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Master of Ceremonies

Amanda Coolong

Chief Content Officer & Advisory Board Co-Chair, Women in Technology International

341 - Luncheon with Keynote Panel: How To Be a Behavioral Change Agent in the Workplace

202 - Get (Em)powered by WITI!

Amanda Coolong has been shaping technology narratives for nearly 20 years. A senior digital media executive and content strategist, she is a powerful voice advocating positive change for women in STEM. Ms. Coolong currently serves as Chief Content Officer and Advisory Board Co-Chair for Women in Technology International (WITI), a leading authority on the issues impacting women in technology. Previously, she led worldwide women's initiatives for a division of IBM. Ms. Coolong was also a founding partner and COO of TechZulu, growing the brand to become Southern California's leading online destination for technology news. While at TechZulu, she was a pioneer of participatory media, utilizing early live streaming video platforms and social media to interact with her audience.

Ms. Coolong is also an established podcaster, having produced, written, and hosted This Week in Cloud Computing under the guidance of Jason Calacanis, and Bitcoin News Weekly with her long-time co-host, Mark Jeffrey. An accomplished online host, emcee, and moderator, she has interviewed hundreds of leaders in the tech ecosystem from events like CES, SXSW, BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the Launch Conference, and more. Her consulting brand, Context & Narrative, specializes in the art and science of storytelling. In her "spare" time, Ms. Coolong advises early stage startups on their go-to-market strategies, and mentors young women pursuing STEM careers.


Vicki Liviakis

News Anchor/Reporter, KRON4 News

299 - Hall of Fame Awards Induction Banquet

Vicki Liviakis is an Emmy Award-winning television news and entertainment Correspondent and Anchor, Managing Editor, and Producer. Ms. Liviakis knows both sides of the camera - from working in Europe as a photographer to anchoring the nightly news in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She has hosted and reported for numerous national television programs, including Paramount's syndicated "The West" and "In America," CBS' "Day and Date," NBC's "Real Life," and Fox Network's "Front Page."

Ms. Liviakis has also produced and hosted series and specials for Cable and Public Broadcasting. Her half-hour Travel Update program aired weekly on the Travel Channel, and Consumer Travel Reports were syndicated on over 100 TV stations in the U.S. as well as dozens of other countries. She co-hosted the series "Experience America" for PBS and traveled to China for a PBS series of documentaries on Shanghai and the World Expo. In addition to her Emmy Awards for Best Entertainment Program and Best On-Camera Performance, Ms. Liviakis earned a Webby for her multi-part documentary, as well as countless other honors for broadcast journalism, including Best Documentary and Best Mini-Series. She's also been honored for Outstanding Contributions to Broadcasting from the American Women in Radio and Television.


Keynotes & Featured Speakers

Kelly Becker

Vice President, Power Solutions Division, Schneider Electric

241 - Keynote Luncheon - Breakthroughs in Leadership: Here's How I Got to the Top!

Kelly Becker is Vice President of the Power Solutions Division for Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation. At Schneider Electric, Ms. Becker is responsible for strategy and business execution for a portfolio of Power Monitoring Hardware, Software and System Solutions, Power Quality and Lighting Control products. She previously led Strategy and Business Development for the $3B Partner Business unit in the US focused on strategic growth and breakthrough initiatives, market and geographic expansions, and internal start-ups.

Prior to Schneider, Ms. Becker was a Global Product Manager at Danaher Corporation in their Product Identification Platform. She worked extensively on new product development, sales growth strategies, and driving the core business internationally. Before attending business school, Ms. Becker sold complex energy management infrastructure projects to K-12 Schools and Universities in Texas, Illinois, and New Mexico. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Advertising/Public Relations from Texas Christian University and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.


Katie Broderick

Research Vice President, 451 Research

203 - Making Tomorrow Brighter: Creating Opportunities for Women in STEM

Katie Broderick is Research Vice President at 451 Research. She has collaborated on some of the industry's leading quantitative research on colocation, cloud computing, and datacenter infrastructure management. Currently, Ms. Broderick runs 451 Research's Datacenter KnowledgeBase. She also studies market dynamics on a custom basis for clients including topics such as cloud computing, hosting, software-defined infrastructure, and brand awareness.

