Hannah Lewbel Email & Phone Number

Kirkland, Wa, Us

Washington, Dc, Us

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides over 9M military veterans and their families with benefits and care earned through sacrifice and service. As the Senior Technical Advisor to the CIO in the Office of Information Technology (OIT), I provide leadership on our exec strategy supporting a $7B budget. I focus on operational excellence and modernizing key systems and processes that enable our execs to prioritize and budget, make data-driven strategic decisions, and ensure long-term health and sustainability of platforms and user experiences. Key focal areas: Cybersecurity & identity robustness, medical systems security and strategy, AI health and payment/claims systems, modern product management, benefits modernization, and org development.Notable accomplishments: I created and continue to drive OIT’s modern product framework for product management and development, which led to a strategic reorganization of the Product Dev team (~10k people) aligning teams with key initiatives. I led a comprehensive portfolio-review process across IT domains including security, health, end user services/devices, and benefits, working closely with execs to refine priorities, budgets, metrics, strategy, improved testing, and accountability. On cybersecurity, I partnered with our CISO and senior leaders to evolve best practices and incident management, and establish better medical device security protocols. For benefits and health, I leveraged AI to optimize operations, providing technical solutions to reduce benefits processing times and support innovative healthcare applications to combat physician burnout and improve data processing. I directed modernization initiatives to stabilize and recover legacy financial medical data systems for billing/claims payments, which resulted in significant financial improvements and improved fraud detection that will save VA millions of dollars.

Lewbel Consultancy provides Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) services to stealth, early, and mid-stage product clients, focused on evolving their executive leadership capabilities, improving operational excellence, advancing technology and information technology organizations, refining product development and product management, and upgrading organizational design as teams evolve products from imagination, to concept, to production, to scale. Product services include product design incubation and production viability analysis and scaling advice in software development, security enhancement, technical architecture, consumer electronics design, artificial intelligence and generative AI product development, gaming, Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, industrial design, UI/UX, accessibility, education, and design for social impact. Organizational support, delivered as leadership coaching, executive and manager training, mentoring circles, and workshops, cover technical interviewing/bar raising & hiring, cultural considerations, talent development, and diversity and inclusivity frameworks. Extensive multi-disciplinary approaches based on experience collaborating with legal, operations, manufacturing, business ops, finance, and marketing teams.

Washington, District Of Columbia, Us

Influencing key technology, fundraising, and marketing business strategies to better support NCPSSM's advocacy and policy work to serve those needing Social Security and Medicare benefits. Advocacy and education for the benefits of Social Security as a critical protection for our most vulnerable American citizens, including seniors and those with disabilities.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Led the Xbox software development organization responsible for developing all of Microsoft's front-end PC, mobile, and Smart TV apps, subscription life cycle, community experiences that enable friends to play and have fun together, and the technology gaming partnerships that enable linking between Xbox and Riot, Discord, and others Gaming industry leaders. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) liaison and key engineering architect representing Gaming at high-level leadership forums organized by the Office of the CTO which brought Partner/VP/CVP collaborators together from across the company. Led multi-org Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across Microsoft (Gaming, Office, Edu), including being a rep on D&I boards, women's boards/communities, leading mentoring circles for Principal women, and collaborating as part of the Microsoft-wide Accessibility xLT board. My work included driving innovative and inclusive meeting experiences by supporting new women inventors and creating/patenting the Teams' "Hand Raise" feature that drives the heart of Microsoft's inclusive virtual meeting behaviors and Teams meeting experiences. On the Accessibility xLT team I drove improved accessibility policy and compliance standards into products such as those in Gaming. I founded two new women's leadership organizations, led Fix Hack Learn hackathons across multiple teams, created partnerships with education and enterprise customers, and evolved recruiting and hiring practices to be more inclusive across my teams and organization.For our talent development, I oversaw many of our hiring and team development initiatives as a Microsoft AA (equivalent of Amazon’s “bar raiser” interviewing and making final decisions on candidates across the organization).

