Susie Armstrong

Susan M. Armstrong started at Qualcomm working on Globalstar and then early CDMA base station projects. She was a pioneer in bringing internet protocols to the cellular industry, resulting in the first web surfing on a cellular phone in 1997, and Qualcomm’s commercialization of packet data in 1998. Since then she has held various leadership positions, first responsible for the development and commercialization of the all of the software that drives Qualcomm’s chipsets, and then as the head of worldwide Customer Engineering, the group who integrates and commercializes the company’s products in phones and other wireless devices. In addition to her work on Qualcomm’s inventions and new technologies, she has worked extensively with base station makers, carriers, phone and device makers in the US, Asia and Europe to bring those technologies to market.

In 2015, Armstrong has joined Qualcomm’s Government Affairs group, where she brings an engineering and product background the Government Affairs work in worldwide public policy, including intellectual property protection, cyber security, STEM and STEM diversity.

Prior to joining Qualcomm in 1994, Armstrong worked for 10 years at the Xerox Systems Development Department and the Xerox Webster Research Center, holding a variety of software engineering positions implementing data protocols (including Ethernet, XNS and TCP/IP), contributing to IEEE standards and doing advanced development in high-speed data networking.

Armstrong holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.