Merline Saintil is the Lead Independent Director of Rocket Lab, opening access to space to improve life on Earth. Her role at this public company is a distinction held by only a handful of Black women in the world.
She also serves on the board of Fortune 60 company TD Synnex as well as GitLab, Symbotic and Evolv Technology, three of the six companies she's taken public. In 2022 Fortune celebrated the scope of her influence by naming her one of the Most Powerful Women in Business.
A long-time angel investor and advisor to CEOs and founders, she's fueling the early success of dozens of innovative startups and now has a fund that focuses on enterprise technology, the future of work and health tech. In 2021, she was named Most Influential Black Corporate Director by Savoy.
Propelled by a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon and a passion for the most innovative technologies, she ultimately became a Silicon Valley COO. Intuit, Yahoo!, PayPal, Adobe, Joyent and Sun Microsystems are among the iconic Fortune 500 and private companies she has successfully helped scale through various stages of rapid growth.
Her perspectives on technology trends, innovation, strategy, cyber risk and digital transformation have been featured by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, CIO Journal, CIO Review, CNET and Business Insider.
In 2020, she co-founded Black Women on Boards (BWOB) — a global organization of 200+ executives, to remove the invisible obstacles Black female executives face when pursuing public company board service.
Members are on the boards of Fortune 500 & pre-IPO companies as well as board-ready women. As of October 2023, BWOB has placed nearly 40 board members on public, private and advisory roles, each of them shaping the future of boardrooms at the most innovative companies.
Outside of her business interests, Merline is passionate about supporting the next generation. She is also a fan of the Stanford Women's Soccer team, which includes her daughter, an equally ardent computer science student.