Change Wave: Recent Episodes
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Change Wave is an exclusive look at the real, first-hand stories of how cutting-edge leaders rose to the top, smashed through barriers and created lasting impact. Brought to you by Treehouse, the company that has taught 850,000 people to code and helps companies like Nike, MailChimp, Airbnb and more hit their hiring plans and create diverse teams. If you’d like to know more, head to https://trhou.se/diversity.
Reema Poddar is a highly successful executive with 26 years of experience in the software Industry. Poddar is a respected thought leader in Technology and authority on Digital and Organizational Transformation. Her successes include accelerating Digital & Organizational transformations enhancing customer experiences, enabling companies to improve automation, developer productivity, and operational excellence.
She recently served Teradata Inc, as the Executive Vice President and “Chief Product and Development officer” of the company and was responsible for leading worldwide product, technology, innovation, corporate security, and analytics strategy. Here she was instrumental in helping the company through its ambitious cloud transformation and the transition of multibillion-dollar product line from a perpetual to a subscription-based offering. In 2018 & 2019 under her leadership, Teradata delivered the world’s first Data and Analytics Platform – “Vantage”, and the first SaaS application- “Vantage CX”. These multi-cloud offerings led to acquiring net new enterprise logos & doubling the cloud revenue for the company. Prior to joining Teradata, Poddar held a variety of senior executive positions within General Electric Company, Emerson Electric and Software Start Up - Intellution Inc.
She is a passionate leader who empowers teams to take risk, fail fast and learn. She is focused on helping women in all areas of technology to reach their next level of success in life and work and is actively involved in a variety of STEM programs, Women in Technology initiatives and other nonprofits.
She holds several business, technology, and CEO leadership awards at GE and the companies she has served. In 2019, Poddar was named one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology by the National Diversity. In 2018, Poddar was honored by the San Diego Business Chambers for her business impact and technology leadership, as well as San Diego Magazine recognized her in the top 5 of the city’s powerful female leaders. Poddar is also an honored recipient of the 2015 Edison Awards for New Product Innovation for healthcare industrial internet of things. In 2014, she was honored with the Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology award for the most innovative new product solution.
Poddar holds a Master’s in computer science and a Master’s in Physics.
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Matthew Joyal is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Pillar Technologies, a risk management platform for construction site developers and general contractors to monitor for destructive environmental conditions through the deployment of on-site sensor for real-time notifications. Matt started Pillar back in 2015 shortly after developing sensor technology applications in college. Since then, Matt and his cofounder were listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list of 2019.
Monica Caldas is the Chief Information Officer for Liberty’s Global Retail Markets (GRM). In this role, Monica is driving the digital transformation within GRM’s global IT organization by delivering innovative solutions for customers and employees. Monica brings IT industry expertise from both the financial services and industrial sectors to deliver business model innovation through a robust digital strategy. Monica joined Liberty after a 17-year career at General Electric where she held senior executive CIO roles across several GE businesses covering multiple lines of business including Capital Rail Services, Capital Fleet Services and Transportation. In those roles, she focused on areas such as IT Operations, Software Development, ERP management and global roll outs, systems integrations, and organizational effectiveness. Monica was recognized by Hispanic Executive magazine as a Top 2016 Leader, was a 2017 Chicago CIO Orbie Awards finalist and was recognized as Digital Leader of the Year 2018 by Information Age Magazine. Monica holds a Bachelor of Science in business and management information systems from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Business degree from Pennsylvania State University. Outside of Liberty Mutual, Monica enjoys working in the community to encourage and inspire more girls to pursue STEM roles, is an active member in Hispanic Affinity networks and is a student of mindfulness and meditation. She recently relocated from Chicago to Boston with her husband, two young children and their very curious rescue dog.
Nicole Neumarker is currently working as Vice President of R&D for Cotiviti, a leading solutions and analytics company that leverages unparalleled clinical and financial datasets to deliver deep insight into the performance of the healthcare system. At Cotiviti she is responsible for delivering value through the software engineering and innovation teams globally. Nicole is the former VP Technology of Helix Education, and originally began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Currently at Cotiviti, Nicole’s initiative portfolio under management, includes all development for new product introduction as well as innovation across the existing install base. She does this by driving lean portfolio and agile practices for scale and entrepreneurial teams for research and innovation. As a member of the Operations senior leadership team, her COE serves product, operations, and go to market functions.
Nicole began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley where she worked on everything from branding and the corporate website development to enterprise data and security initiatives. In her time at Cisco, she learned the criticality of weighing the business value of a project prior to applying scarce and costly technical resources.
Nicole is kept endlessly busy outside of work with her family and kids and is in constant pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee by roasting her own coffee beans in her garage. She has served on the board of a local nonprofit organization focused on high school STEM education, as well as a mentor with the Utah Valley University women’s basketball team.
My name is William Feng (or Will). I am a proud father of a four-year-old son Zachary. I’m also an Organizational Psychologist, Coach, and currently the Director of Learning & Organizational Development at FabFitFun. I lead my team to develop amazing people and a culture that best supported our growing business across five pillars: Onboarding, Learning, Leadership Development, Performance Management, and Culture & Engagement. While my team and I had some amazing accomplishments here in the first 8 months… 1. Onboarded over 300 new hires with an employee satisfaction of 97% and orientation effectiveness of 93%. 2. Fostered a continuous learning culture through the launch of LinkedIn Learning, workshops such as Effective Feedback, Goal Setting, Employee Relations, and Finding your Superpowers. 3. Developed people managers to lead effectively through our first bespoke Manager Essentials Program. 4. Rolled out our first Executive Coaching program to support our Senior Executives 5. Role modeled the importance of setting goals and effective feedback with the implementation of our new performance management approach
I’m just as proud of the 1:1 relationships I have built with our executives through coaching conversation– helping them feel less anxious about company changes by exploring their strengths, beliefs, and values to lead organizational and culture change.
Saloni has almost two decades of experience working with early- and mid-stage, high growth startups, building and running key foundational teams from the ground up. As the Vice President of People at Sentry, she is passionate about organizational design & strategy, transformation and change management, while fostering intellectual honesty and empowering others to develop autonomy and unleash their talents.
As head of GoDaddy’s people and culture, Monica is responsible for talent and performance management, total rewards, learning and development, hiring, inclusion and partnership with our people and leaders worldwide. Since joining GoDaddy in 2013, Monica has implemented several initiatives including an updated performance review process in partnership with Stanford to reduce unconscious bias, while reinforcing great performance and a distinct culture. Additionally, she’s been instrumental in leveling and career structure, pay parity and an employee feedback engine to improve both GoDaddy’s culture and company. Prior to GoDaddy, Monica worked at Microsoft for 17 years where she worked as a trusted business partner, helped create the HR Mergers and Acquisitions practice and ran the top of the house internal assessment and development program aimed at growing top talent for future challenges, including President and CEO successors for the company. She also ran her own HR coaching and consulting firm. Monica holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Psychology and Communications, with a focus on Women’s Studies from Washington State University.
Donna is an energetic software executive passionate about making customers successful. She is an executive sponsor of the Coupa Executive Advisory Board and an inventor with multiple software patents.
Donna started at Coupa in 2011 and leads product strategy and innovation; identifying innovative solutions that solve global business spend management challenges elegantly. Her leadership has helped propel Coupa from early startup days to a public company. In her time at Coupa, she has worked with cross-functional teams from product to sales, led customer success teams to success in hundreds of customer projects, and was a member of the Coupa pre-IPO team, culminating in the highly successful Coupa IPO.
Prior to Coupa, Donna held leadership roles at TriNet, Ketera, and IBM. She began her career with Accenture where she led PeopleSoft projects in the first iterations of “as a service.” Donna earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Management Information Systems from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Kevin Hunter is a pioneering product visionary with 20+ years of entrepreneurial leadership in global strategy, business development and product leadership. As Catalina’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin leads innovation and is responsible for driving global product strategy from concept to commercialization to solve customer challenges and transform the in-store experience for buyers. Kevin’s team also builds strategic partnerships that add dimension and scale to Catalina’s personalization capabilities and fortify its buyer intelligence data. Kevin also serves on the Board of Directors for NCSolutions. Adept at sensing early market and consumer trends, Kevin is part of an experienced team of thought leaders playing a critical role in Catalina’s omni transformation through strategic investments in technology, advanced analytics and data science. His broad, global experience spans IoT, sensor fusion, mobile, digital, marketing, and advertising products in growth and established markets. Before joining Catalina in 2017 as VP of Digital and Consumer Products, Kevin served as President, Head of Americas, Corporate Development and Product Strategy for retail IOT analytics company, Walkbase; and President of inMarket, an ad network focused on location and mobile-based inventory. Previously, Kevin held a variety of senior roles with Qualcomm, including head of strategy and product for the Retail Solutions division focused on commercializing products, solutions, and technologies in mobile payments, location, and proximity marketing for retailers, brands and venues. He also led Qualcomm Labs, where he was responsible for global market development and product management governance for contextual awareness, location, proximity, beacons, Bluetooth Low Energy, LTE-Direct and Retail IoT initiatives. Later, Kevin co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of Gimbal, a mobile engagement and location intelligence solution technology firm carved out of Qualcomm. Kevin is the co-inventor of 28 US granted patents with over 15 more pending. He received an Emmy Engineering Award for Sprint TV, a groundbreaking mobile television product which he led.
