Maura O’Neill is a lecturer and distinguished teaching fellow at the Haas School of Business. Relentlessly focused on sourcing and scaling breakthrough ideas, she has been thrilled to grow businesses, teach, and mentor others wanting to make a big difference across many sectors. A serial entrepreneur, O’Neill founded four companies in the fields of electricity efficiency, smart grid and customer info systems and billing, e-commerce, and digital education. Maura was among those who pioneered the transition to cleaner, less expensive and more reliable electricity supply and networks.
In 2009 she was appointed by President Obama to be the first Chief Innovation Officer of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Serving until 2013, she was responsible for inspiring and leading breakthrough innovations in foreign assistance and development worldwide. O’Neill is best known for co-creating the Development Innovation Venture Fund that has expanded into the Global Innovation Fund, as well as overseeing 300 public-private partnerships globally. She served as a member of the White House Innovation Cohort assisting in innovation across the federal government, as well as, contributed to tackling some of the toughest issues in the White House Situation Room. Prior to joining the Administration, she served as a Chief of Staff in the U.S. Senate in 2008 during the oil, commodity and financial crisis.
In 2019 O’Neill returned to the U.S. Senate to serve as Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to Senator Ron Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee on access to capital for women and people of color. Maura went on to expand this work and her research showed that if we grew America’s businesses to reflect the race/ethnicity and gender of the country the US would have 2 million more businesses.
Currently she is teaching at Berkeley Haas and previously at Stanford and Columbia University. She is a multiple year winner of the Berkeley Haas Earl Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. She advises start-ups, global companies, foundations and government agencies. She has MBAs from Columbia University and Berkeley Haas and a PhD from University of Washington, where her research focused on narrow-mindedness and the errors it can lead to in science, medicine, business, and political decision-making. She was the founding vice chair of the public charter school Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (grades 6-12) that was the subject of an award-winning film, STEP.
