Ray Hensberger ’06 considered multiple factors when choosing where he would go to college: proximity to his home in the Baltimore-Washington area; quality of the engineering program; and the physical location of the campus – was it in a city, or in a rural area?

But there was one thing that made Virginia Tech his number one choice: the Hokie Spirit.

“I just fell in love with the campus, and the way everyone was so into Virginia Tech,” Hensberger said. “The engineering program itself – being one of the best ones in the country – put it over the top for me.”

Hensberger graduated from Virginia Tech in 2006 with a bachelor’s in computer engineering. He worked at the global management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a software engineer and director of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) for more than a decade before joining Amazon Web Services in 2018 as a consultant.

Now the global head of AI and machine learning in generative AI, Hensberger recently joined the Bradley Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) as a member of the advisory board. Hensberger was excited to chat about this new board role; how he found his way to AI; and his transition from Booz Allen Hamilton to Amazon.

How did you find your niche in AI? Not everyone who majors in computer engineering goes down that route.

When I was at Virginia Tech, I took an AI class because the idea of artificial intelligence was always interesting to me. The class was one of the harder ones in my ECE program – it was about heuristics, which is an imperfect method or way of approaching problem solving – and the course helped me grow my interest in AI. After I graduated, I realized there’s two paths for a computer engineer: you can go on this software path, like doing coding, Java, C++, or you can go the hardware route, working on the circuit level and how things operate.

In my first role with Booz Allen Hamilton, I wanted to go the hardware route, but I grew close to the software-based project team. I figured I could always go back to hardware if I didn’t like software! It led me to working with a customer who had a high volume of data; I spent a lot of time and energy coding, and leading projects around handling massive data sets efficiently and effectively. As I got really good at architecture and implementation on the data system side and the platform side, it led to analytics, data science, and machine learning, which connected me to the AI world. I never did go back to hardware.

Can you share what your transition from Booz Allen Hamilton to Amazon Web Services has been like? What’s been most interesting or challenging for you?

Booz Allen is mostly known as a federal contractor, so I got comfortable in that space with those customers and that type of work. Moving over to Amazon, however, things move at a much different pace in the private sector – it's typically a lot faster, which is challenging, and it’s much more revenue, outcome-driven for the customer, versus more around “the mission.” 

When I moved from Booz to Amazon, my first step in that transition was to go super technical. I took an individual contributor role where I didn't have a team when I first joined, so I could diver deeper on the tech side and become a tech expert with the Amazon Cloud. From there, I shifted into other roles where I started to lead at a much larger scale, with different businesses and in areas that Amazon needed me to. But the challenging part – besides just the tech – was Booz is a smaller company. When I was at Booz, I kind of understood how every level operated, and how to execute for my customers in the business. At Amazon, there's a lot of different levels, places, and things. The way they operate, the complexity and scale of all that is much, much different, and it’s something I had to adapt to. 

Thank you for joining the ECE Advisory Board! We enjoy having our alumni work with us to push our department forward. How do you hope to participate, or give back?

I had been looking for board involvement, so the timing actually worked out pretty well, and then it being a Virginia Tech ask on top of that – I felt like I mattered to the university. ECE reached out to me, they found me, so I must be important enough, right? 

The opportunity to share my experience – which has been a journey for sure – especially with our student body, is super interesting to me. I think there are many conversations about AI right now, so I can bring my expertise from my field to Virginia Tech and represent this inflection point we’re at in the industry. I can help inform the board, advise the College on what's next in the space, and even how to adapt our education and our approach with students. How do we prepare our students for the AI-impacted future that’s coming? If I can help figure that out and bring my two cents to the table, that's exciting to me.

What's your best advice for our Hokie engineering students?

When you’re looking at colleges, trying to pick a degree, be real with yourself – what are your natural interests? Recognize what you’re good at or strong on, even if you’re not perfect at it. That’s what will keep you grounded and keep you involved. But then as you get into your career, I think it's important to not to treat your career as a checklist. It's not about what three things you’re going to do that year. Get a certification in this. Check. Get another degree. Check. Finish that project. Check. If you're passionate about what you're doing and you're enjoying your job, do it well. Invest in yourself, and you will naturally get recognition and advance in your field. 

Another thing I’ll say is surround yourself with good people both at work and outside of work – people that you like, admire and look up to. Reach out, network, and get them as a mentor or find some time with them. Don't be afraid of connecting because those people got to where they are for a reason, and you should find out what that is. Maybe there's some commonalities, or they can help you out. They can introduce you to others. They can be an advocate for you. Take that opportunity to get to know people, then don't sell yourself short. I always say you're more valuable than you realize.

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