Ameesh Paleja is the Chief Technology Officer for OfferUp. He oversees the company’s engineering and data science teams and is responsible for all strategic aspects of the technology organization, including infrastructure, security, product engineering, and architecture. Before joining OfferUp, Ameesh was the CTO of Starz and oversaw the modernization of Starz’s technology platform, enabling an international expansion and managing the overhaul of the company’s digital media publishing pipeline. Prior, he spent more than 10 years at Amazon, where he was the founding employee of Amazon’s digital research and development facility in Southern California, managing a team of over 550 employees for products including Amazon Prime Instant Video, Amazon’s Appstore, Cloud Drive, and Kindle. As co-founder of Atom Tickets, Paleja continues to serve on its board as a strategic advisor. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, and holds 24 patents in digital video and related fields.
Debra McCowan is SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) for NetApp, responsible for developing the global HR strategy and leading the entirety of the function including talent acquisition, talent development and learning, business partnerships, organizational development and effectiveness, total rewards, diversity, inclusion and belonging and operations.
Debra is a change and transformational HR leader with 20+ years of global experience focused on integrating the people strategy with the business strategy to effectively drive performance and growth and promote organizational health. Her success comes from her proven ability to build high performing teams and develop business aligned HR strategies and initiatives while providing strategic and operational leadership, typically in a context of rapid growth, change and maturation.
In her last role as CHRO at Equinix, Debra built a robust global HR function in a fast-paced environment. During her five years with the company, the global HR organization was instrumental in evolving Equinix’s culture, building the company brand and designing and implementing leading-edge value driven programs and initiatives in support of business objectives and to ensure the attraction, retention and cultivation of critical talent enabling growth and helping position Equinix as a market leader.
Prior to Equinix, Debra co-founded the Accelerance Group where as a partner, she provided organizational and systems design consulting services and helped clients lead strategic change more effectively. Debra has also held global executive leadership roles at Avago Technologies (now Broadcom Inc.), Hitachi Data Systems (now Hitachi Vantara), and Telstra Corporation
Debra serves on the Board of Directors for HealthEquity, Inc., the largest health savings account non-bank custodian in the US. She holds a post-graduate diploma in Industrial Relations and HR Management from the University of Melbourne and a B.A. from La Trobe University.
Nolan Church is the Chief People Officer at Carta, a Series E fintech company headquartered in SF. As the CPO, Nolan oversees all employee touchpoints including HR, Recruiting, Total Rewards, Internal Communications and Real Estate. Prior to Carta, Nolan was the Head of Talent at DoorDash as its first hire in HR and scaled the company from 50 to >800 employees in three years. Nolan has also worked at Google in recruiting as the company doubled in size to 60k employees. He studied Political Science and was captain of the baseball team at the University of New Orleans.
As the Head of Global HR, Shawna leads the company’s efforts to attract, develop and retain the best talent. Prior to her current role, she led global People Operations to streamline and scale processes, systems, benefits and immigration at Rubicon Project.
Shawna has a unique career path that has contributed to her being a highly respected people leader. She was previously at Concur Technologies leading the Diversity and Inclusion efforts globally across more than 20 offices. Prior to that, she was the Senior Director of International Accounting where she set up European accounting operations in the Netherlands and in addition spent time in Prague as the Country Manager leading the growth of the European service center.
Shawna started her career at Microsoft, and has a Masters in Accounting from Notre Dame and a BS in International Business from George Fox University in addition to having her CPA.
As Chief Operating Officer at Rover.com, Brent brings over 20 years of experience building and leading high-performing teams to the nation’s largest network of five-star pet sitters and dog walkers. Prior to joining Rover, Brent was president of Code Fellows, a digital trade school in Seattle. He also worked in various roles at aQuantive, as executive vice president of call products for Marchex, and as general manager of the search and display media network at Microsoft. When Brent isn’t busy making it easier for more people to have pet love in their lives, he can be found volunteering his time and energy as chairman of the board of REST (Real Escape from the Sex Trade), a faith-based organization that seeks to divert at-risk minors from being trafficked into prostitution. Brent earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Memphis, and a master’s of business administration from Vanderbilt University.
Brandon Krieg is the CEO and co-founder of Stash - the financial platform revolutionizing the way millions of Americans save and invest for their future. Brandon has been recognized by Goldman Sachs as one of 2018’s “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs,” and Stash was highlighted by Forbes’ “Fintech 50 2018” as well as the Wall Street Journal as one of the "Top Tech Companies to Watch in 2018." Prior to Stash, Brandon spent +15 years in financial services, most recently at Macquarie Securities Group.
Matt is a leading thinker and practitioner in the application of new technologies to media. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at theSkimm, a membership company that makes it easier for millennial women to live smarter. He most recently worked as the Chief Technology Officer and part of the founding team for Axios, the news and information start-up. Prior to that he was the Director of the New York Times’ Research and Development Lab, where he had extensive experience in researching and implementing new technologies. Matt has 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry, solving problems of content management, distribution, and market positioning.
Evan Green-Lowe is VP, Engineering Talent Supply at Andela, an organization which believes talent is equally distributed around the world, and leverages that belief to help companies build distributed engineering teams. Evan believes in investing in communities of talent, and creating value for people as a way to bring the best out of them. During his time at Andela Evan has helped grow the engineering workforce from less than 40 engineers in Nigeria to over 1,200 across Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Prior to working at Andela, Evan founded LakeHub Technologies, a technology, design, and entrepreneurship hub based out of Kisumu Kenya, and led the data and analytics team at Evidence Action, raising the bar for quality and analytical rigor in researched-backed development economics interventions.
Miriam Warren is the Senior Vice President of Engagement, Diversity and Belonging at Yelp and Board Chair of the Yelp Foundation. Miriam joined Yelp in 2007, serving in a variety of marketing and operational roles, including leading the company’s expansion efforts internationally as Vice President of New Markets. Presently, she heads a team working at the intersection of culture, engagement, corporate philanthropy and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Charles is the Global People and Culture Leader at Zendrive, where he leads the global people organization. Charles has been instrumental in Hacking HR’s SF Chapter, bringing thought leadership to the discussion of emerging technologies. With 25 years of significant experience in key leadership roles at high-growth organizations, Charles has successfully reorganized entire company cultures and visions to adopt a “one team,” collaborative approach time and time again. He is active in the transformation of the human resources role in business, publishing and speaking on the changing landscape of the profession.
Candice Morgan is the Head of Inclusion and Diversity at Pinterest, where she leads strategies to build a more inclusive and diverse global company. Previously, Candice spent nearly 10 years at Catalyst, where she designed strategic talent initiatives for global companies and firms across a range of industries. Candice holds an MS in cross-cultural psychology from Brunel University and a BS in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a frequent speaker and advisor at global conferences and events, a contributor to Harvard Business Review, and was recently honored on Fast Company's list of Most Creative People in Business & The Root 100 Most Influential African-Americans of 2017.
Margaret Keane is CEO of Synchrony. Prior to that role, she led the Retail Card platform as president and CEO beginning in 2004 and then expanded her responsibilities in 2011 to become president and CEO of their North American Retail Finance business. Through those years, she developed the leadership skills needed to manage a successful organization that has now become a Fortune 200 company five years post-separation. She was able to infuse a mindset of inclusion and innovation into 16,500+ employees which has driven an incredibly diverse culture for all employees to be their authentic selves. Margaret continues to transform Synchrony, positioning the company for long-term growth by focusing on innovation and technology. Margaret led the integration of the company’s strategic imperatives focused on accelerating growth and diversification, directing her management team to oversee areas including business strategy, venture investments and M&A, enterprise data analytics, customer experience, and expansion of the company’s direct to consumer banking and products strategy. Her passion for emerging technology has been a trademark of her 38-year career, as she fully embraces the need to integrate business and technology strategies – understanding that the two must co-exist. Margaret pushes Synchrony to be nimbler and move faster than ever. The company’s deep technology investments are paying off, driving initiatives to make consumer purchases seamless and frictionless.
Serge Saxonov co-founded 10x Genomics in 2012 and has served as the CEO since its inception. He has defined the company's vision and strategy, contributed to core inventions, and led 10x through multiple phases of rapid growth. 10x Genomics is a leading company in the field of genomics. The company was founded on the vision that this century will bring unprecedented advances in biomedicine to transform the way we understand and treat diseases leading to dramatic improvements in human health.
In 2016, he was honored as one of Goldman Sachs 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of the Year. Prior to 10x Genomics, Serge was Vice President of Applications at QuantaLife, where he was responsible for building content, driving new applications, and identifying key diagnostics opportunities for the core ddPCR technology. Before QuantaLife, Serge was the first employee at 23andme. As Founding Architect and Director of R&D, he defined the initial conception of the product, recruited a lot of the earlier team and built many key elements of the technology. Serge received a Ph.D. in biomedical informatics from Stanford University and an A.B. in applied mathematics and biology from Harvard College.
