Florence Hudson is Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Internet2. In this role, she is an innovation catalyst and leader for the research and education community. She develops and leads innovation initiatives focused on the identification and collaborative development of technologies to expand and extend the value of the Internet into the future. The open collaborative innovation initiatives she leads include the Internet2 community of researchers and educators from 300 universities, and 150 industry leaders, labs, agencies and networking partners around the world. Her current focus areas include the Internet of Things, end to end trust and security, Distributed Big Data & Analytics, healthcare and life sciences, smarter cities/smarter campus use cases and technologies.
Florence embodies a unique blend of executive business and technical leadership skills and experience. She as an aerospace and mechanical engineer educated at Princeton University, with executive business education at Harvard and Columbia Universities. She has worked at Grumman Aerospace Corporation, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hewlett-Packard and IBM prior to her current role at Internet2. She is an inspirational presenter and leader with deep skills in innovation, business development, strategic planning, information and communications technology, networking, marketing, channels, sales and diversity programs. She is an experienced independent Board Director.
Prior to Internet2, Florence was with IBM for 33 years in many leadership roles including Director of Business Development for the Internet of Things, Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy, Vice President of Strategy & Marketing in Systems & Technology Group, and Vice President of Strategy & Marketing and acting Chief Technology Officer of the Global Industrial Sector. In these roles, she led the development of business and technical strategies across IBM including the Internet of Things, energy & environment, smarter planet, smarter buildings and cities, water management, IBM Watson and cognitive computing, analytics, cloud computing, growth markets, financing, hardware, software and services.
Ms. Hudson has lectured widely on many topics, including a TEDx talk regarding energy and the environment in 2012, as well as at Advanced Energy Conferences, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard Universities, and in many countries including China, South Korea, Vietnam, Spain, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Trinidad. She has also lectured most recently on “IT: The Endless Frontier”, “Critical Success Factors for Work, Life and Leadership” and “Diversity and Inclusion: Make the case and make a difference”, “Future proofing your career”, “Smart Campus and the Internet of Things”, and “From Engineer to SVP…the Long and Winding Road”.
She spent a year as executive-on-loan and IBM Vice President of Strategic Planning for the Society of Women Engineers where she developed new programs to inspire girls and women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics worldwide.
Prior to IBM, Ms. Hudson worked for Hewlett-Packard, Grumman Corporation and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on projects including solar power satellites, the space shuttle program and future missions around Jupiter.
Ms. Hudson serves on the Princeton University Technology Advisory Council and Princeton University Advisory Council for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She served on the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of the Society of Women Engineers. She is an Executive in Residence at Adelphi University School of Business. She has been honored with the Society of Women Engineers Upward Mobility Award for her exemplary business and technical leadership and for serving as an outstanding mentor and role model for women worldwide and was honored as a Wise Wonderful Woman of Westchester. She was honored as a Top Woman of Machine to Machine in 2014 by Connected World Magazine.