PlenaryMonday Tuesday Virtual Track Speakers
Plenary
Sallie L. Krawcheck
CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest
Sallie Krawcheck’s professional mission is to help women reach their financial and professional goals. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest, a recently launched digital investment platform for women. She is the Chair of Ellevate Network, a many-thousand-strong global professional woman's network. And she is the Chair of the Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Index Fund, which invests in the top-rated companies for advancing women. Krawcheck has been named among the top ten of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People" list. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she was CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and of Smith Barney.
Peggy Johnson
Executive Vice President, Business Development at Microsoft As executive vice president of business development, Peggy Johnson is responsible for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to accelerate growth for Microsoft and its customers. Johnson works with external partners around the world, ranging from start-ups to large-scale enterprises, to identify areas of collaboration, drive innovation and unlock shared value. In this capacity, she also manages Microsoft’s relationship with the venture capital community and oversees strategic investments through the company’s corporate venture fund, Microsoft Ventures.
Prior to this role, Johnson spent 24 years at Qualcomm, where she served as a member of Qualcomm’s Executive Committee. During her time at Qualcomm, Johnson held various leadership positions across engineering, sales, marketing and business development, and ran the Qualcomm Internet Services business unit. Most recently, Johnson was executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and president of global market development, where she was responsible for commercializing new business opportunities and developing strategic relationships for the company.
Prior to joining Qualcomm, Johnson worked as an engineer for General Electric’s Military Electronics Division.
Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Diego State University. She represents the United States on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council and serves as a board member for Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. She has been recognized by multiple organizations, including Silicon Republic (“40 Powerful Women Leading Tech Around the World”), Business Insider (“26 Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2016”), Connected World Magazine (“2014 Women of M2M List”), Women in Technology International (“2013 Hall of Fame Award”) and STEM (“100 Women Leaders in STEM, 2012?).
Read more at https://news.microsoft.com/exec/peggy-johnson/#EwF0Yl1DfwrLm0es.99
Prior to this role, Johnson spent 24 years at Qualcomm, where she served as a member of Qualcomm’s Executive Committee. During her time at Qualcomm, Johnson held various leadership positions across engineering, sales, marketing and business development, and ran the Qualcomm Internet Services business unit. Most recently, Johnson was executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and president of global market development, where she was responsible for commercializing new business opportunities and developing strategic relationships for the company.
Prior to joining Qualcomm, Johnson worked as an engineer for General Electric’s Military Electronics Division.
Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Diego State University. She represents the United States on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council and serves as a board member for Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. She has been recognized by multiple organizations, including Silicon Republic (“40 Powerful Women Leading Tech Around the World”), Business Insider (“26 Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2016”), Connected World Magazine (“2014 Women of M2M List”), Women in Technology International (“2013 Hall of Fame Award”) and STEM (“100 Women Leaders in STEM, 2012?).
Read more at https://news.microsoft.com/exec/peggy-johnson/#EwF0Yl1DfwrLm0es.99
Maria Klawe
President of Harvey Mudd College Maria Klawe became Harvey Mudd College’s fifth president in 2006. Prior to joining HMC, she served as dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University. Klawe joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia where she served in various roles from 1988 to 2002. Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years with IBM Research in California and two years at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. (1977) and B.Sc. (1973) in mathematics from the University of Alberta. Klawe is a member of the board of the nonprofit Math for America, the chair of the board of the nonprofit EdReports.org, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a trustee for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. Recent awards includethe 2014 Women of Vision ABIE Award for Leadership and Fortune’s 2014 list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
Barbara H. Whye
Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer and VP of Human Resources Intel Corporation Barbara H. Whye is Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer and Vice President of Human Resources at IntelCorporation. She leads Intel’s Diversity in Technology initiative as the company endeavors to reach itsgoal of full representation in its U.S. workforce by 2020. A champion of Intel’s culture of inclusion, with21 years of experience, she develops strategy that accelerate progress and integrates diversity andinclusion across the ecosystem to enhance innovation and drive business results.
Barbara joined Intel in 1995 as an engineer and held a number of leadership roles driving large scale andenterprise wide change. Prior to joining HR and Global Diversity and Inclusion in 2015, she spent 15 years in key leadership and project engineering roles responsible for acquiring and starting up newfacilities for Intel Corporation worldwide, including Talent Management as an expatriate in San José,Costa Rica. Barbara also led the investment strategy for Intel’s global (STEM) education portfolio, withan emphasis on girls and undeserved populations and was a strategist on Girl Rising. Intel’s global campaign for girls' education and empowerment.
Barbara earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of South Carolina and her MBA from the University’s Darla Moore School of Business. Recognized as a force for positive social change, she has been awarded with the 2014 National Society of Black Engineers Career ExcellenceAward, a 2015 Society of Women Engineers Spark Award, and a 2016 Inspiring Women of South Carolina Award.
Barbara joined Intel in 1995 as an engineer and held a number of leadership roles driving large scale andenterprise wide change. Prior to joining HR and Global Diversity and Inclusion in 2015, she spent 15 years in key leadership and project engineering roles responsible for acquiring and starting up newfacilities for Intel Corporation worldwide, including Talent Management as an expatriate in San José,Costa Rica. Barbara also led the investment strategy for Intel’s global (STEM) education portfolio, withan emphasis on girls and undeserved populations and was a strategist on Girl Rising. Intel’s global campaign for girls' education and empowerment.
Barbara earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of South Carolina and her MBA from the University’s Darla Moore School of Business. Recognized as a force for positive social change, she has been awarded with the 2014 National Society of Black Engineers Career ExcellenceAward, a 2015 Society of Women Engineers Spark Award, and a 2016 Inspiring Women of South Carolina Award.
Karen Bartleson
2017 IEEE President and CEO
Karen Bartleson has over 35 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, specifically in electronic design automation. Karen retired as Senior Director of Corporate Programs and Initiatives at Synopsys, an electronic design automation company, where her responsibilities included creating programs for technical standards development, software tool interoperability, and creating and maintaining strong relationships with universities and research institutions worldwide. Prior to Synopsys, Karen brought her exceptional professional and leadership skills to bear at United Technologies Microelectronics Center and Texas Instruments.
Karen was President of the IEEE Standards Association in 2013 and 2014. During her tenure, she led the development of a new strategic plan, furthered the principles of the OpenStand market-driven standardization paradigm, and finalized IEEE’s membership in the Global Standards Collaboration.
As a member of and leader within the IEEE Board of Directors in 2013 and 2014, she chaired and led the development of the strategic plan for the IEEE Internet Initiative Committee, whose charter is to raise IEEE’s influence and profile in the areas of Internet governance, cyber-security, and cyber-privacy policy development. She was also a member of the IEEE Strategy Committee, overseeing the development of the role of IEEE in global public policy.
In 2016, Karen was also appointed to the new U.S. Department of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors. Bartleson, an IEEE senior member, and 16 other leaders from the fields of banking, economics, law, and technology are tasked with recommending ways to advance economic growth and job opportunities in the digital age.
Karen has published numerous articles about standards and universities and has authored the book “The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards: Practical Insights for Creating Technical Standards” (Synopsys Press, 2010). In 2003, she received the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation Achievement Award. She earned a B.S. in Engineering Science with a concentration in Electronic Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1980.
Karen was President of the IEEE Standards Association in 2013 and 2014. During her tenure, she led the development of a new strategic plan, furthered the principles of the OpenStand market-driven standardization paradigm, and finalized IEEE’s membership in the Global Standards Collaboration.
As a member of and leader within the IEEE Board of Directors in 2013 and 2014, she chaired and led the development of the strategic plan for the IEEE Internet Initiative Committee, whose charter is to raise IEEE’s influence and profile in the areas of Internet governance, cyber-security, and cyber-privacy policy development. She was also a member of the IEEE Strategy Committee, overseeing the development of the role of IEEE in global public policy.
In 2016, Karen was also appointed to the new U.S. Department of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors. Bartleson, an IEEE senior member, and 16 other leaders from the fields of banking, economics, law, and technology are tasked with recommending ways to advance economic growth and job opportunities in the digital age.
Karen has published numerous articles about standards and universities and has authored the book “The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards: Practical Insights for Creating Technical Standards” (Synopsys Press, 2010). In 2003, she received the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation Achievement Award. She earned a B.S. in Engineering Science with a concentration in Electronic Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1980.
Stefanie Tompkins
Acting Deputy Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Dr. Stefanie Tompkins is the acting deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She has previously served in several DARPA roles, including, most recently, as director of the Defense Sciences Office, where she led DARPA’s most exploratory office in identifying and accelerating breakthrough technologies for national security.
Dr. Tompkins has spent much of her professional life leading scientists and engineers in developing new technology capabilities. She began her technology career in industry, as a senior scientist and later assistant vice-president and line manager at Science Applications International Corporation, where she spent 10 years both conducting and managing research projects in planetary mapping, geology, and imaging spectroscopy. Later, as a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, she created and managed programs in ubiquitous GPS-free navigation as well as in optical component manufacturing.
Dr. Tompkins received a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology and geophysics from Princeton University and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in geology from Brown University. She has also served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.
Dr. Tompkins has spent much of her professional life leading scientists and engineers in developing new technology capabilities. She began her technology career in industry, as a senior scientist and later assistant vice-president and line manager at Science Applications International Corporation, where she spent 10 years both conducting and managing research projects in planetary mapping, geology, and imaging spectroscopy. Later, as a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, she created and managed programs in ubiquitous GPS-free navigation as well as in optical component manufacturing.
Dr. Tompkins received a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology and geophysics from Princeton University and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in geology from Brown University. She has also served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.
Kerena Saltzman
LCSW, Presenter, Facilitator, Trainer
Kerena Saltzman, LCSW is a presenter, trainer, licensed therapist, and women’s leadership coach. Kerena works with high achieving women to hone their leadership abilities, define success on their terms, and create high level collaborative relationships.
Her expertise in coaching and facilitation has led her to work with clients at Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Women’s Business Leadership Forum, and NASA Space Center.
She has taught relational intelligence skills to teams of therapists, physicians, coaches, and Directors of Learning and Development. When people develop relational skills conflict becomes easier, communication is clearer, and employee engagement increases.
Kerena is on faculty at Esalen institute, Omega Institute, and Multiversity. She has presented multiple times at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, Wisdom Women’s Conference, and Emerging Women.
Her expertise in coaching and facilitation has led her to work with clients at Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Women’s Business Leadership Forum, and NASA Space Center.
She has taught relational intelligence skills to teams of therapists, physicians, coaches, and Directors of Learning and Development. When people develop relational skills conflict becomes easier, communication is clearer, and employee engagement increases.
Kerena is on faculty at Esalen institute, Omega Institute, and Multiversity. She has presented multiple times at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, Wisdom Women’s Conference, and Emerging Women.
Sila Kiliccote
Staff scientist and the leader of the Grid Integration, Systems and Mobility research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Sila Kiliccote is a staff scientist and the leader of the Grid Integration, Systems and Mobility research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Prior to joining SLAC full time, Ms. Kiliccote worked as a demand response expert at Google and spent over 10 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as a deputy of the Demand Response Research Center leading the grid integration initiatives. At LBNL, she worked with a team to develop OpenADR, Virtual Grid Integration Laboratory (VirGIL) and worked on the deployment of micro-PMUs for distribution systems. She holds an Electrical Engineering degree from University of New Hampshire and a Master of Building Science degree from Carnegie Mellon University.
Bobbie Carlton
Founder of Innovation Women Bobbie Carlton is the founder of Innovation Women, an online “visibility” bureau, helping drive visibility for entrepreneurial, technical and innovative women through speaking engagements. Innovation Women helps connect event managers with awesome female speakers, thought leaders and subject matter experts, and avoid the embarrassment of the dreaded #allmalepanel. Follow Bobbie on Twitter as @BobbieC and @WomenInno.
Lily Chang
R&D Vice President, VMware Lily is a technology & business executive with extensive experience in cloud, enterprise, EDA, semi-conductor & embedded industries in areas of portfolio/product management, strategic planning, product development, engineering, and global operations. She brings the best of entrepreneurialism, people, process and technology together to solve problems with business outcome.
Besides being a board member of Sugon-VMware Joint Venture (SVM) and Women Who Code, Lily leads VMware Business Transformation Office and SVM Project Office. At VMware, Lily has successfully driven global scalability and growth in ecosystem infrastructure, services, interoperability, developers’ initiatives, and R&D portfolio service model as Central Engineering VP. Prior to VMware, Lily held senior R&D leadership positions at Xilinx, KLA-Tencor, and Mentor Graphics with proven success in driving game-changing innovation, product development and R&D productivity globally.
Lily holds a MSCS from UW-Madison. She currently is adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara University Business School Part-Time MBA program. She is a certified SCRUM Product Owner, SCRUM Master and Ikebana Teacher.
Besides being a board member of Sugon-VMware Joint Venture (SVM) and Women Who Code, Lily leads VMware Business Transformation Office and SVM Project Office. At VMware, Lily has successfully driven global scalability and growth in ecosystem infrastructure, services, interoperability, developers’ initiatives, and R&D portfolio service model as Central Engineering VP. Prior to VMware, Lily held senior R&D leadership positions at Xilinx, KLA-Tencor, and Mentor Graphics with proven success in driving game-changing innovation, product development and R&D productivity globally.
Lily holds a MSCS from UW-Madison. She currently is adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara University Business School Part-Time MBA program. She is a certified SCRUM Product Owner, SCRUM Master and Ikebana Teacher.
Monday Speakers
Kira Makagon
Executive Vice President of Innovation, RingCentral As RingCentral’s Executive Vice President of Innovation, Kira Makagon leads global product strategy, product management, engineering, operations and IT. Over her extensive tech sector career, she has built multiple breakthrough industry solutions and companies, garnering a reputation as a leader in both software development and business management.
Before joining RingCentral, she founded and served as CEO and President of Red Aril, a pioneer in real-time audience and media optimization solutions that was acquired by Hearst. Prior to that, she co-founded and held key executive positions in flagship online marketing and CRM companies—including Octane Software, which was acquired by E.piphany, and Scopus Technology, where she brought multiple generations of CRM products to market.
Makagon holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys working with entrepreneurs and serves as an advisor to early-stage companies, including Illuminate Ventures, Yozio, Qubell, News360, 1 World Online and Airframe, where she is also a member of the Board of Directors.
Makagon is a sought after speaker for audiences interested in tech and entrepreneurism. Recently, she has been honored as one of the 2015 Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times and 2015 Women of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, as well as part of the 2015 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards.
Before joining RingCentral, she founded and served as CEO and President of Red Aril, a pioneer in real-time audience and media optimization solutions that was acquired by Hearst. Prior to that, she co-founded and held key executive positions in flagship online marketing and CRM companies—including Octane Software, which was acquired by E.piphany, and Scopus Technology, where she brought multiple generations of CRM products to market.
Makagon holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys working with entrepreneurs and serves as an advisor to early-stage companies, including Illuminate Ventures, Yozio, Qubell, News360, 1 World Online and Airframe, where she is also a member of the Board of Directors.
Makagon is a sought after speaker for audiences interested in tech and entrepreneurism. Recently, she has been honored as one of the 2015 Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times and 2015 Women of Influence by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, as well as part of the 2015 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards.
Dr. Cathy Chen
Senior Associate, Exponent Cathy Chen is currently a Senior Associate at Exponent Failure Analysis Associates based in New York City. Exponent is a multi-disciplinary engineering and scientific consulting firm that brings together more than 90 different disciplines to solve important engineering, science, regulatory, and business issues facing their clients. Her expertise lies in computer hardware, embedded systems, memory systems, and optical interconnects. Cathy has been a member of IEEE for a number of years and serves as the Young Professional Chair for the New York City Section of Region I. Dr. Chen earned her PhD, MPhil, and MS from Columbia University, and a BS from Cornell University. She has been a recipient of the Columbia University Grossman Scholarship and the Wei Family Foundation Scholarship.
Sarah E. Knoop
Senior Technical Staff Member, Manager of Mobile Health Solutions Innovation, IBM Watson Health Sarah Knoop is a Senior Technical Staff Member and the manager of the Mobile Health Solutions Innovation team in IBM Watson Health. She and her team are pioneering new, cognitive analytics-backed, mobile health and wellness solutions with our foundational healthcare partners. Just prior to joining Watson Health in May 2015, Sarah was the Senior Manager of Discovery Solutions at the IBM Research - Almaden in San Jose, CA where she worked across research disciplines to explore new physical and analytic technologies for the Internet of Things. Sarah's roots at IBM are in the Healthcare Informatics Research Department at IBM Research at Almaden. For nearly a decade, she held various leadership roles across a diverse technical team of researchers and software developers in order to advance the state of the art for public health informatics and healthcare data integration through the evolution of healthcare IT standards, open source software contributions and novel technology additions to IBM's product portfolio in the healthcare industry.
Dr. Julia Schwarz
Senior Researcher, Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft Corporation Julia is a senior researcher on the HoloLens team at Microsoft where she builds prototypes for mixed reality user interfaces. Before working at Microsoft she co-founded Qeexo, a startup developing "rich-touch" interactive technologies. At Qeexo she led the team that developed the FingerSense technology currently shipping on tens of millions of Huawei smartphones. She has a BS in computer science from University of Washington and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.
Kate Boeckman
Senior Manager, Strategic Product Management, Applied Innovation, Thomson Reuters
Kate is an attorney with a strong passion for technology. In the Applied Innovation Group, she is currently tracking wearable and other emerging product technologies, generating innovative opportunities for their use, and leading efforts to develop proof-of-concepts, partnerships, and products based on these technologies. Most recently, Kate has enjoyed leading projects exploring virtual reality, mixed reality, and virtual personal assistants. She was recently honored with the 40 under 40 Award by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal. Kate received her BA from Marquette University and her JD from William Mitchell School of Law.
Dr. Maria Gorlatova
Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University Electrical Engineering Department
Dr. Gorlatova earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (with the highest distinction) from Columbia University and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. (Summa Cum Laude) degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Ottawa, Canada. She has had extensive industry experience in a range of R&D and business roles, and has been affiliated with D.E.Shaw Research, Telcordia Technologies, and IBM. Dr. Gorlatova works on architectures, algorithms, and protocols for the Internet of Things. She published over 20 papers on the Internet of Things devices in top conferences, and is serving as a technical adviser for 2 Internet of Things startups in health and fitness space. Dr. Gorlatova is a recipient of the Columbia University Presidential Fellowship, Google Anita Borg USA Fellowship, and Alexander Graham Bell Canadian Graduate Scholar fellowships. She is a co-recipient of the 2011 ACM SenSys Best Student Demonstration Award, the 2011 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communications, and the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award.
Alejandra Crisafulli
Co-founder, Naked Audience Productions
Named Best Coach by The Corporate America’s, 2016 Boardroom Elite Awards, Alejandra Crisafulli has educated thousands with her revolutionary coaching methods. She is the Founder and Master Coach of Alejandra Crisafulli Coaching and Co-Founder of Naked Audience Productions. She holds over 16 years of experience in corporate management, coaching, training and development. Alejandra is considered one of the pioneers of the coaching industry and has coached and trained clients across the globe.
Alejandra is well-known for her engaging and compelling style, custom designed coaching programs and her ground-breaking 180 SHIFT METHOD. As a result, over 1400 coaching clients have achieved personal, financial and business success, reached their goals and created authentic lives.
Alejandra’s commitment to her own coaching practice and to the advancement of the industry is demonstrated by her investment in developing advanced methods, trainings and workshops. She listens to the needs of her coaching clients and training audiences and answers those needs by creatively designing innovative programs. Alejandra continues to be dedicated to being a powerful voice in the coaching movement.When not coaching, Alejandra can be found enjoying the beautiful Southern California coastline with her beloved husband and daughter and their dog, Buddha.
Alejandra is well-known for her engaging and compelling style, custom designed coaching programs and her ground-breaking 180 SHIFT METHOD. As a result, over 1400 coaching clients have achieved personal, financial and business success, reached their goals and created authentic lives.
Alejandra’s commitment to her own coaching practice and to the advancement of the industry is demonstrated by her investment in developing advanced methods, trainings and workshops. She listens to the needs of her coaching clients and training audiences and answers those needs by creatively designing innovative programs. Alejandra continues to be dedicated to being a powerful voice in the coaching movement.When not coaching, Alejandra can be found enjoying the beautiful Southern California coastline with her beloved husband and daughter and their dog, Buddha.