Prior to joining 451 Research, Ms. Broderick was a Senior Research Analyst at Egon Zehnder International. While there she focused solely on board level consulting and corporate governance research. She was previously a Senior Analyst at IDC, where she conceptualized and led the firm's datacenter infrastructure management research, producing market forecasts and the first vendor comparison across the space. She also led the company's server forecasts for cloud computing. Ms. Broderick holds a Master's in Economics and Finance and an undergraduate degree in Economics and Spanish Language and Literature, both from Brandeis University.


Kelly Dermody, Esq.

Managing Partner, San Francisco Office, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein

341 - Luncheon with Keynote Panel: How To Be a Behavioral Change Agent in the Workplace

The Managing Partner of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein's San Francisco office and chair of Lieff Cabrasers employment practice group, Kelly M. Dermody specializes in class and collective actions on behalf of plaintiffs in employment and consumer cases. Ms. Carmody supervises many of the most significant and challenging employment class action lawsuits in our nation today, including complaints brought by female and minority professionals alleging gender and race discrimination by top Wall Street and Silicon Valley firms, wage suppression claims against technology companies, overtime pay lawsuits against nationally prominent corporations, and ERISA claims that she has tried on behalf of employees and retirees for pension plan abuses.

In addition to spearheading employment lawsuits, Ms. Carmody represents consumers in consumer protection cases. In 2006, California Lawyer magazine awarded her its California Lawyer Attorney of the Year Award for her successful prosecution of several class action lawsuits against California's main hospital chains for charging the uninsured exorbitant and unconscionable prices for medical care. Under settlements in these cases, uninsured patients received more than $1 billion in refunds or bill adjustments. Ms. Carmody is a leader in organizations devoted to serving the public interest, improving access to justice, and ensuring that the rights of historically disenfranchised persons are protected. In 2012 she served as President of the Bar Association of San Francisco, and was a member of its Board of Directors from 2005 to 2012. She earned an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.


Anita Gardyne

CEO/Co-Founder, Onēva

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

Anita Darden Gardyne is the Co-Founder and CEO of Onéva. She holds an MBA and a BA with Double Majors in Economics and Economics in the Black Community from UC Berkeley. She has served in technical roles at Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Pacific Bell, and senior finance and marketing management roles at notable firms including Quantum, IDG, and Pacific Bell/Telesis. Ms. Gardyne has a provisional patent pending for her work at Onéva.


Carolyn Leighton

Founder/Chairwoman, WITI

161 - Founder's Reception

202 - Get (Em)powered by WITI!

Carolyn Leighton founded WITI in 1989 as a worldwide e-mail network for women in all technology sectors. At the time WITI was established, Ms. Leighton was President of Criterion Research, a research consulting firm for the high tech industry which she founded in 1984, as well as chair of the Core Competency Database Project at Stanford University.

Due to Ms. Leighton's leadership and vision, WITI has grown to be the premiere brand and worldwide organization dedicated to empowering women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership and economic prosperity.

Ms. Leighton has 35 years of experience as an educator and entrepreneur. In addition to WITI, she founded four start-ups in the high-tech, legal sectors and, most recently, the pet industry. She attended the University of Michigan and has a bachelor's degree in human development from Pacific Oaks College. Ms. Leighton has received numerous accolades, twice named as one of the "Top 100 Women in Computing." More recently, she was named one of Fast Company Magazine's "Most Influential Women in Technology."


Laurel Mintz

CEO, Elevate My Brand

297 - Words of Wisdom from Six Women Who Persisted

320 - Know Your Brand Story: Cultivate. Innovate. Elevate.

With a J.D/M.B.A from Rutgers University, Laurel Mintz's background has uniquely prepared her to run a successful agency. Inspired by the innovative consulting work she executed early in her career with such brands as Le Bec Fin, Public House Restaurant Group, Bassett Furniture, and Julie Hewett Cosmetics, Laurel knew she wanted to play bigger. A decade later, she has created an agency family serving both startups and blue chip global brands like Facebook, Verizon Digital Media Group, PAW Patrol and Zendesk. Laurel's favorite saying is FIOGID: Figure it out, get it done.

