Engineer Cristina Dolan discusses the importance of being a solutionist both in the scientific world and beyond.

In the early days of the Internet, MIT Media Lab alumna Cristina Dolan co-founded OneMain.com, which grew to be the tenth largest ISP after a successful IPO. In only five months, she conceived and built the OneMain cornerstone, Geographic Communities, into a profitable business. At its launch, the company's IPO became the largest Internet public offering at its time, surpassing Amazon's and eBay's respective IPOs. Cristina has also held executive roles at Wordstream, IBM, and Oracle, among other organizations.

As an engineer and self-described “solutionist”, Cristina appreciates the value of an engineering and computer science education. In October 2013, she launched Dream it. Code it. Win it., a non-profit organization to promote such instruction and celebrate the power of applied problem-solving. Finalists have launched more than six companies and the competition has attracted a diverse group of students from over forty countries.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx