Tia Williams

B.S. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

2026 Distinguished Alumni Award Winner

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Tia Williams  earned her B.S. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in 1996 as a member of Georgia Tech’s inaugural EAS undergraduate class, becoming the first African American graduate of the program. Throughout her four years at Tech, she served as a student assistant in Dr. Michael O. Rodgers’ Air Quality Laboratory. While analyzing remote sensing and vehicle emissions data, she mastered early web programming languages — a skill set that launched her 30-year tech career, beginning at the pioneering Atlanta startup MindSpring.

A developer turned executive, Tia specializes in scaling high-performance design organizations and building tooling for complex cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, and enterprise data ecosystems. She joined Microsoft in 2026 as vice president of Product Design for Azure Data. Previously, as senior vice president of Product Design at New Relic, she led experience strategy for their Intelligent Observability platform, unifying real-time data insights across more than 40 core capabilities. Her extensive enterprise leadership also includes serving as vice president of Product Design for Salesforce’s Sales and Revenue Clouds, as well as a nine-year tenure at Oracle, where she spearheaded the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) User and Developer Experience teams.

An active early-stage venture investor with five successful corporate exits to date, Tia remains deeply committed to her roots in earth science and higher education. She serves as vice chair of the Georgia Tech College of Sciences Advisory Board and is the founder of Earth Frontiers Lab, which produces content exploring the intersections of earth, atmosphere, and AI technology to inspire the next generation of scientists. Through its philanthropic arm, she awards classroom grants to science teachers across Georgia.

How did Georgia Tech prepare you for a successful career?

I entered Georgia Tech convinced I was going to be a chemical engineer. Serendipity had other plans when Michael Rodgers hired me as a freshman student assistant in his Air Quality Laboratory, then affiliated with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. I ended up spending almost as much time in that lab and out in the field as I did in class, learning an exciting new 'thing' alongside his graduate students: early web programming languages used to share data with the EPA and UNC.

Over time, I took electives to understand the deep science behind our measurements, only to realize by my junior year that I was much closer to earning a degree in EAS than ChemE. Changing my major was a natural choice. What I am most grateful for is how Georgia Tech allowed me to discover computer science through my love of earth sciences — engaging with the earliest forms of computational EAS. The technical skills I acquired prepared me to step directly into the commercialized internet industry at MindSpring as it was taking shape. Reflecting on a 30-year career leading software and design organizations, the rigorous, solution-oriented mindset and character-building experiences at Georgia Tech truly set the foundation for my success.