MassMutual Elects Michelle K. Lee to the Company's Board of Directors

SPRINGFIELD, Mass., November 30, 2021 – Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) today announced that technology executive Michelle K. Lee has been elected to the company’s Board of Directors, effective December 1, 2021. Lee has spent most of her professional career advising and helping to build some of the country’s most innovative companies, including Google and Amazon.

“I look forward to Ms. Lee joining our board of directors and welcome her insights and expertise,” said Roger Crandall, Chairman, President and CEO, MassMutual. “Her deep and broad understanding of innovation and technology trends that have been introduced by the digital economy, as well as her global, multi-disciplinary experience and perspective across technology, law, business and government will be an invaluable addition to our board as we continue our growth and digital transformation.” 

"MassMutual has bold ambitions to digitally transform the insurance industry and leverage technology to help more Americans secure their future and protect the ones they love,” said Lee. “As the newest board member and member of the Technology & Governance Committee, I look forward to working with Roger Crandall, his talented team, and the other distinguished board members, to help with this and other priorities."

Lee most recently served as Vice President of the Machine Learning Solutions Lab and the Computer Vision business at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In that role, Lee led a global, professional services team that worked with customers across all industries to solve their business challenges using machine learning. Additionally, she led AWS’ fast-growing computer vision business, whose services range from computer-assisted defect detection on manufacturing lines, to intelligent document processing, to use of computer vision to measure retail traffic in stores for revenue optimization. 

Prior to Amazon, Lee served as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In this role, she led one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world with annual revenues of over $3 billion and approximately 13,000 employees and was the first woman to serve as Director of the USPTO in United States history. Prior to this public service role, Lee was an executive at Google, where she served as Deputy General Counsel. She joined Google in 2003 and helped drive the company’s growth as it evolved from a relatively young company with only domestic revenue and a few products and services to a large, multi-national corporation, including contributing to several key acquisitions such as YouTube and Keyhole, the image rendering technology for Google Maps / Earth. Lee was also previously a partner at Fenwick & West and worked as a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard Research and the MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratories. 

In addition to her role as a new MassMutual Director, Lee previously served on the boards of Alarm.com, a provider of cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to secure and manage an Internet-of-Things connected home or business, and Nauto, Inc., a private company offering an AI-powered fleet management software to anticipate driver distraction and reduce collisions to save lives and expense.

Lee currently serves on the MIT Corporation, the board of trustees and governing body of MIT, and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She previously served on the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors and is a co-founder and board member emeritus of ChIPs, a non-profit devoted to the mentoring and promotion of women in technology, law and policy related fields. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of digital transformation, innovation and artificial intelligence.

Lee graduated with both a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science in Computer Science from MIT. She also holds a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School. 

MassMutual partnered with Trewstar, a woman-owned search firm that specializes in the placement of outstanding female and diverse candidates on boards, to identify Lee as a new board member.