Gary J. Shapiro is the President of Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the trade association for over 1500 of the most innovative American companies. CTA owns and produces CES®, the world’s most influential innovation event. CTA and CES lead, inspire and influence the tech industry and tech policy governing American businesses today.

The mission of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® is to help innovators of all sizes grow their businesses. Technology is about changing people’s lives for the better. It’s about ideas, large and small, that keep us connected, that help us move and that spark even bigger ideas.

I have served at CTA for over 35 years. I was an associate at the law firm of Squire Sanders and served as an assistant to a member of Congress. I earned my law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and am a Phi Beta Kappa graduate majoring in economics and psychology from Binghamton University.

For several years the tech industry has been working to diversify its workforce. Today, women and traditionally underrepresented groups hold one-third of all tech jobs, according to CTA’s 2019 Economic Impact Study. However, despite the surge of tech jobs in the last three decades, the composition of the workforce hasn’t seen a shift. For example, the proportion of women in computing jobs has decreased by five percent between 1991-2017.