Merline Saintil

Lead Director | Fortune 100 Board Member

Silicon Valley Tech & Business Executive

Investor | Speaker | Strategic Advisor

Silicon Valley executive and board director, Merline Saintil aligns every role she holds with purpose and impact, bringing a six-IPO track record and deep operating experience to every room she enters. When she is not cheering on her daughter’s journey from Stanford Women’s Soccer standout and newly minted CS graduate to professional player, she is building and backing initiatives that move industries and people forward.

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Merline is the Lead Independent Director of Rocket Lab (RKLB), a space exploration company that she took public as a board member in 2021. Her role at this public company is a distinction held by only a handful of Black women in the world.

She also serves on the board of Fortune 100 company TD Synnex (SNX) as well as GitLab (GTLB), and Symbotic (SYM), which are some of the six IPOs in her career.

She has served as the chair of all committees on both public and venture-backed boards except for audit and in 2021 and 2024 was named Most Influential Black Corporate Director.

Corporate Board Director

Merline is a long-time angel investor who has helped fuel the success of more than 30 innovative startups and pre-IPO companies, and is now expanding that work by leading a family office fund focused on AI, enterprise technology, and deep tech. She geeks out on her Perplexity space, “Boring is Billions,” which reflects her focus on solving durable, real-time human–machine collaboration challenges.

She continues to advise CEOs and founders and is particularly excited to sharpen her focus on embodied intelligence. In 2026, she will be in conversation with Symbotic’s CTO at the AI Summit in Davos to explore how autonomous systems are moving into the physical world to transform sectors like supply chain, where fleets of AI-powered robots are already reshaping warehouse operations.

Builder and Investor

From humble beginnings in Haiti, Merline discovered computer science in college and quickly fell in love with product and technology. A Stanford GSB alumna, she also holds a master’s degree in software engineering management from Carnegie Mellon University and went on to become a Silicon Valley COO. In 2024, Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering honored her with its Alumni Outstanding Achievement Award, recognizing a career she describes this way:

“The trajectory of my career in one generation is improbable, but it’s not impossible.”

She created the newsletter Lift As We Climb, featuring deep, candid conversations with leading VCs, CEOs, board members, founders, CXOs, and more about modern leadership principles and how they show up in real life.

Inspiring Keynote Speaker

In 2023, she was named to the CNBC Changemakers Advisory Board and honored in Worth Magazine’s Worthy 100. She was also recognized as a 2022 LinkedIn Top Voice in Leadership, one of the top 10 voices to follow in the U.S.

Merline’s perspectives on technology trends, innovation, strategy, cyber risk, and digital transformation have been featured in major media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, CIO Journal, CIO Review, CNET, and Business Insider. Fortune has also recognized the breadth of her influence by naming her one of the most powerful women in business.

Innovation Thought Leader

In 2016, Merline and her family trust established the Merline Saintil ACS Legacy Scholarship at Carnegie Mellon University, providing need-based support to undergraduate students in the School of Computer Science.

In 2020, Merline co-founded Black Women on Boards (BWOB), a global organization of now over 200 leaders representing 11 trillion in market cap, to remove the invisible obstacles Black female executives face when pursuing public company board service. Its members serve on the boards of Fortune 500 and pre-IPO companies, alongside women who are ready for their first board roles. To date, BWOB has placed more than 50 board members, all making an impact that will extend for generations to come.

In 2023, Merline founded the BWOB Rising Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professional development, mentorship, and networking for high-potential, mid-career Black women seeking to advance into executive leadership roles. Her legacy work is the basis for an award-winning documentary called OnBoard, which she executive produced and debuted at Tribeca in 2023.

Legacy Work | Philanthropy

Intuit, Yahoo!, PayPal, Adobe, Joyent and Sun Microsystems are among the iconic Fortune 500 and private companies Merline has successfully helped scale through various stages of rapid growth.

She’s led product development teams in global digital transformations for B2B and B2C companies, as well as executing M&A integrations and divestitures.