Kara's background is a mix of private and public sector experience, including Chief of Staff for the QuickBooks Online Platform at Intuit and Director of Experience Design in the Obama White House. In the former, she champions small businesses, solopreneurs, and freelancers around the globe. Prior, Kara received an appointment to the first class of Presidential Innovation Fellows, where she served as entrepreneur in residence, reimagining the relationship between the federal government and the people from a technology perspective. She was also Chief of Staff at 18F, TEDxIntuit founder, and worked on TurboTax, Oscars, and Super Bowl. Kara does pro-bono digital strategy for the likes of Team Rubicon; spent 10 days in rural India teaching micro-entrepreneur women human centered design; and guest lectures at Stanford, George Washington University, and UC San Diego STEM Academy for high school girls. She graduated summa cum laude from Penn State with a masters in instructional design, and was San Diego Woman of the Year finalist. Twitter: https://twitter.com/karadefrias Website: https://www.karadefrias.com/.
Jackie Berg is the VP of Marketing for Olo, the leading digital food ordering platform for the restaurant industry. Since 2005, Olo has been the interface in between the on-demand world and over 300 restaurant brands such as Applebee's, Chili's, Dairy Queen, Five Guys Burgers & Fries, Jamba Juice, Noodles & Company, Shake Shack, and Wingstop. Since Jackie joined Olo in 2014, the company has grown over 20x and today facilitates orders for millions of customers that use Olo to order ahead and get meals delivered from the restaurants they love. Prior to Olo, Jackie has held both tech marketing and in the agency roles researching consumer insights for companies like Applebee's, Reebok, and Sam Adams. She is passionate about the evolution of the restaurant space and is leading Olo’s in-car ordering R&D work with BMW Labs. Jackie has appeared as a speaker and panelist at restaurant and consumer technology events by BTIG, Cleveland Research, Datassential, Global Culinary Innovators Association, and others.
Danielle Brown empowers the People Team at Gusto. From creating a productive and inclusive work environment, to finding and inviting great talent to join us, to ensuring Gusties have the training, development and support they need to do their best work, to running our People programs (Benefits, Compensation, GustoFIED, rewards + recognition), the People Team is focused on how to make Gusto a place where work can empower a better life for all Gusties.
Prior to joining Gusto, Danielle served as the VP, Employee Engagement, as well as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Google. And before Google, she was VP and Group Chief Human Resources Officer of Intel Corporation.
Akshay Bhargava serves as the Chief Product Officer at Malwarebytes. Bhargava brings nearly 20 years of experience in product, go-to-market and engineering leadership to the company. In this role, he is responsible for driving the company’s technology vision, product roadmap and execution. Before joining Malwarebytes, Bhargava was the Vice President of the Oracle Cloud Business Group. At Oracle, he led various aspects of Oracle Cloud across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. He also led the launch of Oracle Cloud Services for Security and Management. Prior to Oracle, Bhargava was a management consultant from McKinsey & Company, where he worked with numerous C-suite and boards on topics related to product, strategy, cybersecurity, and GTM. He has held a variety of product, marketing, and engineering leadership roles at FireEye, NetApp, and Rainfinity (acquired by EMC). Bhargava holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from MIT Sloan, with a specialization in entrepreneurship and innovation.
As Chief Executive Officer of Flywire, Mike has grown the business from a concept into the global and growing company it is today. He has overseen Flywire’s expansion in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific regions while aligning Flywire’s international team with the company’s strategic direction and increasing the visibility of Flywire globally. Mike began his career as part of the technical risk services practice at PWC, LLP. His background spans global payments, mobile software and hardware, and e-billing at high growth technology companies, including Carrier IQ and edocs, Inc. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Babson College. Mike is also a 2019 recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Financial Services, which recognizes unstoppable entrepreneurs who redefine the way we live, work and play.
Brad is a recognized global leader in technology and innovation within the design and construction space. Prior to his current role as Global Chief Technology Officer for Black & Veatch, one of the world’s largest engineering and construction firms; Brad was a successful entrepreneur, architect, and technology executive. He is the author of the book “BIM and Construction Management,” has lectured at a number of Universities and conferences and has received a number of awards including Ingram’s 40 under 40, ENR’s 20 under 40, the Manual and Lauren Rosen Service Award and the American Institute of Architects BIM Excellence Award. Currently, Brad is the President of Diode Ventures, the private infrastructure development arm of Black & Veatch; a recent intrapreneurial success within the enterprise where he leads a team that develops ground up renewable energy and data center infrastructure projects to better serve clients all over the world. Brad is an alumni of Kansas State University, an Advisory Board Member for the New School of Architecture and American Cancer Society volunteer. He lives in Overland Park, KS with his wife and three children Lucia, Wesley and Hugo.
Tim leads the engineering organization at Convoy. Prior to coming to Convoy, he founded and rapidly grew Uber's Seattle Engineering office. Before that, he was at Isilon Systems holding a variety of engineering leadership roles from individual contributor to Director of Engineering. Tim earned his BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington.
With experience in Talent Management, Sales, Marketing and Coaching experience, Farah Bernier leads Human Resources for Google’s Global Affairs Legal Organization. In this role, she is responsible for leading talent initiatives to further attract, retain, develop and advance historically underrepresented professionals in the technology industry.
Ms. Bernier consults with senior leaders in the organization to assess both business and individual progression along the diversity and inclusion engagement continuum and partners across leadership teams to define and execute on agreed upon team strategies to increase diversity and foster more inclusive working environments.
Additionally, as a certified professional coach, Ms. Bernier frequently delivers workshops on cultural dexterity, personal branding, and other various professional development focus areas.
Her motto around operating with confidence and authenticity is “living fabulously fierce through intentional self-discovery, self-definition and self-distinction”.
In her spare time, Farah enjoys traveling, reading, writing, photography, reflecting and releasing stress through running.
Ms. Bernier is a graduate of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, earned her MBA in Global Studies and Entrepreneurship from Babson College, and her CPC and ELI-MP through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching.
Jennifer Ives is the Senior Vice President of Technology at 3Pillar Global, an 8-time Inc. 500/5000 company. Jennifer leads high performing teams to devise and implement innovative digital products for companies like PBS, Equinox, and Capital One. Jennifer has decades of experience crafting growth and market strategies for private companies, high growth start-ups, and government entities. Before joining 3Pillar Global, Jennifer was SVP at the Top Employers Institute, where she leveraged HR data and built products to guide Fortune 500 C-suite executives to create world class employee conditions. An advocate for women in technology and diversity in the workforce, Jennifer is a frequent speaker and panelist and has been featured on numerous podcasts including What’s Working in Washington, Sales Game Changers, and The Business Blast. In addition to speaking engagements, Jennifer is a sought after mentor and advisor for tech founders throughout the United States.
Yaron Ben-Zvi loves building things that make a difference. That’s how he came to be the co-founder and CEO of Haven Life, a digital life insurance agency that's backed and wholly owned by MassMutual. Yaron worked with several other startups before launching Haven Life in industries as varied as asset management and media, yet the complexity and opportunity in life insurance kept calling him to the cause. Part entrepreneur, part executive, and part family man, Yaron sometimes struggles to make all these parts work together. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Wharton School of Business, he believes strongly in the value of a liberal arts education.
Louise Pentland is the Chief Business Affairs and Legal Officer at PayPal. With a strong commitment to impact and purpose, Louise helps scale innovation in partnership with policymakers, regulators, and public officials around the world. In her role as the leader of PayPal’s People function, Louise has focused her attention on building a diverse and empathetic workforce. She was integral in shaping the company’s four core values: collaboration, innovation, wellness and inclusion and helped launch PayPal’s conscious inclusion program. Under her leadership, PayPal has expanded employee resource group offerings and employee engagement opportunities, like the legal team’s international pro-bono initiative. Louise has been widely recognized for her leadership and legal expertise. The California Diversity Council named her one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology in 2017 and she was one of America’s 50 Outstanding General Counsels by the National Law Journal in 2016. Louise was also named General Counsel of the Year of a Public Company over $1 Billion category at the 2016 Bay Area Corporate Counsel Awards, presented by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the San Francisco Business Times.
Lee Zukor is Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering at SportsEngine and is responsible for creating products customers love. Before joining SportsEngine, Lee held executive positions at both large companies and startups, including VP of Product and UX at Bluestem Brands, Founder/CEO at Simplegoodandtasty.com, and Chief Experience Officer at Wize.com. Lee earned his undergraduate degree from Boston University. When he’s not working, Lee spends his time writing music, traveling, and exploring the Twin Cities with his wife and two teenagers.
Stacy Pourfallah joined Visa in 2000 as a member of the product development team leading several new product initiatives including healthcare and employee benefit products, as well as corporate, government and payroll prepaid products. Her passion for new ideas has led her to be an inventor on 20 patents. She joined Visa’s Global Financial Inclusion team in 2015 to work on solutions and approaches for governments, underserved consumers and small businesses. In 2017, Visa created the Social Impact team and Stacy now leads a team developing global programs aimed at enabling micro and small businesses to growth, thrive and become more resilient. She has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and an MBA in international marketing and finance and is the proud mother of two amazing teenage daughters.
As Executive Vice President and Chief Associate Success Officer, Nathalie Carruthers is passionate about attracting, retaining and engaging the best and brightest associates for JDA. Nathalie’s extensive human resources experience spans more than 20 years with leadership positions at Benchmark Electronics, Lumileds, Flex and Solectron (acquired by Flex). In her most recent role leading HR at Benchmark, she developed an organizational framework for standardized processes, fostered an environment for growing the company’s next-generation leaders and focused on enhancing the customer centric culture. Throughout her career Nathalie has championed programs focused on global talent management, talent acquisition and total rewards, as well as identifying and deploying world-class human resources systems and programs. She began her career with The Conference Board of Canada, Canada’s foremost independent, not-for-profit applied research organization in Canada. She owns a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Ottawa. When she’s not focused on building powerful teams at JDA, you might find this self-described sports mom cheering for one! An avid fan of hockey, soccer and football, she is a supporter of both her son’s and daughter’s collegiate soccer teams as well as her favorite professional team, the Liverpool Football Club.
