Michelle Levesque

Google Corporate Speaker
http://www.google.com/

Bits of Change

How can software be political? Which components of software make a political statement: is it this function call over here, or is it that while loop over there?

In certain parts of the world today, governments read private e-mail and arrest people based on these random sweeps. New software allows them to do so with amazing efficiency. That software was written by someone like you.

Politics, law and ethics are becoming increasingly intertwined with software engineering. These changes are having drastic consequences in the field of software design; the future of our industry will depend on the the next generation of software engineers and the choices that you make.

Biography

Michelle Levesque is a software engineer at Google where she writes and directs internal educational videos, coordinates the massive postering of Google restroom stalls with weekly flyers that promote testing, and interviews potential chefs. Oh yeah, and she writes code too.

Before coming to Google, Michelle worked at the Citizen Lab where she wrote software to study internet censorship around the world. This software is still the leading tool used by researchers to learn more about internet filtering trends and how government and corporate censorship can be circumvented.

Michelle graduated from the University of Toronto last year (2006) with a degree in Software Engineering. She loves her job and can't believe that someone would pay her to code fun things all day.