Bonnie Bonadeo
Co-Founder, Naked Audience Productions
Bonnie Bonadeo, Speaker, Coach, Radio Host, Named one of 2013 Enterprising Women and Honored for one of the Best Coach and Consultant 2015, Bonnie Bonadeo’ evolution of being on the forefront of trends and finding niche opportunities to support personal and business growth. She is the founder of Arakara LLC which comprises of Bonnie Bonadeo Coaching & Consulting, BEaUty Inside and Out Radio and is co-founder of Naked Audience Productions. With over 20 years in corporate, association and non-profit management she stayed true to her passion towards enhancing people skills in business and life, which led her to begin her journey as an entrepreneur. Certified in advanced methods in Entrepreneurship, Business Management, Emotional Intelligence, Life and Business Coaching, Bonnie’s commitment to developing innovative programs and advancing the level of emotional connection in others supports her brand message of “Connecting You to You” which is designed to initiate more compassion and empathy in all business and personal relationships.
As a 2 time International bestselling Author of Success in Beauty, Bonnie authentically shares her struggles and successes through a voice that connects and invites others to evolve as individuals and to be a contribution to others. When not working or traveling for her next speaking or training gig, she is at home in Phoenix, AZ with her son and their Chihuahua Lille.
As a 2 time International bestselling Author of Success in Beauty, Bonnie authentically shares her struggles and successes through a voice that connects and invites others to evolve as individuals and to be a contribution to others. When not working or traveling for her next speaking or training gig, she is at home in Phoenix, AZ with her son and their Chihuahua Lille.
Michele Molitor
CEO, Nectar Consulting, Inc Michele Molitor, CPCC, PCC is the CEO of Nectar Consulting, Inc. Working with executives and entrepreneurs worldwide, Michele brings over 24 years of experience, strategic business savvy and intuitive insights to her clients. Her unique, inside-out approach serves as a catalyst to challenge status quo thinking, eliminate blockages to success, and helps her clients enhance their capacity as a leader. This ultimately leads to increased clarity, collaboration and productivity through enhanced communication and leadership skills to build high performing teams and exponentially increase bottom line results.
As a nationally recognized speaker, certified executive coach, consultant, trainer, writer, and former radio show host, Michele’s passion for helping others hone their leadership skills is conveyed through all aspects of her work and writing. She has co-authored 2 books and has variety of published articles on CNN, SelfGrowth, Lifehack and The Mogul Mom.
As a nationally recognized speaker, certified executive coach, consultant, trainer, writer, and former radio show host, Michele’s passion for helping others hone their leadership skills is conveyed through all aspects of her work and writing. She has co-authored 2 books and has variety of published articles on CNN, SelfGrowth, Lifehack and The Mogul Mom.
Erika Jefferson
President and Founder, Black Women in Science and Engineering (BWISE) Erika Jefferson is the President and Founder of Black Women in Science and Engineering (BWISE), an organization focused on bridging the leadership gap for Black women in STEM. Erika is a native Chicagoan and has worked in a variety of leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies, including Amoco (now BP) and Chevron Corp. Now based in Houston, she has held roles in sales/business development, Lean Six Sigma and Operational Excellence. She received a MBA form Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA and a BS in chemical engineering from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. Erika has a passion for advancing diversity and inclusion in STEM and fostering the success of women and girls in these fields, through training, networking and mentorship.
Prof. Nupur Prakash
Founder Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women, India Prof. Nupur Prakash is the founder Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women (IGDTUW) established by Govt. of Delhi, India in 2013 as the first Women’s Technical University imparting technical education exclusively to the girls of India. She has spearheaded the growth and development of IGDTUW, which has an enrolment of around 2400 girls in various graduate programs, post graduate and doctoral programs in Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) along with Architecture. She possesses a work experience of around 33 years in research, teaching and academic administration, with several years spent holding key leadership positions.
She has been honored for “ Outstanding Contribution to Education” at 22nd Devang Mehta Business School Award held in Mumbai on 15th Nov 2014 and JGBS-Top Rankers Excellence Award for Women Role Model”, held in Delhi, India on 16th Jan 2015. She has also received the “Inspiring Women Edu-leader” award on International Women’s Day on 1st March 2014, by Engineering Watch. Under the leadership of Prof. Nupur Prakash, the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Association (ESDA) has recently honored the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women as the “FASTEST GROWING UNIVERSITY”. The University has also been recognised as “The OUTSTANDING ENGINEERING INSTITUTE, North” by ABP News Channel at the National Education Award function held in Mumbai in July 2015. She has recently been conferred with the “Award for Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education” during 8th Innovative Education Awards held on 18th Feb. 2016 in Mumbai.
Dr. Nupur Prakash has recently attended a program for ‘Women in University Administration’ funded by U.S. Govt. at University of Nebraska, Omaha from 19th June-6th July 2016.
A recipient of the Chancellor’s Medal for being the best outgoing student of University of Roorkee, India in 1981, Dr. Nupur Prakash completed her B.E. (Electronics & Communication Engineering) and M.E. (Computer Science & Technology) degree from University of Roorkee (now I.I.T. Roorkee) and PhD (Computer Engineering) from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India in the area of Natural language Processing using Artificial Neural Network. She has worked as a Scientist at Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh (a CSIR lab) from 1983 to 1985 and was involved in design, research and development of microprocessor based instruments.
She was actively involved in establishing the dept. of Computer Engg. at the prestigious S.G.S. Institute of Technology and Science, Indore, M.P, India during 1986 to 1989. Later on, she served the dept. of Computer Sc. and Engg. at PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh for ten years (1991-2000) in different capacities and became the youngest and the first woman Head of the Dept. in 1994.
She has been honored for “ Outstanding Contribution to Education” at 22nd Devang Mehta Business School Award held in Mumbai on 15th Nov 2014 and JGBS-Top Rankers Excellence Award for Women Role Model”, held in Delhi, India on 16th Jan 2015. She has also received the “Inspiring Women Edu-leader” award on International Women’s Day on 1st March 2014, by Engineering Watch. Under the leadership of Prof. Nupur Prakash, the Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Association (ESDA) has recently honored the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women as the “FASTEST GROWING UNIVERSITY”. The University has also been recognised as “The OUTSTANDING ENGINEERING INSTITUTE, North” by ABP News Channel at the National Education Award function held in Mumbai in July 2015. She has recently been conferred with the “Award for Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education” during 8th Innovative Education Awards held on 18th Feb. 2016 in Mumbai.
Dr. Nupur Prakash has recently attended a program for ‘Women in University Administration’ funded by U.S. Govt. at University of Nebraska, Omaha from 19th June-6th July 2016.
A recipient of the Chancellor’s Medal for being the best outgoing student of University of Roorkee, India in 1981, Dr. Nupur Prakash completed her B.E. (Electronics & Communication Engineering) and M.E. (Computer Science & Technology) degree from University of Roorkee (now I.I.T. Roorkee) and PhD (Computer Engineering) from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India in the area of Natural language Processing using Artificial Neural Network. She has worked as a Scientist at Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh (a CSIR lab) from 1983 to 1985 and was involved in design, research and development of microprocessor based instruments.
She was actively involved in establishing the dept. of Computer Engg. at the prestigious S.G.S. Institute of Technology and Science, Indore, M.P, India during 1986 to 1989. Later on, she served the dept. of Computer Sc. and Engg. at PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh for ten years (1991-2000) in different capacities and became the youngest and the first woman Head of the Dept. in 1994.
Candy Barone
CEO, You Empowered Strong Candy Barone, known as the Pull-No-Punches Accountability Powerhouse, and CEO of YouEmpowered Strong, is an executive trainer and coach, international speaker and Amazon bestselling author.
She is a catalyst and change agent who works with the 3 Es: Executives, Entrepreneurs andEmerging Leaders to help them bring “heart” back to leadership while feeding the soul ofbusiness. With nearly 20 years in Corporate America, she is a master at building exceptional,high-performing teams, maximizing and leveraging ROI, growing emerging leaders, andcatapulting individuals to achieve explosive growth.
Candy was named a 2014-15 VIP Woman of the Year by the National Association ofProfessional Women, was recipient of the 2015 Public Speakers Association Local CollaboratorAward, and was nominated as a 2015 Profile in Power Central Texas Woman of Influence.
Candy also has been showcased in CNN, The Austin Stateman, Austin Business Journal, Bethe Boss Magazine, OffBeat Business Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, ciLiving TV, along withnumerous radio shows and podcasts.
In addition, she serves as a call leader for the Evolutionary Business Council, a PartneringDirector for the Public Speakers Association, and a regular columnist for OffBeatBusinessMagazine.
Candy currently lives in Austin with her dog, Payton, and enjoys her free time outdoors,spending time with friends, reading, or working out in the boxing gym.
She is a catalyst and change agent who works with the 3 Es: Executives, Entrepreneurs andEmerging Leaders to help them bring “heart” back to leadership while feeding the soul ofbusiness. With nearly 20 years in Corporate America, she is a master at building exceptional,high-performing teams, maximizing and leveraging ROI, growing emerging leaders, andcatapulting individuals to achieve explosive growth.
Candy was named a 2014-15 VIP Woman of the Year by the National Association ofProfessional Women, was recipient of the 2015 Public Speakers Association Local CollaboratorAward, and was nominated as a 2015 Profile in Power Central Texas Woman of Influence.
Candy also has been showcased in CNN, The Austin Stateman, Austin Business Journal, Bethe Boss Magazine, OffBeat Business Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, ciLiving TV, along withnumerous radio shows and podcasts.
In addition, she serves as a call leader for the Evolutionary Business Council, a PartneringDirector for the Public Speakers Association, and a regular columnist for OffBeatBusinessMagazine.
Candy currently lives in Austin with her dog, Payton, and enjoys her free time outdoors,spending time with friends, reading, or working out in the boxing gym.
Maja Vukovic
Research Manager, Cloud Services Automation organization, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Maja Vukovic is a Research Manager of the Cloud Services Automation organization at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
Maja's research expertise is in service automation, cloud transformation, crowdsourcing technologies and API ecosystems. Maja has pioneered the area of enterprise crowdsourcing.
Maja has received four IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards and three IBM Research awards for her technical leadership and contributions to enterprise crowdsourcing and innovations in IT service management. Maja is an IBM Master Inventor and a Member of IBM Academy of Technology. She has over 80 publications in top international venues. Maja is a Senior Member of IEEE.Maja received her PhD from University of Cambridge, UK, for her work on context aware service composition using AI planning.
Maja's research expertise is in service automation, cloud transformation, crowdsourcing technologies and API ecosystems. Maja has pioneered the area of enterprise crowdsourcing.
Maja has received four IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards and three IBM Research awards for her technical leadership and contributions to enterprise crowdsourcing and innovations in IT service management. Maja is an IBM Master Inventor and a Member of IBM Academy of Technology. She has over 80 publications in top international venues. Maja is a Senior Member of IEEE.Maja received her PhD from University of Cambridge, UK, for her work on context aware service composition using AI planning.
Dr. Valentina Salapura
IBM Master Inventor and Chief Architect, Resilience and Continuous Availability, IBM Watson Health Cloud.
Dr. Valentina Salapura is an IBM Master Inventor and Chief Architect for Resilience and Continuous Availability at IBM Watson Health Cloud. She is working on cloud computing resiliency for several IBM cloud offerings, such as IBM Watson Health Cloud and IBM Cloud Managed Services. In 2010, Dr. Salapura served as a co-lead for the Global Technical Outlook as part of the IBM Research Strategy and Worldwide Operations team defining IBM’s research roadmap and strategy. Previously, she was a computer architect for the Power8 processor definition team, and the Blue Gene program since its inception. Before joining the IBM at the T.J. Watson Research Center in 2000, Dr. Salapura was a faculty member with Technische Universität Wien in Vienna, Austria where she conducted pioneering research into application acceleration and invented the first application accelerators for fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks.
Dr. Salapura has received several IBM corporate awards for her technical contributions. She is the author of over 80 papers and several book chapters on processor and network architecture, and holds over 120 patents in this area. Dr. Salapura received her PhD from Technische Universität Wien. She is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and Fellow of the IEEE. She is a recipient of the 2006 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Special Achievements for the Blue Gene/L supercomputer and quantum chromodynamics.
Dr. Salapura has received several IBM corporate awards for her technical contributions. She is the author of over 80 papers and several book chapters on processor and network architecture, and holds over 120 patents in this area. Dr. Salapura received her PhD from Technische Universität Wien. She is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and Fellow of the IEEE. She is a recipient of the 2006 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Special Achievements for the Blue Gene/L supercomputer and quantum chromodynamics.
Archana Jain
Vice President, Information Technology for Verizon Enterprise Solutions
Archana Jain is Vice President of Information Technology for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, serving Verizon’s large business customers. In her current role, Archana leads a technology team spanning four continents in support of the technology enablement of Billing, Service Management, Product Development, and Managed Services.
Archana is championing the culture transformation with adoption of Agile and Design Thinking in Verizon. Leading the Agile journey for over 5 years in large businesses, Archana understands the nuances of introducing and sustaining agile practices and behaviors. She has introduced the concept of Design Thinking and bringing in the shift from project work to problem solving. She played a key role in the business transformation of the Quote to Bill automation program and is actively involved in migrating customers to this platform. Archana and her team modernized the Enterprise billing platform, have performed multiple systems consolidations achieving efficiency and scale, and simplified and automated many aspects of the service management platform that supports multiple products such as network, security and applications. She also enabled self-service by making dashboard, inventory and change management capabilities available to both managed and unmanaged customers. With an eye towards the future, Archana is enabling innovation with SDN/NFV and virtualization to revolutionize managed services.
Prior to this appointment, Archana held the position of Executive Director for Contact Center Management. She and her team managed CRM tools, resource management and chat technologies, as well as call quality and monitoring tools. Archana enabled mobility solutions, speech analytics and modernized the CRM platform to enable savings as well as increase adoption.
Archana holds a Bachelor of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi, India) and earned her Masters in Information Management from Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ).
Archana is championing the culture transformation with adoption of Agile and Design Thinking in Verizon. Leading the Agile journey for over 5 years in large businesses, Archana understands the nuances of introducing and sustaining agile practices and behaviors. She has introduced the concept of Design Thinking and bringing in the shift from project work to problem solving. She played a key role in the business transformation of the Quote to Bill automation program and is actively involved in migrating customers to this platform. Archana and her team modernized the Enterprise billing platform, have performed multiple systems consolidations achieving efficiency and scale, and simplified and automated many aspects of the service management platform that supports multiple products such as network, security and applications. She also enabled self-service by making dashboard, inventory and change management capabilities available to both managed and unmanaged customers. With an eye towards the future, Archana is enabling innovation with SDN/NFV and virtualization to revolutionize managed services.
Prior to this appointment, Archana held the position of Executive Director for Contact Center Management. She and her team managed CRM tools, resource management and chat technologies, as well as call quality and monitoring tools. Archana enabled mobility solutions, speech analytics and modernized the CRM platform to enable savings as well as increase adoption.
Archana holds a Bachelor of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology (New Delhi, India) and earned her Masters in Information Management from Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ).
Courtney Gras
Executive Director, Launch League & Co-Founder of Cleantech Startup, Design Flux Technologies, LLC
Courtney Gras is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature. After leaving her job as a power systems engineer at NASA to work for her own startup company, Courtney now utilizes her engineering background to serve the tech-entrepreneur community. Courtney has focused her career on supporting and empowering young entrepreneurs and building strong startup ecosystems. She currently serves as Executive Director for Launch League, a nonprofit organization based in NE Ohio that seeks to increase the success of startups by establishing connections between founders and resources.
Courtney co-founded the Akron-based clean energy startup, Design Flux Technologies while an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Akron. While serving as Chief Operations Officer, Courtney was named a “Forbes 30 Under 30” for her contributions within the organization in 2016. She has also been called one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Cleantech by Midwest Energy and one of Crain’s “Twenty in their 20s”. She also received the ComEd Female Founder Prize for 2015 through the Clean Energy Challenge.
Courtney has traveled around the globe speaking on the topics of entrepreneurship, women in tech, and clean energy. She frequents colleges and universities, following her passion for educating students on what it takes to be an entrepreneur. She has also presented internationally at TEDx Budapest and the Pioneers Festival in Vienna, Austria.
Courtney co-founded the Akron-based clean energy startup, Design Flux Technologies while an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Akron. While serving as Chief Operations Officer, Courtney was named a “Forbes 30 Under 30” for her contributions within the organization in 2016. She has also been called one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Cleantech by Midwest Energy and one of Crain’s “Twenty in their 20s”. She also received the ComEd Female Founder Prize for 2015 through the Clean Energy Challenge.
Courtney has traveled around the globe speaking on the topics of entrepreneurship, women in tech, and clean energy. She frequents colleges and universities, following her passion for educating students on what it takes to be an entrepreneur. She has also presented internationally at TEDx Budapest and the Pioneers Festival in Vienna, Austria.
Natalia Baklitskaya
Chair, Santa Clara Valley Women in Engineering (SCV WIE) board Natalia Baklitskaya started her professional journey in hardware at IBM, working on SystemZ and Power processors in NY. She then moved to Silicon Valley and worked as a Design Verification Engineer on the PHY layer of WiFi (802.11x) chips at Qualcomm. Eager to explore new concepts and to shift gears more towards software, Natalia made a move to Accenture Labs and worked on prototyping new concepts and developing industry-focused applications for VR + MR devices, as well as researching new applications of 3D printing technologies. Having completed several industrial applications and PoCs, Natalia went on to work as a CAD Infrastructure Engineer as part of a Design Automation team at Intel PSG (formerly Altera).
Natalia is a maker, and she loves playing with connected, wearables electronics projects and software, learning by doing, and sharing her love of electronics and code with the world. Natalia teaches Arduino workshops for high school female students in the Bay Area through SWE-sponsored programs, and wearables and IoT workshops within companies and at external events.
Natalia has been very involved in the IEEE community since her college days, and she currently serves as a Chair of Santa Clara Valley Women in Engineering (SCV WIE) board in 2017. SCV WIE facilitates personal and professional growth of women in technology in the Bay Area through tech talks, workshops, networking and professional development events, among many other initiatives.
Natalia is a maker, and she loves playing with connected, wearables electronics projects and software, learning by doing, and sharing her love of electronics and code with the world. Natalia teaches Arduino workshops for high school female students in the Bay Area through SWE-sponsored programs, and wearables and IoT workshops within companies and at external events.
Natalia has been very involved in the IEEE community since her college days, and she currently serves as a Chair of Santa Clara Valley Women in Engineering (SCV WIE) board in 2017. SCV WIE facilitates personal and professional growth of women in technology in the Bay Area through tech talks, workshops, networking and professional development events, among many other initiatives.
Kathy Gruver
Motivational health speaker, an award-winning author Kathy Gruver, PhD is a motivational health speaker and hosts the national TV show based on her first book, The Alternative Medicine Cabinet. She has earned her PhD in Natural Health and has authored five award-winning books including, Conquer Your Stress and Journey of Healing. She has studied mind/body medicine at the famed Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Harvard and has been featured as an expert in numerous publications including Glamour, Fitness, Time, WebMD, Prevention, Huffington Post and Dr. Oz’s The Good Life and appeared as a guest expert on over 250 radio & TV shows. She has facilitated over 200 educational lectures around the world. In 2015 she had the privilege of creating a stress reduction program for the US Military. For fun and stress relief Gruver does hip hop and flying trapeze.
Bhaktipriya Shridhar
Open source enthusiast Bhaktipriya Shridhar is an emerging leader. She is an open source enthusiast and was chosen as one among the 5 Outreachy interns in world at the the world’s largest software development project, Linux Kernel. She has contributed significantly to the Linux Kernel in the areas of Workqueues and Coccinelle, which have helped enhance several performance issues in the celebrated operating system of Linux. She was an invited speaker and an Outreachy panelist at the LinuxCon North America 2016 and a recipient of the Linux Foundation Travel Grant and the Software Freedom Conservancy travel grant to present her talk in Toronto. She is the founder of the Lean In Chapter, Hyderabad. She’s also an invited speaker at Grace Hopper Conference India 2016. She’s also a recipient of the Grace Hopper Scholarship India, 2016.
Judy Gichoya
Open source health IT developer Judy Gichoya enjoys writing code to save lives. A medical doctor from Kenya, she has worked with open source health systems used in multiple countries for the last 8 years. Judy is specializing in radiology, and works to help doctors care for patients using technology. Her passion is in global health and informatics, and she merges her medical and IT skills supporting health care in places like Malawi where there are only 2 radiologists taking care of a population of over 16 million people. Her experience with open source health IT is as a developer, community member and implementer in various African and Latin America countries.
Nithya Ruff
Sr. Dir, Open Source Practice, Comcast
Nithya A. Ruff is the Senior Director for Comcast’s Open Source Practice. As such she is responsible for growing Open Source culture inside of Comcast and engagement with external communities. Prior to this, she started and grew the Western Digital’s Open Source Strategy Office. She first glimpsed the power of open source while at SGI in the 90s and has been building bridges between hardware developers and the open source community ever since. She’s also held leadership positions at Wind River (an Intel Company), Synopsys, Avaya, Tripwire and Eastman Kodak. At Wind River, she led a team of product managers in managing a world class embedded Linux distribution and was a key member of the Yocto Project advocacy team on the board.
