Lisa Su

Company: AMD
Revenue: US$6.73 billion
Valuation: US$217 million
Age: 50

What do your MacBook, Sony’s PS4, Microsoft’s Xbox One, the latest Samsung smartphone, and a UAV military drone have in common? They all rely on AMD hardware to do their job.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is the American semiconductor company that develops computing processors for both enterprise and consumer markets.

Leading the company is Lisa Su, a Taiwanese-American business executive and electrical engineer who rose through the ranks in several engineering management roles at IBM, Texas Instruments, and Freescale Semiconductor before becoming CEO and president of AMD in 2014.

Arriving in the United States from Taiwan at the age of three, her father, a statistician, encouraged her to study math and science. Her mother was an accountant who later became an entrepreneur and taught her business concepts.

She was naturally curious from an early age and explained that she wanted to be an engineer because she wanted to know how things worked.

By age 10, she was fixing her brother’s remote-controlled cars and eventually graduated from the selective Bronx High School of Science before studying electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Her early jobs included being an undergraduate research assistant, building test silicon wafers for graduate students.

At the same time, she had a summer job at Analog Devices, which reinforced her interest in semiconductor technology.

As a doctoral student, Su became one of the first researchers to shed light on an untested technique to improve semiconductor technology. In 2017, Fortune magazine named her one of the world’s greatest leaders.

How to become a leader

When Dr. Lisa Su started working in engineering early in her career, she never thought she could be as successful or as smart as the senior leaders of the company. But by following the advice she received—advice she now gives to others—to try many different things, she was able to optimize several opportunities and learn from a variety of people, including customers and mentors.

Something she values as a leader is the power of bringing people together.

“What you can do as a single person is great, but what you can do when you bring 10 smart people together, or 100 smart people together, or 10,000 smart people together, aligned in a vision, is incredible,” she said.

Owning mistakes

Sharing the story of one of her first major business mistakes, the CEO recommended that leaders take in opinions and apply judgment, understanding the risks and managing them.

As exciting as success can be, the CEO said people grow most by examining what could have been done better and learning from mistakes.

She said it’s about empowering employees to learn on their own as well as guiding them along the way as leaders.

At AMD, Lisa Su likes to use the phrase: “Always focus on the next 5% we could improve.”

The power of computing

Growth opportunities in various markets share one common need: more computing power. She sees three particular areas where computing holds enormous potential:

Even with the pandemic, the power of computing has made collaboration and remote work more convenient and effective.

Without a doubt, Lisa Su is a leader with a clear vision and a leadership style that has taken her to success in managing and enhancing the powerful business she leads.