Laurel sits on the Board of Directors for NFTE (Network for Teaching Leadership), the Women Founders Network, and the UCLA Restaurant Conference. She is a mentor for The Women's Global Leaders Initiative and advises LAVA (Los Angeles Venture Association). Laurel wrote a weekly Inc. Magazine column appropriately entitled "On Brand” for three years. Her published work can be found in Entrepreneur, USA Today, The American Marketing Association and C-Suite Quarterly Magazine. Laurel and the agency have recently won the W3 Silver Award for the PAW Patrol Road Patrol Campaign, the 2017 Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Award, the LABJ Women in Business Award, Comerica and LA Lakers' Women's Business Award, amongst others.


Lori Mitchell

Founder/President, Black Women in Technology

303 - WITI Spotlights: Women Making Things Happen in Technology, Innovation, Leadership

Lori Pressley-Mitchell created Black Women in Technology (BWiT) as a Meetup group late in 2014, as somewhat of a social experiment. New to Los Angeles and a self-described tech enthusiast, she attended technology events around the city. Much to her surprise, she noticed most of the events were not well attended by Black Women. She asked several women of color why, and found one nagging reason: they didn't know the event was taking place. Ms. Mitchell began to post technology and technology-related events held in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas to BWiT's Meetup page. The postings afford members the support of knowing someone else, like them, would also be attending. Feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging.

Ms. Mitchell has worked in technology since 1996. Self-taught to function as a system analyst while a Respiratory Therapist, she eventually returned to school to complete a Bachelor's Degree in Information Systems from Pennsylvania State University. She enjoys working in healthcare IT and is currently an acting operations and implementation manager for a behavioral health company.


Laura Niklason, M.D., Ph.D.

Founder, Humacyte

297 - Words of Wisdom from Six Women Who Persisted

Laura Niklason, founder of the regenerative medicine company Humacyte, has been a patient advocate and an inventor throughout the course of her career. Dr. Niklason is a physician who specialized in intensive care unit medicine, where she helps patients with life-threatening diseases. She is the Nicholas M. Greene Professor in Anesthesia and Biomedical Engineering at Yale University, where she has been on faculty since 2006.

Her research focuses primarily on regenerative strategies for cardiovascular and lung tissues. Dr. Niklason's bioengineered blood vessels are currently undergoing clinical trials, and are the first life-sustaining engineered tissues to be studied under a Phase III trial. Her lab was also one of the first to describe the engineering of whole lung tissue that could exchange gas in vivo, and her work was cited in 2010 as one of the top 50 most important inventions of the year by Time Magazine. She was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2015. In April 2017, Dr. Niklason was also recognized by Fortune among a prestigious list of 34 leaders for driving impactful change in healthcare.

Dr. Niklason received her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Chicago, and her M.D. from the University of Michigan. She completed her residency training in anesthesia and intensive care unit medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and completed post-doctoral scientific training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Niklason is recognized as a global expert in cellular therapies and regenerative medicine. Today, she continues to teach, maintain a vigorous scientific laboratory, and speaks nationally and internationally on her research and exciting, emerging medical discoveries.


Cindy Owyoung

Founder and CEO, Breaking Glass Forums

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

Cynthia Owyoung is the Founder and CEO of Breaking Glass Forums, accelerating diverse leaders and inclusive organizations. She has established and led diversity and inclusion initiatives for nearly 15 years at organizations both large and small, including GitHub, Yahoo, and Intuit. Ms. Owyoung is known for integrating a diversity and inclusion lens into all aspects of the business, from talent management to product development.

Prior to her calling in human resources, Ms. Owyoung launched a strategic planning consultancy, increasing the capabilities of non- and for-profit organizations in organizational development, brand marketing, and business strategy. She also built a decade-long career as a Brand Strategist for leading global brands and advertising agencies, developing campaigns for Microsoft, Levi Strauss, and Apple. Ms. Owyoung currently serves on the Board of Directors for Abilities United, a non-profit dedicated to the advancement, inclusion, and independence of people with developmental disabilities. She earned an MBA in human resources from UCLA's Anderson School of Management, a BS in marketing and finance from UC Berkeley's Haas Business School, and a BA in psychology, also from UC Berkeley.


