Who is Kimberly Powell? Inside the Nvidia Healthcare VP linked to CEO Jensen Huang's second affair

Kimberly Powell, age 48, has been appointed as Vice President for the field of healthcare in Nvidia and is among the senior executives working under Jensen Huang, the troubled CEO of the company. A New York Times news story suggests that Kimberly Powell has revealed her extramarital affair with the 63-year-old businessman, which makes it the second affair brought to light as the board of directors of the company decides on the fates of Huang and Powell.

Career progression of Kimberly Powell

Kimberly Powell joined Nvidia in 2008 and became responsible for making the GPU platform of Nvidia the foremost computing platform for medical devices.

Over the years, she has managed to progress rapidly to the top executive position in one of the fastest-growing verticals of Nvidia.

Promotion in 2016: Kimberly Powell was promoted to Senior Director of Business Development for the Artificial Intelligence division, which enabled her to supervise the areas of education, research, the Nvidia AI Lab, and Inception Startup.

Promotion in 2017: Powell became Vice President of Healthcare in the company and got the responsibility for development of the platforms for life sciences, medicine and drug discovery.

In the early days of engineering: Powell was a hardware engineer with DOME Imaging Systems (1999–2003) and then worked for more than five years with Planar Systems, Inc. in the Medical Business Unit.

San Jose conference incident and NDA

As a top representative of Nvidia, Powell is an esteemed speaker in many conferences around the globe. During the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, Powell talked about AI advancements in biology in a presentation that used cartoon versions of Huang himself.

However, according to three people who talked to the New York Times, Huang and Powell exhibited romantic gestures while at a hotel near the venue of the conference.

The encounter was filmed by a spectator; however, Huang’s security team told the bystander to sign a non-disclosure agreement after the incident was caught on camera.

Huang and Powell are both married.

Boardroom drama and espionage investigation

The revelation of the internal affair comes soon after Huang’s confession to employees on Sunday about the fact that he had betrayed his spouse of 41 years and had conducted another affair with Alice Huang.

The scandal has its consequences for the high-flying AI chip manufacturer:

Possible CEO removal: It has been reported by the Wall Street Journal that Nvidia's board of directors is convening on Wednesday to decide whether to oust Huang from his position of leadership.

Investor lawsuit: Classes of shareholders have taken action against Huang and Nvidia alleging that the company withheld important information concerning the CEO's relationships and their potential governance implications.

Stock decline: Nvidia shares appear to have fallen sharply after Huang's initial admission raising questions about a successful career which has just earned him the National Medal of Science from President Trump.

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