Nithya has been a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to new people inOpen Source for many years. She has also been a promoter of valuing diverse ways of contributing to open source such as in marketing, legal and community. You can often find her on social media promoting dialogue on diversity and open source. She has spoken at multiple conferences such as OSCON, All things Open, SCALE, Grace Hopper, OpenStack and Red Hat Summit on the business and community of open source. In recognition of her work in open source both on the business and community side, she was named to CIO magazine’s most influential women in open source list.
Nithya graduated with an MS in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School. She lives in the bay area and is a proud mother of two daughters. You can follow her on twitter @nithyaruff
Nithya has been a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to new people inOpen Source for many years. She has also been a promoter of valuing diverse ways of contributing to open source such as in marketing, legal and community. You can often find her on social media promoting dialogue on diversity and open source. She has spoken at multiple conferences such as OSCON, All things Open, SCALE, Grace Hopper, OpenStack and Red Hat Summit on the business and community of open source. In recognition of her work in open source both on the business and community side, she was named to CIO magazine’s most influential women in open source list.
Nithya graduated with an MS in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School. She lives in the bay area and is a proud mother of two daughters. You can follow her on twitter @nithyaruff
Jeff Dean
Google Senior Fellow in Google's Research Group
Jeff Dean joined Google in 1999 and is currently a Google Senior Fellow in Google's Research Group, where he leads the Google Brain team (g.co/brain), Google's deep learning research team in Mountain View, working on systems for speech recognition, computer vision, machine translation, language understanding, and various predictive tasks. He has co-designed/implemented five generations of Google's crawling, indexing, and query serving systems, and co-designed/implemented major pieces of Google's initial advertising and AdSense for Content systems. Â He is also a co-designer and co-implementor of Google's distributed computing infrastructure, including the MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner and TensorFlow systems, protocol buffers, LevelDB, systems infrastructure for statistical machine translation, and a variety of internal and external libraries and developer tools. Â He is currently working on large-scale distributed systems for machine learning. Â He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1996, working with Craig Chambers on compiler techniques for object-oriented languages. Â He is a Fellow of the ACM and the AAAS, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of the Mark Weiser Award and the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences.
Anu Duggal
Founding Partner, Female Founders Fund
As the Founding Partner of Female Founders Fund, Anu believes that the next generation of successfulventure-backed entrepreneurs will include talented female founders. An entrepreneur herself, Anu’s manysuccesses include starting India’s first wine bar - The Tasting Room, as well as co-founding Exclusively.In,an Accel and Tiger-backed e-commerce company based in India. Anu graduated from Vassar College andholds an MBA from London Business School. She currently serves on the board of ELOQUII and the RubinMuseum.
Susan Houlihan
Executive Coach & COO, Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute
Susan Houlihan, M.B.A., is a certified executive coach, facilitator and lecturer in leadership and coaching at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She graduated college in Ireland as an electrical engineer, and spent the first fifteen years of her career until 2012 in engineering and operations at Analog Devices, Cypress Semiconductor and Cisco Systems. As a principal consultant to Fortune 500 Companies, she is particularly interested in helping technologists and introverts build persuasive communication sets through programs like Technical Communications and Cultural Transformation.
Jennifer Caleshu
Executive Coach & Director of Marketing, Berkeley Executive Coaching Jennifer Caleshu, M.B.A. is a certified executive coach, facilitator, and lecturer in leadership, design thinking and innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Her work is informed by more than 15 years of leadership in the cultural sector with functional expertise in strategy, marketing and communications. As a coach, consultant, and teacher, she is interested in helping individuals broaden the scope of possibility in themselves, their teams, in business and the world.
Shubha Govil
Head of Products @CiscoDevNet Shubha Govil is Head of Products @CiscoDevNet. Shubha is a product management leader,with over 15yrs of experience. For last 9 years, she is leading several product lines in Cisco Cloud Collaboration team. In the past, she lead cross-functional product management teams in enterprise applications, middleware, and SaaS products arena. She is passionate about teaching and mentoring and runs several formal/informal programs to help people with their learning goals. As an advocate for STEAM education, she also created Cisco DevNet kids program to bring STEAM/IoT workshops for Cisco families and her bay area community.
James (Jim) E. Lukaszewski
President, The Lukaszewski Group Division James (Jim) E. Lukaszewski (Loo-ka-SHEV-skee) is one of America’s most visible corporate go-to people for senior executives when there is trouble in the room or on the horizon. As America’s Crisis Guru®, Lukaszewski is known for his ability to help executives look at problems from a variety of sensible, constructive and principled perspectives.He is known for taking a business approach rather than traditional PR strategiesby teaching clients to take highly focused, ethically appropriate action. He is a consummate storyteller.
Lukaszewski has written 13 books and hundreds of articles and monographs.
His 2009 Bestselling book“Why Should the Boss Listen to You; The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor” cracks the code on getting heard and seen by the boss. Many have described the book and Jim’s counsel as “Game Changers” in their careers.
Lukaszewski received a Bachelor of Arts in 1974 from Metropolitan State University in Minnesota and continues to be a devoted alumnus. He is a former deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Economic Development and assistant press secretary to former Minnesota Governor Wendell Anderson. Corporate Legal Times once listed him as one of 28 experts to call when “All Hell Breaks Loose.”
Lukaszewski has written 13 books and hundreds of articles and monographs.
His 2009 Bestselling book“Why Should the Boss Listen to You; The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor” cracks the code on getting heard and seen by the boss. Many have described the book and Jim’s counsel as “Game Changers” in their careers.
Lukaszewski received a Bachelor of Arts in 1974 from Metropolitan State University in Minnesota and continues to be a devoted alumnus. He is a former deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Economic Development and assistant press secretary to former Minnesota Governor Wendell Anderson. Corporate Legal Times once listed him as one of 28 experts to call when “All Hell Breaks Loose.”
JJ DiGeronimo
President, Tech Savvy Women JJ DiGeronimo, the President of Tech Savvy Women, advanced from entry-level positions into leadership positions within technology companies. Through her keynotes and executive sessions, JJ shares effective leadership and inclusion strategies to retain, develop and advance diverse talent. JJ includes these experiences in her book new book “Accelerate Your Impact” published by Smart Business Books which complements her 2011 book, “The Working Woman’s GPS.” JJ has been quoted in numerous publications including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox Business.
Julie Bernauer
Lead, Deep Learning Pursuit Engineering Solution Architect Team, NVIDIA
Julie leads a deep learning pursuit engineering solution architect team at NVIDIA. She is part of the Deep Learning Institute at NVIDIA, offering courses at Universities and community events. Prior to joining NVIDIA, she was a visiting research scientist in SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in CA, USA. She was a senior research scientist in INRIA from 2007 to 2015 focusing on machine learning for computational structural biology. She also served as an adjunct associate professor in Ecole Polytechnique from 2013 to 2014. She received a PhD from University Paris-Sud in 2006. Julie has a broad research interest including machine learning, data mining, and computational structural biology.
Bozenna Pasik-Duncan
Professor of Mathematics, University of Kansas
Bozenna Pasik-Duncan received Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Warsaw in 1970, and Ph.D. and D.Sc. (Habilitation) degrees from the Warsaw Schoolof Economics (SGH) in Poland in 1978 and 1986, respectively. Before moving to theUniversity of Kansas (KU) in 1984, she was a faculty member of the Department of Mathematics at SGH. At KU she is a Professor of Mathematics, a Courtesy Professor of both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Aerospace Engineering(AE), and an Information & Telecommunication Technology Center (ITTC) Investigator,a Chancellors Club Teaching Professor, and a member of the KU Women's Hall of Fame. She is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IFAC, a recipient of the IEEE ThirdMillennium Medal, and IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Distinguished MemberAward. She has served in many capacities in several societies including IEEE CSS Vice President, IEEE CSS BoG member, and Program Director of SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory. Her current service includes Deputy Chair of the CSS TCon Control Education, Chair of the AACC Education Committee, a member of the IFACTB as the Education Liaison, 2017 Chair of IEEE WIE Committee, a member of theIEEE CSS BoG and IEEE SSIT BoG, and a member of the SIAM Activity Group onControl and Systems Theory Conference Steering Committee. She is founder of Women in Control (WIC), first chair of IEEE CSS Standing Committee on WIC and member of WIC Advisory Board, founder and faculty advisor of Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Student Chapter at KU, founder and coordinator of the MAM/ Outreach Program at KU, and founder and chair of Stochastic Adaptive Control Seminar at KU. She is an Associate Editor of several Journals, and an author and co-author of over 200 technical papers and book chapters. Her research interests are primarily in stochastic systems and stochastic adaptive control, and in STEM education. She has been an organizer and co-organizer of many workshops and control conferences. Sheis a recipient of many awards including IREX Fellow, NSF Career Advancement Award,KU Women of Distinction, Service to Kansas, H.O.P.E., Kemper, L. Hay, Morrison,Price, Polish Ministry of Higher Education Award, and recently received the 2016 IEEE EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Continuing Education.
Kristina Young-Fisher
Member of Technical Staff, Post Fab Development, GlobalFoundries
Kristina Young-Fisher received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Houston in 2011 with a focus on semiconductor devices. She then joined GLOBALFOUNDRIES Research and Development team where shehas held a number of positions. Initially she worked in Front-End- of-Line semiconductor research at AlbanyNanotech with IBM Alliance. For the last three years she has focused on packaging development andqualification for manufacturing with an emphasis on 2D FCBGA technologies. With this move into electronicspackaging she joined IEEE Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society (CPMT). Hercurrent role as technical program manager for package technology integration is supplemented by herappointment as the WIE representative for IEEE CPMT. Kris is an avid cyclist, burgeoning oenophile, and mother to a very outgoing three year old boy.
Ariunbolor Purvee
Founder and President, Women in STEM in Mongolia
Dr. Purvee is an educator with approximately twenty five years of working experience in bothmines and mining engineering higher educational institutions. After receiving her Ph.Ddegree in Mining Engineering from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology(MUST) based on her research work in India, she completed a post doc at the University ofSeoul. In 2014 she received her Professional Engineering qualification and now serves as aConsultant for Mining Electrical Engineering in Mongolia. Dr. Purvee has been a Member ofInternational Network of Women Engineers and Scientists since 2011. As a result, shebecame the Founding President of the non-profit organization “Woman in STEM in Mongolia”in 2012, which she continues to lead. She has been a member of IEEE IAS since 2015.
Over the course of her academic career at MUST she has developed six new courses inengineering, wrote 5 engineering textbooks and 6 manuals for undergraduate students; shehas supervised 5 MA degree and 2 PhD degree students. For her efforts, she received theTop Lecturer Award in 2011, and Awards for Teaching Excellence in 2002, 2004, and 2006.Her research interests focus on mine design, mine safety, artificial neural networks, dynamicsimulations, robust design and quality engineering, and reliability of mining power supply.This work has resulted in the publication of 66 papers, 5 research projects, 6 highereducation development projects, 12 copyrights, 1 patent, and 1 trademark. Her scholarshipwas recognized by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Department of Mining and GeologicalEngineering, where she selected to serve as a Visiting Faculty member in 2011 and 2013,and as an Adjunct Professor in 2015.
Over the course of her academic career at MUST she has developed six new courses inengineering, wrote 5 engineering textbooks and 6 manuals for undergraduate students; shehas supervised 5 MA degree and 2 PhD degree students. For her efforts, she received theTop Lecturer Award in 2011, and Awards for Teaching Excellence in 2002, 2004, and 2006.Her research interests focus on mine design, mine safety, artificial neural networks, dynamicsimulations, robust design and quality engineering, and reliability of mining power supply.This work has resulted in the publication of 66 papers, 5 research projects, 6 highereducation development projects, 12 copyrights, 1 patent, and 1 trademark. Her scholarshipwas recognized by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Department of Mining and GeologicalEngineering, where she selected to serve as a Visiting Faculty member in 2011 and 2013,and as an Adjunct Professor in 2015.
Anar Simpson
Special Advisor, Women, Girls and Technology, Mozilla Anar Simpson is a key influencer for Women, Girls and Technology & leads this initiative atMozilla. She has taken the Technovation STEM pipeline to a global level. Anar works withgovernments, United Nations, ITU, World Bank, the White House, State Dept. and Silicon Valleycompanies to ensure the digital inclusion of women. She is a Deputy on the UN High LevelPanel for Women's Economic Empowerment, an invited speaker, & has been awarded theDistinguished Alumna Award from the University of Calgary + 2015 GEM Tech Award from theITU and UN Women + 2017 GSMA GLOMO Award for her leadership and outstandingcontribution to closing the industry gender gap.
Liang Xi Downey
Business Development Executive for IBM’s New Energy and Environment Global Industry. Liang works for IBM as a Business Development Executive for IBM’s New Energy and Environment Global Industry. She promotes emerging solutions that leverage IOT, analytics and cognitive computingto better balance the distributed energy supply and demand, eliminate energy waste and reduce GHG emission. Her professional experience spans over 20 years in consulting, program management and emerging technology development across multiple industries. For 5 years at a renewable energy microgrid start up, she helped the company grow, from business strategy and partnership to licensing company’s IP.
Liang joined a group of volunteers to support the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) in 2009. HTC aimed at enabling remote villages in regions of the world that lack access to electricity by deploying mobile solar trailers built-in with stationary battery, home batteries, as well as LED lightings and phone charger, to light up and digitize dark homes. HTC has since evolved into IEEE Smart Villageinitiative today.
In 2016, Liang successfully organized and chaired IEEE Women In Engineering Detroit Summit. This inaugural event in IEEE region 4 attracted over 20 speakers and resulted in an amazing experience for all attendees to be able to share their success and failure stories, as well as lessons learned.
Ms. Downey earned a Master Degree in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University in New York,with GPA 4.0/4.0. She received her MBA in Finance from Wayne State University in Dec.2014.
Liang joined a group of volunteers to support the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) in 2009. HTC aimed at enabling remote villages in regions of the world that lack access to electricity by deploying mobile solar trailers built-in with stationary battery, home batteries, as well as LED lightings and phone charger, to light up and digitize dark homes. HTC has since evolved into IEEE Smart Villageinitiative today.
In 2016, Liang successfully organized and chaired IEEE Women In Engineering Detroit Summit. This inaugural event in IEEE region 4 attracted over 20 speakers and resulted in an amazing experience for all attendees to be able to share their success and failure stories, as well as lessons learned.
Ms. Downey earned a Master Degree in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University in New York,with GPA 4.0/4.0. She received her MBA in Finance from Wayne State University in Dec.2014.
Katie Mishra
Founder, Code Circle Katie is a high school junior at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California. She is the Founder and CEO of Code Circle(www.codecircle.org), an international youth-driven non-profit working to provide engaging courses to teach middleschoolers the design, logic, and programming behind computer science. Currently she is leading a 35-person stronghigh school through graduate team to reach over 200,000 students in 6 countries. For her efforts, she has beennationally recognized by NCWIT and Stanford’s she++, and has won regional awards from the Prudential Spirit ofCommunity and National Charity League. Katie is passionate about computer science, and has self-taught herselffive programming languages. She is most interested in Artificial Intelligence, and has participated in Stanford’s Pre-Collegiate AI program and Stanford Scholars to make cutting edge research accessible to all. She also serves asScouting & Strategy and Research & Development Lead for her FIRST Robotics team, which has gone to WorldChampionships in the last two years. In addition, Katie has developed several apps, one of which won Global Semi-Finalist in the Technovation Challenge. Outside of CS, Katie loves writing and has published three novels and wonScholastic Writing awards in each of the past three years.
Edith Yeung
Partner, 500 Startups China Edith focuses on investing in education, healthcare, entertainment, and artificialintelligence startups. Prior, Edith was the VP of marketing & business development forDolphin Browser. Dolphin Browser is a Sequoia-backed mobile browser with over 150million installs worldwide. She also founded RightVentures - seed stage investment firmfocusing on mobile and consumer internet companies. Edith is also an enterprise veteranworking with companies like Siebel, Oracle, Autodesk, AT&T, etc.
Some of her investments include Penrose (Pixar of VR) and Cryworks (by Pixar & DisneyVeteran), SIlk Labs, Piper, Apptopia, Mobile Action, Andy OS, Quickly, Powercore, Pack,Fleksy, Ingrain, Hooked, Switch, Bento, DayDayCook, Palantir, etc.
She is also the host of the 'Fast Forward with Edith' in partnership with NasdaqEntrepreneurship Center focuses on interviewing frontier technology startups.
Some of her investments include Penrose (Pixar of VR) and Cryworks (by Pixar & DisneyVeteran), SIlk Labs, Piper, Apptopia, Mobile Action, Andy OS, Quickly, Powercore, Pack,Fleksy, Ingrain, Hooked, Switch, Bento, DayDayCook, Palantir, etc.
She is also the host of the 'Fast Forward with Edith' in partnership with NasdaqEntrepreneurship Center focuses on interviewing frontier technology startups.
Aine Shivnan
Vice president, Program Management at Qualcomm Research
As vice president, program management at Qualcomm Research, Áine Shivnan is responsible for operations and strategy management for research programs focusing on deep learning and robotics. In this capacity she works with engineers developing state-of-the art technologies with a particular focus on optimizations for space and runtime efficiency of deep learning networks on embedded devices as well as autonomy, mobility and low-power for use in drones, services robots and automotive applications.Prior to joining Qualcomm in 2009, Shivnan served as vice president engineering at a number of telecommunications startups including NextWave Wireless where she led the WiMax basestation software development team and also at AirFiber which she co-founded, developing a free-space optical transmission platform for a carrier-grade ATM-based mesh network for dense urban areas.
Shivnan earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland. She serves on Qualcomm’s Women’s Leadership Council andis an active supporter of STEM through Qualcomm’s work withFIRST® Robotics Competition and as volunteer judge for 2017 FTC regionals.
Shivnan earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland. She serves on Qualcomm’s Women’s Leadership Council andis an active supporter of STEM through Qualcomm’s work withFIRST® Robotics Competition and as volunteer judge for 2017 FTC regionals.
Rashmi Char
Vice President, Engineering, Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated
Rashmi Char serves as vice president of engineering for Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated. Her current responsibilities include leading the Global Product and ToolsOrganization responsible for delivering world-class mobile chipsets to markets aroundthe world and leading the next generation 1-Gbps Class Modem for smartphones,tablets and mobile broadband products as Software Project Engineer.
Rashmi Char joined Qualcomm in 1997 and has held roles of increasing responsibility inMobile Product Development and Commercialization since that time. One of her firstkey positions was in UMTS Protocol Stack Development. She then moved on to leadglobal Software Design and Development teams to support High-Speed Data Servicesover all air interface technologies (UMTS, LTE, CDMA). As Software Project Engineerand Architect, she led the worldwide commercialization of the first worldwide LTE (4G)capable handsets launches on all major carriers’ networks including VZW, ATT, SKT,LGU+, and Sprint and a number of cutting-edge 4G modems for mobile products.Rashmi excels at directly leading hundreds of employees, and also simultaneouslyleading projects comprised of thousands of engineers around the world.
Rashmi is a member of Qualcomm’s Women’s Leadership Council and a part ofQualcomm Incorporated5775 Morehouse DriveSan Diego, CA 92121-1714Qualcomm’s Executive Women’s Leadership Development program. Rashmi firmlybelieves that attracting and retaining more women in the science, technology,engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce will maximize innovation, creativity,and competitiveness and is passionate about doing her part to promote women inSTEM.
Rashmi has a bachelor of engineering Degree in Electronics and Computer Scienceand a master’s degree in Computer Science from SDSU.
Rashmi Char joined Qualcomm in 1997 and has held roles of increasing responsibility inMobile Product Development and Commercialization since that time. One of her firstkey positions was in UMTS Protocol Stack Development. She then moved on to leadglobal Software Design and Development teams to support High-Speed Data Servicesover all air interface technologies (UMTS, LTE, CDMA). As Software Project Engineerand Architect, she led the worldwide commercialization of the first worldwide LTE (4G)capable handsets launches on all major carriers’ networks including VZW, ATT, SKT,LGU+, and Sprint and a number of cutting-edge 4G modems for mobile products.Rashmi excels at directly leading hundreds of employees, and also simultaneouslyleading projects comprised of thousands of engineers around the world.
Rashmi is a member of Qualcomm’s Women’s Leadership Council and a part ofQualcomm Incorporated5775 Morehouse DriveSan Diego, CA 92121-1714Qualcomm’s Executive Women’s Leadership Development program. Rashmi firmlybelieves that attracting and retaining more women in the science, technology,engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce will maximize innovation, creativity,and competitiveness and is passionate about doing her part to promote women inSTEM.
Rashmi has a bachelor of engineering Degree in Electronics and Computer Scienceand a master’s degree in Computer Science from SDSU.
