2025 Speakers
Monica Harrington, Founding CMO, Valve (retired)
Monica Harrington is a writer, entrepreneur, and social innovation strategist with a strong track record in business and nonprofit environments (Microsoft, Valve, Picnik, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). She was the Founding Chief Marketing Officer at Valve (now a multi-billion-dollar entertainment company) and Picnik (acquired by Google). At Microsoft, she worked in the Office and Consumer divisions in increasingly senior marketing and business development roles over a period of 11 years. In 1995, the year before Valve was founded, she earned the Microsoft Consumer Division’s Market Maker Award for “having the biggest impact on the bottom line.” After leaving Valve in 2000, Harrington took a five-year hiatus. In 2005, she was recruited to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she managed the central communications team and served as Bill and Melinda's media advisor. Harrington left the Gates Foundation to help launch Picnik, which became the web's most popular online photo editor before its acquisition by Google in 2010. After Picnik, Harrington served on the founding board of Code for America and as a pro bono senior advisor to the CEO of NetHope, a tech-focused nonprofit that serves as a bridge to encourage technology sharing between the world's leading tech companies and the world's leading nonprofits. She later won elected office as a public hospital district commissioner and was honored as a Woman of Courage by the Women's Center and the University of Washington Law School for her work on patient rights. Harrington has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Oregon, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Oregon State University. She started law school earlier this year.
