Sophie Vandebroek


Sophie V. Vandebroek is a Belgian electrical engineer and business executive, who was the Chief Technology Officer of Xerox, and President of Xerox Innovation Group until December 2016. Vandebroek was CTO and a corporate vice president of Xerox corporation from 2006 till 2016.

Early life

Vandebroek was born in Leuven, Belgium.

Education

Vandebroek earned a master's degree in electromechanical engineering at KU Leuven University, and moved to the United States in 1986, where she graduated with a PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1990.

Career

Vandebroek first joined the IBM research labs before moving on to Xerox in 1991. She has praised Xerox for "creating a supportive environment for women". Vandebroek was a director of the board of Analogic Corporation from 2008 to 2016 and has been a director of the board of IDEXX Laboratories since 2013. Vandebroek has given talks at many conferences, including about artificial intelligence, cyber security, internet of everything and democratizing energy. She has been a member of the advisory council of the dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2010 and was a member of the advisory council of the dean of engineering at Cornell University from 2005 until 2011. Vandebroek announced her intention to retire from Xerox at the end of 2016 when Xerox split into two companies.
Vandebroek accepted the Chief Operating Officer role at IBM Research in January 2017. She stepped down from IBM in July 2019 and became the Inaugural School of Engineering Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the supervisory board of Wolters Kluwer in 2020.

Awards

She was elected Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow in 2005.
Vandebroek is featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards.