Anna Brady-Estevez joined the U.S. National Science Foundation as a SBIR/STTR program director in 2016. In this role, she brings a broad background across entrepreneurship and venture capital, innovative research, and direction of corporate strategy and investments. Anna has served as a collaborator with numerous startups, including having worked as an inventor for an early stage venture-backed start-up providing low-cost, low-energy portable water treatment and as a principal investor for an early stage venture firm. Anna's contributions were recognized in 2009 when she was selected as one of about 30 Kauffman Fellows from around the globe for leadership in innovation and venture capital. She served as director of corporate strategy for leading multinational corporations, including The AES Corporation and Cummins Inc., and has advised numerous clients while serving as a management consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. Anna's work in these roles resulted in over $6 billion in infrastructure
investments with enhanced returns; identification of billions of dollars of cost reduction opportunities, contributing to a core transformation team of a trillion dollar entity in oil and gas; and the implementation of several new technologies spanning nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, Big Data and the Internet of Things, along with new equipment that enabled
transforming energy economics. Earlier in her career, she performed research at the intersection of innovation and international relations with the Office of Naval Research at the U.S. Embassy in Chile. Anna holds a doctorate in chemical and environmental engineering from Yale University, where she received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship; and a bachelor's in
chemical engineering and Spanish from Johns Hopkins University.