Adria Richards

Blogger, Change agent, Connector, Engineer, Idea generator, Jewish, Startup, Technologist, Web guru

Embracing her inner nerd, Adria moved moved to San Francisco to pursue her passion for technology. She works as a Developer Evangelist at SendGrid to help developers get unsexy email delivered. Focused on education, advocacy and digital equality in tech, Adria uses her uncanny ability in drawing parallels between technology and real life to create change. SendGrid customers include Pinterest, foursquare, Uber, Path, Change.org and The Obama campaign. SendGrid is based in Boulder, Co, graduated from TechStars in 2009 and has closed two rounds of funding with their series B round led by Bessemer. Investors include Foundry Group, SoftTech VC, TechStars, Highway 12 Ventures 500 Startups, David Cohen and Matt Mullenweg. Adria previously worked in technical and consulting for SMB's, startups and Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Apple, CDW, Dell, John Deere, MVNA, Equinox, Samsung and Zendesk. She has been a speaker at SXSW, O'Reilly Web 2.0, The Lean Startup Conference, BlogHer and numerous media outlets including NPR, The Rachel Maddow show, Inc.com and ComputerWorld on technology, diversity and business.

Helping others become empowered through technology

Convince Microsoft to sell a $1 operating system that will always be patched and receive updates and this will reduce the spread of viruses, bot networks and data compromises worldwide saving companies large and small billions of dollars per year. This operating system will be minimal in features but support the ability to receive updates and thus increase the level of security for the end user, the network and their data.

It's been my goal since 2008 to attend TED and speak there too. I firmly live a life of action and empowerment to inspire others. I love to smile and leave a lasting impression on people I meet.