[Women’s History Month] Meet Lisa Gelobter, founding formulator of early GIF images

March is the Women’s History Month celebrated globally to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. The month corresponds with the International Women’s Day which is marked globally on March 8.

As part of Face2Face Africa’s commitment to informing and connecting black people around the world, we have resolved to devote each day of the month of March to celebrate black women inventors and to highlight their inventions.

Lisa Gelobter is a computer science guru. As the founder and CEO of tEQuitable, “a 3rd-party, tech-enabled Ombuds platform; a confidential sounding board for employees to address issues of bias, discrimination and harassment, and for companies to make workplaces more inclusive.”

Additionally, Gelobter has worked in the White House as its Chief Digital Service Officer with the United States Department of Education.  She has also served as the Interim Chief Digital Officer and the Vice President of Digital Products, Engineering and Operations for Black Entertainment Television Networks (BET) and as a senior member of the management team formed for the purpose of the launching of Hulu.

Gelobter is a pioneer in the development of video on the internet by way of Brightcove, Joost, and The FeedRoom.

Although graphics interchange format (GIF) or JIF is credited as being developed by a team of scientist at CompuServe which was led by Steve Wilhite, Gelobter laid the early groundwork for the program by developing the animation used to produce GIF images.

Gelobter is a graduate of Brown University with a computer science degree with a concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Gelobter is a former member of the New York Urban League STEM Advisory Board.