Bridget Kimball ('89, Electrical Engineering)

Bridget Kimball

Vice President, Fellow & Chief Architect, Intuit Consumer Group

BS Electrical Engineering, Cal Poly Pomona, 1989

MS Electrical Engineering, USC, 1991

At Cal Poly Pomona, Bridget Kimball originally studied chemical engineering, but changed to electrical engineering during her second year when she realized she wanted to work in aerospace, particularly space applications. She changed majors and made up some lost time, ultimately graduating on time and becoming co-valedictorian of the College of Engineering in 1989.

“The most valuable skill I learned at Cal Poly Pomona was how to think—how to frame a problem, break it down into its components and consider different solutions in any situation,” she says. “Those skills continued to be very useful when I moved into leadership roles.”

Bridget’s first job out of school was at Hughes Space and Communications, working as a payload systems engineer on communication satellites. Since then, she has served in senior engineering and leadership roles at General Instrument, Copper Mountain Networks, Motorola and Comcast, before landing in her current role as vice president, fellow and chief architect at Intuit’s Consumer Group, focusing on products for personal tax and finance management.

Along the way, Bridget received numerous industry awards and recognition, including the 2016 CableFax Most Powerful Women in Cable (Technology Award), and developed a strong commitment to mentoring the next generation of women in technology.

“Career advancement is not always a straightforward path up,” she says. “The advice I would give is to stay flexible and take any opportunity to learn something new. View it as preparing yourself to be ready when the advancement opportunity comes along. Take a long view and remember that setbacks are temporary—pick up and keep going.”