As the Chief People Officer, Mary leads Squarespace’s People team, overseeing human resources, people operations, talent acquisition & development, facilities & workplace services, employee experience, and diversity & inclusion. Prior to joining Squarespace, Mary focused on HR roles with early stage pre-IPO software companies. Mary has 20+ years of experience leading People functions at high-growth SaaS companies, and was most recently Chief People Officer of Fuze, a global, cloud-based unified communications platform that empowers productivity. Prior to that, she held leadership roles at tech companies including hCentive, Blackboard, CACI, SRA International, and AMS, Inc. Mary earned her Master’s in Business Administration with a concentration in Human Resources Management from Syracuse University and received her undergraduate degree in Human Development and Family Studies from The Pennsylvania State University.
Squarespace is the leading all-in-one platform for websites, domains, online stores, and marketing tools that empowers anyone with a creative idea to succeed. With millions of customers on the platform including Chance the Rapper, Gloria Steinem, John Malkovich, Leon Bridges and Keanu Reeves (Arch Motorcycle), Squarespace makes aspirational branding attainable by democratizing access to world-class design.
Founded in 2003, Squarespace’s team of more than 1,000 is headquartered in downtown New York, with offices in Dublin, Ireland and Portland, Oregon. For more information, visit www.squarespace.com.
Kate Gulliver oversees the Talent team at Wayfair where she is responsible for global human capital management including recruiting, organizational design, talent management, talent analytics, compensation and learning and development. Prior to her role in Talent at Wayfair, Kate managed the company's Investor Relations function where she drove all communication and relationship development with outside investors, and led the company in their efforts to become publicly traded. Previously, Kate worked as an investor for nearly five years at Bain Capital, the Boston based private equity firm. She started her career in consulting at McKinsey & Company. Kate holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. from Yale University. Kate lives in Boston's South End with her husband and two daughters.
For over a decade, Ben Greenberg served as the Vice President of Mobile Products & User Experience for WebMD, where he built software to promote patient wellness and provide decision support to physicians at the point of care. Some of Ben’s most popular products include Medscape Mobile, Medscape Consult, and WebMD for Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
Today Ben serves as Dr. Eric Topol’s Chief Product Officer at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. At Scripps, Ben leads Product efforts for The Participant Center of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, a historic initiative aimed at accelerating health research breakthroughs and enabling new modes of individualized health care.
Lindsey Barrows has been employed at Datrium, Inc. as their CHRO for the past 1.5 years. Having worked over 20 years mostly in the area/s of Human Resources and Talent Acquisition for Technology companies, she is very familiar with the aggressive hiring and operational HR framework needed to build and ramp a start-up company. She is particularly experienced in the areas of talent acquisition and management, executive coaching and strategy. Lindsey is from Texas where she lives with her 17 year old daughter who has never met a rule she didn’t follow and her 15 year old son who ever met a rule he would follow and their Labrador Retriever, Tuck. Lindsey is passionate about changing how we hire and retain top talent as well as creating an open culture of honest communication.
Ushashi Chakraborty is a Director of Engineering for Backend Engineering at Mode Analytics in San Francisco. She moved to California in October 2018 from Chicago where she worked in Groupon for 5 years as an Engineering Manager for Consumer Applications and before that as a Software Development Engineer in Test. She has also worked in Microsoft and Thomson Reuters. She holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from North Dakota State University. Ushashi has been involved with theater since high school and, especially, with improv since 2015. She is a Second City Training Center, Chicago alumni and has performed improv, sketch and stand up across several small theaters in Chicago. Ushashi has spoken at major conferences including Grace Hopper Conference (SOL, 2014), expo:QA, Madrid, multiple chapters of CTO Summit in Nasdaq NYC, Austin, Chicago, and SF as well as in Leadership Summits by Code Climate, VerveCon, and General Assembly Breakfast Talk in 2018-19. She has recorded podcasts for the startupcto and frontier by gun.io. She, most recently, spoke at the Grace Hopper Conference, Orlando, 2019.
Deanna Bass is the Executive Director of Global Diversity & Inclusion at Procter & Gamble. She is a speaker, writer, advocate and diversity champion with more than 25 years of experience as a human resources executive. She is a chief architect of P&G’s Global Gender Equality strategy and co-creator of the “Women at Work: Myth vs Reality” campaign which launched in Davos in 2018. As part of her work in gender equality, Deanna sponsored a multi-year partnership with Catalyst, Inc bringing their Men Advocating Real Change initiative into the portfolio of P&G’s leadership development curriculum. She also authored P&G’s Equality Based Policy initiative which focused on global paid parental leave, pay equality, expanded flexibility, and disability inclusion. Deanna has extensive experience in Organization Design, Organization Transition & Transformation, Strategic HR Partnerships, Talent Management, Executive Coaching, and Change Management & Divestitures on behalf of multi-billion dollar brands. Deanna was the past Vice President of Hope Springs Institute Board of Directors and currently sits on the Board of All In Together, a collaboration-driven campaign to empower and inspire American Women to drive meaningful change in their communities. She also serves on Working Mother’s Multicultural Women and Work Beyond Summit Advisory Board. She is the recipient of the 2018 Ted Childs Life Work Excellence Award for her work in advancing culture, dependent care, flexible work, and parental leave policies. A Midwest native, Deanna has lived and worked across the U.S. and the globe. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sheila Jordan is the former senior vice president and chief information officer at NortonLifeLock Inc. (formerly Symantec Corp.), the global leader in cybersecurity. She was responsible for driving information technology strategy and operations, ensuring that the company had the right talent, staying ahead of technology trends, and maximizing the value of technology investments. Her mission has been to transform the company while driving increased productivity, revenue optimization, and more simple and intuitive experiences overall for NortonLifeLock Inc.'s global workforce, customers and partners.
Michael Gronager is Co-founder and CEO of Chainalysis, the blockchain analysis company. As CEO, Michael is responsible for running all facets of the business in order to provide leading anti-money laundering solutions for cryptocurrency businesses, financial institutions, and government agencies. Prior to founding Chainalysis, Michael was the Co-founder and COO of Kraken, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
Michael was bitten by the cryptocurrency bug in 2011, which prompted him to leave an impressive career managing international science projects. He holds a PhD in Quantum Mechanics, is on the Board of a Top500 Supercomputer Center, and is a founding member of the Working Group preparing the 5th European AML Directive.
As a 20-year Diversity and Inclusion, and Human Resources veteran, Angela Roseboro was recruited by Riot Games as it's first Chief Diversity Officer to evolve and transform the culture of the company. Driven by the philosophy, be the change you want to see in the world, Angela has spent her career building and executing strategies that increase representation for women and people of color in leadership, ensure fairness and equity in process and programs, and that foster a culture that empowers employees to do their best work. Named as 25 Most Influential Black Women in Business by the Network Journal and 50 Out Front for Women in Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion, and 2019 Moves Power Woman, she has worked at such Fortune 500 companies as T. Rowe Price, Jones Lang LaSalle, and the Whirlpool Corporation. Angela received her bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University in Illinois. A Chicago native, Angela is a wife, and mother of two daughters.
Tracy Malingo is Senior VP of Product Strategy of Verint Intelligent Self-Service where she provides strategic and operational vision on the company’s extensive and innovative conversational AI-suite. Tracy believes in delivering intelligent solutions to customers and employees so they can build trusted relationships and unlock value together.
Previously, Tracy was president of Next IT, the provider of conversational AI for the enterprise, where she guided conversational AI into the mainstream. Tracy’s compelling blend of business acumen and technical expertise enables her to relate to all elements of the industry and articulate the need for machine intelligence throughout an organization. Tracy is the proud owner of the world’s most awesome dog and is never afraid to go “all in” with a jack/ten pocket hand at the table.
Marcelo Cortes is the co-founder and CTO of Faire, a curated wholesale marketplace connecting local retailers with emerging and established brands. More than 50,000 retailers and 7,000 makers use Faire and since launching in 2017, more than 15 million products have been sold on the marketplace. Earlier this year, Faire expanded to include international makers from 39 countries and brought Canadian retailers onto the platform last month. Most recently, Faire announced a $150 million Series D funding round (at a $1 billion post-money valuation), and will use the capital to continue to scale the marketplace to empower more entrepreneurs in wholesale/retail.
Spencer is the CEO and co-founder of Cockroach Labs, a company formed to accelerate the development of CockroachDB. Previously, Spencer worked for 15 years at various and sundry companies including Square, Google, and a couple of his own startups. His experience at each stop along the way convinced him of the need for a better open source database. Before his professional career, Spencer co-authored the open source GIMP photo editing software while an undergraduate at UC Berkeley.
