Lewis Shepherd
Chief Technology Officer, Federal at Broadcom
San Francisco, California, United States
About Lewis Shepherd
Lewis Shepherd is Chief Technology Officer, Federal at Broadcom. Location: San Francisco, California, United States.
Enjoying and always learning in my role at global AI leader Broadcom. I’ve led multiple waves of R&D innovation with technical and executive success in Silicon Valley, and flag-rank service in government after the 9/11 attacks. I've been deploying AI in high-stakes environments since before most organizations knew the term. Beginning in 2003 as Senior Technology Officer at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, I led launches of more than 20 machine learning, predictive analytics, and semantic-reasoning systems across the classified enterprise, along with a full panoply of enterprise IT hardware/software innovations. We partnered with or funded numerous startups, often working jointly with CIA's In-Q-Tel. That experience set a trajectory. At Microsoft, I led a small division bridging the company's research capabilities and the real-world deployment needs of government customers — including pioneering AR/VR work with what became HoloLens, and applied AI/encryption R&D. At VMware I led applied-research work on AI/autonomy digital twins and AI-augmented cyber simulation platforms. Today I'm the Federal Chief Technology Officer at Broadcom, helping shape global AI infrastructure and cloud strategy following the $69B acquisition of VMware. Concurrently, I serve as a senior advisor to the U.S. and other governments on AI and machine learning. My goal always: making powerful technology actually work in the real world, at scale, in environments where the margin for error is small. I work hard to remain equally fluent in the technical depth required to engage seriously with engineers and researchers, and the policy fluency needed to navigate governments, regulators, and executive leaders. I also invest in the next generation. For five years I taught AI at George Mason University’s Graduate School of Engineering in a program for CIA officers earning graduate degrees — covering ML algorithms and architectures, large-scale deep-learning infrastructure, and the ethics and policy of responsible AI deployment. I've lectured internationally for the State Department, and at Princeton, Purdue, Georgetown, Stanford, and I've published peer-reviewed research on AI orchestration, cybersecurity, and autonomy. I'm focused on the intersections of AI capability and AI safety; on deploying frontier AI responsibly in high-stakes environments; and on the governance frameworks that will determine whether the technology realizes its potential or generates avoidable harm. If you're working similarly I welcome the conversation here.
Skills
Additional experience
Chair, Intelligence Committee
AFCEA International
Started September 2008
Education
- M.A., Stanford University
- Executive Education, Harvard Kennedy School