Founder and CEO, Credo AI
UW Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering
“I always wanted to create my own world where I could make change happen,” Singh says. “One of my favorite quotes is: ‘You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to start to be great.’ ”
When she was growing up in India, she was inspired watching her mother reinvent her own career, from teaching to fashion design. Singh’s father served in the Indian military for four decades and instilled in her a deep sense of service and community.
With the help of her parents and a scholarship, Singh was able to leave her home in India to pursue her dream of higher education in the United States and quickly felt at home at UW–Madison. “Even though I came from a very different world and a different culture, I felt a strong sense of belonging quite quickly.”
Singh made the most of her time at UW–Madison, assisting professors with research and becoming a teaching assistant while earning her master’s degree in electrical engineering. She vividly recalls her first year as a teaching assistant in physics as a turning point: “It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had, and I failed miserably,” she says. Determined not to give up, she mastered the material and polished her English, and the next year she earned a Best Teaching Assistant award that still hangs in her office. “If I set my mind to something, I just know I’m going to accomplish it,” she says.
That spirit fueled her early career in engineering. Drawn to STEM by the ability to turn her ideas into reality, Singh initially focused on hardware, earning her master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. She spent more than a decade at Qualcomm in research and development engineering, contributing to wireless technologies and infrastructure that remain central to smartphones and mobile devices today.
She was recruited to work at Microsoft to focus on the software and cloud computing side of technology. It was there that a new set of questions began to take shape around artificial intelligence: What does responsible AI look like? What is our responsibility? How do we ensure that these systems serve humanity?
Singh founded Credo AI in 2020 to help answer those questions. The company’s platform provides organizations with a centralized way to govern, measure, and monitor AI systems while keeping pace with emerging global regulations and standards. She also serves on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, is an AI expert at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and serves as an adviser to the UN AI Advisory board.
“The question I always pose is not, ‘What can go wrong with this technology?’ but, ‘What will humanity look like when we get this right?’ ” Singh says. “We’re excited about what’s next, and from where I stand, it’s going to be beautiful, prosperous, and human-centered.”