Martha Alade
Founder, Women in Technology in Nigeria(WITIN)
Martha Alade is a Computer Engineer and a technopreneur with positive energy. Her rich experience coupled with her passion to bridge the gender digital divide in technology led her to form Women in Technology in Nigeria(WITIN); an NGO that provides networking, entrepreneurship and professional development opportunities through technology for women in Nigeria, inspiring girls to embrace the emerging tech markets as inventors and innovators.WITIN has positively affected the lives of hundreds of thousands ofwomen and girls in Nigeria and has presence in the 36 states of thefederation and the FCT, with over 20,000 active women in her network and currently in Special Consultative Status with the UN.
Martha has pioneered, for over 14 years, several communities drivenskills acquisition and capacity building programs inICT/STEM/Education for teachers, women and girls in Nigeria. She has worked extensively with several international organizations on STI(Science, Technology and Innovation) initiatives, which has positively transformed the lives of numerous women and girls in the country.
Martha has pioneered, for over 14 years, several communities drivenskills acquisition and capacity building programs inICT/STEM/Education for teachers, women and girls in Nigeria. She has worked extensively with several international organizations on STI(Science, Technology and Innovation) initiatives, which has positively transformed the lives of numerous women and girls in the country.
Malika Cantor
Operations Partner @ Comet Labs
Malika is devoted to bringing great ideas to life. She is an Operations Partner at Comet Labs, a cross between a venture fund and experimental research lab that supports AI and robotics startups. She previously worked in investment banking, and oversaw the development and growth of software and hardware startups in the education, healthcare, and telecom fields, in Asia, Europe and North America. She graduated from the University of Cambridge and has an MBA from Tsinghua University and MIT Sloan.
Val Wright
Internationally acclaimed Innovation Expert Internationally acclaimed innovation expert Val Wright was named as one of the top 50 resources for Chief Operating Officers by ClickSoftware. She is one of only 64 experts inducted into the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame. The global clients who haverequested her help include Starbucks, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Financial Times, and DreamWorksAnimation. Val’s corporate experience includes tenures during dramatic growth periods atAmazon, BMW, Microsoft, Harrods, Marconi, and Sema Group.Val participated on the small team that created the fastest-selling device of all time, Kinect forXbox, which won a Guinness Book of World Record, selling over 20 million devices. Thiscontributed to the turnaround of Microsoft’s Entertainment business from a billion-dollar lossto a multimillion-dollar profit machine.Her unique approach, which she has trademarked as Thoughtfully RuthlessTM, has producedtypical client results of market domination in extraordinarily short time frames along withcompassionate truth telling, fearlessness, and extensive creative, technical, and leadership gains.Val’s forthcoming books include: Thoughtfully Ruthless: The Key to Exponential Growth (Wiley,May 2016) and Innovation Trifecta: How to Catapult Innovation by Creating a Symbiotic Relationshipbetween Creative, Business, and Technical Teams. She is a regular contributor on CNBC, Inc.Magazine, Business Insider, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Reuters, LA Times, MSN, and Today.Originally from England, Val now lives in California with her three daughters and husband.
Trish Costello
Founder and CEO of Portfolia Trish Costello is Founder and CEO of Portfolia, a global entrepreneurial investing platform, designed for women. Portfolia packages 6-9 entrepreneurial companies annually in multiple focus areas, such as Enterprise, Consumer Tech, Active Aging and Women’s Health, enabling its investors to have a diversified ‘portfolia’ of high-potential companies for one annual investment. All Portfolia funds provide a transparent,interactive and educational view of investing for its members, while seeking market returns and new innovation in the marketplace.
Trish is internationally recognized for her pioneering work in educating and preparing venture capital investment partners, through the prestigious Kauffman Fellows Program. As the founding CEO and CEO Emeritus of the Center for Venture Education she led the Kauffman Fellows Program for its first ten years. Trish was Founding President of CVE Capital Corp, the holding company of a $1.7 billion Fund of Funds. Costello was on the start-up team of the Kauffman Foundation’s entrepreneurship center, where for eight years she directed its efforts in venture capital, angel investing, and programming to accelerate high potential women entrepreneurs. She played a leading role nationally in increasing equity investments in women’s businesses and in funding initiatives supporting high-growth women entrepreneurs.
Trish led the National Science Foundation SBIR Sub-Committee on Commercialization and was the Director of the Arthur M. Blank Center of Entrepreneurship at Babson College, the first college focused in entrepreneurship and rated within the top 5 globally.
Trish was recently recognized by INC. Magazine in its 15 Most Innovative Women Entrepreneurs of 2016.
Trish speaks globally on new models of venture capital and angel investing, trends with women investors and women’s high-potential entrepreneurship. Trish has twin daughters, both of whom work in San Francisco start-ups, and recently hiked the 28 mile Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with them to celebrate a significant life event.
Trish is internationally recognized for her pioneering work in educating and preparing venture capital investment partners, through the prestigious Kauffman Fellows Program. As the founding CEO and CEO Emeritus of the Center for Venture Education she led the Kauffman Fellows Program for its first ten years. Trish was Founding President of CVE Capital Corp, the holding company of a $1.7 billion Fund of Funds. Costello was on the start-up team of the Kauffman Foundation’s entrepreneurship center, where for eight years she directed its efforts in venture capital, angel investing, and programming to accelerate high potential women entrepreneurs. She played a leading role nationally in increasing equity investments in women’s businesses and in funding initiatives supporting high-growth women entrepreneurs.
Trish led the National Science Foundation SBIR Sub-Committee on Commercialization and was the Director of the Arthur M. Blank Center of Entrepreneurship at Babson College, the first college focused in entrepreneurship and rated within the top 5 globally.
Trish was recently recognized by INC. Magazine in its 15 Most Innovative Women Entrepreneurs of 2016.
Trish speaks globally on new models of venture capital and angel investing, trends with women investors and women’s high-potential entrepreneurship. Trish has twin daughters, both of whom work in San Francisco start-ups, and recently hiked the 28 mile Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with them to celebrate a significant life event.
Boutheina Kzadri Tlili
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology Boutheina Kzadri Tlili joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at RIT Dubai as an associate professor in 2010. Dr.Tlili earned her PhD (‘94) in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University. Prior to joining RIT, she was the program director of the Computer Engineering program at Michigan State University-Dubai. Dr. Tlili was an associate professor and program coordinator of Electrical and Computer Engineering program at the AmericanUniversity in Dubai from 2004-2008. Her area of Specialty is AppliedElectromagnetic. Her research interest include Antenna analysis and design, Electromagnetic Theory, Field propagation in complex media and Microwave electronics. She has published many articles in international journals andconferences.
Dr. Tlili is an IEEE senior member and IEEE Women in Engineering chair for theUAE section. Her involvement with IEEE UAE section started in 2004 as follows:
1. Initiated IEEE student branch and WIE affinity group at the AmericanUniversity in Dubai in 2004 where she supervised many events from seminars tooverseas field trip.
2. Initiated IEEE student branch at Michigan State University in Dubai in 2008.
3. Was part of the UAE WIE committee since 2004. She helped promote IEEEand WIE membership by conducting talks at different Universities in the UAE.
4. Was part of the organizing committee of WIE anniversary in 2006 where IEEE president Dr. Lightner was invited.
5. Became IEEE Women in Engineering chair of the UAE section in 2007.
6. Coordinated each year the involvement of IEEE and WIE in WETEX.
7. As WIE chair she promoted WIE at different Universities. As a result, many WIE student affinity group were formed ( Bits Pilani, Petroleum institute, HCT).
8. Organized the largest event in WIE history in the UAE: Women in Engineering Sciences and technology forum in 2010 that attracted more than 150 participants mostly female with HH Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi Minister for Foreign Trade as keynote speaker.
9. Under the leadership of Dr. Tlili the WIE UAE section won an internationalaward “ IEEE WIE affinity group of the year award” in 2010.
10. Organized IEEE Teacher in service workshop in June 2014.
11. Organized Women in engineering Leadership summit in October 2016.
Dr. Tlili is an IEEE senior member and IEEE Women in Engineering chair for theUAE section. Her involvement with IEEE UAE section started in 2004 as follows:
1. Initiated IEEE student branch and WIE affinity group at the AmericanUniversity in Dubai in 2004 where she supervised many events from seminars tooverseas field trip.
2. Initiated IEEE student branch at Michigan State University in Dubai in 2008.
3. Was part of the UAE WIE committee since 2004. She helped promote IEEEand WIE membership by conducting talks at different Universities in the UAE.
4. Was part of the organizing committee of WIE anniversary in 2006 where IEEE president Dr. Lightner was invited.
5. Became IEEE Women in Engineering chair of the UAE section in 2007.
6. Coordinated each year the involvement of IEEE and WIE in WETEX.
7. As WIE chair she promoted WIE at different Universities. As a result, many WIE student affinity group were formed ( Bits Pilani, Petroleum institute, HCT).
8. Organized the largest event in WIE history in the UAE: Women in Engineering Sciences and technology forum in 2010 that attracted more than 150 participants mostly female with HH Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi Minister for Foreign Trade as keynote speaker.
9. Under the leadership of Dr. Tlili the WIE UAE section won an internationalaward “ IEEE WIE affinity group of the year award” in 2010.
10. Organized IEEE Teacher in service workshop in June 2014.
11. Organized Women in engineering Leadership summit in October 2016.
Miyako N. Schanely
Commanding General 102d Training Division (Maneuver Support) , Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri Brigadier General Schanely is currently assigned as the Commanding General of the 102d Training Division (Maneuver Support), headquartered in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Her troop assignments include seven and a half years of active duty. She served as Platoon Leader of Vertical and HorizontalConstruction Platoons, as well as Company Executive Officer in the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion(Heavy) in Darmstadt, Germany, completing troop construction projects in Aschaffenburg, Darmstadt,and Rhein Main Air Force Base. After completing the Engineer Officer Advanced Course, she served asCompany Commander, Battalion S1 and Battalion Assistant S3 in the 536th Engineer Combat Battalion(Heavy) at Fort Kobbe, Panama during humanitarian construction deployments to Honduras, Guyana, Uruguay, El Salvador, and the “interior” of Panama.
After transitioning to the U.S. Army Reserve in 1993, BG Schanely held several staff positions in the 98thDivision (Institutional Training) and the 78th Division (Training Support). Her command assignmentshave included the 2/313th Regiment (Logistical Support) of the 78th Division at Fort Drum, the 6thBrigade (Professional Development) of the 98th Division in Syracuse, and the 3rd Battle CommandTraining Group of 2/75th Division at Fort Dix. As Support Division Chief for the Office of the ProgramManager – Facilities Security Forces in Riyadh from 2010-2011, she oversaw essential administrative andlogistical staff support functions to a new strategic partnership with the Saudi Arabian Ministry ofInterior and Facilities Security Forces. Returning to her Engineer roots, she served as Chief of Staff of the 416th Theater Engineer Command in Darien, Illinois, and most recently as Deputy Commanding Generalof the 412th Theater Engineer Command, headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
BG Schanely is a graduate of the Engineer Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, the Combined Arms andServices Staff School, the Army Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, andAdvanced Joint Professional Military Education. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management from the U.S. Military Academy, a Master of Business Administration from the Universityof Rochester, a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College, and a Master of Arts inCommunity Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University.
Her awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal (with Silver Oak LeafCluster), the Army Commendation Medal (with Silver and Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters), the ArmyAchievement Medal, the Parachutist Badge, and the Jungle Expert Badge.
In her civilian career, BG Schanely is the Executive Director of the State University of New York (SUNY) North Country Consortium, a partnership of six SUNY campuses that collaborate to bring a variety ofundergraduate and graduate degree programs to Fort Drum and the Northern New York community.
She and her husband Steve reside in Black River, New York, and have two grown children, Michael and Teresa.
After transitioning to the U.S. Army Reserve in 1993, BG Schanely held several staff positions in the 98thDivision (Institutional Training) and the 78th Division (Training Support). Her command assignmentshave included the 2/313th Regiment (Logistical Support) of the 78th Division at Fort Drum, the 6thBrigade (Professional Development) of the 98th Division in Syracuse, and the 3rd Battle CommandTraining Group of 2/75th Division at Fort Dix. As Support Division Chief for the Office of the ProgramManager – Facilities Security Forces in Riyadh from 2010-2011, she oversaw essential administrative andlogistical staff support functions to a new strategic partnership with the Saudi Arabian Ministry ofInterior and Facilities Security Forces. Returning to her Engineer roots, she served as Chief of Staff of the 416th Theater Engineer Command in Darien, Illinois, and most recently as Deputy Commanding Generalof the 412th Theater Engineer Command, headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
BG Schanely is a graduate of the Engineer Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, the Combined Arms andServices Staff School, the Army Command and General Staff College, the Army War College, andAdvanced Joint Professional Military Education. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management from the U.S. Military Academy, a Master of Business Administration from the Universityof Rochester, a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College, and a Master of Arts inCommunity Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University.
Her awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal (with Silver Oak LeafCluster), the Army Commendation Medal (with Silver and Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters), the ArmyAchievement Medal, the Parachutist Badge, and the Jungle Expert Badge.
In her civilian career, BG Schanely is the Executive Director of the State University of New York (SUNY) North Country Consortium, a partnership of six SUNY campuses that collaborate to bring a variety ofundergraduate and graduate degree programs to Fort Drum and the Northern New York community.
She and her husband Steve reside in Black River, New York, and have two grown children, Michael and Teresa.
Sandhya Jetti
Senior Electrical Engineer, Hyperloop-One
Sandhya Jetti was born and raised in Hyderabad, India. She received her M.S in Electrical engineeringfrom University of Missouri, Rolla (now called Missouri University of Science and Technology). She worked as Motor Controls Engineer at General Motors, Torrance, CA and Power Electronics DesignEngineer at Enerpro Inc, Santa Barbara, CA. She is currently a Sr. Electrical Engineer, in TransponicsDepartment at Hyperloop-One, LA. She is responsible engineer for medium voltage high speed ACswitches, one of the key components of Hyperloop propulsion. Her areas of interest include powerelectronics, design, control and development and emerging technologies in electric propulsion. She loves traveling and enjoys playing badminton and ping pong.
Denise Douglas
Ph.D., Associate Dean, Executive Education Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University (OH)
Dr. Denise Douglas has more than 20 years of leadership experience in both private and publichigher education institutions. Denise is currently the Associate Dean of Executive Education atthe Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University (OH) where she leads a staff of 16 responsible for over 70 open enrollment professional development programs, custom corporate solutions, executive coaching, signature programs, the Executive MBA (EMBA), and operations.
Prior to her role in the Executive Education, Denise served as the Senior Associate Dean for theSchool of Graduate Studies and Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Case Western Reserve University. In this role, Denise led a staff of eight with responsibilities in admissions, orientation, graduate academic affairs, commencement and postdoctoral affairs.
During Denise’s 16+ year career at Case Western Reserve University, she has been instrumental in forming partnerships with individuals across several university departments to launch professional development programs such as the Women Staff Leadership Development Institute (WSLDI) and the university level Professional Development Center.
Denise is also the President of Career Spark, LLC a leadership development, coaching, and educational practice. She is certified to deliver and interpret the Emotional and SocialCompetency Inventory (ESCI), as well as other leadership and career development assessments.
Denise has practiced as an executive coach for over 10 years for custom corporate leadership development and coaching education programs through the Weatherhead School ofManagement as well as privately in the Cleveland Clinic’s leadership programs. Her passion iswomen’s leadership development.
In 2012, Denise was selected to attend the ACE National Women’s Leadership Forum. In 2009,Denise was awarded the President’s Distinguished Service Award (Case Western Reserve University). Other awards and recognition include the YWCA Woman of Professional Excellence(2007), Kaleidoscope Magazine’s 40-40 Club (2007) and selection to attend the prestigious HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education (2005).
Denise holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Educational Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota. She received her B.A. in English Literature from George Mason University.
Prior to her role in the Executive Education, Denise served as the Senior Associate Dean for theSchool of Graduate Studies and Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Case Western Reserve University. In this role, Denise led a staff of eight with responsibilities in admissions, orientation, graduate academic affairs, commencement and postdoctoral affairs.
During Denise’s 16+ year career at Case Western Reserve University, she has been instrumental in forming partnerships with individuals across several university departments to launch professional development programs such as the Women Staff Leadership Development Institute (WSLDI) and the university level Professional Development Center.
Denise is also the President of Career Spark, LLC a leadership development, coaching, and educational practice. She is certified to deliver and interpret the Emotional and SocialCompetency Inventory (ESCI), as well as other leadership and career development assessments.
Denise has practiced as an executive coach for over 10 years for custom corporate leadership development and coaching education programs through the Weatherhead School ofManagement as well as privately in the Cleveland Clinic’s leadership programs. Her passion iswomen’s leadership development.
In 2012, Denise was selected to attend the ACE National Women’s Leadership Forum. In 2009,Denise was awarded the President’s Distinguished Service Award (Case Western Reserve University). Other awards and recognition include the YWCA Woman of Professional Excellence(2007), Kaleidoscope Magazine’s 40-40 Club (2007) and selection to attend the prestigious HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education (2005).
Denise holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Educational Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota. She received her B.A. in English Literature from George Mason University.
Krunali Patel
Vice President and Manager, Analog Design Services
Krunali Patel is vice president and general manager of Analog Design Services for Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI).
During her 21 years at TI, she has shown skilled leadership in negotiating complex business models, making strategic investment decisions and driving flawless execution in new product development.
In her current role, she oversees a global team of 350 people who provide critical design tools and new product design support for TI. She is also the executive sponsor of TI’s New Product Development Execution initiative, and is instrumental in implementing and measuring product development best practices across the company. Additionally, Krunali serves as a member of the Executive Steering Team for TI’s Women for Technical Leadership (WTFL) program.
Outside of her work, Krunali is passionate about promoting STEM programs in school and helping the community. As a mother of two daughters, she believes in motivating young women to succeed and recently launched an engineer shadowing program for high school girls in the Dallas area. Krunali also serves as a board member on the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) board Dallas Chapter and is the executive sponsor for Texas Instruments’ fundraising effort for JDRF. She holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University.
During her 21 years at TI, she has shown skilled leadership in negotiating complex business models, making strategic investment decisions and driving flawless execution in new product development.
In her current role, she oversees a global team of 350 people who provide critical design tools and new product design support for TI. She is also the executive sponsor of TI’s New Product Development Execution initiative, and is instrumental in implementing and measuring product development best practices across the company. Additionally, Krunali serves as a member of the Executive Steering Team for TI’s Women for Technical Leadership (WTFL) program.
Outside of her work, Krunali is passionate about promoting STEM programs in school and helping the community. As a mother of two daughters, she believes in motivating young women to succeed and recently launched an engineer shadowing program for high school girls in the Dallas area. Krunali also serves as a board member on the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) board Dallas Chapter and is the executive sponsor for Texas Instruments’ fundraising effort for JDRF. She holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University.
Manasi Kakade
Career Strategist for Growth-driven Professionals
Manasi Kakade is an engineer turned marketer turned entrepreneur. She teaches ambitious, purpose-driven professionals the skills to stand out, get noticed, andattract the right career growth opportunities that align with their passions and strengths.
Early on in her career, Manasi realized that just having a unique set of talents and skills isn’t enough to advance fast in a career. What she needed to master, was the art of expressing her strengths with clarity and confidence. The skills she now calls “Communicate YOU”.
After getting her MS in Engineering and MBA, this need became even more evident because she pursued team leadership positions.
As she started developing the “Communicate YOU” skills, she also shared them with others through her blog. To her surprise, she received an enthusiastic response toher blogging, developed a readership of professionals from 51 countries who also put her skills to work and started seeing results.
Finally, when she began receiving client requests through her blog, she decided to turn that into her full-time business.
Now, through her online coaching classes, Manasi teaches how to “Communicate YOU” in professional settings such as meetings, interviews, LinkedIn, and salary negotiation. Her clients love her actionable tips and conversational teaching style.
She believes that, it is our responsibility to make use of our unique set of talents and skills to serve others, and it is our right to experience abundance in the process. She helps you achieve exactly that!
Early on in her career, Manasi realized that just having a unique set of talents and skills isn’t enough to advance fast in a career. What she needed to master, was the art of expressing her strengths with clarity and confidence. The skills she now calls “Communicate YOU”.
After getting her MS in Engineering and MBA, this need became even more evident because she pursued team leadership positions.
As she started developing the “Communicate YOU” skills, she also shared them with others through her blog. To her surprise, she received an enthusiastic response toher blogging, developed a readership of professionals from 51 countries who also put her skills to work and started seeing results.
Finally, when she began receiving client requests through her blog, she decided to turn that into her full-time business.
Now, through her online coaching classes, Manasi teaches how to “Communicate YOU” in professional settings such as meetings, interviews, LinkedIn, and salary negotiation. Her clients love her actionable tips and conversational teaching style.
