Charles Lyons-Burt
Regina Dugan, who led the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 2009 to 2012, has joined the board of directors of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The nearly three-decade public and private sector veteran will serve on the technology committee of HPE’s board, the company said Thursday.
Antonio Neri, CEO and president of HPE, stated that Dugan will prove instrumental in assisting the company embrace new technologies and “transform to be the edge-to-cloud company.”
Neri additionally suggested Dugan’s board position will allow HPE to better tailor its services to clients’ needs and enable them to “innovate even more advanced ways to unlock the value in their data.”
For nearly three years, Dugan was the first woman to lead DARPA as director. Subsequently, she worked as vice president of engineering at Facebook, vice president of engineering, advanced technology and projects at Google in addition to her time as senior vice president of advanced technology and projects at Motorola.
Currently, Dugan presides as CEO over the nonprofit Wellcome Leap organization, which takes an international, human health-focused approach to research and development activities not unlike some of the undertakings Dugan took on at DARPA. The project is intended to proliferate new discoveries and findings in the health R&D field.
Dugan shared that HPE’s championing of edge-to-cloud architectures is what drew her to the company, noting that it is an “exciting time” to contribute to the board. In the past, she was a board director for Zynga, Varian Medical Systems and Cruise.
The executive’s skill set reportedly lies in product development, operational performance and engineering—she holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Caltech. In her past work, Dugan oversaw projects ranging from hundred-million to multibillion-dollar budgets.
Dugan’s instatement follows the appointment of Ron Bewtra as director of high performance computing at HPE in January.