Michele C. Meyer-Shipp joined KPMG LLP as Principal and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer in August 2018. In this role, she leads the National Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) team and oversees its strategy and objectives, including supporting the recruitment, retention, and development of a diverse workforce; inspiring broad perspectives and innovative client solutions; and fostering an inclusive and accessible culture. Michele works closely with KPMG’s leadership teams to advance its inclusive and diverse culture, which has earned the firm recognition as a top workplace by FORTUNE magazine, DiversityInc, Working Mother, and The Human Rights Campaign. Michele most recently served as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. In this role, she was responsible for developing and promoting all diversity management practices across the firm, Prior to that, Michele was employed by Prudential Financial Inc., where she served as Employment Counsel from 2010 to 2012, and then as Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer from 2012 through 2017. In the latter role, Michele was responsible for leading and supporting all diversity and inclusion efforts for the company, and for ensuring ongoing compliance with equal employment opportunity laws. During her tenure, the organization was consistently recognized by DiversityInc as among the “Top 50 Companies for Diversity,” including multiple appearances in the top 10. Prior to her employment at Prudential, Michele worked in the public sector as General Counsel of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, and as Director of the New Jersey Division of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action. Michele also worked at Merrill Lynch as Employment Counsel and then as Northeast Regional Diversity Lead in the global wealth management business. She started her career in private practice as an employment litigator after serving as a law clerk for the New Jersey Supreme Court. Michele currently serves as a member of Twitter’s Diversity Advisory Council and Working Mother Media’s Multicultural Women’s Advisory Board. She is also an active Board member of the National Organization on Disability. She has previously served on the boards of GLSEN, Inc. (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network), the Women Presidents’ Organization, and the American Conference on Diversity. She is an active member of several professional associations and recently completed her tenure as co-chair of the Asia Society Global Talent and Diversity Council.
Mohamed “Mo” ElShenawy is a Vice President of Engineering at Cruise–the San Francisco-based self-driving tech company. With more than 20 years of software engineering and leadership experience, Mo leads the largest department at Cruise. Mo’s teams, comprised of over 750 engineers, are responsible for our AV Development, Product and Mapping Engineering, Data and Machine Learning Platforms, On-Premise and Cloud Infrastructure, Engineering Productivity, PaaS, and other functions, working in harmony to massively accelerate our rate of progress. Prior to Cruise, Mo led global technologies for Amazon ReCommerce Platform, Warehouse Deals, and Liquidations: a massive scale global business that enables Amazon to evaluate, price, sell, liquidate, and donate millions of used products daily. Prior to that, Mo led all engineering for SCH Business Solutions to deliver enterprise, customer-centric solutions to many Fortune 100 companies. In addition, over the past decade, Mo was a technical co-founder and CTO for three tech startups, the latest of which is a cloud-based financial services development platform used by top financial institutions.
Karen is responsible for scaling Paycor’s people practices in support of its rapid growth and for reinforcing its strong culture across an evolving geographic footprint. Before Paycor, Karen held leadership positions at American Modern Insurance Group, Kendle International, and Convergys.
Chris Trombetta currently serves as the Chief People Officer for ServiceTitan. Prior to ServiceTitan, Chris was the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Talent (HR) for Red Bull North America where he created the strategy practice and led a HR transformation. Earlier in his career, he worked for Bain & Company, a leading global management consulting firm, focused on consumer products and media & entertainment clients and as an infantry officer in the United States Army. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Dave is CTO | CISO at Moogsoft, who are pioneering AI for IT Operations (AIOps) across all industries, ranging as diverse as airlines, rideshare companies, global banks, pharmaceuticals, energy companies, clothing brands, gaming developers and even the most renown luxury houses of Paris! AIOps is a super exciting field where the best of machine learning and data science are part of the very fabric of global digital transformation. Before joining Moogsoft, Dave led architecture, cloud and infosec for some of the world's largest Wall St. financial institutions, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Deutsche Bank. Dave has served as co-chair of the Open Datacenter Alliance (ODCA) infrastructure working group, a cross-industry consortium that worked to standardize cloud-native approaches in the early, formative days of cloud. Dave loves to code, travel, beach, ski, guitar and play tennis and video games with his sons.
Satyen Yadav serves as the Chief Technology Officer and head of software development for Boeing Digital Solutions & Analytics. He manages a global organization responsible for all external‐facing software development in support of digital aviation business. He is responsible for creating the vision and direction for digital product architecture, agile development methodologies, cloud service architecture, and security practices. Satyen is also responsible for providing industry technology leadership for airlines, MROs, and other commercial aviation and regulatory agencies. Before joining Boeing, Satyen was General Manager at Amazon Web Services and led the global product, software engineering, and P&L portfolio for the Internet of Things (IoT) cloud‐to‐edge, Machine Learning at the edge, and edge computing services. His team developed and launched many innovative service offerings including one of the world's most innovative edge computing platforms called AWS Greengrass, Amazon FreeRTOS – an open source IoT OS for building intelligent embedded systems, AWS IoT 1‐Click ‐ a turnkey service for customers wanting fast IoT results with ready‐to‐deploy devices and pre‐built cloud services, and machine learning at the edge service. These services are available globally and have thousands of active developers and customers from many industries. Before joining Amazon, he was General Manager of IoT and Wearable Solutions at Intel Corporation and led a global organization to deliver hardware and software solutions for IoT and wearable devices. Before this, he held global leadership positions in engineering and business functions at Intel and helped establish new businesses in wireless networking and cybersecurity areas. Satyen holds an MBA degree from Northwestern University (Kellogg) and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Iowa State University. Satyen was named one of The World's Top 50 Cloud and Edge Computing Influencers (AMERICAS50 and EDGE50), by Data Economy in 2018. He holds over 20 patents in distributed & cloud computing, networking, and Internet security innovations.
Tony Ford, Marqeta’s Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for the organization’s long-term technology strategy and vision. Tony has more than 15 years of experience in leading high performing teams to deliver technology-differentiated solutions across different industries. Prior to joining Marqeta, Tony spent several years building web applications and community-driven video game tools for IGN Entertainment and brands such as Rotten Tomatoes. Under Tony's leadership, the team at IGN built a modern, scalable, service-oriented platform and mobile team. Tony’s specialties include open source software, distributed computing, web development, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and agile and lean product development.
Jeff brings more than 20 years of security leadership experience as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Contrast Security. Previously, Jeff was co-founder and CEO of Aspect Security, a successful and innovative application security consulting company acquired by EY. Jeff is also a founder and major contributor to OWASP, where he served as Global Chairman for 10 years, and created the OWASP Top 10, OWASP Enterprise Security API, OWASP Application Security Verification Standard, XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet, and many more popular open source projects. Jeff has a BA from Virginia, an MA from George Mason, and a JD from Georgetown. https://www.linkedin.com/in/planetlevel/ @planetlevel
Sherika Ekpo (she/her), a native of the D.C. Metropolitan area, joined Google as the Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lead for the Artificial Intelligence and Research product area. Prior to Google, Sherika served as the Head of People Operations at the United States Digital Service (USDS). Sherika has over 15 years of experience and a diverse set of skills in recruiting, data analysis, diversity, training and public policy. She has worked in both the public and private sectors with enterprises such as JP MorganChase, General Electric, and the Department of Homeland Security, just to name a few. She received her Masters of Business Administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland and Bachelors of Business Administration from Howard University. Outside of her professional experiences, she is a loving wife to Anyanime, and mother of three children, Oshae, Amari, and Ayanna. In her spare time, she loves to travel, spend time with friends, and watch Grey's Anatomy.
Maria Potoroczyn is VP of Strategy & Innovation and a Venture Catalyst at Citibank’s Global Consumer Bank. In her role, Maria leads mission-critical initiatives in designing the future of consumer finance and creates connectivity between Citi Ventures and lines of business.
Maria is also Co-Founder and Board Director of WIN: Women in Innovation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to close the gender gap in the field of innovation. Under her leadership, WIN grew its community from 20 to 3,000 members, expanded the team from 3 to 35, and established presence in San Francisco and London chapters beyond New York's home-base.
Maria has a track record of solving some of the most complex business challenges by combining her grounding in human-centered methodologies with a strategic rigor built over years of working with senior executive teams at Fortune 500, PE-backed companies, and nonprofits.
Maria is a frequent speaker, co-author, workshop leader, and programmatic advisor at industry conferences, including Fast Company Innovation Festival, NYC X DESIGN, SXSW, Experience Fighters, amongst others. She has also appeared at Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, New York University, and Parsons The New School as a guest lecturer.
Maria holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, media and communications from Goldsmiths College and a master’s degree with distinction in innovation management from Central Saint Martins.
Maria resides in New York City with her husband and two young daughters, who are currently CEOs of her household.
*as mentioned at the end of the podcast, you can follow Women in Innovation on instagram here: @womenininnovation
Margie leads the people team, overseeing all HR functions including people operations and talent acquisition. Most recently, she was Senior Director of Global People Operations at Twitch where she built talent programs and helped facilitate global expansion. Margie also served as the Director of Global People Operations at Ooyala, and Manager of Global Employment and Compliance at Netflix, helping to lead unprecedented changes to the company's parental leave policy, and Senior Manager of HR Center of Excellence at Sony PlayStation, where she drove strategic initiatives around compliance and technology.
Blaire was born in Dallas, TX, raised in Louisville, KY and launched a career as a highly competitive Sales Professional in Atlanta,GA.
There, she was consistently presented with challenging opportunities which contributed to her unique blend of Sales, Training, Operations and Performance Management expertise.
