“Electrical Engineering, particularly at MIT, was the hardest major,
so I said, ‘You know, how about we try and see how it goes.’“
Those are the words of Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su (蘇姿丰), an engineer who has
indeed earned her Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and PhD in
Electrical Engineering - all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
just as she said she would. After receiving her doctorate, Taiwan born Dr.
Lisa Su did brief stints at IBM and Texas Instruments, before joining, and
later becoming the CEO of, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a company which designs
computer hardware. The tech industry she would join however, was (and is)
hostile to women. With 92% of its leaders being men, it was not ready to
let that change, and Dr. Su started with a salary $150,000 less than her male predecessor in the exact same position. Nonetheless, she stepped into
the role despite mentors in her life urging her not to,
and got to work.
Indeed it was a great achievement, save for the fact that in 2014,
as she became CEO, AMD was failing - big time. The company’s primary product,
it’s central processing units (CPU's) were terrible: they were slower, ran hotter
and were more expensive than competitor Intel’s comparable products. In true Dr. Su fashion,
she had chosen the most difficult possible time to take the reigns. At that point, shares
of the publicly traded company were sat around the $2 mark. In just about five years however,
under her leadership that skyrocketed to $110 per share, and AMD's market share doubled.
How did she do it? For one, she intelligently managed the company, cutting deals with Microsoft
and Chinese manufacturers to keep it afloat, buying time while she worked to redesign the company’s
entire product line from the ground up. Saying, “People are really motivated by ambitious goals”
she set a lofty, near impossible goal to make their products 40% faster. Two years later, AMD beat that,
and exploded back into the scene. In a male dominated field, where women are seen as inferior,
despite taking over a sinking ship, despite earning significantly less than
her male predecessor, Dr. Lisa Su defied the entire industry and succeeded. Today,
AMD processors power the latest Xbox's,
AMD outsold Intel in datacentres for the first time in history, and Dr. Su’s incredible success story is taught as a case study at Harvard Business School. She has been selected as Time Magazine’s 2024 CEO of the year - the first women ever to receive such a nomination, and is one of thirty women on the S&P 500.
Behind all of the accolades though, the three degrees, and the multi-national
technology companies, one thing is clear: Dr. Lisa Su worked hard and fought for every last thing she has ever earned.
From learning to multiply at the age of seven, to becoming the highest paid CEO in the S&P 500,
Dr. Su’s story is one of intelligent risk taking, tireless determination,
and a relentless drive to outperform every expectation. And that, is
what makes her my personal hero.