Who: Megan Smith, the former Google executive who is now the first female chief technology officer of the United States.
Why: Well, besides being the first female CTO of the U.S., Smith has done some really cool stuff at Google and is set to make big changes at the White House.

In September, the White House announced via a blog post that it had named Megan Smith as its next chief technology officer.

In her position, Smith will guide the administration’s information technology policy and initiatives. While Smith is the first female CTO of the U.S., she’s just the country’s third ever. President Obama named former Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra to the newly created position in the spring of 2009, and he served until the winter of 2012. Chopra was replaced by health care entrepreneur and former Department of Health and Human Services CTO Todd Park, who announced in late August that he was leaving the post.

According to The Washington Post, Smith is a MIT-trained mechanical engineer and entrepreneur with deep roots in the California tech world. Prior to her current gig, Smith was as a vice president at Google[x], the company’s lab for ambitious next-generation projects, like its delivery-by-drone Project Wing and its balloon-borne internet connectivity program Project Loon. Prior to this position, Smith led Google’s team that was responsible for developing new business, overseeing the acquisitions that would become Google Earth and Google Maps.

Smith also has a record of focusing on digital inclusiveness. Before Google, she was the CEO of the online LGBT community PlanetOut. In addition, she’s worked to bring more women into the engineering and technology fields at Google through the company’s Women Techmakers program. Smith also has an adventurous streak — she was once part of a student team that raced a solar car across Australia’s Outback.