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26 November 2019Influential Women in IPSarah Morgan

USPTO Interviews: One giant leap

Being deputy director of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was not Laura Peter’s first career choice. If you had asked the three-year-old Peter what she wanted to do when she grew up, “astronaut” would have topped the list.

With a father serving as a vice president at Hughes Aircraft Company and her interests including the first geosynchronous satellites being launched into orbit, the sky was no limit to her ambition.

She soon realised, however, that heights were not her friend and instead turned towards engineering school at Cornell University. While there, she learned what it was like to be one of the only women in the room. What began as an equally split class on gender lines fell to only 20% women on graduation.

While Peter attributes this partly to external factors, she believes that women themselves can create their own challenges.

“Women sometimes have a perfectionist complex. If they’re not excellent and getting As, it can be discouraging, but they must keep on working,” she says.

“It’s hugely important for women to participate across the STEM environment because we’re half the population and we have a different approach to solving problems,” says Peter.

The now USPTO deputy director went on to receive her Master’s in public policy studies from the University of Chicago, before becoming a lawyer in Silicon Valley.

After serving as a private practice lawyer for many years, Peter joined the USPTO, which was quite a change in terms of diversity—she went from regularly being the only woman in the room to an organisation where 38% of senior management and 30% of patent examiners are women.

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