February 18, 2013

Amber Case ’08

2012
Young Alumna Award

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and a cofounder of Geoloqi, a company that developed a platform for real-time location-based services. She has been featured in Forbes and Wired magazines, spoken at SXSW, TED and MIT on technology and humans, and was named by Fast Company as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in 2010. She studies the interaction between humans and computers and how relationships with information are changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds.

Amber Case graduated from Lewis & Clark with a major in sociology and anthropology. Her senior thesis was on the topic of techno-social aspects of the cell phone. Already deep into the world of cyborg anthropology, the study of how humans and computers interact, she
credits her attendance at local technology conferences with securing her first jobs in consulting.

After graduation, Case consulted with the Portland-based advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy, where she helped initiate a two-year Facebook branding campaign for Old Spice. She has also conducted demographic research for Levi Strauss and Target, writing computer programs to search the Web for references to the brands and put the information into a dashboard format for easy access and analysis. In addition, Case founded CyborgCamp Portland. This event features structured experts as well as user-generated sessions in which the audience chooses topics to explore.

With Aaron Parecki, Amber Case founded Geoloqi, a company that provides a platform for location-based services. In October 2012, Geoloqi was acquired by technology company Esri. Case has been invited to speak at a number of venues, including TED, MIT, and a recent keynote at South by Southwest (SXSW). She has also been featured in Forbes and Wired. She was named one of the most influential women in technology in 2010 by Fast Company, one of National Geographic’s 2012 Emerging Explorers, and one of Inc. magazine’s 30 under 30 with Parecki.