Donna Auguste
Encyclopedia
Donna Auguste is an African-American businesswoman, entrepreneur
, and philanthropist
. She was the founder and chief executive officer
(CEO) of Freshwater Software from 1996 to 2001. Prior to Freshwater Software, she was a senior engineering manager at Apple Computer
who helped to coordinate the development of the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA).
In 2001, she sold Freshwater Software to Mercury Interactive
Corp. for $147 million. In the same year, she was recognized as one of the "25 Women Who Are Making It Big In Small Business" by Fortune Magazine
. She also won the 2001 Golden Torch
Award for Outstanding Woman in Technology.
but relocated to Louisiana
and then to Berkeley, California
. She and her three sisters were raised by their single mother
. Since an early age, Donna loved to tinker with things: from taking apart doorbell
s to disassembling toaster
s and other appliances. After graduating from high school
, she enrolled in the electrical engineering
and computer science
(EECS) program at the University of California, Berkeley
where she overcame many obstacles to earn her undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She did graduate study in
computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, where she earned her MS degree in 1983.
and artificial intelligence
at Carnegie-Mellon University, Donna interned at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center and met the future founders of IntelliCorp
. Donna was hired by IntelliCorp as a software engineer
in 1986 to work on technology products that incorporated artificial intelligence. After spending four years at IntelliCorp, Donna took a break from work for two months to bike through Japan
's countryside. Upon her return, Donna was hired by Apple Computer in 1990 to serve as lead software engineering
manager for the Newton PDA development project. While at Apple Computer, Donna was well liked and won praises for her managerial skills as well as technical contributions (she held various patent
s for her work on the Newton PDA).
In 1996, Donna relocated to Boulder, Colorado
and joined U.S. West Advanced Technologies as senior director of multimedia
systems engineering
and development. While working on interactive television
applications for the company's fiber-optic
broadband
network, Donna foresaw the potential of the internet
and later launched her own company: Freshwater Software Inc., a provider of software solutions for maintaining and monitoring business-critical web application
s. Freshwater Software grew rapidly from a tiny start-up
into a nationally recognized multi-million-dollar software provider which boasted Fortune 500
clients like Alta Vista, IBM
, Microsoft
, Go.com
, and Merrill Lynch
. Freshwater Software was later purchased by Mercury Interactive Corp. of California
for $147 million in 2001.
2008 presidential campaign.
organization that helps to provide housing
, electricity
, and vaccination
s to poor and underprivileged communities around the world.
Donna is an active member of her parish: Cure d'Ars Roman Catholic Church
in Denver, Colorado
. She is a talented musician
and plays the piano
and bass guitar
for her church's gospel choir.
Donna also heads part of her church's global outreach program. One of the goals of the outreach program was to establish solar-powered
electricity and e-mail
communication via laptop
s for school
s and hospital
s in remote areas of Tanzania
.
In 2009, Donna was awarded $750,000 from Santa Clara County
as a settlement for winning a high profile lawsuit
stemming from questionable tactics used by the district attorney
office's prosecutor
in a criminal case where her house was searched in connection with her nephew Damon Auguste's rape
conviction which was later overturned.
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
, and philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
. She was the founder and chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
(CEO) of Freshwater Software from 1996 to 2001. Prior to Freshwater Software, she was a senior engineering manager at Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
who helped to coordinate the development of the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA).
In 2001, she sold Freshwater Software to Mercury Interactive
Mercury Interactive
Mercury is now part of Hewlett-Packard. The combination of Mercury Interactive and HP OpenView formed HP Software Division, a global business unit within HP Enterprise Business...
Corp. for $147 million. In the same year, she was recognized as one of the "25 Women Who Are Making It Big In Small Business" by Fortune Magazine
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
. She also won the 2001 Golden Torch
Golden Torch
The Golden Torch, more commonly known as The Torch, was a mod nightclub in Tunstall, Stoke on Trent, England. The club opened on January 30, 1965 with the headline act of Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas...
Award for Outstanding Woman in Technology.