She started with DiscoverOrg leading a metric-focused team who focus on technology proficiency, adoption and continuous application for external customers. She has since moved into a newly established role as Director of Training & Sales Enablement at ZoomInfo powered by DiscoverOrg, leading a team who motivates our revenue generating teams to stretch their skillset & bloom into consistent high performers.
Blaire has gained a reputation as an energetic motivator, disruptive innovator and inspirational leader who other leaders lean on to develop Sales Operational & Training Excellence within their rapidly growing organizations and implement strategies to increase diversity company-wide.
Melanie joined Surescripts as Chief Marketing Officer in 2017, bringing with her more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of marketing, technology and healthcare. Based in our Arlington, Virginia, office, she loves serving as “chief storyteller,” helping people understand how technology unites our fragmented healthcare system. And she’s passionate about how we deliver comprehensive patient information to the point of care—we call it “actionable intelligence”—to increase patient safety, provide better access to quality care and lower costs. After earning her MBA from Boston University, she built her career at McKesson Health Solutions, taking on progressively pivotal roles focused on marketplace positioning of solutions, and developing successful action plans to reach customers. As Vice President of Strategic Marketing, she led marketing for one of McKesson’s largest technology units, championing its role in thought leadership, content marketing and social media. Before that, she gained considerable industry knowledge through key roles in strategic planning and marketing for Sutter Health in Sacramento, California, and Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Melanie enjoys traveling whenever she can. One of her most memorable trips was to Israel which she describes as the most awe-inspiring trip of her life. When an overseas adventure isn’t on the horizon, she unwinds by cooking and spending time with family. Having recently moved from Boston to Washington, D.C., with her husband and daughter, she hopes to spend less time relying on Dark Sky, her go-to weather app for updates on the next round of rain, sleet or snow.
Arijit is a Distinguished Architect at Splunk and passionate about observability. As the former CTO and first employee at SignalFx, Arijit has spent years designing, developing, and managing many aspects of SignalFx’s product. Previously, Arijit was one of the original developers of Facebook’s metrics solution (ODS) and subsequently managed the development of Facebook’s networking tools, data visualization, and other infrastructure monitoring software. He has been focused on the monitoring space for more than a decade, in a career that has also spanned IP telephony, VoIP conferencing, and network virtualization.
Dawn Frazier-Bohnert joined Liberty Mutual Insurance in the spring of 2013 to shape the new office of Diversity and Inclusion. As Senior Vice President, Global Diversity & Inclusion Officer, Dawn is responsible for leading the design, development and implementation of Liberty Mutual's diversity and inclusion strategy and programs. This includes enhancing employees’ D&I capability and skills, internal and external communications, metrics and measurements, benchmarking, external partnerships and the development of employee resource groups. Prior to joining Liberty Mutual Insurance, Dawn was Chief Administrative Officer and Partner at Global Novations, a Korn/Ferry International Company, where she developed their human capital strategy and led their post-merger company culture-shaping efforts. Before employment with Global Novations, she was at The Gillette Company as Vice President, Global Diversity and Inclusion, where she developed and led their Global Diversity Strategic Plan. Dawn has also held HR leadership positions at Lotus/IBM, Fidelity Investments and Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Growing up in an Air Force family as an Air Force brat, Dawn lived and traveled all over the world. She believes that these experiences helped her to develop the ability to be effective in most any culture. Building her cultural dexterity has enabled her to learn to navigate new organizations and to value and appreciate differences. Dawn attended Mount Holyoke College and graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. She served on the Board for the Black Achievers Branch, YMCA of Greater Boston and was a volunteer Big Sister for over 10 years. She served as a member of the Women’s Network Advisory Board for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Dawn is on the GK100 list of Boston’s 100 Most Influential People of Color, a list the Boston Globe reports, “showcase(s) minorities who are shaping the region across various sectors, including academia, business, health care, and philanthropy.” Dawn is also a four-time recipient of the Profiles in Diversity Journal Diversity Leader Award. She was awarded the Race Amity Medal of Honor in 2017 and recognized in 2017, 2018 and 2019 on the Black Enterprise List of “Top Executives in Corporate Diversity.”
Angelica Erazo is the Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator for Oracle Corporation where she assists the company in external strategic partnerships and manages the corporate HR blog. Prior to Oracle, Angelica worked on the Hill as a 2017 Running Start Fellow for Senator Martha McSally where she assisted staff on tech policy and communications logistics. She currently is the Vice Chair for the Austin Hispanic Quality of Life Commission, a board member for the New Philanthropist, and a board member for Austin Earth Day. She is the recipient of the Austin Mosaic Awards for her work around corporate diversity, a recipient of the Certificate of Heroism by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner for her work saving 400 endangered lives during Hurricane Harvey, and received national recognition from Shell Corporation for Hurricane Harvey efforts. She graduated from Huston-Tillotson University in 2016 with a B.A in Political Science and is currently at the University of Texas studying cyber security. During her free time, she likes to garden and watch clips of politicians bantering with each other.
Jimena Almendares is the VP of Global Expansion at Intuit, makers of QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint. She also serves as the CEO and President of Intuit Payments Inc, a subsidiary that owns the money transmission licenses for money movement across Mint and QuickBooks, and the Executive Sponsor of Intuit’s Latinos Connect employee group. Before joining Intuit, she was the Chief Product Officer at OkCupid and one of two C-level executives heading the company through its IPO as part of the Match Group. Jimena has worked in 16 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, at companies including Meetup, Zynga, Facebook, and Eventbrite. Jimena graduated from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris with a BA and MA in International Business and later received an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A three-time national ice-skating champion, Jimena has lived in eight countries, traveled to 44 and speaks five languages.
Wendy Zenone is a Senior Information Security Engineer for Netflix, responsible for managing the 3rd Party Risk Program. Wendy loves the ever-changing landscape of vendor security and enjoys working in a position that allows her to partner with many different teams across the company. Prior to working at Netflix, Wendy worked at Lending Club on their Application Security Team managing their bug bounty program, developer security training and vulnerability management. Wendy is a graduate of Hackbright Academy. Outside of work, Wendy enjoys spending time with her family traveling, snowboarding, watching Netflix and hanging out with their new puppy.
Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law and the Director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. A graduate of Harvard (AB summa cum laude), Oxford (MSc as a Rhodes Scholar) and Yale (JD), he specializes in constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, and law and literature. He is the author of three books: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights; A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Teach Us About Justice; and Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial. Yoshino has published in major academic journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. He has also written for more popular forums, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He makes regular appearances on radio and television programs, such as NPR, CNN, PBS and MSNBC. In 2011, Yoshino was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers for a six-year term (serving as President of that body in the 2016-17 academic year). He also serves on the Board of the Brennan Center for Justice and on the External Advisory Panel for Diversity and Inclusion for the World Bank Group. He has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship, including the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award in 2016, and an honorary degree from Pomona College in 2018.
Tracy Mahnken is the VP of Product at NerdWallet. She has over 20 years of product management, marketing, research and sales operations experience in the real estate and CPG industries, including as the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Realtor.com. At NerdWallet, she leads the product management team, focusing on data-driven problem solving to power our holistic product experience and drive business results. Outside of work, Tracy enjoys spending time with her husband and three teenage sons, either in the outdoors or over board games. She received a BA in Economics from the University of Washington and is an avid Seattle Seahawks supporter.
Asya Kamsky is a Principal Developer Advocate at MongoDB and has two decades of experience in highly technical, yet user facing roles. Asya is a subject matter expert in databases, static code analysis, scientific application programming, data warehousing and more. She is a frequent industry speaker and author.
Adam Ghetti, technologist and entrepreneur, founded Ionic Security in 2011 to address the problem of trust in our machine scale world. He has over 15 years of experience building large-scale systems in multiple Internet-related markets. He is an expert in complex systems and task automation along with an applied knowledge of application security, network security, data security, and artificial neural networks. He was recognized by Forbes as a 30 under 30-thought leader in technology and by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer. Additionally, Mr. Ghetti served on the inaugural Global Future Council on Cybersecurity on behalf of the World Economic Forum, serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Cybersecurity at the World Economic Forum, as an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations, as a member of both the advisory board for the College of Computing and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy at Georgia Tech, a charter member of TiE, a Distinguished Lecturer for the Robson Program at Emory University, and as a board member for Savvy Cyber Kids a 501(C)(3) providing educational materials for families to better enable them in navigating the digital world safely.
Rick Hamilton is the Senior Vice President at Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. Hamilton is responsible for Ciena’s Blue Planet software platform and global services organization, including consulting and support services for designing, deploying, managing and maintaining communications networks. Prior to this role, Hamilton served as the Corporate Vice President, Professional Services, for Juniper Networks and had a 11 year career at Cisco Systems. At Cisco, he lead services organizations from each of Cisco’s service lines. He was the GM for Cisco Systems Cloud and Managed Services business, Cisco Managed Security Service business, Professional Services Leader for their Global Enterprise Accounts and the combined PS Enterprise business and Technical Services organization in the Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR) region. Hamilton has effectively worked and lived in EMEA and Asia and has served all of Cisco’s developed and developing markets. Before joining Cisco, Hamilton was Senior Vice President and CIO of The DFS Group (a division of LVMH Group), a luxury retailer catering to the traveling audience. Previously, he led the Applications and Technology Services team that serviced 135 stores throughout the United States for Cost Plus World Market, and he led the applications development team for Discovery Channel’s consumer division.
