Interview With Engineer and Entrepreneur Stephanie Hurlburt

This interview is with graphics engineer and entrepreneur Stephanie Hurlburt. Stephanie previously worked at Oculus and Unity before co-founding Binomial with Rich Geldreich, a software company which is building Basis, a texture compressor.

Newnham: What were you like as a kid? How would your friends and family have described you?
Hurlburt: I was kind of an oddball as a young kid, but one who was pretty good at getting along with people and who had a small group of friends and neighbors I hung out with.

When I was in sixth grade my favorite outfit was bright pink leggings and a very baggy shirt with tons of goldfish on it because I thought goldfish were the best thing ever. In fact, I thought they were so awesome that I would write long stories detailing my fantasy adventures with my pet goldfish. I was obsessed with art, and writing, and science, and math.

And as I got to high school age, I got more into psychology and politics and social justice. I also became less off a kid who drew pictures and wrote stories all day and more of someone who worked way too much. I ran the speech and debate club, the art club, I studied piano, I did dance (ballet/tap/jazz), I ran a local community activist organization; I took as many advanced classes as I could.