Cheryl Ainoa
SVP, Global Service Engineering, Yahoo!

As Senior Vice President of Global Service Engineering at Yahoo!, Cheryl is leading teams that develop the groundbreaking hardware and software infrastructure that supports all Yahoo! products worldwide, managing over 900 employees and influencing over 6,000 engineers in the Product organization. Cheryl focuses on creating a global Service Engineering organization that provides scalable, technologically-sound solutions that are cost effective and create a positive end user experience. Within a short time through focusing on metric creation and analysis, improved processes and engineering solutions, Cheryl has improved the user experience across Y!’s products globally by significantly reducing the number and duration of product incidents.

During her seven years at Yahoo!, Cheryl Ainoa has directed the technology and infrastructure backbone for Yahoo! global products and services, while simultaneously demonstrating tremendous leadership and a passion for innovation. She is a big picture technologist who successfully maintains existing products, while focusing on a vision for the future. During her 5 year tenure as Vice President of Global Media Engineering, she developed the next generation media products for the world’s largest audiences. Her teams developed and managed the technology for Yahoo!’s industry-leading Finance, Games, News, Music, Sports, Movies, Video, and over 20 property sites, reaching over 70 million people monthly.

Prior to Yahoo!, Cheryl spent 18 years in various engineering leadership positions in a variety of companies that span small startups such as Genealogy.com, Healtheon and IMPAC Medical Systems to large, well-established companies including Broderbund Software, Informix Software and Varian Associates. Cheryl has a BSEE from Washington State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.