Cheryl L. Shavers
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Dr Cheryl L. Shavers, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology (1999-2001)
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| Born | Cheryl Lynn Shavers 26 December 1953 San Marcos, Texas |
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Cheryl L. Shavers, born in 1953 in San Marcos, Texas, is a chemist, expert in semiconductors, and Chairman and CEO. After gaining a degree in chemistry, she worked as an engineer at Motorola. Shavers returned to university for a few years, gaining a PhD in solid state chemistry, before returning to private industry. Shavers worked at increasingly senior levels in Silicon Valley, at Hewlett Packard and Intel. She served as Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology in the Clinton Administration (1999-2001), and is a registered patent agent in the US Patent and Trademark Office. After leaving government service in 2001, she established a consultancy and strategy business, Global Smarts Inc. Shavers was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame and the Hall of Fame of the Arizona State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Shavers' mother, Erna Mae Caldwell, was a maid, who brought her and her sister up alone in South Phoenix in financial hardship. She attended South Mountain High School. When she was a young teenager, a sex worker in her neighborhood was murdered. Watching the police investigators at the scene gave her the ambition of working in forensic science, which required a chemistry degree.
Shavers was awarded a scholarship to Mesa Community College, and gained a chemistry (Associate Arts) degree. She transferred to the Bachelor of Science program at the Arizona State University, majoring in chemistry and paying for tuition by working at night in a data processing center. Shavers successfully applied for an internship in the Phoenix Police Department's crime lab, working with a team developing a method for separating enzymes trace materials (enzyme typing). When the lab director reassigned her to menial tasks a few months short of completing her degree, she resigned in distress and changed career course. Shavers graduated in 1976. She has described an encounter as a graduate student with Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling, at a conference" “He went over some of my work and it all became real". However, she has said she did not want an academic career: "That wasn't for me. I wanted to get going, get back to industry where I could make things happen."
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