Caitlin Kalinowski is an American product designer and mechanical engineer. Since 2024, she leads the robotics and consumer hardware initiatives at OpenAI. Prior to that, she was the head of hardware at virtual reality technology company Oculus VR.[1]
Personal life
editCaitlin Kalinowski grew up in New Hampshire. She moved to the west coast, and began attending Stanford University to study product design. Her parents were both professors.[2] She lives in San Francisco, California.[3]
Kalinowski is involved with various women's and lesbians' technology groups focused on increasing awareness and resources for women in the technology fields. She is on the board of Wogrammer, a project focused on sharing interviews of women engineers, and the advisory board of Lesbians Who Tech.[3]
Career
editAfter three years at Stanford University, Kalinowski left to begin working at OQO, where she worked on the OQO model 02.[4] She later left OQO for Apple, where she worked as a technical lead on the design of laptops in the MacBook product line.[5] While continuing to work half-time at Apple, she returned to Stanford and in 2007 received her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. She left Apple to work at Facebook, where she worked on the Facebook Bluetooth Beacon project.[6] After Facebook acquired Oculus VR, Kalinowski joined the company as the head of product design. In 2018 she became the acting head of hardware for Oculus, where she works on the Oculus Go, Santa Cruz prototype, Oculus Rift and the other virtual reality products developed by the company.[7]
In 2018 she was listed as one of the most powerful female engineers by Business Insider.[8]
She was a featured speaker at WISMP Summit 2018, held in San Francisco on February 3, 2018.[9]
In 2021 and 2022, she was included on the Fast Company Queer 50 list.[10][11]
In November 2024, Kalinowski joined OpenAI to lead the company's robotics and consumer hardware initiatives.[12]
References
edit- ^ "The Craft of Prototyping by Caitlin Kalinowski". mindtheproduct.com. 15 September 2017. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
- ^ Oculus Connect 2: Shipping Hardware: The Evolution of the Rift, 2015-11-04
- ^ a b "Caitlin Kalinowski". Lesbians Who Tech. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
- ^ "The Craft of Prototyping by Caitlin Kalinowski - Mind the Product". Mind the Product. 2017-09-15. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
- ^ Brown, Richard (2016-01-07). "The woman who heads product design at Oculus". ABAC Women's Forum. Archived from the original on 2016-10-10. Retrieved 2016-10-04.
- ^ "Six Steps to Superior Product Prototyping: Lessons from an Apple and Oculus Engineer". firstround.com. 22 February 2017. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
- ^ "Caitlin Kalinowski". wogrammer. 2015-08-17. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
- ^ Bort, Julia. "The 39 most powerful female engineers of 2018". Business Insider. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
- ^ "WISMP Summit 2018 Saturday, February 3rd in San Francisco". Retrieved 21 June 2018.
- ^ "Announcing Fast Company's second annual Queer 50 list". Fast Company. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
- ^ Klein, Jessica (2022-06-08). "Caitlin Kalinowski is shaping the metaverse". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-06-19.
- ^ Field, Hayden (2024-11-05). "OpenAI hires Meta's former Orion head to lead its robotics efforts". CNBC. Retrieved 2024-11-10.