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Lisa Su was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in 1969 and immigrated to New York City when she was three. Her father is a mathematician, and her mother is an entrepreneur. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Su went to MIT, where she earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and later her Ph.D. She cited the subject's difficulty as a motivating factor in pursuing it.
Lisa Su was a member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments in the Semiconductor Process and Device Center from 1994 to 1995.
From February 1995 until May 2007, Su worked at IBM in a number of engineering and business leadership positions, including vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center.
After IBM, Su served as senior vice president, chief technology officer, and general manager of Networking and Multimedia at Freescale Semiconductor, a semiconductor manufacturing company. Her responsibilities included global strategy, marketing, and engineering for the company’s embedded communications and applications processor business.
Su joined AMD in January 2012 as senior vice president and general manager. Prior to taking on the roles of chair and CEO of AMD, Su served as a chief operating officer at the company and was in charge of integrating processes between business units, sales, global operations, and infrastructure enablement teams.
Su has been credited with bringing AMD from the brink of bankruptcy and substantially increasing profits for the company. A Wall Street Journal article pointed out that when AMD was still struggling to survive, Su made the right decision to invest resources in the company's core products. Prior to the pandemic, the Associated Press and Equilar, an executive data firm, reported in 2019 that Su was the highest-paid CEO in the S&P 500, with an annual salary of US$ 58.5 million (NT$1.75 billion).
Su has bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has published more than forty technical articles and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers in 2009. In 2018, Su was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and received the Global Semiconductor Association’s Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award.
In 2020, Fortune named Su #2 on its “Business Person of the Year” list. That same year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was the recipient of the Grace Hopper Technical Leadership Abie Award. In 2021, she was recognized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) with the Robert N. Noyce Medal and was appointed by President Biden to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
She has been a member of the board of directors of Cisco Systems since January 2020 and serves on the board of directors for the Semiconductor Industry Association. Su has also received the following awards:
- 2022 Forbes 50 Over 50
- 2022 Barron's World's Best CEOs of 2022
- 2022 Fortune Most Powerful Women
- 2022 International Peace Honors Honoree
- 2021 Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women
- 2021 IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal
- 2021 Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business
- 2021 Member of the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
- 2021 Five Most Admired Female Leaders in Technology and Innovation
- 2021 Women in Technology Hall of Fame
- 2021 Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) Woman of Innovation Award
- 2021 Legend in Leadership Award of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
- 2021 Barron's World's Best CEOs of 2021
- 2020 Fortune Business Person of The Year (Ranked #2)
- 2020 Spirit of Silicon Valley Leadership Award
- 2020 Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business
- 2020 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) Robert N. Noyce Award
- 2020 Grace Hopper Technical Leadership Abie Award
- 2020 Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
NTHU President W. John Kao (高為元) (left) conferred the honorary doctorate degree upon Lisa Su (蘇姿丰).
Su was awarded an honorary doctorate by National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan. The award ceremony was held on June 2 in Austin, Texas, United States. During her speech, Su acknowledged that the recognition is especially meaningful to her as her father is an NTHU alumnus. Chun-hwai Su, Su's father, graduated from NTHU in 1967 with a degree in mathematics.