Dawn Nott is the VP of People at Wish, the leading mobile e-commerce platform in the US and EU. She is also the Founder of BlueHive, which provides coaching and HR advisory services to start-ups in the Bay Area. Dawn has over 17 years of experience building and leading HR teams for companies during periods of hypergrowth and transition. Dawn was the first HR leader at Zenefits, where she navigated the company through a period of massive growth and transformation, resulting in 300% employee growth. She was also part of the integration team at Yammer when the company was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2B. Dawn holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC. Prior to her career in HR, Dawn was an actor in the Bay Area, appearing in a variety of stage and commercial productions. When not leading all things People & Culture, Dawn loves to cook without recipes, hike in the Berkeley hills, and binge-watch Tiny House videos on YouTube.
Souvik is responsible for the development, management, and execution of Zenefits’ engineering vision and roadmap. Before Zenefits, Souvik served as SVP of engineering at healthcare technology company Grand Rounds, where he built and scaled an enterprise-grade engineering organization. Before Grand Rounds, he was the CTO of Capital One's Auto Finance business unit and held technology leadership roles at Netscape and PayPal. Souvik holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Georgia.
Nicolas is the CEO and Co-founder of Algolia, the leading Search-as-a-Service solution for websites, mobile sites and mobile- and voice-first apps. Today, over 8,000 customers use Algolia to deliver instant, relevant search results to their users anywhere in the world. Seeing search as a great touchpoint to optimize user engagement, Nicolas launched Algolia in 2012 with CTO and Co-founder Julien Lemoine to help developers connect their users with what matters most. Nicolas is a firm believer in “culture-first” companies and is focused first and foremost on building just that at Algolia where ownership is the path to accomplishing their goals. Prior to Algolia, Nicolas spent over 12 years working on information retrieval at Exalead and Thales.
Wendy Lam is an engineering manager at Laserfiche. As a software professional with more than 15 years of experience in software development, Wendy has extensive experience providing technical leadership and guidance, building relationships with stakeholders and project management, and a proven track record in delivering quality software for organizations from startups to mature companies. In her role at Laserfiche, Wendy leads a team of engineers that is responsible for developing, testing, delivering and maintaining Laserfiche’s infrastructure supporting the company’s global offices. Prior to Laserfiche, Wendy worked as a tech lead for Honey Science, leading the team that managed the company’s most popular features. She also worked as an engineering manager at the Aerospace Corporation, where she collaborated with critical stakeholders to identify requirements for the next generation of innovative engineering applications and guided the development team responsible for more than 10 products. Wendy earned a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a certified Scrum Master and fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. Wendy enjoys volunteering for organizations that promote coding education, such as Code.org, and spending time with her two children. Wendy is also a reiki certified practitioner.
Dan Colomb serves as Snapsheet’s chief technology officer. Dan is responsible for the technical and architectural direction of Snapsheet and oversees the technical strategy and product management teams to create the future of virtual claims. Prior to joining Snapsheet, Dan served as a product software architect in HP's Autonomy division, heading the development of their secure enterprise document management software. He also worked in Motorola's Applied Technology and PCR groups, working on military, public safety, and commercial communication products. Dan is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.
François Locoh-Donou is F5’s President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors. He joined F5 in April 2017, bringing nearly two decades of enterprise technology experience building a wide range of products, teams, and operations around the world. Locoh-Donou previously held successive leadership positions at Ciena, including most recently, Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining Ciena, he held research-and-development roles at Photonetics, a French opto-electronics company. Locoh-Donou serves on the board of Capital One Financial Corporation and is also the co-founder of Cajou Espoir, a cashew-processing facility that employs several hundred people in rural Togo, 80 percent of whom are women. He holds engineering degrees from École Centrale de Marseille and Télécom ParisTech in France and a M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Gray Knowlton is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Kaseya, makers of the IT Complete Platform for IT Managed Service Providers. Mr. Knowlton has also held the role of CIO of Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Program & Product Management leader for Microsoft Office, and Product Management for Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Creative Suite. Delivering projects such as Open XML / ISO/IEC29500, the Daisy Translator for Microsoft Word, the Epilepsy Foundation My Seizure Diary, the Brian Grant Foundation Power Through project and others has helped Mr. Knowlton establish a reputation as an impactful technology leader in many segments around the globe. Mr. Knowlton brings a unique combination of product, program, engineering and IT leadership experience to Kaseya, to help the company realize its vision for IT Service Management. When he is not leading technology initiatives, Mr. Knowlton spends time with his beloved family, and at race tracks driving at extremely high speeds.
Paige is motivated to provide life-changing opportunities to those who may not otherwise get a chance to demonstrate their ability, tenacity, and creativity in the tech sector. Outside the office, you can find her singing the praises (literally with her classically trained voice) of her daughter on the lacrosse field. A multi-talented HR and IT veteran, Paige understands the intersection of technology and humanity. She was the executive director of human resources and IT infrastructure at Constellation Energy. She also was the director of human resources for PayPal’s global financial services.
Pablo Calamera is the CTO for JW Player where he oversees all aspects of technology development and technical operations. Prior technology executive roles ranging from startups to public companies including iconic enterprises like Vonage, iHeartRadio, and Apple. Pablo helped Vonage pivot from residential phone service to a leader in Business UCaaS, launched iHeartRadio’s first personalized and live radio products, and Apple’s icloud predecessor which launched coincident with the iPhone's debut, to name a few accomplishments. At the end of this episode, Pablo mentions this book: The Power of Customer Misbehavior: Drive Growth and Innovation by Learning from Your Customers by Michael Fisher, Martin Abbott, and Kalle Lyytinen
David Inns is CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of GreatCall Inc., the leader in connected health solutions for active aging. Since its inception in 2006, GreatCall has developed a complete portfolio of products and services that help enable independent aging, including: telehealth services, medication adherence programs, emergency response, fall detection and activity monitoring. GreatCall’s commitment to simplicity and best-in-class service helps the older consumer adopt and enjoy connected health solutions while keeping caregivers up-to-date on their own smartphones with the GreatCall Link app. Under David’s leadership, GreatCall has grown from a startup in 2006 to a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and over 1,000 employees. David is also an Executive Board member of the Consumer Technology Association. He was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 nationally in the Services category.Before joining GreatCall, David was Vice President, Consumer Markets for Bell Mobility in Canada where he ran the $1.6 billion consumer market P&L. He was also Vice President, Consumer Marketing for Bell Canada where he ran the $4 billion wireline P&L. David was a Partner at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, which was bought by PWC in 2010 for $378 million.
Lifelong Girl Scout, STEM champ, and advocate for girls and youth education, Sylvia Acevedo was appointed CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) in May, 2017. She assumed this notable position after having served as a member of the Board of Directors from 2009 to 2016 as an officer and member of its Executive Committee.Growing up in rural New Mexico, Girl Scouts nourished a love for math and science in Sylvia that would culminate in a career as a rocket scientist, engineer, and award winning STEM entrepreneur. She has held executive and engineering roles at leading technology companies such as Apple, Dell Computer Corporation, Autodesk Inc. and IBM.Sylvia began her career as a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she worked on NASA’s Voyager II mission, developing unique algorithms that analyzed the data Voyager II sent back to earth, helping NASA learn about Jupiter and its moon’s Io and Europa.Sylvia understands the U.S. education system and the challenges parents face in their children’s educational journey. Over the years Sylvia has spoken across the country about the importance of helping girls discover their strengths, passions, and talents. She served on the founding board of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin, Texas—the largest all-girls public school in the nation.To help narrow academic achievement gaps in America Sylvia co-authored the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Family Engagement curriculum. She is the author of Path to the Stars, an aspirational memoir for middle school students that focuses on her own journey of perseverance, hope, and achievement against the odds.Sylvia was one of the first Hispanic students, male or female, to earn a graduate engineering degree from Stanford University—an MS in industrial engineering—and she holds a bachelor of science degree with honors in industrial engineering from New Mexico State University.
Cal Jackson is the Diversity & Inclusion global leader at Tech Data Corporation and a certified NTL Diversity Practitioner. He joined Florida’s 2nd largest corporation in 2014. Cal is most known in the Diversity and Inclusion community for his design, development and delivery of engaging and thought-provoking cultural competence workshops. Topics include bias, generations, gender, lookism, self-awareness, classism and enhancing the cultural competence of leaders.
Cal has experience building safe containers for courageous conversations in Fortune 500 companies, academia, and civic forums.
He has received various accolades for his work from Black Enterprise Magazine, Florida Bar, Tampa Bay Diversity Chamber, Clearwater Bar, FL Blue, Florida Diversity Council, Jacksonville Business Journal and Leadership Jacksonville.
Cal presently serves on the board of directors for the Florida Diversity Council and is the President of the Florida Diversity Council Tampa Bay Chapter.