Redmond, Washington, Us

Led architecture vision and technical development for player identity modeling, accounts and subscriptions, social graph learning and personalization, artificial intelligence (AI), apps & services, and systems that connect and engage Microsoft's gaming players and customers.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Evolved Microsoft's persona models to incorporate personal intelligence, multi-profile human-based reasoning, behavior modeling, learning models, search & increased relevancy, AI & Machine Learning, content ingestion, storage, intelligence, data analysis, and signals. Worked collaboratively across many Microsoft orgs on multidisciplinary customer-facing and enterprise products to better connect Microsoft's platform teams with customer value and experience opportunities that could provide a better persona model and personalization to drive customer delight and revenue.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Whiteboard: Led software dev teams in Microsoft Education to build and ship Whiteboard's first generation freeform digital canvas on Windows, Teams, iOS, Android, and web apps based on newly acquired Intentional Software & interactive documents modeling. Created strategy and vision for data science, DevOps, platform and app performance, build/test and automation, and app customer experiences. Wove accessibility into product strategy, planning, and dev. Partnered with design, research, and accessibility to drive improved customer experiences based on real customer feedback. Close collaboration with Charles Simonyi and founding acquisition team, Senior Leadership strategy meetings with EVPs, Satya Nadella, Charles Simonyi, and Bill Gates. Podcast with Satya Nadella.Inclusive Meeting Patents: Founded and mentored Intentional’s women’s leadership group, creating the 1st inclusive meeting behaviors in software. Patented, developed, and presented these to Senior Leadership, and shipped them in Whiteboard and as key features across Office software, including critically acclaimed patents for a virtual hand-raise feature and inclusive meeting transcripts, features used globally during COVID era and post-pandemic in modern Teams video conferencing.Computer Science: Drove research and strategy including investments in STEM and Comp Sci curriculum, partnerships, diversity/inclusion/gender-inclusive curriculum, Computer Science for All, and accessibility. Spearheaded a cross-company education consortium including the Education, Gaming/Minecraft for Edu, Whiteboard, Microsoft Learn, and the Developer Division orgs. Volunteered as a remote Cascade high school Computer Science teacher through the TEALS (Technology Education And Learning Support) program.Devices: Drove architecture and engineering technical strategy between Education/Whiteboard and the Surface devices organizations for co-developing Microsoft’s Surface Duo dual-screen phone from prototype to production.

Neubiberg, München, De

Strategic advising on key technology and industry trends, including silicon chip and sensor technology, home automation, automotive, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed computing, silicon chip and hardware development, organizational culture and leadership, and virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR)

Technical advisor and board member on 1st generation early Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) wearables headset product development focused on improving human perception, visual experiences, and creating accessible technology support for people with disabilities

Seattle, Wa, Us

C-suite technology leader for Worldreader, a non-profit organization focused on creating digital/e-reader school and library programs to improve children’s literacy globally. Exec responsibilities included creating and presenting roadmaps, strategy, and budgets to the exec team and board on key technology and infrastructure opportunities, and making decisions and purchases of software and infrastructure tools to serve our book content, user experiences, cloud services for our data, website, CRM, mail clients, marketing, finance systems, etc. Provided technology north star and vision, managed all software and infrastructure developer teams that powered and scaled Worldreader’s global education and literacy programs through its digital media library. Planned consolidation and deprecation of prior disparate systems. Tech strategy infrastructure using Salesforce, ERP/PLM systems, payment processors, mail clients, app development, systems administration, and QA. Technical work on e-reader device triage and repair, reading initiatives, and operations processes.

Sunnyvale, Ca, Us

Led the Kindle products audio hardware team through 7 models of Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon v1 Echo/Alexa product testing, and accessories development. Successfully presented Dolby Atmos surround sound demos on the Kindle Fire tablets to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and SLT on innovative audio features and emerging tech. Primary responsibility for Kindle Fire tablets’ audio acoustic and electrical performance. Defined testing strategy, roadmaps, and validation. Hiring, organizational structure, coaching for development. Final decision-maker on component selection, cost analysis, cost improvements during product iterations. Formed and led a team that updated Amazon's Product Development Process for product life cycle and improved supplier collaboration. Amazon Bar Raiser – interviewer across the organization in multiple disciplines to help uphold our hiring bar and make long-term good hires for the teams.

