Amy Chaput is a former Acting Chief Technology Officer for the Directorate of Science & Technology at CIA, where she spearheaded the enterprise-wide strategy for science and technology to include research, investment, and partnerships with industry and academia. Chaput is currently Vice President for Civil Programs at Stellar Solutions.
As a little girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I always knew I wanted to be an engineer. My grandfather owned an electrical construction business in downtown Chicago with my father and uncle, and I worked there every summer. Although my first job was simply answering the phone, my father and grandfather engaged me in all aspects of the business from the bid and proposal process to electrical design to payroll and bookkeeping. My favorite task was building the company’s first personal computers, back when you had to integrate the processor, motherboard, and memory by hand. There was nothing better than seeing the computer power up and present that all-inviting command prompt “computer engineering careers” that opened up an endless world of possibilities.
Like many women who end up in STEM career fields, I was fortunate that my family encouraged my interest in technology. On one particularly memorable Christmas, Santa brought me a Texas Instruments TI-99 home computer (complete with a speech synthesizer and a Basic programming language interpreter). I taught myself how to program in Basic, print the word “hello”, and say my name in the funny way those first computers sounded.
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