Andres is the Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Softvision (a division of Cognizant Digital Business), a digital services company that sits at the intersection of strategy, design and execution for the world’s leading global brands. Andres has extensive experience in developing large-scale technology businesses. He is a proven leader in effectively deploying technology and business process strategies, leveraging his proficiency in Digital Strategy, Agility and Team Development, Game Development and Enterprise Software Architectures. Andres’ vision and experience in identifying talent and the right resources have been pivotal to the company growth, from expansion into Canada to heightening superior delivery for customers looking to transform their organization. This is partly due to Softvision’s tremendous growth around digital capabilities. Today the company has delivery centers in U.S., Romania, Canada, Argentina, India, and Brazil. With an entrepreneurial mindset, he drives the power of a digital economy to his clients and is passionate about creating digital experiences that simplify and enrich our lives. He is at the forefront of addressing the growing customer demand for digital IT services and has managed transformations for some of the largest and most technologically advanced companies in the world. Andres can bring together teams across the globe for world-class delivery, and his cutting-edge approach to digital is instrumental to Cognizant Softvision’s marquis clients. Prior to Softvision, Andres was one of Globant's pioneers and recently served as the Chief Solutions Officer. His entrepreneurial skills kicked in and he successfully created multi-million-dollar practices, fostered a culture of continuous discovery, where design, technology, process and talent blended to drive digital innovation at scale for the company’s marquee global clients. His areas of expertise include product development, agile transformation, and gaming. Before becoming Chief Solutions Officer, Andres founded and served as the EVP and GM of Globant’s gaming studio, leading business on the West Coast, as well as VP of Engineering and Director of Global Presales Consulting from the U.K. He held other positions at Synthesis Information Technology, Electronic Data Systems and Sistemas Estrategicos. Andres is a frequent speaker and thought leader on how to scale digital innovation in organizations. He is a recognized speaker at Agile Business Conference, Insight Innovation eXchange North America, the Omni-Channel Retail Conference, the Chief Strategy Officer Summit, SXSW Interactive and Zend Con. He also co-authored a book titled The Never-Ending Digital Journey: Creating New Consumer Experiences Through Technology. His second book, Transforming While Performing: How To Create A Culture Of Innovation With Partners, will be published this fall. He started his career in Argentina as a software developer and holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Management and a Master’s degree in Software Engineering. Andres has lived in Buenos Aires, New York, London and California and is fluent in English, Spanish and Italian. Andres is also a trained classical pianist.
Anne Robie has been practicing the art of maximizing human potential for over 20 years. She is a seasoned HR executive, coach and facilitator and has experience working in diverse corporate environments as an internal leader and external consultant. She started her career at IBM and is currently the SVP of People and Place at Turnitin, an education technology company. Anne is passionate about the human aspects of business, believing the people perspective is the key to realizing organizational opportunity
Rebekah is Vice President of Community & Culture at Zillow, leading efforts around Equity & Belonging, Social Impact, and Cultural Engagement. She serves on nonprofit boards, as an advisor to technology startups, and is a Forbes.com contributor. Her first book, Blaze Your Own Trail, will be coming out in February 2020. Rebekah has been recognized in the Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40, the Inman 33 People Changing the Real Estate Industry, and the Female Founders Alliance Champion Awards. She is also a mentor, a mother to two boys and an aerial acrobat.
Ann Cuiellette Marr is currently Executive Vice President, Global Human Resources and a member of the Executive Team for World Wide Technology. WWT is a $12B systems integrations, value added reseller and software development company. WWT is on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For (8 years in a row) and Best Places to Work for Glassdoor. In her role, Ann oversees all global human resources functions which include talent acquisition, strategic staffing, policy development, benefits and compensation, government compliance, training, leadership development, immigration, communications and employee relations. WWT’s global expansion has included offices in Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, England, India, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. As a strategic partner, Ann also manages the company’s Corporate Development Program which includes Diversity and Inclusion, Supplier Diversity and Small Business Enterprise and manages the company’s communication efforts. Ann has successfully spearheaded the company’s submission for the 100 Best Companies to Work For and founded the WWT Women’s Leadership Forum. Ann is President of the WWT Charitable Foundation and is very active in the St. Louis community. Ann has managed tremendous growth at WWT continues to focus on making WWT a great place to work. Ann has over 30 years of human resources experience and has held HR positions with Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Anheuser-Busch Companies.
Stefan Schwab is CEO of Enlighted, Inc. Schwab oversees the strategic direction of the Sunnyvale-based, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions company delivering the leading technology platform for smart buildings. Enlighted is not only transforming the office work experience by revolutionizing the way intelligent buildings and people interact, but the company’s software also helps to improve the workflow and processes in the healthcare industry. Siemens acquired Enlighted in July 2018 and Schwab was appointed CEO in October 2018. Schwab began his Siemens career in 2006 in business development in Germany. Over the next 12 years, he advanced through positions of increasing responsibility in executive management including assignments in Germany and Singapore. In 2014 he was named executive general manager of the Siemens Building Technologies Division for Australia and New Zealand. Schwab earned degrees in political science, economics and business administration from the University of Augsburg and Munich, as well as an MBA from the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin.
Fred Lee serves as chief technology officer for Cars.com. In this position, Lee manages the technical and data engineering teams and is responsible for the product, data and operational platforms. Prior to Cars.com, Lee was the vice president of digital architecture at Grainger and chief technology officer at Gamut, a fully-owned subsidiary of Grainger. Previously, Lee was the chief technology officer at Belly, a six-year-old Chicago startup with top-tier investors, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Lightbank. Before his time at Belly, Lee was the chief information officer and chief technology officer of Enova International, Inc. (NYSE: ENVA). During his time at Enova, he helped launch eight businesses in six different countries while managing a team of 250 engineers, five data centers, and multiple systems. Lee served as the director of web strategy at Vail Systems prior to joining Enova, where he was responsible for the creation and development of the company’s web-based services and products. Lee received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Purdue University and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Paulette Luftig is a Senior Software Engineer, two-time team lead, and manager at Mavenlink. She is a former counselor and small business owner who transitioned into tech after attending Dev Bootcamp in 2014. In addition to coding, Paulette enjoys coaching others to develop their leadership skills. Amanda is a Senior Software Engineer, team lead, and manager at Mavenlink. She has a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering and a Bachelor’s Degree in Web Design and Engineering. A true unicorn of tech, Amanda has a broad and valuable range of skills, and is always willing to tackle any project, from designing a team logo to migrating an app to run on Kubernetes.
Lauren Hood is Diversity & Inclusion Executive at Bank of America, leading strategies, programs and initiatives that actively support Bank of America’s diverse and inclusive global workplace. Prior to joining the Global Diversity & Inclusion organization, Lauren managed Bank of America’s strategic partnership with China Construction Bank, the second largest bank in the People’s Republic of China. Lauren is Six Sigma certified and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and English with cum laude honors at Duke University. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and two sons.
Sarah Castle currently manages the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion work at Toast, Inc, a Boston-based company that builds restaurant management software. Prior to her role as the Program Manager of DEI, she supported the Engineering & Product departments as their HR Business Partner at Toast.
Nick Greenfield is the co-founder and CEO of Candid, a direct-to-consumer oral healthcare company devoted to patient outcomes. Nick co-founded Candid in 2017 after trying to get his teeth straightened and directly experiencing the high-cost of orthodontic care in America. He and his co-founders are focused on increasing the availability of high-quality remote oral healthcare. Nick is also a Partner at Redesign Health, a venture studio launching world-class consumer health businesses. Previously, he was the COO of Paribus (acquired by Capital One) and was a part of the team that launched Lyft in 2012.
Nick grew up in Maryland and graduated from Stanford in 2011 with a degree in International Relations with a focus on Latin America and Modern Languages. He’s always had the entrepreneurial bug, having worked at, founded, or invested in over a dozen startups. He’s known amongst his friends for his thousand dollar ideas.
Nick currently lives in New York City and spends his spare time chasing a flying disc as semi-pro ultimate frisbee athlete (on a brief hiatus).
Madhavi is a change leader with over 10 years of experience in successfully managing global programs focused on social impact, capacity building and sustainable change. She is passionate about designing approaches for collective impact through social change projects. Currently she is leading Okta’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Prior to joining Okta, Madhavi led a global technology entrepreneurship program for young girls (ages 10-18) at Technovation. Outside her fun work life, Madhavi loves to meditate and listen to imaginary tales from her preschooler.
Anne Benedict is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Infor. Ms. Benedict has global responsibility for ensuring that Infor, one of the world’s largest cloud software companies, is able to attract, select and manage the talent required for the business and its customers. Ms. Benedict leads the human resources function for 17,000 employees in over 60 countries. Ms. Benedict has over 20 years of global (Toronto, Paris, NYC) human resources experience, including 10 years of consulting at Mercer, organizational development roles at Disney-ABC, as well as 9 years of talent management and HR responsibilities in marketing services at Interpublic Group. Her breadth of experience across HR disciplines – such as recruiting, talent management, operations and compensation – brings a holistic approach to managing talent. Ms. Benedict graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Science from McGill University and holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Waterloo. She teaches Talent Development at the NYU Wagner School of Public Policy. She is the vice chair of an NYC non-profit called Futures and Options that prepares disadvantaged youth for careers and internships. She also sits on two advisory boards supporting McGill University. She is bilingual in French and English.
Sarah Chavarria is Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Delta Dental of California and its enterprise affiliates including Delta Dental Insurance Company, Delta Dental of New York, Inc., and Delta Dental of Pennsylvania, which operate in 15 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. She leads the overall Human Resources function, employee and corporate communications, strategic planning, and the corporate foundation. Sarah is focused on leading the business transformation through cultural change, organizational capabilities, leadership, and an optimized experience for employees and customers. Since joining Delta Dental, Sarah has implemented the first cloud-based solution for the enterprise, transformed HR, delivered change and communication capabilities.