Biography
Veda Cook ’93 is an entrepreneur and software developer with a background in artificial intelligence. She co-founded Metaweb, a software startup that built a structured database of the world’s knowledge, acquired by Google in 2010 where it now supports billions of daily searches.
Under a grant from The Soros Open Society Foundation, Veda worked closely with investigative journalists and NGOs to design advanced analytical tools and a centralized data platform to fight transnational corruption.
Veda is also the cofounder and CEO of Em, an early startup with the goal of radically simplifying and modernizing email in a way that deepens support for online communities while dramatically reducing our dependence on tech monopolies.
Veda came out publicly as transgender in March of 2017. She graduated with a degree in computer science from Yale in 1993 and now lives in Berkeley with her wife and two teenage sons.