Krunali Patel

VP and GM of Analog Design Services, Texas Instruments

297 - Words of Wisdom from Six Women Who Persisted

Krunali Patel is vice president and general manager of Analog Design Services for Texas Instruments (TI). During her 21 years at TI, Ms. Patel has shown skilled leadership in negotiating complex business models, making strategic investment decisions, driving flawless execution in new product development, and managing through organizational change.

In her current role, she oversees a global team of 350 people who provide critical design tools and new product design support for TI and is the executive sponsor of TI's New Product Development Execution Initiative. In this capacity, Ms. Patel is instrumental in implementing and measuring product development best practices across the company. Her hands-on teaching approach makes her a true partner with business leaders and engineering teams. She also serves as a member of the Executive Steering Team for TI's Women for Technical Leadership (WTFL) program.

Outside of TI, Ms. Patel is passionate about promoting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs in schools. As a mother of two daughters, she strongly believes in motivating young women to succeed and has recently launched a program that gives female high school students in the Dallas area the opportunity to shadow TI engineers for a day. She also serves as a board member on the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) board Dallas Chapter and is the executive sponsor for Texas Instruments' fundraising effort for JDRF. Ms. Patel holds a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University.


Samantha Raja

UX Engineer, Google

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

Samantha Raja is a UX Engineer at Google, working on prototyping user interfaces for virtual reality. Prior to this, she worked as a Technical Director at Pixar for six years, specializing in hair and clothing simulation. Her film credits include Brave, Monsters University, Inside Out, and The Good Dinosaur.

Ms. Raja has always enjoyed toeing the line between design and technology, pursuing both computer science and art classes in high school and undergrad. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Digital Media Design, a cross-disciplinary computer science-based major that included core programming curriculum as well as classes in art, film, and animation.


Rashmi Rao

Global Head, Advanced Engineering, CoC User Experience, Harman

351 - Are YOU a Budding Inventor? Ever Thought of Getting a Patent?

303 - WITI Spotlights: Women Making Things Happen in Technology, Innovation, Leadership

Rashmi Rao is Global Head, Advanced Engineering, CoC User Experience at HARMAN, the connected technologies company for automotive, consumer, and enterprise markets. At HARMAN, Ms. Rao is responsible for defining the company's technology strategy and roadmap to drive breakthrough user experiences in next-gen connected cars. She oversees the direction and management of the advanced engineering organization. Ms. Rao effectively leads a team of engineers responsible for developing various software components in infotainment, including audio, radio tuner, embedded systems, and vehicle interface. Her team creates solutions focused on combining cutting-edge technologies with advanced user experience design and human-machine interactions, from entry level to high-end and luxury vehicles.

Ms. Rao is a very active member of the Society of Information Display (SID) and currently holds several executive positions on the SID board. She is a strong advocate of STEM education and actively lobbies for diversity in technology work places. She is the author of over 19 US and global patents and many pending patents, two book chapters, and several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers.


Mona Sabet

Founder, Tribal Ventures

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

Mona Sabet is an entrepreneur, business executive, fierce diversity advocate, and seasoned attorney. She has had hands-on management with P&L responsibility, entrepreneurial experience, and expertise in scaling businesses through early stage development ($10M - $50M), as well as in large organizations through inorganic growth and partnerships. She believes in the power of small diverse teams to drive significant, meaningful change. Ms. Sabet is one of the co-founders of ChIPs ("Chiefs in Intellectual Property"), originally intended as an informal dinner group by seven heads of IP from major technology companies in the Silicon Valley, now a worldwide organization helping women in the tech sector accelerate their careers.

As former GM of The Grace Hopper Celebration, Ms. Sabet led the strategy and implementation that took the event from 8,000 to 15,000 attendees in two years. She co-founded VIBLIO, an online video search and sharing service. Prior, she was on the buy side of start-ups, running corporate development for Cadence Design Systems. Ms. Sabet has a strong science, legal, and business background and years of experience negotiating complex technology deals. In her career, she has driven corporate growth through technology transactions, new product marketing initiatives, acquisitions, patent strategy, and talent management.


