Jeanne Dietsch is a Democratic member of the New Hampshire Senate, representing the 9th District since 2018. Prior to joining the legislature, Jeanne Dietsch was a tech entrepreneur. She co-founded MobileRobots Inc/ActivMedia Robotics in 1995, and also served as its Chief Executive Officer until the company was sold in 2010 to Adept Technology in Silicon Valley. Under her leadership, MobileRobots' Pioneer became the launch platform for Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. The company is now owned by Omron Automation.
Personal life
Jeanne Dietsch grew up in Marion, Ohio, with her parents and three brothers. Her mother, Betty Dietsch, is a former English professor who authored college textbooks, including McGraw-Hill's Reading and Writing Well. Her father, George Dietsch, started out as manager of the Marion Livestock Company after serving in the United States Army during World War II, then became partner and president of the parent corporation, Ward Livestock Company. Her eldest brother, Neil, is an officer of the Alabama Chess Federation and founded Alabama Chess in Schools. Jeanne left Marion in 1970 to attend Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago for two years, then transferred to Western Michigan University, where she graduated with a B.S. in 1974. She moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and married Bill Kennedy in the same year. The couple have two children, Eva and Ethan. The two later founded ActivMedia Robotics together in 1995. watches MobileRobots founder Jeanne Dietsch
Tech career
Jeanne Dietsch began her entrepreneurial career at age 29 as president of an Oak Park, Illinois, market research venture, TALMIS, co-owned with Patrick Joseph McGovern of International Data Group. The company studied the burgeoning market for personal computers and software in schools and homes. After selling that start-up and moving to Peterborough, New Hampshire, she and her husband started Kinemation, a software development company, whose games included Intrigue! published by Spectrum HoloByte. The game was one of the earliest graphical adventures, with characters including herself, Bill, and friends such as author Boman Desai. Dietsch started her next company by publishing an e-commerce market report, "Who's Succeeding on the Internet and How", months after the Internet opened to the public for commerce. She and Anne Wujcik, her former partner from TALMIS, surveyed all 1,100 companies then listed in Yahoo. Later in 1995, Dietsch co-founded the enterprise that would become ActivMedia Robotics. For 16 years, her team designed and built complex systems underlying the autonomous programmable intelligent mobile robotic bases and control systems for autonomous interior mapping and navigation, including multiple patents. Some of their research was funded through a US National Institutes of HealthSmall Business Innovation Research grant. The couple sold MobileRobots Inc to Adept Technology in 2010. Dietsch also served on the board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Industrial Activities committee and wrote a quarterly column for Robotics & Automation magazine. She served on the review board of Industrial Robot journal and the editorial board of Intelligent Service Robotics Journal and helped found the Robotics Technology Consortium. She also directs non-profit Sapiens Plurum which, in conjunction with the Future of Life Institute, runs an annual short-fiction contest to "inspire us — the first species that can intentionally impact its own evolution — to aspire beyond what was humanly possible."
Government career
After helping transition MobileRobots Inc. to its new owners, Dietsch earned a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. After returning from Cambridge, Jeanne began working in local government, leading strategic planning for the Peterborough Economic Development Authority. Dietsch ran for State Senate in New Hampshire in 2016, losing in the primary to four-time candidate Lee Nyquist. In 2018, Dietsch bested two competitors, winning 54% of votes in the Democratic primary. She later won the general election against Republican Dan Hynes, 14,037 to 12,776. In Concord, Dietsch serves as Vice Chair of the Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee and Chair of the Commission on the Environmental and Health Impacts of Perfluorinated Chemicals. She is also a member of the Ways and Means Committee, the JointLegislative Committee on Administrative Rules and the Business Finance Authority.
