aye Wattleton is perhaps best known for her career in reproductive rights: As the first Black woman to head Planned Parenthood, in 1978, she set the organization on a path it continues to follow today—reaching millions of patients through a network of affiliates. Now 80 years old, Wattleton is a sought-after women’s rights champion and governance expert who could easily fill her time fighting the continued rollback of reproductive rights in the United States.
She believes that quantum computing holds potential to revolutionize myriad industries: It could turbo-charge research into drug therapies, find solutions for combating climate change and advance the science of food production, mineral exploration, and manufacturing methodologies. Where her activist background comes in is “about the manipulation of science,” she says.
In 2017, Wattleton was advising on board governance as a managing director at New York-based consulting firm when Nick Farina and Johannes Pollanen came calling. Farina had met Wattleton through a mutual friend in 2015 and thought her leadership experience would round out his and Pollanen’s technical skills in building a quantum startup.
It’s not a panacea for the world’s problems. Quantum, once achieved, could have serious ethical consequences. For one, it could jeopardize today’s encryption technologies and put national infrastructure, including electric grids and defense, at risk. The technology is anticipated to be so transformative that the World Economic Forum in 2022 laid out, despite quantum being in its infancy. This oversight is where Wattleton comes in.