Microsoft’s Peggy Johnson tops list of most powerful female engineers of 2017

With this week being National Engineer’s Week (February 19-25), Business Insider listed the 43 most powerful female engineers in the US for 2017. Microsoft’s Peggy Johnson tops the list as the most powerful female engineer in the US.

Johnson is Microsoft’s executive vice president of Business Development. Johnson and her team were responsible for Microsoft’s $26 billion buyout of LinkedIn in 2016. However, that is not the only time Johnson has come up big for Microsoft.

Johnson helped Microsoft build an artificial intelligence center in Montreal after buying the startup company, Maluuba. Johnson also helped microsoft invest in the incubator, Element AI, and also collaborated with Yoshua Bengio.

Johnson was also integral in creating Microsoft Ventures, Microsoft’s corporate venture capital fund. In addition, Johnson is a board member of PATH, an international health organization, as well as Live Nation Entertainment. Prior to joining Microsoft, Johnson started out as an electrical engineer for Qualcomm.

Microsoft’s Lili Cheng is also on the list, ranked at the 31st most powerful female engineer. Cheng is a great engineer and a part of Microsoft’s AI and Research department. Cheng is a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, responsible for much of the Microsoft Bot Framework, specifically focusing on conversational bot AI.

Currently, Cheng is working on making Cortana a contender for Amazon’s Alexa. Previously, Cheng was the director of user experience for Microsoft Windows. Cheng helped organize Botness in NYC and helped create Kodu Game Lab more than 6 years ago.