Donna Auguste (born 1958) is an African-American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

. She was the co-founder, along with colleague John Meier, and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

(CEO) of Freshwater Software from 1996 to 2000. Prior to founding Freshwater Software, Auguste was a senior engineering manager at

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

who helped to coordinate the development of the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA).Brown, Carolyn
She's Fresh
Black Enterprise Magazine. (November 1, 2000).
PBS. Additionally, she was the senior director for US West Advanced Technologies, whereabouts she met John Meier and began seriously thinking about the creation of Freshwater Software. In 2000, she sold Freshwater Software to Mercury Interactive Corp. for $147 million. In the same year, she was recognized as one of the "25 Women Who Are Making It Big in Small Business" by Fortune Magazine. She also won the 2001

Golden Torch The Golden Torch, more commonly known as The Torch, was a nightclub in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, England. Opened as a mod venue, it later became important to fans of Northern soul. Peter Stringfellow was amongst the many DJs who at some time h ...

Award for Outstanding Woman in Technology.Golden Torch Award
/ref> After returning to academia for a Ph.D. with the University of Colorado Boulder, Auguste was awarded the "eminent engineer" designation from the nation's oldest engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi.

Early life and education

Donna Auguste was born in Texas but relocated to Louisiana and then to California where she attended college. She and her four sisters were raised by their mother. Since an early age, Auguste loved to tinker with household appliances. She would frequently take apart

doorbell A doorbell is a signaling device typically placed near a door to a building's entrance. When a visitor presses a button, the bell rings inside the building, alerting the occupant to the presence of the visitor. Although the first doorbells were ...

s and disassemble other electrical appliances to understand the mechanics behind how they work. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in the electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) program at the University of California, Berkeley where she overcame many obstacles to earn her undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Attending a program with a high concentration of male peers, Auguste was frequently ostracized and devalued by her colleagues. Auguste went on to become the first African-American women to attend the PhD program at

Carnegie-Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Career

While conducting research in

applied science Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

at Carnegie-Mellon University, Auguste interned at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center and met the future founders of IntelliCorp. Auguste was hired by IntelliCorp as a software engineer in 1986 to work on technology products that incorporated artificial intelligence. After spending four years at IntelliCorp, Auguste took a break from work for two months to bike through Japan's countryside. Upon her return, Auguste was hired by Apple Computer in 1990 to serve as lead software engineering manager for the Newton PDA development project. While at Apple Computer, Auguste was well-liked and won praises for her managerial skills as well as technical contributions (she held various patents for her work on the Newton PDA). In 1996, Auguste relocated to

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

and joined U.S. West Advanced Technologies as senior director of multimedia

systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking ...

and

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped *Photographi ...

. While working on

interactive television Interactive television is a form of media convergence, adding data services to traditional television technology. It has included on-demand delivery of content, online shopping, and viewer polls. Interactive TV is an example of how new informati ...

applications for the company's fiber-optic broadband network, Auguste foresaw the potential of the internet and later launched her own company: Freshwater Software Inc., a provider of software solutions for maintaining and monitoring business-critical web applications. Freshwater Software grew rapidly from a tiny

start-up A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

into a nationally recognized multimillion-dollar software provider which boasted

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

clients such as

Alta Vista AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

, IBM, Microsoft,

Go.com Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, one of four divisions of the ...

, and Merrill Lynch. Freshwater Software was later purchased by Mercury Interactive Corp. of California for $147 million in 2001.Donna Auguste
/ref>

Personal life

Upon retiring after the sale of Freshwater Software, Auguste founded the Leave a Little Room Foundation, LLC, a philanthropic organization that helps provide housing, electricity, and vaccinations to poor and underprivileged communities around the world. In 2009, Auguste was awarded $750,000 from Santa Clara County as a settlement for winning a high-profile lawsuit stemming from questionable tactics used by the prosecutor from the

district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a loc ...

's office in a criminal case where Auguste's Colorado home was searched in connection with her nephew Damon Auguste's rape conviction which was later overturned. She is a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and a member of Cure d'Ars Parish in Denver.

References

External links

Women Who Inspire Us
{{DEFAULTSORT:Auguste, Donna Living people African-American women in business 1958 births American software engineers American women computer scientists American computer scientists African-American women engineers American women engineers African-American engineers African-American Catholics People from Denver People from Berkeley, California Henry Crown Fellows Catholics from California Catholics from Colorado Engineers from California 21st-century women engineers African-American computer scientists 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women

Early life and education

Career

Personal life

Further reading

References

External links