Building High-Functioning, Diverse Teams to Power Growth

Nancy Wang is the Chief Technology Officer at 1Password and a Venture Partner at Felicis, where she backs early-stage founders building in infrastructure, cybersecurity, and AI. As CTO, she leads the company's technology strategy and engineering organization, driving innovation across AI-powered security, identity access management, and the next generation of trusted digital security for an agent-first future. As a product and engineering executive, Nancy brings a builder’s mindset to investing, helping startups refine their product-market fit, land their first enterprise customers, and scale production-grade systems.

Prior to 1Password, Nancy served as Director of Product & Engineering and General Manager at Amazon Web Services, where she owned P&L and led product, engineering, and design for AWS's $1.5B+ data protection and data security portfolio. Earlier in her career, she built cloud SaaS products at Rubrik, network infrastructure products at Google, and helped launch HealthData.gov for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Nancy extends her cybersecurity expertise by serving on the Cyber-Resilience Advisory Council for Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT), advising the C-suite on enterprise security trends and product strategy, and bridging early traction with durable growth for both Fortune 10 companies and startups.

Passionate about expanding access to technical leadership, Nancy founded and serves as Board Chair of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), a global 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has educated more than 45,000 learners through Coursera. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also serves on the Board of Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (BoTIE).

Mikaela Smith has 20+ years of experience in the technology sector building teams at public companies like Twitter and Slack, as well as many more pre-IPO startups. During her tenure at Slack, Mikaela and her team played a pivotal role in building out the early engineering team and hiring the leaders who took the company through critical years of growth leading up to their very successful IPO. Mikaela now works at the boutique executive search firm Smith & Whitten, and is the fractional Head of People at The New Club, a members-only network of 1,700+ women in engineering connecting members with the community and careers to excel. Outside of her professional endeavors, Mikaela actively mentors and supports women in technology, advocating for greater diversity and inclusion within the industry. She firmly believes that empowering underrepresented groups is not only the right thing to do but also crucial for driving innovation and creating a more vibrant and inclusive tech ecosystem. The data is clear. Building diverse teams and companies leads to better business outcomes.