Liz Derr

Liz Derr has a long and distinguished career in software engineering and development. Liz began their career in 1987 as a Senior Software Engineer at Amdahl Corp., where they designed the Machine Data Analysis (MDA) system and acted as Technical Lead for the MDA development project. In 1992, they moved to Informix as Senior Software QA Manager, where they managed an organization of 36 software engineers responsible for quality assurance of Informix products. In 1994, Liz became Director of Software Development at Autodesk, where they envisioned, proposed, and secured funding for the development of a new product, the AutoCAD Express Tools. Liz built the product team and delivered seven quarterly volumes of new AutoCAD-based software tools and utilities. In 1999, Liz joined Egreetings as VP of Engineering, where they managed a staff of 31 and was responsible for software development, technical operations, business partnership management, and customer service. In 2002, Liz co-founded MiaVia, an early innovative supplier of spam filtering software, where they were Vice President of Engineering. Liz was also a consultant at Alaras in 2002. In 2004, Liz moved to Monsoon Commerce, home of Alibris, as Chief Operating Officer. During their tenure as COO, Monsoon Commerce was consistently profitable and drove online sales of $450 million of GMV in 2010. Finally, in 2011 Liz co-founded Simularity, Inc., an award-winning AI software company that automatically analyzes multispectral and SAR satellite imagery. As Co-founder and CEO, Liz has grown Simularity into a successful business, and their primary roles at the company are setting the strategy, hiring, co-leading the architectural design of Simularity's AI software, and heading product management, sales, corporate management, HR, and finance.

Liz Derr attended the University of Florida from 1982 to 1987, where they earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Engineering (BSCE).