Sophie Vandebroek

Sophie V. Vandebroek is a Belgian-born electrical engineer and business executive. She was the Chief Technology Officer of Xerox, and President of Xerox Innovation Group until December 2016. Vandebroek was CTO and a corporate vice president of Xerox corporation from 2006 till 2016.

Education Vandebroek earned a bachelors degree in engineering and a master's degree in electromechanical engineering at KU Leuven University. She moved to the United States in 1986, on a Fulbright Fellowship and graduated with her PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1990.

Career Vandebroek first joined the IBM research labs in 1990 before moving on to Xerox in 1991. She has praised Xerox for "creating a supportive environment for women". Vandebroek was a director of the board of Analogic Corporation from 2008 to 2016 and has been a director of the board of IDEXX Laboratories since 2013.

Vandebroek accepted the Chief Operating Officer role at IBM Research in January 2017. That same year, she founded the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She stepped down from IBM in July 2019 and became the inaugural MIT School of Engineering Visiting Scholar and mentored students.

In May 2021 Vandebroek was elected as Honorary Professor at the KU Leuven Engineering Science Faculty, a five-year assignment.

Personal life Vandebroek has three adult children and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a US citizen.

Awards Vandebroek was elected Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow in 2005. She became a foreign member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in 2010.

Vandebroek is featured in Women in Technology Hall of Fame, and on the Notable Women in Computing cards.