Claire Brewer, the Ragon Institute’s Director of Information Technology since 2019, has been a trailblazer since her early teens. In the mid-1980s, at age fourteen, she was the only girl at her UK school studying computer science. Brewer attributes her early passion for technology to childhood influences both in her community and at home. As the youngest of three children growing up in Swindon, a small English town, she watched her hometown transform itself from an industrial railway town to one filled with tech companies. Her father was an engineer who repaired televisions, and she has fond memories of his opening the backs of televisions to reveal valves that glowed and a fascinating array of wires, lights and gizmos. She found this hidden world of the television inner workings magical, igniting her own interest in all things electronic at an early age.

Brewer is unabashed in her love for her job and enjoys that her responsibilities at the Ragon Institute are both rooted in the present and focused on the future. As she says, everyone, even Nobel Prize winners (with whom she has worked), have tech needs they may not be able to solve. Her day-to-day duties include assisting everyone involved at the Ragon, from outside delivery folks to all the scientists and administrators to others throughout the Mass General Brigham system. She is also responsible for planning the IT for the Ragon Institute’s new building, a daunting task. Indeed, what she loves most about her multi-faceted job is that she touches all levels of the organization.

Currently a one-person IT department, Brewer is hoping to recruit an assistant and hopes that the percentage of women in the field will increase in the future. She would like to encourage girls and women to “go for it!” and would also like people to stop thinking of tech workers as geeks. In fact, she insists, technical skills are not the most important part of her job; people skills are. Often when someone needs her help, it is because they are not having a good day. Brewer happily accepts the challenge to keep her cool, “be a psychologist,” and try to find a way to make their day better.

Brewer continues to defy stereotypes even when relaxing. When not at her desk, she can be found engaging in the very low-tech hobbies of knitting or crocheting in the Ragon’s Tea Room, hoping to inspire others to join her. But do not ask this born-and-bred Brit if she would like a cup of tea. She doesn’t touch it, calling it “the abomination of all abominations!” As for her father, who first sparked Brewer’s interest in technology and passed away in 2008, she tears up when she admits that although he was not one for showing emotion, she thinks he would be proud of her if he could see her now. The Ragon Institute is also proud to honor our resident tech trailblazer who is making a difference every day.