She believes that, it is our responsibility to make use of our unique set of talents and skills to serve others, and it is our right to experience abundance in the process. She helps you achieve exactly that!
Kimberly Weisul
Editor-at-Large for Inc magazine and Inc.com. Kimberly Weisul is an award-winning writer, editor, and all-around media pro, speaking frequently on entrepreneurship and women and business.
Weisul is currently the Editor-at-Large for Inc magazine and Inc.com., writing about fast-growth companies, money, and healthcare, with a particular emphasis on women and entrepreneurship. Recent cover subjects have included Marla Malcolm Beck, founder of Bluemercury, and Sarah Kauss, founder of S'well. Weisul has also written extensively about veteran-owned businesses and women and finance. She serves as a mentor to entrepreneurs through three different virtual accelerators. She is a frequent public speaker, panel moderator, and media guest. In 2014, the U.S. Dept. of State sponsored her on an eight-day speaking tour of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Before joining Inc, Weisul was a senior editor at BusinessWeek, where she directed all coverage of small business and entrepreneurship and was the founding editor of BusinessWeek SmallBiz a spin-off publication devoted to small business. She hired a fantastic team and won a slew of awards. She has also covered finance for a division of Dow Jones, and technology for Ziff-Davis.
Weisul is currently the Editor-at-Large for Inc magazine and Inc.com., writing about fast-growth companies, money, and healthcare, with a particular emphasis on women and entrepreneurship. Recent cover subjects have included Marla Malcolm Beck, founder of Bluemercury, and Sarah Kauss, founder of S'well. Weisul has also written extensively about veteran-owned businesses and women and finance. She serves as a mentor to entrepreneurs through three different virtual accelerators. She is a frequent public speaker, panel moderator, and media guest. In 2014, the U.S. Dept. of State sponsored her on an eight-day speaking tour of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Before joining Inc, Weisul was a senior editor at BusinessWeek, where she directed all coverage of small business and entrepreneurship and was the founding editor of BusinessWeek SmallBiz a spin-off publication devoted to small business. She hired a fantastic team and won a slew of awards. She has also covered finance for a division of Dow Jones, and technology for Ziff-Davis.
Lisa Smith-Strother
Sr. Director & Global Head of Employer Branding and Diversity Talent Acquisition, Ericsson Lisa has been the Sr. Director and Global Head of Employer Branding and Diversity Talent Acquisition across Ericsson’s Social and Digital Careers Channels for nearly 2 yrs. With over 15 years of marketing experience in the financial service industry, she’s held roles with increasing responsibility at American Express, NatWest Bank, M & T Bank, and Bancorp Bank as a Vice President and Strategic Marketing Head. Her experience covers consumer direct marketing, segmentation, ethnic marketing, and brand awareness. Lisa successfully transferred her marketing skill set to the HR Employer Branding arena for the Pharma industry at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals - where she led and delivered Employer Branding strategies, social/digital media, candidate attraction, and onboarding solutions for 7 years. Lisa enjoys using her marketing skill set in the exciting ICT industry. Earlier this year Lisa received her World Class Employer Branding certification. She also received the YMCA Adult Achiever Award and is the recipient of the Trailblazer Award from the National Association of Business Women. She is a graduate of Springfield College, and has a Masters from the graduate School of Retail Bank Marketing and MBA from Temple University. She resides in Wilmington, Delaware with her family.
Tuesday Speakers
Sandi Mitchell
CEO, APEX Leadership Mastery Sandi Mitchell is CEO of APEX Leadership Mastery, a firm focusing on building strong leadership and high performing teams. We are dedicated to both people and profitability through intentional emphasis on emotionally intelligent leadership for extraordinary leaders – both those with the official leadership titles and those unofficial leaders. APEX Leadership Mastery helps build influence, confidence, and a coach-centric culture. We give you the business skills you need to be an extraordinary leader, including strategic thinking and planning, effective decision making, dynamic communications, influencing others, and negotiations.
Angela Lussier
Founder, Speaker Sisterhood Angela Lussier is an award-winning speaker, three-time author, two-time TEDx presenter, and trainer. She is the founder of the Speaker Sisterhood, a network of speaking clubs that help women find their voice and develop the confidence to be a leader. Angela is the host of Claim the Stage, a public speaking podcast for women. She is a contributor to Huffington Post and her work has been featured on ABC, NBC, Forbes, Virgin, and Entrepreneur. Her motto: Stop waiting. Start creating.
Karen Holtzblatt
Thought leader, industry speaker, and author Karen Holtzblatt is a thought leader, industry speaker, and author. As the visionary behind InContext's unique customer-centered design approach, Contextual Design, and the Women in Tech Project Karen's combination of technological and psychological expertise is one of the creative forces driving innovation in the tech industry.
Recognized as a leader in requirements and design, Karen has pioneered transformative ideas and design approaches throughout her career. Karen developed Contextual Inquiry and Contextual Design now the industry standard for gathering and using field data to understand how technology impacts the way people work and live. When mobile devices utterly transformed the way technology is integrated into daily life, Karen initiated the Cool Project to explore users’ experiences and the impact of cool products. Her newest book, with her long time business partner Hugh Beyer, Contextual Design 2nd Edition Design for Life details the new techniques needed for product innovation today.
In 2014 Karen launched the WIT Retention Project to understand the work experience of women in high technology companies in order to understand why women are leaving the field. Her research, started while at Stanford, and the resulting Work Life Action Framework describes the core factors in the work environment that women need to achieve success. The project draws upon corporate and university volunteers across the industry to help with the work: field research, creating and validating a survey to measure work-life goodness, and identifying and trying out intervention games and guidelines for organizations.
ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) – the international society for professionals, academics and students – has twice honored Karen. She was awarded membership to the CHI Academy and received the first Lifetime Award for Practice presented in recognition of her impact on the field.
Karen co-founded InContext Design in 1992 with Hugh Beyer to use Contextual Design techniques to coach product teams and deliver market data and design solutions to businesses across multiple industries. Karen collaborates with many universities and is newly associated with University of Maryland’s iSchool as a Research Scientist working with students and on the WIT Retention Project. Karen has more than 25 years of teaching experience, professionally and in university settings. She holds a doctorate in applied psychology from the University of Toronto. She is known as a dynamic speaker.
Recognized as a leader in requirements and design, Karen has pioneered transformative ideas and design approaches throughout her career. Karen developed Contextual Inquiry and Contextual Design now the industry standard for gathering and using field data to understand how technology impacts the way people work and live. When mobile devices utterly transformed the way technology is integrated into daily life, Karen initiated the Cool Project to explore users’ experiences and the impact of cool products. Her newest book, with her long time business partner Hugh Beyer, Contextual Design 2nd Edition Design for Life details the new techniques needed for product innovation today.
In 2014 Karen launched the WIT Retention Project to understand the work experience of women in high technology companies in order to understand why women are leaving the field. Her research, started while at Stanford, and the resulting Work Life Action Framework describes the core factors in the work environment that women need to achieve success. The project draws upon corporate and university volunteers across the industry to help with the work: field research, creating and validating a survey to measure work-life goodness, and identifying and trying out intervention games and guidelines for organizations.
ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) – the international society for professionals, academics and students – has twice honored Karen. She was awarded membership to the CHI Academy and received the first Lifetime Award for Practice presented in recognition of her impact on the field.
Karen co-founded InContext Design in 1992 with Hugh Beyer to use Contextual Design techniques to coach product teams and deliver market data and design solutions to businesses across multiple industries. Karen collaborates with many universities and is newly associated with University of Maryland’s iSchool as a Research Scientist working with students and on the WIT Retention Project. Karen has more than 25 years of teaching experience, professionally and in university settings. She holds a doctorate in applied psychology from the University of Toronto. She is known as a dynamic speaker.
Patti Cotton
Founder of Women Who Take the Lead Patti Cotton works with high-potential female executives and professionals to engage, elevate, and equip them for greater leadership and outcomes. Now the Founder and CEO of her own company, she possesses more than 25 years of leadership both stateside and abroad, in diplomatic relations, and corporate profit and not-for-profit worlds.
During her tenure as chief development officer of a 5-hospital healthcare system, Patti designed a plan and led a team that raised more than $21.3 Million in 4 years – a feat that experts said could not be done. Leveraging this experience, she now helps women around the world to master their inner leader and executive presence for extraordinary results.
During her tenure as chief development officer of a 5-hospital healthcare system, Patti designed a plan and led a team that raised more than $21.3 Million in 4 years – a feat that experts said could not be done. Leveraging this experience, she now helps women around the world to master their inner leader and executive presence for extraordinary results.
Rosie “the Closer” Zepeda
International Speaker and CEO of Compelling Conversations
Rosie “the Closer” Zepeda, Ed.M., is an International Speaker and CEO of Compelling Conversations, a leadership diversity training and cultural marketing consulting company: www.compelling-conversations.com. She is also the Founder of www.latinasuccessnetwork.com, an organization dedicated to the culturally relevant professional development of Latinas through two unique academies. In May 2016, Rosie was presented with a Woman of Influence Award by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. This award is given to only 100 women in Silicon Valley each year.
Rosie consults and trains corporations, organizations and business leaders to learn to strategically alter their language in order to effectively deliver the right message to their target audiences, thereby increasing their business leadership success. IBM, Oracle, Intel, Comerica Bank, Safeway, Cisco, PG&E, San Jose State University are some of organizations she has worked with, as well as hundreds of small businesses.
She is known to deliver great content in a highly interactive and humorous style that keeps her audiences highly engaged. Some of the topics Rosie has spoken or trained on: “Creating & Managing the Brand of YOU,” “The Art of Negotiation,” “Building A Strategic Social Media Brand,” “Positioning Yourself with Stakeholders,” “Successful Business Communication,” “Conscious Leadership & Creating Diverse Teams,” “Brand, Messaging & Marketing,” “The Power of Your Brand,” “From No to YES – Selling in the New Economy,” and “Executive Presence 101.”
She is a graduate of Santa Clara University where she received a BA in Theater Arts/Spanish Literature and minor in Communication. She was a Reader’s Digest Fellow at Herbert Lehman College for her Master’s in Education and a Teach for America/AmeriCorps Alumni. She has done private research on how the brain takes in and reacts to messages. For 11 years Rosie worked as a Business Development Strategist for two top Fortune 100 tech companies in NYC and San Francisco.
Rosie and her family immigrated from Mexico when she was 4 years old. She started her first business with her father at the age of 9 years old. Since the age of 5 years old she has been singing mariachi. She is an avid hiker, traveler and documentary aficionado. She lives in South San Jose surrounded by her large family and the mountains.
Rosie consults and trains corporations, organizations and business leaders to learn to strategically alter their language in order to effectively deliver the right message to their target audiences, thereby increasing their business leadership success. IBM, Oracle, Intel, Comerica Bank, Safeway, Cisco, PG&E, San Jose State University are some of organizations she has worked with, as well as hundreds of small businesses.
She is known to deliver great content in a highly interactive and humorous style that keeps her audiences highly engaged. Some of the topics Rosie has spoken or trained on: “Creating & Managing the Brand of YOU,” “The Art of Negotiation,” “Building A Strategic Social Media Brand,” “Positioning Yourself with Stakeholders,” “Successful Business Communication,” “Conscious Leadership & Creating Diverse Teams,” “Brand, Messaging & Marketing,” “The Power of Your Brand,” “From No to YES – Selling in the New Economy,” and “Executive Presence 101.”
She is a graduate of Santa Clara University where she received a BA in Theater Arts/Spanish Literature and minor in Communication. She was a Reader’s Digest Fellow at Herbert Lehman College for her Master’s in Education and a Teach for America/AmeriCorps Alumni. She has done private research on how the brain takes in and reacts to messages. For 11 years Rosie worked as a Business Development Strategist for two top Fortune 100 tech companies in NYC and San Francisco.
Rosie and her family immigrated from Mexico when she was 4 years old. She started her first business with her father at the age of 9 years old. Since the age of 5 years old she has been singing mariachi. She is an avid hiker, traveler and documentary aficionado. She lives in South San Jose surrounded by her large family and the mountains.
M. Michelle Blaise
Senior Vice President, Technical Services
M. Michelle Blaise, senior vice president of Technical Services, is responsible for Engineering, Project Management and Smart Grid & Technology for ComEd.
ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation. ComEd delivers electricity to approximately 3.8 million residential and business customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population.
Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), now including the Pepco Holdings utilities, is the nation’s leading competitive energy provider, with 2015 revenues of approximately $34.5 billion. Headquartered in Chicago, Exelon does business in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Exelon is one of the largest competitive U.S. power generators, with more than 32,700 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation’s cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. The company’s Constellation business unit provides energy products and services to approximately 2 million residential, public sector and business customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100. Exelon’s six utilities deliver electricity and natural gas to approximately 10 million customers in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through its Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, Delmarva Power, PECO and Pepco subsidiaries. Follow Exelon on Twitter @Exelon.
ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation. ComEd delivers electricity to approximately 3.8 million residential and business customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population.
Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), now including the Pepco Holdings utilities, is the nation’s leading competitive energy provider, with 2015 revenues of approximately $34.5 billion. Headquartered in Chicago, Exelon does business in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Exelon is one of the largest competitive U.S. power generators, with more than 32,700 megawatts of owned capacity comprising one of the nation’s cleanest and lowest-cost power generation fleets. The company’s Constellation business unit provides energy products and services to approximately 2 million residential, public sector and business customers, including more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100. Exelon’s six utilities deliver electricity and natural gas to approximately 10 million customers in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through its Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd, Delmarva Power, PECO and Pepco subsidiaries. Follow Exelon on Twitter @Exelon.
Robin Farmanfarmaian
Angel Investor and VP at Invicta Medical
Robin Farmanfarmaian is an entrepreneur, founder, professional speaker and investor working in cutting edge technology and medicine. Currently Farmanfarmaian is an Angel Investor and VP at Invicta Medical, a medical technology company focusing on sleep apnea. A life long philanthropist and mentor, she is the Co-Founder and Board of Directors (formally Executive Director) for the Organ Preservation Alliance, catalyzing breakthroughs in organ banking for transplants and tissue engineering. Robin is on the advisory board of many startups and conferences, and mentors female entrepreneurs. Previous work includes President of Innovation for Jobs, COO of Arc Fusion, VP at Singularity University, and a Founder of Morfit & the Exponential Medicine conference. Her book, “The Patient as CEO; How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer”, is a #1 Best Seller on Amazon.
Jenny Q. Ta
CEO / Founding Partner, VCNetwork.Co
Jenny Q. Ta is the founder and CEO of Sqeeqee, the first-of-its-kind social networthing® site. Launched in 2015, the site gives individuals, businesses, celebrities, politicians, and non-profit organizations the ability to monetize their profiles in unprecedented ways. Sqeeqee is the first integrated ecommerce and social media platform offering live streaming capabilities built from within. Ms. Ta is also the mastermind behind an interactive multi-player game Squiggy Piggy that can be played online, or downloaded on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
In 2016, together with her partner, Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo (Founder / CEO of Bubu.com), VCNetwork.co was conceived to help forward-thinking VC firms and individual VCs find the startups that have what it takes to succeed. The award-winning partnership between these two innovative women makes it clear that both understand that VC investing is all about connections.
Ms. Ta is a seasoned entrepreneur with two successful ventures to her credit. She was the Founder and CEO of Titan Securities, a full service investment firm that was acquired in 2005. Prior to founding Titan Securities she was the driving force behind Vantage Investments, a full-service broker-dealer start-up she founded in 1998-99 at the age of 27 and grew to a quarter of a billion dollars in assets.
Jenny is an author whose book, Wall Street Cinderella, which is currently in production talks to become a movie detailing her escape from Vietnam during the war and her path to success from welfare to Wall Street. As a self-made millionaire by the time she was 27, the book will serve as a roadmap for women looking at a business career.
She earned a Master of Business Administration degree in Financial Management. A Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from California State University, Fresno.
In 2016, together with her partner, Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo (Founder / CEO of Bubu.com), VCNetwork.co was conceived to help forward-thinking VC firms and individual VCs find the startups that have what it takes to succeed. The award-winning partnership between these two innovative women makes it clear that both understand that VC investing is all about connections.
Ms. Ta is a seasoned entrepreneur with two successful ventures to her credit. She was the Founder and CEO of Titan Securities, a full service investment firm that was acquired in 2005. Prior to founding Titan Securities she was the driving force behind Vantage Investments, a full-service broker-dealer start-up she founded in 1998-99 at the age of 27 and grew to a quarter of a billion dollars in assets.
Jenny is an author whose book, Wall Street Cinderella, which is currently in production talks to become a movie detailing her escape from Vietnam during the war and her path to success from welfare to Wall Street. As a self-made millionaire by the time she was 27, the book will serve as a roadmap for women looking at a business career.
She earned a Master of Business Administration degree in Financial Management. A Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from California State University, Fresno.
Kathy Herring Hayashi
IEEE Region 6 Women In Engineering Coordinator, IEEE HKNSenior Staff Engineer, Qualcomm
Kathy has been involved in semiconductor software her entire career. At Unisys Corporation, she worked in research and development, working in teams to develop advanced in-house CAD software tools, including a custom RTL, custom parsers and behavior to structure synthesis tools using rules based AI techniques. She also worked on an advanced parametric graphical layout language which significantly reduced the development complexity for layout. Through acquisition, she transitioned to Cadence Design Systems where some of the previous tools were incorporated into commercial EDA tools. She then brought her technical breadth and professional leadership to Syntricity, a San Diego based semiconductor startup. As the Director of Professional Services and Support, she led groups to successfully develop, test and support an internet based semiconductor yield management tool built on a high performance data warehouse. Kathy currently works at Qualcomm Inc., analyzing and optimizing semiconductor workflows in large scale compute environments. She also teaches at the Computer Science and Information Technology Department of Palomar College in San Marcos, California. Kathy Herring Hayashi founded and was past chair of the the San Diego IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group, recipient of the IEEE 2016 Southwest Area award for Outstanding Individual–Outstanding Leadership and Professional Service and is the 2017 IEEE Section 6 Director for Women in Engineering (Western Region).
Nadiah Saba'neh
Head of the Technical Development Directorate at the Palestinian Higher Council for Innovation and Excellence Nadiah Saba'neh, is the Head of the Technical Development Directorate at the Palestinian Higher Council for Innovation and Excellence. Her responsibilities vary from evaluating projects, overseeing the incubation process of startups, and leading the discovery of young innovators from schools and universities. Saba’neh was a DAAD scholarship holder and got a very good standing M.Sc degree in Wireless Communication Engineering and Excellent standing B.Sc degree in Telecommunications Technology. Saba'neh has a total of 10 years experience working for Relief International, an international non-governmental organization as a programs manager, Palestinian Cellular Operator Jawwal in the Project management and the strategic planning unit, in addition to Teaching at the Electrical Engineering department in BirZeit University.
Saba’neh has participated in Techwomen 2015 mentorship program as an emerging leader in STEM fields from Palestine and since then is working hard to transfer the knowledge and experience gained to other community members.
On her future plans, Saba’neh is preparing for her PhD studies and wishes to work for the International Telecommunication Union one day.
In her free time, Saba’neh enjoys the adventure of travelling and sightseeing.
Saba’neh has participated in Techwomen 2015 mentorship program as an emerging leader in STEM fields from Palestine and since then is working hard to transfer the knowledge and experience gained to other community members.
On her future plans, Saba’neh is preparing for her PhD studies and wishes to work for the International Telecommunication Union one day.
In her free time, Saba’neh enjoys the adventure of travelling and sightseeing.
Marie Perruchet
Journalist, a marketing expert and the author of "One Perfect Pitch, how to sell your idea, your product, your business or yourself" at McGraw-Hill Marie Perruchet is a journalist, a marketing expert and the author of "One Perfect Pitch, how to sell your idea, your product, your business or yourself" at McGraw-Hill.
A "child of the world", she was born in South Korea, was adopted to French parents, worked in Europe, in India and in China as a political journalist for the BBC. In 2008, inspired by the campaign of President Obama, she moved to the US to follow her passion for storytelling. She reinvented her career in Silicon Valley, first freelancing as a videographer for technology companies, then moved to the startup world as a pitch coach for startup incubators such as 500 startups.
Realizing that nailing your pitch was fundamental to the success of all, she created a universal method for engineers, marketers and product managers to tell their story and pitch it effectively. She now advises businesses on their best storytelling strategies through brand engagement seminars and marketing programs. You can find her book on Amazon and follow her on LinkedIn, on her Facebook page or on Instagram @oneperfectpitch
A "child of the world", she was born in South Korea, was adopted to French parents, worked in Europe, in India and in China as a political journalist for the BBC. In 2008, inspired by the campaign of President Obama, she moved to the US to follow her passion for storytelling. She reinvented her career in Silicon Valley, first freelancing as a videographer for technology companies, then moved to the startup world as a pitch coach for startup incubators such as 500 startups.
