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Stuart Garfield
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
2010 Women to Watch
WiTricity's Katie Hall embraces startup experience
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Katie Hall
Chief Technology Officer, WiTricity Corp.
Education: Bachelor’s degree, physics, Wellesley College; master’s degree and Ph.D., electrical engineering and computer science, MIT
Noteworthy: Hall holds 11 U.S. patents and has published more than 100 journal articles and conference papers.
On discovering science
“I really liked all kinds of subjects. I enjoyed learning and when I went off to college my intention was to go into politics. I really wanted to make the world a better place. People used to say, ‘You can’t beat City Hall.’ That always made me mad. Yes you can, or if you can’t beat it, let’s change it or make it right. But when I got to college, I took a physics course thinking, ‘Well, I’ll fulfill my science requirement,’ and you know, that freshman year physics course, I just loved it. Being in the lab and connecting the equations in the book with how stuff works. I really fell in love with it. I pretty much decided on the spot that I would be a physics major.”
At Lincoln Labs, known for defense work, did you feel a conflict between your ‘fight City Hall’ attitude and the research?
“In some ways it is the same motivation, right? You are trying to do things that make the world a better place. You are trying to solve problems, you are trying to understand what limits things and trying to find ways around it. I didn’t pursue that in a political way but in some ways science is very similar. The kinds of projects I was working on had to do with optical communications and optical switching, and these are things that are out in the commercial marketplace now.”
What do you like about the startup world?
“What has always been important to me is working with great people, and we always had not just smart people but [people] with diverse backgrounds. I really loved the startup experience — you’re sort of out on your own, you are building a team. You are doing everything from inventing something incredibly interesting to taking out the trash.”
What do you do outside of work?
“I have two children. I have an 18-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter. One thing that happens when you work at a startup, you work crazy hours, so anytime I have the opportunity to spend time with my kids, that’s absolutely my favorite thing to do. It’s really fun to watch them grow and as they find the things that they love, being able to share that with them is great — go to their games and plays and things like that.”
“I was an athlete when I was in college. I played volleyball, basketball and lacrosse. A lot of my fondest memories from college are things that happened on those teams or on the field, and a lot of my best friends are the people I played sports with.”
Thoughts on Hall, from Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity Corp.
“Katie has an incredible can-do spirit and sense of humor. No matter how daunting a challenge we present her with, she finds a way to break problems down into bite-sized pieces that her team can address. No matter how overwhelming a technical or business situation that we might face, she can lighten up the room with joke or a story.
“As for the most difficult part (of working with her) … not choking on our sandwiches when she tells an especially hilarious joke — or makes a painful pun — at the company lunch table.”
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