Two women advancing generative AI at AWS

With a PhD in mathematics, Marcus didn’t want to be a math professor and saw two possible career paths outside of academia: Wall Street or the federal government. She pursued a career doing large-scale data analytics for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where she received the technical medal of excellence, and other national security agencies.
After years doing analytics for intelligence agencies, she transitioned her skills to the finance sector, leading AI labs and teams in investment banking, hedge funds, and asset management before eventually finding her way to Amazon. She then moved over to AWS to pursue more scientific roles, heading up applied machine learning and then Amazon Bedrock Science.

Throughout her career, Marcus has consistently worked on applying AI and analytics to large datasets.

“It’s important to make sure you find something that you really love to do,” she said. “Being able to jump up every morning and be excited about what you do just sets the foundation for a successful career.”

Marcus recognizes that pathways into leadership roles don’t always come easy for women, but as she looks back on her career, there are three behaviors that stand out as key contributors to her success: speaking up to take on assignments for a more prominent seat at the table, eagerness to learn new skills, and networking.

“Find your voice and speak up. A lot of women don’t speak up when men may raise their hands to take opportunities. Even if it’s a small task to start, don’t be afraid to take it on to get a seat at the table,” Marcus said. “Second, just be curious and learn. Ask a lot of questions and try to get better every day. And the third is to try to find a person, at least once a week, who’s interesting to talk to and learn something from. I frequently talk to technologists at all levels, and I learn something new all the time.”

Rosenberg's passion for computer science blossomed at a young age, inspired by sharing a hometown with the famous 19th- and 20th-century inventor Thomas Edison, where she often visited a museum dedicated to his legacy. Thanks to computer science courses in her public high school in New Jersey, she also had access to formal tech education since about age 14.

"That was a really good opportunity for me to gain access to the tech world, develop that love for programming, and set me up with the tools that I needed to succeed, she said. "I really wanted to be an inventor and in the engineering world from a very young age."

Around the same time in high school, Rosenberg fell in love with studying foreign languages. She now speaks seven languages and has found a way to combine her interests in language and technology.

“I really wanted to work with computers and how they understand human language. This passion drew me to natural language processing and to AWS,” she said.

She said the appeal of working on Amazon Bedrock's Responsible AI program was too good to pass up when AWS recruited her, and she's learned some valuable career lessons since joining AWS in 2021.

“Don’t be afraid to be interdisciplinary and combine things that you care about,” she said. “Be passionate, learn about the things you love, and look for opportunities early and often. Find mentors that you respect and can learn from, and don’t be afraid to be in a room full of people smarter than you. In fact, when you feel like the smartest person in the room, you’ve probably outgrown that room.”

Lauren Fay Rosenberg
Software Development Engineer, Amazon Bedrock

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