Background

Margaret O'Mara was born on November 15, 1970. She has a brother John Pugh.

Education

Margaret O'Mara received her Bachelor of Arts degree in History and English in 1992 from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Her Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in History she received from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

Prior to her academic career, Margaret O'Mara took the position of a special assistant of Intergovernmental Affairs at the United States Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 till 1995. Then she worked in the Clinton White House, working on urban economic development, health care, and welfare reform, and served as a contributing researcher at the Brookings Institution till 1999. Then from 2002 till 2007, she was an assistant professor of history at Stanford University. From 2007 Margaret is a Professor at the University of Washington.

O'Mara's expertise includes the relationships between technology and politics, as well as the relationship between technology companies and urban development. She has written numerous research papers about Silicon Valley and American Presidents. She is the author of such books as Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (2005), Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century (2015), and The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (2019). She also is a coauthor, with David Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, of forthcoming editions of a widely used United States history college textbook, The American Pageant.

Margaret is a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians and a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. She is currently exploring the globalization of the technology industry since the 1970s.

Achievements

• Margaret O'Mara is the recipient of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She received the Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology from The University of Washington in 2014.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

    (Margaret O'Mara has produced the definitive history of Si...)

    2019
  • Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century

    (Exploring the personalities, critical moments, and surpri...)

    2015
  • Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley

    (This book examines why high-tech development became so ec...)

    2005

Views

Experience in national politics and policymaking showed Margaret O'Mara the critical role of historical knowledge in understanding the present and informing the future. Her research, teaching, and work with people and organizations beyond academia is inspired and shaped by her desire to make history relevant, exciting, and central to the way people understand our world.

Membership

Margaret O'Mara is a faculty affiliate of the West Coast Poverty Center, the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, and an advisory board member for Startup Hall.

Connections

Margaret O'Mara is married to Jeffery Lawrence O'Mara. They have two daughters.

husband:

Jeffery Lawrence O'Mara

Jeffery Lawrence O'Mara is the Healthentic CEO and President.

Brother:

John Pugh