Lesbian Named Obama's Chief Tech Officer

The White House yesterday appointed out Google executive Megan Smith as the Obama administration's new Chief Technology Officer.

Smith, the new U.S. CTO, is an MIT-trained mechanical engineer and entrepreneur with deep roots in the California tech world. She currently serves as a vice president at Google[x], the company's lab for ambitious next-generation projects, like its delivery-by-drone Project Wing and its balloon-borne Internet connectivity program Project Loon. For nine years, Smith led Google's team responsible for developing new business, where she led the acquisitions that would become Google Earth and Google Maps. And she's familiar to Washington's burgeoning "civic tech" community through her work with the Google Crisis Response project. Smith also has a record of focusing on digital inclusiveness. Before Google, she was the CEO of the online LGBT community PlanetOut.