Ann Mei Chang is the CEO of Candid and author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good. A leading expert on social innovation, Ann Mei previously served as the Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Mercy Corps, and Pete for America. As the first Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab, she harnessed best practices for innovation to accelerate the impact and scale of solutions to the world’s most intractable challenges.
Prior to her pivot to the public and social sector, Ann Mei was a seasoned technology executive, with more than 20 years’ experience at such leading companies as Google, Apple, and Intuit, as well as at a range of startups. As Senior Engineering Director at Google, she led worldwide engineering for mobile applications and services, delivering 20x growth to $1 billion in annual revenues in just three years.
Ann Mei earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and is a member of the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellows’ class of 2011. She has been recognized as one of the “Women in the World: 125 Women of Impact” by Newsweek/The Daily Beast in 2013, “23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech” by Business Insider in 2019, and “20 Top LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurs, Executives and Thought Leaders” by Global Shakers in 2019.