Realizing that nailing your pitch was fundamental to the success of all, she created a universal method for engineers, marketers and product managers to tell their story and pitch it effectively. She now advises businesses on their best storytelling strategies through brand engagement seminars and marketing programs. You can find her book on Amazon and follow her on LinkedIn, on her Facebook page or on Instagram @oneperfectpitch
Dr. Catalina Spataru
Director of the Course Mres Energy Demand Studies and the Leader of the Energy Space Time Group at UCL. Dr. Catalina Spataru, Lecturer (Assistant Professor in the US system) in Energy Systems and Networks at Energy Institute, UCL, London, UK. She is the Director of the Course Mres Energy Demand Studies and the Leader of the Energy Space Time Group at UCL.
In her role at UCL, she employs a unique blend of research, teaching and consultancy, with great passion to help government and companies to build sustainable Transformations and rethinking the future of the energy system. Dr Spataru has published widely and has been in several committees and scientific chair for a number of conferences. She also is responsible for securing funding for research initiatives and has served as a Principal and Co-Investigator on several research grants. Her research focuses on energy systems and networks with main interest in interconnected regions (EU, West Africa, Latin America) and islands. She has strong interest in multidisciplinary research, such as water-energy-land-food nexus to assess the water scarce implications in risky countries like Brazil, Jordan, Egypt etc. She has complemented her research expertise with an extensive portfolio of publications, speaking engagements and leadership activities. She is the regional representative of the IEEE Women in Power (Region 8- Europe). She has written the book Whole Energy System Dynamics.
In her role at UCL, she employs a unique blend of research, teaching and consultancy, with great passion to help government and companies to build sustainable Transformations and rethinking the future of the energy system. Dr Spataru has published widely and has been in several committees and scientific chair for a number of conferences. She also is responsible for securing funding for research initiatives and has served as a Principal and Co-Investigator on several research grants. Her research focuses on energy systems and networks with main interest in interconnected regions (EU, West Africa, Latin America) and islands. She has strong interest in multidisciplinary research, such as water-energy-land-food nexus to assess the water scarce implications in risky countries like Brazil, Jordan, Egypt etc. She has complemented her research expertise with an extensive portfolio of publications, speaking engagements and leadership activities. She is the regional representative of the IEEE Women in Power (Region 8- Europe). She has written the book Whole Energy System Dynamics.
Andrea S. Kramer
Author:Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work
Andrea S. Kramer is a partner in an international law firm, where she is a founding member of the firm’s Diversity Committee and co-chair of its Gender Diversity Subcommittee. She previously served on its Management and Compensation Committees. Andie is co-author with her husband, Alton B. Harris, of the bookBreaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work,which was named one of the best business books of 2016 by Women@Work and “a well-organized, well-thought-out call to action” by Publishers Weekly. She isalso the co-author of over50 articles and blog posts on promoting diversity and overcoming gender stereotypes and biases. Andie has spoken at more than 150 national diversity conferences, trade association meetings, professional service firms, multinational corporations, podcasts, and webinars on the importance of assuring women equal access to career opportunities and leadership roles.
Among her many honors and awards, Andie was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal for her “demonstrated power to change the legal landscape, shape public affairs, launch industries, and do big things.” She received theInspiration Award from the Coalition of Women in Law Initiatives; the Top Women Lawyers in Leadership Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois; the2014 Gender Diversity Private Practice Lawyer of the Year from ChambersUSA; the Founder’s Award from the Chicago Bar Associations Alliance for Women; and the Women With Vision Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois.Finding that mentorship opportunities for young women are limited in most organizations, Andie co-founded and serves as the Chair of the board of directors of the Women’s Leadership and Mentoring Alliance (WLMA).Andie was profiled in Chicago Lawyer magazine (February 2012) as an “inspiring innovator” as the first in its series on “members of the legal community who think outside the box and inspire their colleagues.” She was featured as a “Remarkable Woman” by the Chicago Tribune in August 2013, as a “Top Lawyer with a Corner Office” with a “Penchant for Platypuses and a Dream of Gender Equality.” Join the discussion at www.AndieandAl.com.
Among her many honors and awards, Andie was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal for her “demonstrated power to change the legal landscape, shape public affairs, launch industries, and do big things.” She received theInspiration Award from the Coalition of Women in Law Initiatives; the Top Women Lawyers in Leadership Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois; the2014 Gender Diversity Private Practice Lawyer of the Year from ChambersUSA; the Founder’s Award from the Chicago Bar Associations Alliance for Women; and the Women With Vision Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois.Finding that mentorship opportunities for young women are limited in most organizations, Andie co-founded and serves as the Chair of the board of directors of the Women’s Leadership and Mentoring Alliance (WLMA).Andie was profiled in Chicago Lawyer magazine (February 2012) as an “inspiring innovator” as the first in its series on “members of the legal community who think outside the box and inspire their colleagues.” She was featured as a “Remarkable Woman” by the Chicago Tribune in August 2013, as a “Top Lawyer with a Corner Office” with a “Penchant for Platypuses and a Dream of Gender Equality.” Join the discussion at www.AndieandAl.com.
Alton B. Harris
Author:Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work
Al was a founding partner of the law firm of Ungaretti& Harris, which is now part of Nixon Peabody LLP, where Al is a partner. At Ungaretti& Harris, Al served for many years as managing partner and then as a member of its Executive and Compensation Committees. In these roles, he had extensive experience mentoring and advising women in many career fields, focusing on the communication skills they need to advance in their chosen fields, despite the prevalence of negative gender stereotypes.Al speaks to women about what male colleagues expect from future leaders, offering creative ideas and useful techniques to be seen as talented leaders. He also speaks to organizations and the men that run them about the negative affect gender bias has on their organizations, providing practical steps to eliminate gender bias. He is co-author with his wife, Andrea S. Kramer, of the book Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work, which was named one of the best business books of 2016 by Women@Work and “a well-organized, well-thought-out call to action” by Publishers Weekly. He is also the co-author of over 50 articles and blog posts on promoting diversity and overcoming stereotypes and biases. Join the discussion at www.AndieandAl.com.
Jean McManus
Executive Director – Emerging Technologies in Verizon Labs
Jean McManus is the Executive Director – Emerging Technologies in Verizon Labs. She has responsibility for product innovation with emerging technologies. She also is responsible for a product proof of concept lab in Irving, TX. For more than 20 years, Jean has held both management and technical positions at Verizon in IP architecture, metro Ethernet architecture, network security, VoIP design, and optical network architecture. Early in her career, Jean worked at GTE Government Systems (formerly Contel Federal Systems) as a systems and security engineer.
Jean was recognized by Fierce Telecom as both a 2011 Women in Wireline and in a series entitled “Six Faces of IPv6” for her leadership at Verizon during the 2011 World IPv6 Day. She regularly champions Women in Tech initiatives within Verizon Labs including Women’s Developer Summits and Women’s Networking Circles. Jean received her PhD (Systems Engineering) and MSE (Electrical Engineering) from University of Pennsylvania and a BSE (Electrical Engineering) from Duke University.
Jean was recognized by Fierce Telecom as both a 2011 Women in Wireline and in a series entitled “Six Faces of IPv6” for her leadership at Verizon during the 2011 World IPv6 Day. She regularly champions Women in Tech initiatives within Verizon Labs including Women’s Developer Summits and Women’s Networking Circles. Jean received her PhD (Systems Engineering) and MSE (Electrical Engineering) from University of Pennsylvania and a BSE (Electrical Engineering) from Duke University.
Melissa Marshall
Technical Presentations Expert and TED Speaker, Melissa Marshall Consulting LLC
Melissa Marshall is on a mission: to transform how scientists and engineers present their work. That’s because she believes that even the best science is destined to remain undiscovered unless it’s presented in a clear and compelling way that sparks innovation and drives adoption. For almost a decade, she’s traveled around the world to work with Fortune 100 corporations, institutions and universities, teaching the proven strategies she’s mastered through her consulting work and during her 10 years as a faculty member at Penn State University. Melissa is an in-demand leading expert in the area of technical presentations. When your team works with Melissa, they’ll get the practical skills and natural confidence they need to immediately shift their “information dump”-style presentations into ones that are meaningful, engaging, and inspire people to take action. Melissa’s talks are lively, practical and transformational. For a sneak peek, check out her TED Talk, “Talk Nerdy to Me.” It’s been watched by nearly 2 million people (and counting). Learn what other clients have to say about Melissa at www.PresentYourScience.com. Melissa can be reached at melissa@presentyourscience.com
Leah Jamieson
The John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at Purdue University, Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Leah Jamieson is The John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at Purdue University, Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and holds a courtesy appointment in Purdue’s School of Engineering Education. She is co-founder and past director of the EPICS – Engineering Projects in Community Service Program. She servedas the 2008 President and CEO of the IEEE, 2005 Vice President of Publication Services and Products, 2003 Vice President for Technical Activities and is the IEEE Foundation Past President.
Jamieson served on the steering committee for the report Changing the Conversation: Developing Effective Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering (NAE, 2008), was co-chair of the American Society for Engineering Education project “Innovation with Impact: Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systemic Innovation in Engineering Education (ASEE, 2012), and was a member of the planning committee for the report Advancing Research in Science and Engineering (ARISE-II): Unleashing American’s Research and Innovation Enterprise (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2013). She has been recognized with the National Academy of Engineering’s Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, the NSF Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars, the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Social Impact, and the Simon Bolivar medal from the National Ministry of Education of Colombia. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Society for Engineering Education. Jamieson received her S.B. in Mathematics from MIT and her PhD in Electrical Engineering and computer Science from Princeton University.
Jamieson served on the steering committee for the report Changing the Conversation: Developing Effective Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering (NAE, 2008), was co-chair of the American Society for Engineering Education project “Innovation with Impact: Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systemic Innovation in Engineering Education (ASEE, 2012), and was a member of the planning committee for the report Advancing Research in Science and Engineering (ARISE-II): Unleashing American’s Research and Innovation Enterprise (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2013). She has been recognized with the National Academy of Engineering’s Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, the NSF Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars, the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Social Impact, and the Simon Bolivar medal from the National Ministry of Education of Colombia. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Society for Engineering Education. Jamieson received her S.B. in Mathematics from MIT and her PhD in Electrical Engineering and computer Science from Princeton University.
Rosina L. Racioppi
President and CEO, WOMEN Unlimited, Inc As President and Chief Executive Officer of WOMEN Unlimited, Inc., Dr. Rosina Racioppi spearheads her organization’s initiatives to help leading organizations cultivate the talented women leaders they need for ongoing growth and profitability. By overseeing the management of programs and services nationwide, Dr. Racioppi helps organizations meet the challenges of a continually changing global economy. Additionally, she works with corporate partners to assess and update offerings to their high-potential women; and ensures that WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. is in synch with the needs of its present and potential partners.
Dr. Racioppi earned her doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Executive Program. Her dissertation, “Women’s Mentoring Wisdom” focuses on how women use and fail to use mentoring at the all-important mid-career level and has been a springboard for discussions on tools and techniques for improving the mentoring process . She is also the co-author with Jean Otte, WOMEN Unlimited’s Founder of the book,Women are Changing the Corporate Landscape: Rules for Cultivating Leadership Excellence.
Dr. Racioppi earned her doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Executive Program. Her dissertation, “Women’s Mentoring Wisdom” focuses on how women use and fail to use mentoring at the all-important mid-career level and has been a springboard for discussions on tools and techniques for improving the mentoring process . She is also the co-author with Jean Otte, WOMEN Unlimited’s Founder of the book,Women are Changing the Corporate Landscape: Rules for Cultivating Leadership Excellence.
Paulina Yenbic Chan
Principal & CEO, Global Mutual Innovation Consortium Focus on applications and translational technologies into commercial products and services in STEM & M(Management), Paulina directs and works with multidisciplinary professionals across continents to foster collaborations in innovative technologies, intelligent infrastructures and green energies. She is a strong advocator of entrepreneurship and Women In STEM.
Dr Chan’s career includes Managing Directors of AT&T/Lucent Technologies in the US, Asia/Pacific Region (expatriate) and the EU (expatriate); Project Director of Exxon/Mobil Corporation Headquarters, New York NY; China Regional General Manager (expatriate) of ICO Global Communications London and Beijing; and Senior Adviser of the EU for Hungary.
Paulina has chaired many programmes and technical session committees of major national and international conferences, including the IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineer) - ICC, GLOBCOM, NTC, DSP and INFOCOM. She is also the Champion of the Imperial College London Mentoring Programme to guide young scientists / technologists / engineers / managers-in-training to develop career paths and personal growth.
Dr Chan’s career includes Managing Directors of AT&T/Lucent Technologies in the US, Asia/Pacific Region (expatriate) and the EU (expatriate); Project Director of Exxon/Mobil Corporation Headquarters, New York NY; China Regional General Manager (expatriate) of ICO Global Communications London and Beijing; and Senior Adviser of the EU for Hungary.
Paulina has chaired many programmes and technical session committees of major national and international conferences, including the IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineer) - ICC, GLOBCOM, NTC, DSP and INFOCOM. She is also the Champion of the Imperial College London Mentoring Programme to guide young scientists / technologists / engineers / managers-in-training to develop career paths and personal growth.
Hillary Barnhart
Senior Director, AGS Equipment, Applied Materials, Inc. Entrepreneurial, connected, results-oriented, passionate about innovation and leadership, Hillary is senior director of business operations and program management for a $500M+ global business within Applied Materials. She brings visions to life and gives life to visions. concept-to-market, quote-to-cash, process optimization, business transformation. Hillary founded an intrapraneurial venture in the augmented reality space. Her professional experience includes 20+ years in pivotal roles within engineering, product management, marketing, supply chain, IT and business development.
Hillary serves as a Board Member for the Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley (ACGSV) and is director for Women in Technology International’s (WITI) semiconductor industry network. She is inspired by helping women develop their leadership potential. Hillary earned her MBA at Santa Clara University, and MSIE and BSEE from Stanford University.
Hillary serves as a Board Member for the Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley (ACGSV) and is director for Women in Technology International’s (WITI) semiconductor industry network. She is inspired by helping women develop their leadership potential. Hillary earned her MBA at Santa Clara University, and MSIE and BSEE from Stanford University.
Darya Chudova
VP of Bioinformatics at Guardant Health
Darya leads Guardant Health’s growing bioinformatics function and has deep experience developing analytical methods and software for interpreting genomic sequencing data for Illumina and Veracyte.She has an extensive background in probability and machine learning, and her work exploring the use of genomic sequencing in non-invasive prenatal testing has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. She holds a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Irvine.
Rochelle Rice
President, In Fitness & In Health
Rochelle is a Movement Expert helping businesses and organizations move in new directions by creatinga direct relationship with their physical bodies for increased energy, efficiency and creativity. She hasappeared on Fox News, ABC World News Tonight and the CBS Early Show. and her movement programhas been featured in the New York Times, the LA Times, Family Circle and Fit Magazine. Rochelle is theonly woman in the world to hold the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from the NationalSpeakers Association and the Accredited Speaker (AS) designation from Toastmasters International. Sheis currently serving a three year term on the Board of the National Speakers Association. Her passion andcommitment stems from her belief that being inclusive and collaborative leads to success in today’s world.
Gina Otts
Manager, Emerging Technologies VZ Labs
Gina Otts is a Manager of the Emerging Technologies team within Verizon Labs. She leads a team ofsoftware/hardware engineers developing early stage prototypes focusing on the use of artificial intelligencein the fields of robotics and video content. Gina and her team are delivering innovation solutions by blendingadvanced software with Verizon’s wireless technologies to enhance the human interaction with mobileproducts. Gina also participates in numerous events focused on inspiring and educating young girls to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering. Gina has a bachelors in Computer Science from University of Iowa and an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Osnat Benari
Sr. Director Research and Development, AOL
Osnat leads Research and Development for Area 51, AOL's innovation arm looking at future technologies and partnerships relevant to AOL's portfolio of content and advertising brands. In her role, she partners with startups and universities to identify relevant technologies and talent to work on tomorrow's next big ideas. She also leads the Area 51 program, where employees and recent college grads can bring their ideas to production.Osnat is a product creator and an active mentor for startups, and serves in several groups dedicated to empowering women to in lead in tech. Before AOL Area 51, she led the product groups for AOL Video and Studios
Kelly Simmons
Senior Faculty member at Center for Creative Leadership, San Diego Campus Kelly joined the Center for Creative Leadership as an Associate Coach in EMEA in 2008, and as Senior Facultyin San Diego, California in 2015. She began her working career as a Manufacturing and Supply Chain engineerat Hewlett Packard Company in San Diego, USA and Guadalajara, Mexico where she led projects based in Asiaand South America.Kelly is a specialist in applying systems thinking to organizational, team and individual leadershipdevelopment. She has merged a solution focused approach with learning and development, culture change,coaching and facilitation to engage organizations to meet the wide range of situations that they face.
Prior to joining CCL, Kelly led the set up and operation of the consulting and training departments of twostart-up boutique consulting firms in Barcelona, Spain. She has been on the faculty at EADA business schoolin Barcelona, Spain for 10 years, and has designed and delivered leadership and organizational developmentprograms across Europe and the United States. She has worked within the tech/high tech/biotech, finance,manufacturing, consumer products, healthcare, energy and alternative energy sectors.
Her specialization in organizational systems shows up in the chapter she co-authored in the book, “Seeingteams as Human Systems” in the 2008 publication of “Do you Work or Collaborate?” (“¿Trabajas ocolaboras?) by Profit Editorial, 2011. She has spoken twice about Systems Thinking in Leadership at the IEEEInternational Women’s Leadership Conference in the Silicon Valley (2014 & 2015).
Prior to joining CCL, Kelly led the set up and operation of the consulting and training departments of twostart-up boutique consulting firms in Barcelona, Spain. She has been on the faculty at EADA business schoolin Barcelona, Spain for 10 years, and has designed and delivered leadership and organizational developmentprograms across Europe and the United States. She has worked within the tech/high tech/biotech, finance,manufacturing, consumer products, healthcare, energy and alternative energy sectors.
Her specialization in organizational systems shows up in the chapter she co-authored in the book, “Seeingteams as Human Systems” in the 2008 publication of “Do you Work or Collaborate?” (“¿Trabajas ocolaboras?) by Profit Editorial, 2011. She has spoken twice about Systems Thinking in Leadership at the IEEEInternational Women’s Leadership Conference in the Silicon Valley (2014 & 2015).
Patty Burke
Strategic Business Partner, Innovation and Leadership Solutions Patty is an experienced C-level executive who has served in operational roles with large corporations andstartups and as a consultant to venture capital firms, corporate venture and innovation groups andtechnology startups. She was founder and managing partner of Accelevate, an innovation consulting firmproviding business model validation and innovation training for corporate innovation teams, based on LeanStartup and Business Model Canvas principles. She also consulted for Bell Mason Group, conductingcorporate innovation readiness assessments, innovation training and corporate venture capital programs.Consulting clients have included AmEx, CitiGroup, Coca-Cola, Philips, Siemens, Dignity Health, SanDisk,McAfee, Fujifilm, Alcatel-Lucent, DSM and Merck.
As Director of Product Marketing at Peter Norton Computing and as VP Marketing at Symantec, Pattypioneered the consumer anti-virus category and managed worldwide corporate, channel and productmarketing. She was the first US marketing executive for UK-based Madge Networks, growing the companyby 15X over 3 years to a successful NASDAQ IPO. As VP Marketing and the first non-engineering executive atRamp Networks, she helped create the small business internet access category and drove marketing andsales leading to Ramp’s 1999 IPO and acquisition by Nokia in 2001. She was previously a Partner with RegisMcKenna Inc. in Palo Alto and GM of RMI’s Los Angeles office. Patty was also an instructor for the CalTechIndustrial Relations Center Executive Education program.
Patty represents CCL in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, working closely with clients in technology, healthcareand financial services. She is also a member of CCL’s Global Innovation Practice Community.
As Director of Product Marketing at Peter Norton Computing and as VP Marketing at Symantec, Pattypioneered the consumer anti-virus category and managed worldwide corporate, channel and productmarketing. She was the first US marketing executive for UK-based Madge Networks, growing the companyby 15X over 3 years to a successful NASDAQ IPO. As VP Marketing and the first non-engineering executive atRamp Networks, she helped create the small business internet access category and drove marketing andsales leading to Ramp’s 1999 IPO and acquisition by Nokia in 2001. She was previously a Partner with RegisMcKenna Inc. in Palo Alto and GM of RMI’s Los Angeles office. Patty was also an instructor for the CalTechIndustrial Relations Center Executive Education program.
Patty represents CCL in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, working closely with clients in technology, healthcareand financial services. She is also a member of CCL’s Global Innovation Practice Community.
