Joanna Shields, Baroness Shields, OBE (born 12 July 1962) is a British-American businesswoman and politician. Shields was made a Life Peer in the House of Lords in 2014, and later served as Minister for Internet Safety and Security under David Cameron and Theresa May. She had also served as Advisor on the Digital Economy to David Cameron.
Shields was born in 1962 in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, and was the second of five children.[1]
Shields moved to Silicon Valley in 1989, and joined Electronics for Imaging as an early employee. In 1997 Shields became CEO of Veon, an interactive video technology company whose intellectual property included patents for adding interactive links to video streams that became part of the MPEG4 streaming video standard. Philips acquired Veon in 2000. After closing the Veon transaction, Shields was hired by the company that invented streaming audio and video, RealNetworks, to run its businesses outside the United States.[2]
Shields briefly joined former Efi CEO and colleague, Dan Avida, to build the business of a storage encryption company he founded called Decru, where she played an instrumental role in forming a partnership with Network Appliance, the company that eventually acquired Decru for $272m.[3]
Shields then became a managing director for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa where she was responsible for developing the company's advertising syndication business, AdSense, and for the acquisition of content and partnerships for such products such as Google Mail, Video (before the YouTube acquisition), Maps, Local, News and Books.
In late 2006 Shields was approached by Benchmark Capital to step in as CEO of the social networking startup Bebo.[4] At Bebo, Shields introduced Open Media, opening Bebo's platform for media companies to reach its 50M user base and enabling media owners to monetise their content,[5] and Bebo Originals, a series of original online shows.[6] The first Bebo Original KateModern was viewed 85M times, was nominated for two BAFTA awards[7] and won the Broadcasting Press Guild Innovation Award for Outstanding Development in Broadcasting.[8]
After engineering Bebo's acquisition for $850m by Aol in May 2008, Shields briefly relocated to New York City to head Aol's newly created People Networks, overseeing the company's social and communications assets including AIM, Aol Instant Messenger and ICQ. Bebo's development continued under Shields with the release of Timeline in 2009, the first social network to organise and represent life events in a linear way.[9] Timeline eventually became standard on social networks when Facebook released the feature in 2012.[10]
In 2009 Shields was recruited by former Google colleague Sheryl Sandberg to run Facebook in Europe, Middle East & Africa as VP & managing director.[11] In her role she built EMEA into the company's largest region, focusing on making Facebook the world's most valuable marketing, communications and customer services platform for brands and leveraging Facebook's Open Graph as a growth engine for some of Europe's hottest startups and established businesses. She also presided over the growth of international presence to over one billion users.[12]
In May 2018, Shields was announced as the Group CEO of BenevolentAI, a London-based medical startup.[13][14] She stepped down from that role in September 2023.[15]
Shields was ranked No. 1 on the Wired 100 in 2011[16] and No. 6 in the MediaGuardian 100 in 2012.[17] In February 2013 she was named to the list of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.[18] In July 2013 Computer Weekly named Shields the Most Influential Woman in UK IT.[19] In July 2013 she received the British Interactive Media Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.[20]
In October 2012 Shields was named the UK's Ambassador for Digital Industries.[21] She was Chair and CEO of Tech City from January 2013 to May 2015.[22] She helped create Future Fifty, a programme whicxh was launched by the Chancellor George Osborne in April 2013.[23]
Shields was appointed OBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List for "services to digital industries and voluntary service to young people".[24] After being nominated as a working peeress in August 2014,[25] Shields was elevated to the peerage on 16 September 2014 taking the title Baroness Shields, of Maida Vale in the City of Westminster.[26]
She graduated as BS from Penn State University, where she was a member of Chi Omega sorority,[27] and did her post-grad studies as MBA from George Washington University. Shields received a Doctorate in Public Service, Honoris Causa, from George Washington University May 2016.[citation needed]. Shields is married to Andy Stevenson, from the Racing Point Force India Formula One team.[28]
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