Erin Jerri Malonzo Pañgilinan is a proud Silicon Valley native born and raised software engineer, startup founder, former CTO, author, and speaker working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and emerging interfaces.
She is the lead author of Creating Augmented and Virtual Realities: Theory and Practice for Next-Generation Spatial Computing (O’Reilly Media), which debuted as the #1 new release in Amazon’s Game Programming category, has been translated into Chinese and Korean, is distributed in more than 42 countries, and became widely known within the XR community as the “VR Bible.”
Erin is the founder of TimeBite, an AI-native platform currently in beta on Apple platforms, that helps people better understand how they spend their time and align daily actions with long-term goals.
Her technical background includes selection into leading engineering and entrepreneurial programs, including the Amazon Web Services CTO Fellowship (2022), Gitcoin Kernel (2021), Verizon Ventures’ Alley program (2019), Meta’s Oculus Launch Pad (2018), the University of San Francisco Data Institute’s Deep Learning Fellowship (2017–2018), the inaugural Data Ethics program through fast.ai (2020), and Venture Forward through the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and UC Berkeley Executive Law Program (2025).
Erin earned her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Early in her career, she spent more than seven years as a journalist and more than five years in civic engagement, including paid campaign staff for Obama for America (2012) and Ro Khanna for Congress (2014).
She co-founded two nonprofit organizations — FASTER (Filipinx Americans in STEAM), which supports Filipinx American professionals in tech, and ARVR Academy, which focused on increasing representation of women in immersive technology — and has served on the board of the Silicon Valley Ice Skating Association (SVISA)
Today, Erin builds AI-native products, advises founders on AI and spatial computing, and is developing new books, film, and television projects.