Randi Sumner
Senior Director, IEEE Strategy & Entrepreneurship, IEEE Randi Sumner has over twenty years of experience shepherding associations towards success. She has worked for a wide range of non-profit organizations, ranging from those with almost no budget and staff to those with a $400 million budget and over 1,000 employees. Sumner has led a wide variety of strategic programs at IEEE servicing over 430,000 members of both IEEE and it’s more than 50 Technical Communities since 2007.
Throughout her over 20-year career, Sumner has successfully envisioned and initiated new, uncharted and profit-driven “bootstrap startup” projects within a wide variety of mission driven organizations. The impact of her role in several projects helped to transform business models as well as drive energy into stagnant organizations.
Currently she holds the position of Director, Volunteer Engagement & Strategy for the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society where she spearheaded the launch of IEEE’s Entrepreneurship initiative. This first-of-its-kind IEEE initiative inspires a global community for technology founders, engineers working in startups, as well as the vendors and funders helping to scale these businesses. Her efforts have brought the IEEE's global resources to technology entrepreneurs while inspiring new style events, virtual communities, and a video channel dedicated to startups.
Sumner brings to her leadership perspective, the knowledge and wisdom acquired as the Chief Staff Executive of the New Jersey Society of Association Executives, an organization that serviced Association Professionals in New Jersey before it’s 2010 merger into the Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives. Prior to that, she severed as Deputy Executive Director of the New Jersey Apartment Association. During that tenure, the association doubled in both staff and budget. In addition to her executive skills, she has been a strategy consultant, career and presentation coach and a professional speaker.
Sumner is a Certified Association Executive (CAE) and a cum laude graduate of Brandeis University.
Throughout her over 20-year career, Sumner has successfully envisioned and initiated new, uncharted and profit-driven “bootstrap startup” projects within a wide variety of mission driven organizations. The impact of her role in several projects helped to transform business models as well as drive energy into stagnant organizations.
Currently she holds the position of Director, Volunteer Engagement & Strategy for the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society where she spearheaded the launch of IEEE’s Entrepreneurship initiative. This first-of-its-kind IEEE initiative inspires a global community for technology founders, engineers working in startups, as well as the vendors and funders helping to scale these businesses. Her efforts have brought the IEEE's global resources to technology entrepreneurs while inspiring new style events, virtual communities, and a video channel dedicated to startups.
Sumner brings to her leadership perspective, the knowledge and wisdom acquired as the Chief Staff Executive of the New Jersey Society of Association Executives, an organization that serviced Association Professionals in New Jersey before it’s 2010 merger into the Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives. Prior to that, she severed as Deputy Executive Director of the New Jersey Apartment Association. During that tenure, the association doubled in both staff and budget. In addition to her executive skills, she has been a strategy consultant, career and presentation coach and a professional speaker.
Sumner is a Certified Association Executive (CAE) and a cum laude graduate of Brandeis University.
Christie Pitts
Development Manager at Verizon Ventures Christie is a venture development manager at Verizon Ventures works with their portfolio companies to create compelling new value propositions for Verizon, source new technology, and identify emerging technology trends. Christie has been with Verizon for over 10 years and has held a variety of sales, marketing, and operations leadership roles. Most recently, Christie focused on developing fruitful relationships in the startup community, with a focus on IoT and the sharing economy. Christie began her career in retail sales and moved on to lead the marketing and sales operations teams for the Northern California/Nevada/Hawaii market. Christie holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from San Jose State University and a MBA from University of Phoenix. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Shilpa Prasad
Director, Strategy and Innovation at YouNoodle
Shilpa Prasad is Director, Strategy and Innovation at YouNoodle and is responsible for taking to market YouNoodle's products and services. As an innovation partner, YouNoodle helps support businesses through the entire lifecycle of designing, launching, managing and scaling innovation challenges with a combination of its industry leading Products, Platforms and Services.
Prior to YouNoodle, Shilpa was the Director of Business Development at Custom Insight, a Saas platform for employee engagement solutions.
A quintessential entrepreneur, Shilpa is fascinated by everything entrepreneurial and how the landscape is creating an avalanche of disruption. She draws her energy from an adrenaline fueled start-up environment and helping create change on a global scale. YouNoodle is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco and focuses on driving startup engagement in the global and local ecosystems. We work along with various local and international stakeholders, key partners and entrepreneurs to achieve our client’s objectives & help solve business problems using startups. We run startup programs that are currently sourcing over 10,000 startups per quarter from 178 different countries. Our technology is unique for its global reach, quality and early-stage of companies. Our technology platform (the backbone of the YouNoodle startup sourcing and selection engine) makes it easy and seamless for sourcing, screening and selecting startups.
Prior to YouNoodle, Shilpa was the Director of Business Development at Custom Insight, a Saas platform for employee engagement solutions.
A quintessential entrepreneur, Shilpa is fascinated by everything entrepreneurial and how the landscape is creating an avalanche of disruption. She draws her energy from an adrenaline fueled start-up environment and helping create change on a global scale. YouNoodle is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco and focuses on driving startup engagement in the global and local ecosystems. We work along with various local and international stakeholders, key partners and entrepreneurs to achieve our client’s objectives & help solve business problems using startups. We run startup programs that are currently sourcing over 10,000 startups per quarter from 178 different countries. Our technology is unique for its global reach, quality and early-stage of companies. Our technology platform (the backbone of the YouNoodle startup sourcing and selection engine) makes it easy and seamless for sourcing, screening and selecting startups.
Terri Hanson Mead
President, Solutions2Projects and Vice President, Sand Hill Angels
Terri Mead is president of Solutions2Projects, LLC and has spent the last 18 years working with, andadvising, emerging life sciences companies on IT strategy, IT compliance, system selection, projectmanagement, and computer validation. Ms. Mead is passionate about leveraging technology toimprove business processes to move towards commercialization and increase overall profitability.
Ms. Mead is an active angel investor and Vice President of Sand Hill Angels. Ms. Mead regularly advisesstartups on their pitches and business strategy. Ms. Mead focuses on investing in companies that haveproducts or services that improve peoples’ lives including MyHealthTeams, Sandstone Diagnostics,TomboyX and Zum.
Ms. Mead is an advocate for women and girls and is exploring ways to increase the level of VC fundingfor female led startups. She is a commercially rated helicopter pilot, and when time permits, loves toshare her love of flight with girls so that they, too, know that they can be pilots.
On a personal note, Ms. Mead is a Bay Area native with two children, ages 12 and 15, and is fortunate tohave a husband who has been a stay-at- home dad for the last 10 years allowing Ms. Mead to enjoy,pursue and succeed at personal and professional endeavors.
Ms. Mead is an active angel investor and Vice President of Sand Hill Angels. Ms. Mead regularly advisesstartups on their pitches and business strategy. Ms. Mead focuses on investing in companies that haveproducts or services that improve peoples’ lives including MyHealthTeams, Sandstone Diagnostics,TomboyX and Zum.
Ms. Mead is an advocate for women and girls and is exploring ways to increase the level of VC fundingfor female led startups. She is a commercially rated helicopter pilot, and when time permits, loves toshare her love of flight with girls so that they, too, know that they can be pilots.
On a personal note, Ms. Mead is a Bay Area native with two children, ages 12 and 15, and is fortunate tohave a husband who has been a stay-at- home dad for the last 10 years allowing Ms. Mead to enjoy,pursue and succeed at personal and professional endeavors.
Samantha Snabes
Co- Founder, re:3D
Samantha Snabes is a Catalyst for re:3D facilitating connections between others printing human-scaleand/or using recycled materials to create more access to 3D printable solutions worldwide. As re:3D Co-Founder, she currently serves on the IEEE Entrepreneurship Steering Committee. Previously, she servedas the Social Entrepreneur in Residence for the NASA HQ and Deputy Strategist supporting NASAJohnson Space Center’s Space Life Sciences Directorate after selling a start-up for a DARPA-funded, co-patented tissue culture device. Samantha holds a BS in Biology, BA degrees in International Relations and Hispanic Studies, a MBA with concentrations in Supply Chain Management & International Relations,and certifications as a firefighter & EMT-B.To her knowledge, Samantha is the CEO of one of the few 3D printing companies with a social focus.
Currently she is actively working to capture the efforts of like-minded peers in the 3D printingcommunity who are serving others. Samantha has spent the last year traveling to personally connectwith thought leaders in the field and interviewing 3D printing users making a difference, which she islooking forward to sharing during her presentation. She also has begun donating one large 3D printer forevery 100 her company delivers to groups seeking to make a difference through 3D printing.
Additionally, her company is actively pursuing opportunities to 3D print from plastic trash.
Currently she is actively working to capture the efforts of like-minded peers in the 3D printingcommunity who are serving others. Samantha has spent the last year traveling to personally connectwith thought leaders in the field and interviewing 3D printing users making a difference, which she islooking forward to sharing during her presentation. She also has begun donating one large 3D printer forevery 100 her company delivers to groups seeking to make a difference through 3D printing.
Additionally, her company is actively pursuing opportunities to 3D print from plastic trash.
Mary Ellen Randall
IEEE Director, Vice President of Member and Geographic Activities
Mary Ellen Randall is founder/CEO of Ascot Technologies, Inc., an award winning software company which develops mobile apps for enterprises.
Ms. Randall serves on the IEEE Board of Directors, as the IEEE Vice President for Member and Geographic Activities, as an IEEE Corporate Officer and as MOVE Community Outreach Program Director, an IEEE-USA Initiative.
Previously, Ms. Randall held a variety of management and technical positions with IBM, including an international assignment, hardware and software development, digital video encoder & decoder chips, client/server services, network management, operating systems, and test design automation. She routinely managed projects on an international scale.
Ms. Randall is a member of the Eta Kappa Nu honor society in the profession ofElectrical and Computer Engineering.
Ms. Randall was named a top Woman In Business in the Research Triangle NC area and made Business Leader Magazine’s Impact 100 List.
She has an MS Computer Science and Bachelors in Mathematics from Binghamton University.
Ms. Randall serves on the IEEE Board of Directors, as the IEEE Vice President for Member and Geographic Activities, as an IEEE Corporate Officer and as MOVE Community Outreach Program Director, an IEEE-USA Initiative.
Previously, Ms. Randall held a variety of management and technical positions with IBM, including an international assignment, hardware and software development, digital video encoder & decoder chips, client/server services, network management, operating systems, and test design automation. She routinely managed projects on an international scale.
Ms. Randall is a member of the Eta Kappa Nu honor society in the profession ofElectrical and Computer Engineering.
Ms. Randall was named a top Woman In Business in the Research Triangle NC area and made Business Leader Magazine’s Impact 100 List.
She has an MS Computer Science and Bachelors in Mathematics from Binghamton University.
Kim Moore
Operating Partner, Glynn Capital Management Kim Moore is the Operating Partner at Glynn Capital Management. She is dedicated to supporting and adding value to the Firm's private portfolio companies through business development and corporate development initiatives. Additionally, Kim is responsible for managing and growing the Firm’s relationships with Fortune 1000 C-level executives. From 2013-2017, Kim was at Innovation Endeavors, an early-stage venture capital firm solely backed by Eric Schmidt. At Innovation Endeavors, Kim focused on business development andcorporate initiatives in the U.S. and Israel. She supported over 100 private companies with anemphasis product/market fit, customer growth and talent.
Previously, Kim worked at Asana and Olive Grove Consulting. Kim is the founder of REACH andon the Board for foster care focused organizations including: California CASA, Together We Rise,HEAR and Advanced Studies Scholarship Fund.
Kim received her undergraduate degree with honors in Social Science from University ofCalifornia, Irvine and her Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus Prevention Science and Practice.
Previously, Kim worked at Asana and Olive Grove Consulting. Kim is the founder of REACH andon the Board for foster care focused organizations including: California CASA, Together We Rise,HEAR and Advanced Studies Scholarship Fund.
Kim received her undergraduate degree with honors in Social Science from University ofCalifornia, Irvine and her Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus Prevention Science and Practice.
Whurley
Managing Director Goldman Sachs Whurley’s career has spanned over 20 years working for some of the most innovative companies on the planet including Apple Computer, and IBM. He has received numerous awards and recognitions including an Apple Design Award, being named an IBM Master Inventor, and being awarded the 2012 International Genius Grant from the City of Amsterdam. In 2013 he was one of 100 innovators on British Airways inaugural UnGrounded flight. In 2016 he co-founded EQUALS; A Partnership For Gender Equality In The Digital Age with the United Nations ITU and UNWomen. Whurley is a published author and frequent public speaker focusing his personal efforts on innovation and diversity.
Jackie M. Peer
Director, SEL University Jackie M. Peer earned a BSEE from Washington State University and currently serves at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories as the director of SEL University.
In 1996, Peer joined SEL as an application engineer and since then has held a variety of positions, including R&D management of distribution engineering for relays and controls, time and communications products, and LAN products. She has led technical marketing functions, served as regional sales and service director for the West region of the U.S., and as the director of SEL’s Modern Solutions Power Systems Conference.
Peer is a senior member of IEEE and the Society of Women Engineers, and a member of IEEE PES (Power Engineering Society), IEEE Women in Engineering (WiE), IEEE Women in Power (WiP), and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). She has written several papers covering workforce-related issues in the electric power industry and has presented at numerous industry events and conferences on this topic and on education and training within the industry.
An advocate for ensuring a well-educated industry workforce, Peer is involved at the national and regional levels of the IEEE Scholarship Plus Initiative™, presently serving as Chairman, whose purpose is increasing the supply of well-qualified, entry-level engineers to the power and energy industry. In addition, she serves on the Executive Board and Board of Directors for the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Lewis Clark Valley, serving over 5,000 area youth.
In 2014, Peer received The Manufacturing Institute’s Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Award, which recognizes women in those four disciplines who have made significant achievements in manufacturing.
In 1996, Peer joined SEL as an application engineer and since then has held a variety of positions, including R&D management of distribution engineering for relays and controls, time and communications products, and LAN products. She has led technical marketing functions, served as regional sales and service director for the West region of the U.S., and as the director of SEL’s Modern Solutions Power Systems Conference.
Peer is a senior member of IEEE and the Society of Women Engineers, and a member of IEEE PES (Power Engineering Society), IEEE Women in Engineering (WiE), IEEE Women in Power (WiP), and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). She has written several papers covering workforce-related issues in the electric power industry and has presented at numerous industry events and conferences on this topic and on education and training within the industry.
An advocate for ensuring a well-educated industry workforce, Peer is involved at the national and regional levels of the IEEE Scholarship Plus Initiative™, presently serving as Chairman, whose purpose is increasing the supply of well-qualified, entry-level engineers to the power and energy industry. In addition, she serves on the Executive Board and Board of Directors for the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Lewis Clark Valley, serving over 5,000 area youth.
In 2014, Peer received The Manufacturing Institute’s Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Award, which recognizes women in those four disciplines who have made significant achievements in manufacturing.
Tulsi Dharmarajan
VP Product Management & Design, Verb. Tulsi Dharmarajan has more than 20 years of leadership roles in Product Management, Design, and Technology. She is currently VP of Product Management at Verb, an Enterprise Employee Engagement platform that provides social impact opportunities and leadership development for employees through project-based learning and virtual volunteering.Tulsi is am passionate about creating user friendly, memorable enterprise products that solve problems.
Ben Larson
Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Gateway
Ben Larson is a serial entrepreneur, professional business coach, and startup adviser based in Silicon Valley. He is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Gateway, the premier startup accelerator for the burgeoning cannabis industry. In his spare, and less controversial time, Ben is a Director and Mentor for the Founder Institute, there he formerly managed global operations and helped grow Founder Institute into over 100 cities. He's active on several boards and advises early stage companies around the world.
Alexandra (Sasha) Good
CEO and Co-Founder of Janus Choice
Alexandra “Sasha” Goodwin, CEO and Co-Founder of Janus Choice, was born and grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. She originally came to the United States for graduate studies and stayed here permanently. Alexandra carries multiple graduate degrees in theoretical astrophysics from the US and Russia. She worked and did research in ultra-high energy cosmic rays and holds a patent in this field. She also has an extensive experience in corporate finance for telecommunications. The experience her family went through, when her father had series of strokes and heart attacks, lead to a search for a solution and resulted in Janus Choice creation. Since then, Alexandra has been working in healthcare space. She worked as a consultant for Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine and on e-Health projects for Walgreens. While working on Janus Choice, she also received MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Besides science and technology, Alexandra enjoys skiing, painting and classical music.
Jin Lee
CEO, Baby Noggin
CDC reports that 1 out 6 children have developmental or behavioral problems and 1 in 9 US births are premature (Boyle et al., 2011), costing healthcare $30+ billion annually. Extensive research proves early detection can improve outcomes and reduce costly interventions (Glascoe et al, 1997; WHO, 2007). To close the screening gap and offer parents peace of mind,BabyNoggin is a population health mobile platform that enables parents work seamlessly with their physicians to track their children’s developmental milestones and have early screening and early intervention.
Deanna Hearns
Group Program Manager, Microsoft HoloLens & Mixed Reality Experiences, Microsoft
Deanna Hearns leads Strategy and Production for Microsoft HoloLens & Mixed Reality applications. She and her team deliver applications for customers and craft groundbreaking experiences for Microsoft HoloLens across audiences including a rich content portfolio that will inspire creativity and innovation in the new medium. Previously, Deanna held leadership roles at Microsoft developing PC & XBox games as well as business and consumer mapping software.
Reeny Sondhi
Vice President, Product Security at Autodesk Reeny is Vice President, Product Security at Autodesk. She is responsible fordriving the strategy and execution of Autodesk's application security, cloud security, product security incident response and security complianceprograms across its diverse set of desktop and cloud products. Prior toAutodesk, she led the Security Engineering team at EMC for 10+ years. Reeny is known in the industry as a product security expert and is regularlycalled on to present at conferences. She also has several years of productmanagement experience bringing multiple software and hardware productsto market. She is passionate about diversity in tech, encouraging women in pursuingSTEM education and mentoring talent in the technology field. Read her blogpost on this topic: http://girlrising.com/blog/nothing-is- unattainable-technology-is- for-girls- too/
Sophia Velastegui
Chief Product Officer, Doppler Labs Named one of Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Female Engineers in 2017,” Sophia has been the Head of Silicon / Architecture Roadmap and worked on Special Projects at Alphabet’s Nest as itgrew from a small company and scaled under Alphabet. Prior to joining Nest in 2014, Sophia led the “Think Tank” Program Management at Apple. She previously led the company’s Laptop & SpecialProjects Product Management group.Her experiences in Silicon Valley, as well as her prior experience at Applied Materials, HarvardBusiness School, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech, provide her with global perspectives on productizing technology, execution, and strategic planning. She has been awarded a number of patents and is alsoactive in the greater tech community. Beyond her work at Nest, Sophia is on the advisory board of Georgia Tech, a Woodruff School ofMechanical Engineering. She is also an advisor and mentor in Georgia Tech’s Create X incubator.Additionally, Sophia is a board director of Elwyn.org, a nonprofit servicing children and adults withdisabilities.
Raylene Yung
Lead, Stripe's Applications team Raylene leads Stripe's Applications team, which builds API anddashboard products that enable people to successfully run theirbusinesses end-to-end on Stripe. Prior to Stripe, she was anEngineering Director at Facebook. There, she led product initiativesaround privacy and content creation, as well as earlier projects onthe Facebook News Feed and Timeline. Raylene holds a BS and MS inComputer Science from Stanford University.
Nisha Thatte-Potter
Senior Engineering Manager, Ten-X Nisha Thatte-Potter is a Senior Engineering Manager at Ten-X, the nation’s leading online real estate transaction marketplace. Ten-X is transforming the real estate industry having sold residential and commercial properties to date totaling almost $46 billion. At Ten-X, Nisha has worked both as an individual contributor, technical lead, and in engineering management on all three lines of their business. Prior to Ten-X, she worked as software engineer focused on user interfaces at companies ranging from ten person startups to large corporations such as Electronic Arts, IBM, Raytheon and Oracle. She holds a Masters Degree from Brown University and a Bachelors Degree from Smith College, both in Computer Science.
Gunjan Aggarwal
Global Head of Talent Acquisition, D&I, and M/A
Gunjan Aggarwal is an accomplished HR leader with several years of experience as Head of HR in various roles across US, Switzerland, UK, and India.
Currently, Gunjan heads up the Global Talent Acquisition, Diversity Recruitment, and M&A HR function at Ericsson. She is also the HR Head of the Media Business of Ericsson, headquartered in Santa Clara, US.
Gunjan is a passionate advocate of driving innovation and believes firmly that authenticleadership, a diverse culture, and digital enablement are the three influential drivers for success in organizations. As a woman of ethnic diversity, she looks to help other women and promote the Women in Leadership program at Ericsson. These passions drove her to contribute her time as an advisory board member CanGrade, a Harvard based start-up in analytics-based recruiting and Rubia, a non-profit that supports Afghan women.
