Who We Are: Mary Lou Jepsen, PixelQi

Mary Lou Jepsen is the Women of Vision Award winner in the Innovation category. She is honored for her technical successes in innovative design of computer displays over several iterations, her leadership of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to accomplish its ambitious goals, and in the impact of OLPC’s work on accessibility of digital technology to enable children in all nations to use the digital tools of the modern world, and use them collaboratively.

Mary Lou Jepsen is globally recognized as an innovative technology leader with independence from industry majors, yet deeply connected through-out – from architecture, design, sourcing, business strategy, manufacturing, software, content to brand-level. She is known for creating and leveraging small but powerful teams and negotiating insertion of those teams at effective level in the Asian manufacturing structure to deliver innovative product to mass production quickly with minimal cost. While primarily an executive, she has maintained a deep contributory role in display and device architecture inception. Her broader strength is in innovative technology management and she also has experience in software, wireless, manufacturing, Asia, developing world, education & open source. Over the last decade she has spent the majority of her time in Asia primarily in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Mainland China and has developed deep relationships throughout.

Her executive experience spans big companies (Intel, Philips), startups (Pixel Qi Corp. and MicroDisplay Corp), as well as the non-profit arena (One Laptop per Child Association and Foundation).

She is well known for her efforts on high profile programs at Intel, One Laptop per Child and most recently through Pixel Qi an organization she founded in 2008.