Early life and education
Donna Auguste was born in TexasTexas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
but relocated to Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
and then to Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. She and her three sisters were raised by their single mother
Single parent
Single parent is a term that is mostly used to suggest that one parent has most of the day to day responsibilities in the raising of the child or children, which would categorize them as the dominant caregiver...
. Since an early age, Donna loved to tinker with things: from taking apart doorbell
Doorbell
A doorbell is a signaling device typically placed near a door. Most doorbells emit a ringing sound to alert the occupant of the building to a visitor's presence, when the visitor presses a button. Many modern doorbells are electric — they are actuated by an electric switch...
s to disassembling toaster
Toaster
The toaster is typically a small electric kitchen appliance designed to toast multiple types of bread products. A typical modern two-slice toaster draws anywhere between 600 and 1200 W and makes toast in 1 to 3 minutes...
s and other appliances. After graduating from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, she enrolled in the electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
(EECS) program at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
where she overcame many obstacles to earn her undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She did graduate study in
computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, where she earned her MS degree in 1983.
Career
While conducting research in applied scienceApplied science
Applied science is the application of scientific knowledge transferred into a physical environment. Examples include testing a theoretical model through the use of formal science or solving a practical problem through the use of natural science....
and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
at Carnegie-Mellon University, Donna interned at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center and met the future founders of IntelliCorp
IntelliCorp
IntelliCorp is a name used by multiple corporations:*IntelliCorp , provider of SAP application lifecycle management software.*IntelliCorp , provider of employee background checks for employment and other purposes....
. Donna was hired by IntelliCorp as a software engineer
Software engineer
A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...
in 1986 to work on technology products that incorporated artificial intelligence. After spending four years at IntelliCorp, Donna took a break from work for two months to bike through Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
's countryside. Upon her return, Donna was hired by Apple Computer in 1990 to serve as lead software engineering
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
manager for the Newton PDA development project. While at Apple Computer, Donna was well liked and won praises for her managerial skills as well as technical contributions (she held various patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s for her work on the Newton PDA).
In 1996, Donna relocated to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
and joined U.S. West Advanced Technologies as senior director of multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
systems engineering
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
and development. While working on interactive television
Interactive television
Interactive television describes a number of techniques that allow viewers to interact with television content as they view it.- Definitions :...
applications for the company's fiber-optic
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...
broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
network, Donna foresaw the potential of the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and later launched her own company: Freshwater Software Inc., a provider of software solutions for maintaining and monitoring business-critical web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
s. Freshwater Software grew rapidly from a tiny start-up
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
into a nationally recognized multi-million-dollar software provider which boasted Fortune 500
Fortune 500
The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...
clients like Alta Vista, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Go.com
Go.com
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...
, and Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
. Freshwater Software was later purchased by Mercury Interactive Corp. of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
for $147 million in 2001.
Politics
Donna contributed to President Obama'sBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
2008 presidential campaign.
Personal life
Upon retiring after the sale of Freshwater Software, Donna founded the Leave a Little Room Foundation, LLC, a philanthropicPhilanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
organization that helps to provide housing
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
, electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
, and vaccination
Vaccination
Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material to stimulate the immune system of an individual to develop adaptive immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by many pathogens...
s to poor and underprivileged communities around the world.
Donna is an active member of her parish: Cure d'Ars Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
in Denver, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
. She is a talented musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and plays the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
for her church's gospel choir.
Donna also heads part of her church's global outreach program. One of the goals of the outreach program was to establish solar-powered
Solar power
Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar radiation, along with secondary solar-powered resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available...
electricity and e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
communication via laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s for school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s and hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
s in remote areas of Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
.
In 2009, Donna was awarded $750,000 from Santa Clara County
Santa Clara County, California
Santa Clara County is a county located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,781,642. The county seat is San Jose. The highly urbanized Santa Clara Valley within Santa Clara County is also known as Silicon Valley...
as a settlement for winning a high profile lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
stemming from questionable tactics used by the district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
office's prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
in a criminal case where her house was searched in connection with her nephew Damon Auguste's rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
conviction which was later overturned.