Terry Roberts’s professional background is in User Experience Design: designing and testing software to make sure it’s useful and usable for the people who use it. She’s done that work in a variety of fields, including interactive data visualization (Tableau), accounting and tax (Intuit), programmer tools (Sun Microsystems), telecommunications (U S WEST), and office systems (Xerox). She has a doctorate in Computer Science from Stanford, and has chaired the professional organization Human-Computer Interaction Consortium. Terry retired in 2019.

Terry is originally from Ohio and first moved to Palo Alto in 1973. After a 10-year-interlude in Colorado, she returned to Palo Alto in 1996 to raise her daughter here. Terry is a single mom who adopted her daughter from China; they make periodic returns visits. Terry is an avid hiker and loves travel. Her prior volunteering has included Recording for the Blind, Big Brothers Big Sisters, teaching martial arts, South Palo Alto Food Closet, and (currently) leading weekly hikes for a meetup.