INVENTOR of the MONTH

Donna Auguste: Co-Inventor of the Original Personal Digital Assistant

After Donna Auguste became a key software engineer at Apple Computer in 1990, the use of computers made a great leap forward. Apple hired her to manage the department that created the first personal digital assistant — the Newton PDA. Auguste was not only the department manager; she contributed technically to the development of the handheld computer and won four U.S. patents for her work.

Auguste’s family, originally from Louisiana, moved to Berkeley, California when she was a few months old. She has two older sisters and two younger sisters. After her parents’ marriage ended, her mother worked up to three jobs to support her daughters and pay for a Catholic school education. As a child, Auguste was a “tinkerer” and took apart things like doorbells and toasters. She regularly rode the bus across town to attend science fairs with her older sister. Watching the Apollo moon landing on TV, she was inspired to seek a career in science and technology.

Auguste was the first person from her family to graduate from college. In 1980, she received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Her studies there were challenging, sometimes because of prejudice. The engineering field is dominated by white males, and some students refused to work on project teams with her. She was even told by a professor that she would not be enrolled in the program if Berkeley had not lowered its admission standards to accept African-Americans.

Auguste was the first Black person accepted into the Computer Science PhD program at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. While there for three years, she conducted research in artificial intelligence, and held summer internships at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

In 1996, Auguste and a friend from Apple co-founded Freshwater Software, Inc. As CEO of Freshwater, she developed the startup company into a successful business with thousands of customers. Freshwater provided software to monitor business-critical web servers, and its customers included many Fortune 500 companies. Auguste and her co-founder sold the business for $147 million in 2001. Today Auguste leads the Leave a Little Room Foundation, which she established in Colorado. The foundation provides sustainable technology for people in Africa, Mexico, and other developing areas. Auguste is also active in her church community as a bass player.

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