Sunnyvale, Ca, Us

Led technical development for 1st gen Kindle Paperwhite display (first product ever to include e-paper + frontlight) and other reflective display (e-paper, eInk) Kindle products. Extensive work with international suppliers, factories, and manufacturers in Asia (China, Japan, Korea). Drove design, roadmap, spec requirements for UI/UX, testing, and validation of brand new display stack (integrated reflective displays + frontlight), including font/menu appearance, contrast ratio, ghosting, display reliability, accessibility, and mechanical integrity. On-site for engineering builds improving testing processes and data collection with Supplier Quality Management. Created and maintained the top-level display specification, test plan, and product display BOM in Agile (PLM doc control). Responsible for hiring and developing, mentoring, coaching. Filed service design patents on new e-paper and frontlight display stacks.

Sunnyvale, Ca, Us

Lead hardware engineer for the Kindle Fire (shipped ~7M devices), Kindle DX, and Kindle 3 (Kindle Keyboard) products from concept through high-volume manufacturing production, including:Architectural systems integration, schematic design & maintenance (OrCAD), BOMs, system validation and debug, chairing weekly engineering meetings and driving cross-functional problem solving, leading design and layout reviews, hardware bug tracking, 2nd source part qualification/cost reduction, technical documentation, mentorship and management of supporting engineers, recruiting/growing team. Design and testing with part suppliers, CMs, and ODMs. Factory test process improvement, onsite build support at factories and supplier locations. Extensive international travel and on-site factory support in China for engineering builds. Additional responsibilities for Kindle Fire: Creating a thermal test plan and spec criteria, system power management validation, wireless validation alongside RF team, an executive launch demo, managing supporting electrical engineers, creating system level tech specs, electrical BOM, and improving PLM processes. Detailed cost analysis, BOM reduction, and as-needed sustaining support.Kindle 1 (Fiona) and Kindle 2 (Turing) engineering testing and support.Patent for the first Kindle Lighted Book Cover (shipped ~12M) which was my sole invention, and numerous other patents for the recovery of missing devices (“find-my-phone” patent), dorsal touch, multi/dual-screen electronics, adapting font displays for reflective screens, display technology, accessories, etc.

Us

Electrical engineering schematic design, fabrication, and hardware validation of video control boards and extremely large-scale LED pixel display products for professional film, lighting, entertainment, and architectural applications. VersaTube products were used to create the set for Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" music video, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Stadium Arcadium" tour, and VersaRay products were used in the 2006 Doha Asian Games giant stadium-sized display of 762,000 RGB LEDs which was the largest custom screen ever used for a live event (165m W x 39m H)

Bend, Us

Schematic design, component selection, BOM management, cost reduction, and PCB layout of a jukebox-shaped iPod dock with audio and LED integration (JukeDock™).

Cupertino, California, Us

Core systems design engineer for the original Mac Mini, iMac G5, G5 towers, and Macbook laptops from concept through high volume manufacturing production. Circuit design and analysis, audio testing, hard drive and memory validation, power systems, manufacturing and operations support overseas at factory builds (China), close work with RF, mechanical & PD engineering, compliance.

Cupertino, California, Us

VLSI Design Hardware Engineering: Created a disassembler and pin-out program for the HyperTransport point-to-point processor bus for use with a Tektronix logic analyzer.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Hardware silicon chip design and analysis and package qualification work. Researched/presented a BGA/QFN package reliability report. Training in Cadence Design Tools and RFIC design.

Cupertino, California, Us

C++ Frameworks: Perl and MPW scripting to embed documentation within C++ MacApp source code.

Bsee, Electrical Engineering

Full Stack Software Engineering Certificate, Computer Software Engineering

Computer Engineering