Lina M. Echeverria is the 2006 Women of Color Technologist of the Year. She retired as Corning's vice president and director of exploratory markets and technologies in 2009. Other positions she held at Corning include research director and various places in research and development and technology management.

Since retiring, she has worked as an innovation leadership consultant, was a principal at Seven Passions of Innovation, LLC, and worked with the American Management Association.

Echeverría began challenging convention as a student in her native Colombia. She was the first woman to graduate in engineering geology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia at Medellín, opening the door to a new field for a generation of women in an engineering school recognized as the most rigorous in the country. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in geology at Stanford.

Echeverria attended the Max Planck Institut, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford University, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the oldest engineering school in Colombia.

Echeverría spent twenty-five years accelerating innovation. She led teams of scientists and researchers that developed everything from ceramic filters for car exhausts, glasses for TV screens, dental bridges, and dinnerware.

She was part of a culture that has provided the world with everything from the optical fiber that is the backbone of the Internet to the glass used as the tough but beautiful touchscreen for iPhones.

At Corning, Echeverría created an environment where scientists were creative and productive, where teams balanced the ability to explore the edges of possibility. At the same time, Echeverría was known not just for her ability to lead and manage effectively, she was known for her ability to teach those skills to other managers. She led organizations in New York and France.

After winning a fight against aggressive breast cancer, Echeverría stepped aside from the corporate world to focus on her passions: helping create cultures of innovation inside companies and organizations and creating wearable textile art in her studio.

A mother of two, she is fluent in English, Spanish, and French and has lived in four countries. Currently, she lives in upstate New York with her husband, a research scientist, and their two greyhounds.