lisa Su, the CEO and Chair at AMD—the semiconductor company that she led from near-bankruptcy to claiming a spot on the Fortune 500 list, even overtaking long-time competitor Intel.

Born in Taiwan, Su has an MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT. She joined AMD in 2012. Under her leadership, the company’s share price grew from $3 to $177, and the company is now valued at more than $250 billion.

Her career trajectory:
▶ In 1995, she joined IBM where she led R&D operations and helped design chips that ran 20% faster by switching from aluminium to copper circuitry
▶ In 2007, she joined Freescale Semiconductor as CTO where she oversaw the company's R&D
▶ In 2012, she was hired by AMD where she introduced the now market-leading Zen CPU architecture

Her leadership at AMD saw her become the first woman ever to top The Associated Press' survey of CEOs’ compensation. Today, Su is one of just 26 self-made American women billionaires, alongside Oprah Winfrey and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Su has published more than 40 technical articles and has been awarded:
▶ Chief Executive magazine’s Chief Executive of the Year (2024)
▶ the Robert N. Noyce Medal by the IEEE (2021)
▶ the Global Semiconductor Association's Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award (2018)

She is also a member of several boards including Cisco Systems and the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Fun fact: NVIDIA and AMD are two of the biggest companies in the chips space today, and their Taiwanese-American CEOs Jensen Huang and Dr. Lisa Su are first cousins once removed.