Aggarwal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from JMI University in India and aMaster’s degree in Human Resources from XLRI Jamshedpur. She has also completed post-graduate executive programs from Stanford University, MIT, and Harvard University.
Currently, Gunjan heads up the Global Talent Acquisition, Diversity Recruitment, and M&A HR function at Ericsson. She is also the HR Head of the Media Business of Ericsson, headquartered in Santa Clara, US.
Gunjan is a passionate advocate of driving innovation and believes firmly that authenticleadership, a diverse culture, and digital enablement are the three influential drivers for success in organizations. As a woman of ethnic diversity, she looks to help other women and promote the Women in Leadership program at Ericsson. These passions drove her to contribute her time as an advisory board member CanGrade, a Harvard based start-up in analytics-based recruiting and Rubia, a non-profit that supports Afghan women.
Aggarwal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from JMI University in India and aMaster’s degree in Human Resources from XLRI Jamshedpur. She has also completed post-graduate executive programs from Stanford University, MIT, and Harvard University.
Farhin Ali
Cofounder of Frisco Neurofeedback
Farhin Ali earned her BSEE from Case Western Reserve University. She worked in the private sector as an engineer for 12 years before learning about neurofeedback’s effectiveness in optimizing human potential. Farhin Ali is an Ambassador and Forum moderator for NeurOptimal. She has her advanced certification from the Zengar Institute.
Farhin Ali is Cofounder of Frisco Neurofeedback, a company focused on empowering people of all ages to have access to life enhancing non-medical technologies to improve quality of life. Training, not treatment means no diagnosis, no labels, no pre-existing conditions. We offer diagnostically agnostic in-office sessions and rentals with unlimited 1on1 support, so you can train yourself or loved ones in the convenience of your own home no matter where you live.
Neurofeedback can help you become more productive, focused, clear, decisive, organized and confident. Neurofeedback brain training can help you become a better communicator, better project manager, and a better leader. It is a powerful tool to help you overcome what has been holding you back. Neurofeedback is safe and effective for seniors, adults and children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has rated neurofeedback level1 best support for ADHD, the same rating given Ritalin.
Frisco Neurofeedback gives back to veterans by sponsoring NeurOptimal neurofeedback to one veteran per month with the Homecoming for veterans, a nonprofit affiliated with the EEG institute.
Farhin Ali is Cofounder of Frisco Neurofeedback, a company focused on empowering people of all ages to have access to life enhancing non-medical technologies to improve quality of life. Training, not treatment means no diagnosis, no labels, no pre-existing conditions. We offer diagnostically agnostic in-office sessions and rentals with unlimited 1on1 support, so you can train yourself or loved ones in the convenience of your own home no matter where you live.
Neurofeedback can help you become more productive, focused, clear, decisive, organized and confident. Neurofeedback brain training can help you become a better communicator, better project manager, and a better leader. It is a powerful tool to help you overcome what has been holding you back. Neurofeedback is safe and effective for seniors, adults and children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has rated neurofeedback level1 best support for ADHD, the same rating given Ritalin.
Frisco Neurofeedback gives back to veterans by sponsoring NeurOptimal neurofeedback to one veteran per month with the Homecoming for veterans, a nonprofit affiliated with the EEG institute.
Sally L. Wood
Thomas J. Bannan Professor of Electrical Engineering, Santa Clara University
Sally L. Wood is the Thomas J. Bannon Professor of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University. She has been a member of the faculty since 1985 and served several terms as the department chair. Her teaching and research are centered in signal and image processing, computer vision, and medical imaging.
Dr. Wood was a Program Director in the Directorate of Engineering’s Division of Engineering Education and Centers at the National Science Foundation where she managed the Innovations in Engineering Education, Curriculum and Infrastructure Program. She received the ASEE Electrical and Computer Engineering Division Distinguished Educator Award in 2009 and the Santa Clara University Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation in 2014.
Dr. Wood has been active in service to the profession primarily through the IEEE and ABET. She has served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and as Vice President for Awards and Membership for the Signal Processing Society. In addition, she has served as a member or chair of a number of IEEE medal selection committees. She is a program evaluator for ABET and has served on the board of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association, and the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering.
She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the ASEE. Wood received her B.S. from Columbia University and her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Dr. Wood was a Program Director in the Directorate of Engineering’s Division of Engineering Education and Centers at the National Science Foundation where she managed the Innovations in Engineering Education, Curriculum and Infrastructure Program. She received the ASEE Electrical and Computer Engineering Division Distinguished Educator Award in 2009 and the Santa Clara University Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation in 2014.
Dr. Wood has been active in service to the profession primarily through the IEEE and ABET. She has served on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and as Vice President for Awards and Membership for the Signal Processing Society. In addition, she has served as a member or chair of a number of IEEE medal selection committees. She is a program evaluator for ABET and has served on the board of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association, and the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering.
She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the ASEE. Wood received her B.S. from Columbia University and her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Anuradha Luther Maitra
Chair of the Vision Committee, Pratichi Trust
Dr. Anuradha Luther Maitra received her Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and subsequently taught in the UC system and the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.
During 2000-13, Anu was President and CEO of Floreat, Inc., a provider of telecommunications and multimedia software.
As Special Advisor to the UC Santa Cruz Chancellor 2013-15, she was charged with the responsibility of expanding the university’s global presence and international engagement.
Since 2000, she has served as Trustee on the UCSC Foundation Board, including a two-year term as President 2005-07. Her accomplishments as a trustee include securing three faculty endowed-chairs; establishing the Sidhartha Maitra Memorial Lecture series that brings stellar international speakers to campus; providing endowments to support the Maitra Lecture, Classical Indian Music programs and South Asia Studies, including a conference on Feminist Interventions: Gender and South Asia.
Anu is Chair of the Vision Committee of the Pratichi Trust established by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen to combat uneven access to education and healthcare in India, particularly for young girls and women.
Along with her husband, Professor Thomas Kailath, Anu administers the family’s donor-advised charitable funds, which includes support for the Sarah Kailath Lecture Series on ‘Women and Leadership’ at UC Berkeley.
During 2000-13, Anu was President and CEO of Floreat, Inc., a provider of telecommunications and multimedia software.
As Special Advisor to the UC Santa Cruz Chancellor 2013-15, she was charged with the responsibility of expanding the university’s global presence and international engagement.
Since 2000, she has served as Trustee on the UCSC Foundation Board, including a two-year term as President 2005-07. Her accomplishments as a trustee include securing three faculty endowed-chairs; establishing the Sidhartha Maitra Memorial Lecture series that brings stellar international speakers to campus; providing endowments to support the Maitra Lecture, Classical Indian Music programs and South Asia Studies, including a conference on Feminist Interventions: Gender and South Asia.
Anu is Chair of the Vision Committee of the Pratichi Trust established by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen to combat uneven access to education and healthcare in India, particularly for young girls and women.
Along with her husband, Professor Thomas Kailath, Anu administers the family’s donor-advised charitable funds, which includes support for the Sarah Kailath Lecture Series on ‘Women and Leadership’ at UC Berkeley.
Virtual Track
Kim Cruz
CEO and Founder, Center for Integrative Leading Highly regarded by organizations undertaking their most important change initiatives, Kim harnesses her 27+ years of Corporate and entrepreneurial experience to serve leaders delivering business-critical change. She counsels leaders to fully maximize the potential of people and to ignite their organization through the power of high-stakes communication. She has impacted some of the most renowned companies like Accenture, Allied Signal, Honeywell, Qwest, Colorado State University’s Flint Animal Cancer Center, Corporate Express (now Staples), Camp Bow Wow, Tri-State Generation and Transmission to name a few.
At Center for Integrative Leading, we aim to start a global conversation about how we each step into our personal Vision Quest (our calling) in our roles or businesses, leading the change we want to see in the world. We are experts serving people – from community leaders, to entrepreneurs, to teachers and academics, to C-suite executives who are driven to make a difference bigger than themselves. We serve people who are committed to personally evolve and elevate to meet the needs of change, and to fearlessly lead themselves and others.
Kim is a sought-after speaker, trainer and #1 international best-selling author of the book: Success University for Women in Business. Kim is the CEO and Founder of Center for Integrative Leading, a Colorado-based consultancy. She and her team are the creators of the “Change for the People” lifecycle, a unique approach that supports leaders and clients through significant, business-critical organizational change; and “IN8 Leadership”, a 4-phased program for personal evolution and elevating contribution for people leading change.
Organizations don’t transform. People transform organizations. And it starts with you.
At Center for Integrative Leading, we aim to start a global conversation about how we each step into our personal Vision Quest (our calling) in our roles or businesses, leading the change we want to see in the world. We are experts serving people – from community leaders, to entrepreneurs, to teachers and academics, to C-suite executives who are driven to make a difference bigger than themselves. We serve people who are committed to personally evolve and elevate to meet the needs of change, and to fearlessly lead themselves and others.
Kim is a sought-after speaker, trainer and #1 international best-selling author of the book: Success University for Women in Business. Kim is the CEO and Founder of Center for Integrative Leading, a Colorado-based consultancy. She and her team are the creators of the “Change for the People” lifecycle, a unique approach that supports leaders and clients through significant, business-critical organizational change; and “IN8 Leadership”, a 4-phased program for personal evolution and elevating contribution for people leading change.
Organizations don’t transform. People transform organizations. And it starts with you.
JJ DiGeronimo
President of Tech Savvy Women JJ DiGeronimo, the President of Tech Savvy Women, advanced from entry-level positions into leadership positions within technology companies. Through her keynotes and executive sessions, JJ shares effective leadership and inclusion strategies to retain, develop and advance diverse talent. JJ includes these experiences in her book new book “Accelerate Your Impact” published by Smart Business Books which complements her 2011 book, “The Working Woman’s GPS.” JJ has been quoted in numerous publications including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox Business.
Terri Hanson Mead
President of Solutions2Projects, LLC Terri Mead is president of Solutions2Projects, LLC and has spent the last 18 years working with, and advising, emerging life sciences companies on IT strategy, IT compliance, system selection, project management, and computer validation. Ms. Mead is passionate about leveraging technology to improve business processes to move towards commercialization and increase overall profitability. Ms. Mead is an active angel investor and Vice President of Sand Hill Angels. Ms. Mead regularly advises startups on their pitches and business strategy. Ms. Mead focuses on investing in companies that have products or services that improve peoples’ lives including MyHealthTeams, Sandstone Diagnostics, TomboyX and Zum. Ms. Mead is an advocate for women and girls and is exploring ways to increase the level of VC funding for female led startups. She is a commercially rated helicopter pilot, and when time permits, loves to share her love of flight with girls so that they, too, know that they can be pilots.
Julie Gordon White
CEO, The WELL for Women Entrepreneurs Julie Gordon White has over 25 years in the corporate and small business world, is a an award-winning entrepreneur, bestselling business author, and advised hundreds of business owners as the founder & CEO of BlueKey Mergers & Acquisitions, a multi-million dollar firm she founded in 2004.
In 2012, Julie began living her true passion as the founder of The WELL for Women Entrepreneurs, teaching women how to crack the code of growing to a million and someday selling for a million through step-by-step training and coaching programs, media, speaking, and signature events.
Julie is a featured small business expert for Google Small Business and Intuit QuickBooks; and has been quoted in Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg Businessweek.com, New York Times, Enterprising Women, Black Enterprise, and San Francisco Business Times. In 2017, Julie will release her new book, “100K Concept: The Freedom Formula for Women & Girls” and the companion “$100K Show" podcast is available on iTunes.
In 2012, Julie began living her true passion as the founder of The WELL for Women Entrepreneurs, teaching women how to crack the code of growing to a million and someday selling for a million through step-by-step training and coaching programs, media, speaking, and signature events.
Julie is a featured small business expert for Google Small Business and Intuit QuickBooks; and has been quoted in Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg Businessweek.com, New York Times, Enterprising Women, Black Enterprise, and San Francisco Business Times. In 2017, Julie will release her new book, “100K Concept: The Freedom Formula for Women & Girls” and the companion “$100K Show" podcast is available on iTunes.
Annyse Balkwill
President of The LuminUS Group
Annyse Balkwill, PEng is the President of The LuminUS Group where she works with organizations to build community through meaningful conversations. She focuses on teaching how to co-create a life- nurturing environment defined by behaviours, which is ultimately the journey of leadership. This work creates an environment where creativity and innovation can thrive. It also guides us along the journey of becoming mindful of the impact of our behavior so we may consciously shift it to ensure we are positively contributing to our environment. Annyse is a licensed professional chemical and biochemical engineer in Ontario, Canada who worked in product management for over a decade at GE Water & Process Technologies where she held several global positions. She had the privilege of facilitating powerful conversations with customers and GE employees all over the world. She is a certified Genuine Contact facilitator and an Open Space Technology facilitator. She is so a yoga instructor and a committed life long student of personal development.
Alyssa Dver
Co-founder of the American Confidence Institute
Alyssa Dver is the expert on The Neuroscience & Social Secrets of Confidence. She’s the co-founder of the American Confidence Institute and author of 6 books, including her latest “Kickass Confidence: Own Your Brain. Up Your Game.” and her first, “Software Product Management Essentials”. In her keynotes and workshops, Alyssa entertains, educates and empowers audiences so they can better manage their own and other people’s confidence. Clients include IBM, Staples, Pepsi, Royal Bank of Canada, Rue La La, State Street, Liberty Mutual and a long list of conferences and associations including Women in Technology International (WITI), IEEE CNET, SoftwareCEO, and Assoc. of International Product Management & Marketing (AIPMM). She also teaches both staffs and students at MIT, Wharton and other colleges, high, and middle schools. Her business background includes being a Chief Marketing Officer for 7 tech companies and founding Mint Green Marketing to provide part-time CMO services to over 150 companies based all over the world. She continues to be a trusted leadership advisor for executives and entrepreneurs. With a monthly WebTV show, popular blog and active social media channels, Alyssa’s reach makes her a go-to expert for media including Forbes, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, NPR, CNN Money, The Boston Globe. A Wharton graduate, Alyssa started her career as a product manager and was one of the first certified Product Managers and Marketers. For several years running, she’s been a judge for the Stevie’s International Marketing and Best Employer awards. When she’s not confidence crusading, Alyssa is a guitarist and vocalist in two bands, plus, she’s game for all things involving art, wine and food. She lives in Westborough, MA with her 2 very tall teenage sons, her utterly patient 5th grade teacher husband, and their cute, but quirky, rescue pooch.
Jennifer Tacheff
VP of Partnerships, Women Who Code Inc
Jennifer works with partners like Google, VMWare, and Capital One, helping to create pathways to leadership, diversity and inclusion programs, product campaigns and more. She is an executive leader at Women Who Code, helping to advance 80,000+ women around the world in tech and leadership.
Prior to Women Who Code, Jennifer helped to build the first and only resource center for girls in Alameda County. In addition to raising a combined $20M for the center as well as programming for 8,000+ in downtown Oakland, Jennifer received a LEAD fellowship award for her work as a change agent in the community. She also drove strategy and fund development for Bill Nye’s Climate Lab and Teaching Institute in partnership with OUSD, the National Science Foundation and Chabot Space & Science Center. Jennifer is a 2017 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Equity Fellowship recipient and has spoken at many conferences and summits around the world.
Prior to Women Who Code, Jennifer helped to build the first and only resource center for girls in Alameda County. In addition to raising a combined $20M for the center as well as programming for 8,000+ in downtown Oakland, Jennifer received a LEAD fellowship award for her work as a change agent in the community. She also drove strategy and fund development for Bill Nye’s Climate Lab and Teaching Institute in partnership with OUSD, the National Science Foundation and Chabot Space & Science Center. Jennifer is a 2017 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Equity Fellowship recipient and has spoken at many conferences and summits around the world.
Lawler Kang
Founder/CEO of League of Allies
Lawler currently serves as Founder/CEO of League of Allies, a services provider dedicated to gender parity and engagement. The League offers a comprehensive array of offerings that revolve around our proprietary data collection tool: the Gender Parity and Engagement Assessment. These including audits and best practices, brand-enhancing Seals of Approval, and bond ratings that measure the relative execution risk of female representation, from the board level down. We can also provide data that meets the increasing requirements from the investment community and workshops and presentations geared to facilitate mental shifts in management.
The inspiration for The League most recently came from his second book, The E Ticket, and a related presentation “In-powered Women, Liberated Men, Superior Results.” While a thriller, with the assistance of 200 sourced footnotes, it makes the case that women are biochemically better suited to lead, and we need more women in positions of power if our species, and planet, are to survive and thrive.
Lawler penned The E Ticket on the side for three year while serving in positions such as Chief People Officer at Rue La La, a leading fashion/lifestyle ecommerce business, and Sr. Director of People Strategy at Medullan, a health-focused software consultancy. His first book, Passion at Work, led to a speaking/workshop business servicing leaders such as Cisco, HP, EY, Pfizer and Oracle. He draws on 15+ years of strategy, technology, and turnaround consulting, and has degrees from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and Vassar College.
The inspiration for The League most recently came from his second book, The E Ticket, and a related presentation “In-powered Women, Liberated Men, Superior Results.” While a thriller, with the assistance of 200 sourced footnotes, it makes the case that women are biochemically better suited to lead, and we need more women in positions of power if our species, and planet, are to survive and thrive.
Lawler penned The E Ticket on the side for three year while serving in positions such as Chief People Officer at Rue La La, a leading fashion/lifestyle ecommerce business, and Sr. Director of People Strategy at Medullan, a health-focused software consultancy. His first book, Passion at Work, led to a speaking/workshop business servicing leaders such as Cisco, HP, EY, Pfizer and Oracle. He draws on 15+ years of strategy, technology, and turnaround consulting, and has degrees from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and Vassar College.
Mayasari Lim
Founder and CEO, SE3D Dr. Mayasari Lim is founder and CEO of SE3D, a startup focused on next generation lab automation in 3D bioprinting and assays for laboratories and education. Previously, she was a professor in Bioengineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), a top engineering university in Singapore. Her research expertise included stem cell engineering, bioprocess design, bioprinting and tissue engineering. Apart from her strong belief in the potential of bioprinting technology, she is greatly passionate about training next generation minds for our future. Dr. Lim obtained her Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and her B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley.
Laura Steward
CEO & Founder, VideoFizz Laura has over 15 years of leadership experience and a history of building high-functioning teams in multiple successful biotechnology start-ups. Most recently Laura was Commercial Leader for two GE businesses, a genomic sequencing company in Houston acquired by GE and their start-up oncology clinical trials business based in Orange County, California.
After years of working in cancer diagnostics, Laura was intent on finding a way to use today’s technology to spread joy. This led to the creation of VideoFizz, a mobile app that makes it easy to create collaborative video greetings. VideoFizz gathers video well wishes filmed from multiple invited participants. Acquired videos are automatically stitched together with personalized animations and music to create amazing compilations used to celebrate any occasion.
When not at work, Laura is intent on keeping sand between her toes, juggling parenthood, and travelling the world with her husband and three children
After years of working in cancer diagnostics, Laura was intent on finding a way to use today’s technology to spread joy. This led to the creation of VideoFizz, a mobile app that makes it easy to create collaborative video greetings. VideoFizz gathers video well wishes filmed from multiple invited participants. Acquired videos are automatically stitched together with personalized animations and music to create amazing compilations used to celebrate any occasion.
When not at work, Laura is intent on keeping sand between her toes, juggling parenthood, and travelling the world with her husband and three children
Nita Patel
Chair, IEEE WIE ILC Nita Patel, P.E., is a Systems and Software Engineering Director at L-3 Warrior Systems. Nita was named the 2014 L-3 Engineer of the Year and the 2011 New Hampshire Engineer of the Year award for her technical contributions to the engineering profession. Nita is the Founder and Chair for the IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (WIE ILC), past international chair for IEEE WIE, 2nd VP for IEEE Computer Society and member of the Board of Governors for Eta Kappa Nu. Outside of IEEE, she is active with Toastmasters and the United States Chess Federation. Nita received her MS Computer Engineering (1998), BS Electrical Engineering (1995) and BS Mathematics (1995) from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Shana Pepin
Project Specialist, Strategic Programs, IEEE Shana Pepin, CMP, Project Specialist, within the Strategic Programs team, has been with IEEE Meetings, Conferences & Events (MCE) at IEEE for five years. Shana manages content generation, speaker management, IEEE staff & volunteer liaison duties and planning activities for some of IEEE’s largest events. Shana spends much of her time in the project management role for the IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (WIE ILC) which she has been a part of since its inception in 2014. Shana graduated from Rowan University, in New Jersey, with a B.A. in Public Relations and minor in Journalism. Her favorite “new job” is being a mother to her son, Ezra and spending quality time with her husband, puppy and extended family.