WITI NextGen Program 2011
This micro-conference on Monday, October 3rd, is designed to encourage young women and girls to consider careers in Science and Technology. Leading women in Technology will teach, mentor, and share with students through speaking engagements, mentoring panels, workshops and roundtable discussions highlighting how these women of note chose their path while reinforcing the importance of demonstrated leadership. The day will feature an opportunity to have lunch with distinguished members of the WITI Board of Advisors and Directors as well as WITI Hall of Fame Honorees.
NextGen Event Schedule
9:00-9:45 Breaking the Stereotypes of Girls and Women in Technology
Group discussion on what girls and women in technology are supposed to look like, be interested in and the stereotypical norms they are associated with. The goal of this session: to break the ice with the different schools by having open group discussions and breaking the stereotypes of women in Science and Tech.
Program Moderator and WITI NextGen Program Manager:
Corinne (Eckel) Reitter, Senior Engineer, BookRenter.com; and Web Presence Strategist
9:45-10:00 Women in Science and Technology Presentations, Part 1
Successful women in various Science and Tech fields give a 15-minute presentation on what they love about their career, why they chose it, and what it involves. Each presentation will be followed by a short Q&A period. [This session will be held in two parts, so the NextGen attendees and speakers may attend Jocelyn Goldfein's presentation in the WITI Summit.]
Session Moderator:
Theresa Spralling, Senior Associate Director,
Business Sales Leadership Development, AT&T
Speakers:
Leigh Fonseca, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, BookRenter.com
Pamela Fox, Web Programmer/Web App Developer
Joanne Moretti, Vice President, Sales Excellence Enterprise Business, Hewlett-Packard
Andi Plantenberg, Single Bound Creative
Debra Vogler, President, Instant Insight; and Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
Estelle Weyl, CSS3 / HTML5 / Javascript Consultant, Speaker, Teacher
10:15-10:50 Giving STEM Roots: Fostering Interest and Overcoming Obstacles
Speaker:
Jocelyn Goldfein, Director of Engineering, Facebook
In this WITI session, Facebook Director of Engineering Jocelyn Goldfein will discuss the importance of getting more women into STEM, what the key obstacles are, and some changes that would make a difference in growing the number of women in tech. Jocelyn will also talk about the path to her current position and the impact of various experiences on her career decisions.
11:00-12:30 Women in Science and Technology Presentations, Part 2
Women in various Science and Tech fields give a 15 minute presentation on what they love about their career, why they chose it and what it involves. Each presentation will be followed by a short Q&A period.
12:30-1:45 Luncheon with WITI Summit Attendees
Distinguished members of the WITI Board of Advisors and Directors, as well as WITI Hall of Fame Honorees, are invited to meet with the NextGen girls over luncheon and informally share ideas, answer questions, and open a new door or two.
1:45-2:15 Wrap-Up, Summary, and Action Steps
In concluding our time with the girls, we'll discuss what we all learned from the day's speakers and where the girls hope to go in their own careers.
NextGen Speaker Bios
Leigh Fonseca
Leigh Fonseca leads the Analytics team at BookRenter.com. Since joining in December of 2010, she's launched a data warehouse, instrumented core reporting, and is now developing an analytic, info-graphic site to tell the story of education. Previously, Leigh launched the Customer Analytics program at Rhapsody in response to her frustration at the company's inability to answer the simple question, "What do our customers do?" Having joined Rhapsody in 2006 to lead their Server QA team, her first mission was to understand customer behavior to drive backend-testing strategies. Unwilling to accept the lack of customer-centered information, she began to mine Rhapsody's data warehouse and report on valuable customer insights that in turn drove subsequent business decisions. This experience led her to discover her passion--to tell the story of the customer and of the company--and began her career in analytics. Leigh was lured from a career in academic teaching from her Ph.D. program at University of California, Santa Barbara graduating with a MA in History to pursue technology and software development. When not geeking out on data modeling and visualizations, Leigh is training for triathlons or marathon swims, most recently swimming from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge.
Pamela Fox
Since discovering web programming as a kid, Pamela Fox has loved using web technologies to make apps and teaching other people how to use them. She went to USC for her bachelors and masters in computer science, spent five years at Google helping developers use the Maps and Wave APIs in their apps, and is now working on her own web apps using a mix of Python, JS, and HTML5.
