Influential Woman · Tech

Ashley Acosta

Strategy for AI Accelerator, NVIDIA

San Francisco, CA

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Cornell University Degree Nutrition and Biochemistry Aspects of Human Nutrition Degree Mount Sinai Degree Master's in Biomedical Sciences

Her Story

About Ashley

I started my career path as pre-med at Cornell, where I studied nutrition and biochemistry aspects of human nutrition because I felt doctors didn't know much about nutrition. I then went to Mount Sinai for my master's in biomedical sciences, studying tendon repair and regeneration because I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. While there, I took an entrepreneurship class and ended up building a medical device with the chairman of neurosurgery - a tool that allowed surgeons to swap out instruments quickly during brain tumor surgeries through the nasal canal, solving the problem of limited range of motion and preventing patient deaths from bleeds. That experience got me interested in tech, and I formally entered the industry in 2015-2016. Now I work at NVIDIA on an internal, highly technical team that enables everything from super native AIs to open source groups to NCPs, where I help lead strategy for the team. I'm passionate about hiring and connecting really talented women and helping them accomplish impressive tasks, which I think is one of my most notable achievements - being able to lift people up in a different way now that I've reached a certain place in my career.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Ashley

01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I think one of the best pieces of advice that I received was if you know someone who can speak to your work, and they're trying to pull you into a new company or into a new role, you should follow them. Obviously, with other factors in mind, you know, what's the role, comp, etc, but having somebody who can pull you in and really look out for you, especially early on, I think is always almost like an armor, internally, and supercharged for your career, for learning, for the ability to move upwards.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I think to stay on top of all the changes that are happening in AI, use AI, you know, learn how to use Cloud Code, even for just, you know, little projects, I think that can be the most impactful avenue for careers moving forward.

03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

I think integrity is something that, with AI, we are constantly coming up against, both with the largest models that we read about and use, but also on, like, a geopolitical scale. And so I think that that is something that unfortunately, right, speed, it's kind of trumping a lot of the probably safer blocks that we should. And that's something that I think is a very common, open topic right now.

04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I think integrity. In tech, there's a lot of, you know, obviously what we see in the headlines is a microcosm of, you know, a certain, I think, number of folks, but I think that when you kind of are in it enough, you start to realize, you know, who really would do the right things behind closed doors, and I think that's really important, and it's really important to surround yourself with those people.

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