Delia Grenville was an architect at Intel specializing in strategy, innovation, platform engineering, and the user experience when she was honored as the 2015 Women of Color Technologist of the Year. She’d also invented six digital content technologies.
Her inventions allow consumers to filter content streaming to their televisions via the Internet and provide the ecosystem to advertise and enhance the content viewing experience. However, Grenville didn’t realize the impact that recognition as tech of the year would have on her life.
“The award opened up a lot of career conversations in and outside of my company,” Grenville told Women of Color magazine. “It definitely gave me access to executive-level connections and conversations I wasn’t having before. I don’t think where I was in middle management, those conversations would have occurred as quickly.”
Grenville said it’s beneficial for individuals advancing on the corporate ladder to be aware of how they are perceived both within their companies and beyond.
As the 2015 Technologist of the Year, she got the opportunity to work with Intel’s vice president of engineering as part of the Chief of Staff’s Office.
Other highlights included attending the Silicon Valley Comic Con, where she represented Intel on an “Engineering for Tomorrow” panel, meeting Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, participating in an Intel fashion and STEM panel with women who have combined technology with the arts, and speaking at a Women’s Club luncheon.
“On a personal front, the year opened me up to expanding my horizons to entrepreneurial collaborations,” Grenville said. “One of my favorite projects is with my sister, where we are bringing an adventurous young girl of color, Sela Blue, to life. I love applying my product development body of knowledge to an entirely different domain. Selablue.com is a creativity opportunity where I can provide ideas to combine technology with print.”
Her message to young people: Focus on science in school, but don't undervalue the importance of the arts. She advised students to take the opportunity to blend arts and sciences and develop the unique abilities to invent, design, and create future technologies.
“Believe you can,” she said, adding that individuals who possess unique artistic talents, as well as technical skills, must recognize that they have something special to bring to the world.
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Before joining Intel, Grenville was a research scientist at Oracle working on small device interfaces and geospatial visualization. She has served as a program chair and reviewer for the Human Factors Engineering Society.
Grenville is also co-founder of an organization that seeks to steer professional women into executive and leadership positions. The "Got Strategy" workshop she co-created assists junior and mid-level professionals in setting and executing a career strategy.