Joanne Moretti
Joanne Moretti is Vice President of Sales Excellence for the HP Enterprise Business group. A recognized sales leader with nearly 30 years of experience selling into enterprise accounts, Joanne has leadership responsibility for developing and delivering a world-class learning experience for thousands of HP sales account professionals around the world. This includes partnering across business functions to create an HP Sales University curriculum focused on selling portfolio solutions, as well as leading the design and development of a dedicated, state-of-the-art facility for year-round learning. Joanne came to HP from Computer Associates where, over a 23-year career, she held a number of executive positions in sales and marketing, most recently including Senior Vice President of Product Marketing and SVP & General Manager of two successful sales regions. Joanne was born in Canada, is a graduate of Control Data Institute and has a Masters certification in Lean/Six Sigma. A business thought leader, social networking enthusiast, and prolific author who speaks frequently at industry events, Joanne has two children and is active in numerous IT and women's leadership organizations.
Andi Plantenberg
Andi is a seasoned creative who's been serving Fortune brands and high-profile startups alike since the mid 1990s. She founded Singlebound Creative (http://www.singleboundcreative.com), an award-winning digital agency in 1999. Singlebound is based in San Francisco and thrives at the intersection of design, business and technology. Under her leadership, Singlebound has grown to a million dollar agency boasting top notch creative and a direct relationship with top brands. Andi's unconventional path as a creative started in Silicon Valley. She migrated from the print world to web when the Internet was in its very early stages, initially with O'Reilly & Associates' Global Network Navigator (GNN – creator of the banner ad ). In 1996 after GNN had become part of AOL, she joined the financial startup INVESTools as Art Director, where her team broke new ground in concept, design, and implementation of financial and analytic tools for consumers. Andi remained with the company through its sale to Telescan, then as the company's Creative Director. Andi has also held positions as Online Design Director at ZDTV / Tech TV and Creative Director at Razorfish.
Corinne (Eckel) Reitter
For Corinne (Eckel) Reitter choosing to major in Computer Science at University was far easier than deciphering just what to do with the degree upon graduation. Corinne moved to California from Canada, after a year abroad in Australia, to begin her career in Web Development and Social Media Strategy in the Silicon Valley's Start Up Technology scene. You can now find Corinne at BookRenter.com, helping students inexpensively rent their text books. To keep everything in the high speed world of start up technology in perspective, Corinne balances web development with triathlons, marathons and traveling the world.
Theresa Spralling
Theresa Spralling is a successful sales leader and technology professional
with over 20 years of leadership experience. She has developed a track
record of success in creating and managing high performance teams and
leading through change. She's employed by AT&T as a Senior Associate
Director in their Business Sales Leadership Development Program. Theresa
serves on several Executive Boards; Women of AT&T, Children's Wish
Foundation International, Atlanta Tribune Advisory Board, and Women in
Technology International (WITI). She has received several awards,
including: 2010 Top 100 Most Influential Women in Atlanta; AT&T Service
Excellence Award; and Toastmasters International Excellence in Education
and Training Award. The 2009-2010 District Governor for Toastmasters
International, Theresa holds dual degrees in Business Administration and
Behavioral Science. Her expertise includes business development, sales,
collaboration, coaching & leadership development, conflict resolution,
change management, and end-to-end business solutions.
Debra Vogler
Debra Vogler is the president of Instant Insight, Inc. She received her BS and MS degrees in physics from Marquette University (with a minor in math) and had a 20-year career as a reliability engineer before founding Instant Insight in 1998 to create original video and audio content. While developing projects for Instant Insight, she built an 11-year career in journalism, reporting on the semiconductor, solar photovoltaics, and nanotechnology industries, and editing technical articles as senior technical editor of Solid State Technology, Photovoltaics World, Advanced Packaging, and Small Times. Still a full-time journalist for these publications, she has conducted hundreds of video and audio interviews with scientists and technologists. She is also the executive producer of the Curious Duck (TM) science show - the most recent project of Instant Insight - and hopes it will inspire young people to study science, engineering, and math. Among her other interests, Ms. Vogler studied piano for 13 years and also explored the possibility of starting a jewelry company while attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising during a break in her engineering career in the mid-80s.
Estelle Weyl
Estelle Weyl started her professional life in architecture, then managed teen health programs. In 2000, she took the natural step of becoming a web UI engineer. She has consulted for Kodakgallery, Yahoo! and Apple, among others. Estelle provides tutorials and detailed grids of CSS3 and HTML5 browser support in her blogs (http://www.standardista.com and evotech.net/blog). She is the author of Mobile HTML5 (O'Reilly, November 2011) and HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World (Sitepoint, May 2011). While not coding, she works in construction, taking the Brady Bunch look out of her 1960's home.
