Board Chair of Verified Voting
Barbara Simons is the board chair of Verified Voting, a member of the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (appointed by Sen. Reid and reappointed by Sen. Schumer), and the co-author of the book, “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”. She has been a leader on technology policy issues for more than 40 years and co-authored numerous reports and studies on how to improve our voting systems.
Simons was President of ACM, the nation’s oldest and largest educational and scientific society for computing professionals, from July 1998 until June 2000. She founded ACM’s US Public Policy Committee (USACM) in 1993 and served for many years as the Chair. Under President Clinton she served on the President’s Export Council’s Subcommittee on Encryption and on the Information Technology-Sector of the President’s Council on the Year 2000 Conversion.
Simons earned her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and she also co-founded the Reentry Program for Women and Minorities in the U.C. Berkeley Computer Science Department. For many years she was a Research Staff Member at IBM’s San Jose Research Center (now Almaden), from which she is now retired.