Lisa Seacat DeLuca

Technology Strategist, Cognitive Incubation Lab, IBM Watson Customer Engagement

297 - Words of Wisdom from Six Women Who Persisted

Lisa Seacat DeLuca currently serves as a technology strategist in the Cognitive Incubation Lab for IBM Watson Customer Engagement. She is recognized as the most prolific female inventor in IBM history and, at only 34 years old, one of the youngest inventors at IBM ever to reach the 100th Invention Plateau Award (an IBM internal patent award system). Ms. Seacat DeLuca's innovation portfolio includes over 600 patent applications filed within the United States and abroad, of which 250 have been granted to date. The subjects of her patent ideas range from cloud, mobile, IoT, social, security, cognitive, and commerce to everything in between.

In addition to her work at IBM, Ms. Seacat DeLuca is also a TED speaker; a self-published author of two children's books, "A Robot Story" and "The Internet of Mysterious Things;" and an AAAS-Lemelson Inventor Ambassador where she increases visibility to the importance of innovation. In 2016, Ms. Seacat DeLuca was designated one of the Most Influential Women in IoT by the Internet of Things Institute. In 2015, she was recognized as one of MIT's 35 Innovators Under 35, LinkedIn's NextWave of 10 Enterprise Technologists Under 35, one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business, and IBM's Working Mother of the Year for Working Mother Magazine. In 2014, she was named one of Network World's 50 Most Fascinating People in the World of Technology.

Ms. Seacat DeLuca holds a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University with minors in Business Administration and Multimedia Productions.


Cynthia Stoddard

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Adobe Systems

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

As senior vice president and chief information officer of Adobe, Cynthia Stoddard oversees Adobe's global Information Technology team. In her leadership role, she spearheads a global strategy for delivering services that form the mission-critical backbone for the company. Ms. Stoddard is an IT industry veteran, with more than 25 years of business experience and IT expertise leading large global organizations in supply chain, retail, and technology development. Before joining Adobe in 2016, she was chief information officer and senior vice president at data storage and management company NetApp, where she led the company's traditional IT functions while also expanding focus on innovation, customer-facing programs, and strategic partnerships. She previously held a number of information technology and technical leadership positions at supply chain, retail, and technology companies including Safeway Inc. and APL Limited.

Ms. Stoddard is a recipient of the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders Award, was named among the top Women of Influence in 2016 by Silicon Valley Business Journal, and was recognized as one of Huffington Post's Top 100 Most Social CIOs in 2015 and 2016. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Western New England University, from which she graduated cum laude, and an MBA from Marylhurst University.


Selma Svendsen

Senior Director of Program Management, iRobot

297 - Words of Wisdom from Six Women Who Persisted

Selma Svendsen is the Senior Director of Program Management at iRobot where she plays a lead role in advancing iRobot's technology development strategy. Ms. Svendsen holds 22 U.S. patents for the invention of technologies that are core to robot design, including autonomous mobility behaviors and mechanical cleaning systems found on popular iRobot products like the Roomba vacuuming robot. Her inventions and leadership helped transform iRobot from a small Massachusetts startup to a global, publicly traded consumer robot company with more than $660 million in annual revenue.

Ms. Svendsen came to the United States in 1994 as a refugee of the Bosnian War. In the U.S., she pursued her passion for engineering and joined iRobot in 1998 as a senior mechanical engineer, soon transitioning to lead mechanical engineer. In 2003, Ms. Svendsen joined iRobot's Home Robotics division, building technologies that formed the foundation of iRobot consumer robots. She became deeply involved in business operations, working with overseas contract manufacturers to ensure iRobot could scale with rapidly growing demand. Her efforts in manufacturing efficiency and components cost reductions helped iRobot deliver high quality products on time, on budget. To date, iRobot has sold more than 15 million home robots worldwide.

Ms. Svendsen holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Dzemal Bijedić University (Bosnia) and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University. She actively participates in iRobot's mentorship and STEM outreach programs, continuously inspiring and encouraging young people to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.


Gené Teare

Head of Content, Crunchbase

303 - WITI Spotlights: Women Making Things Happen in Technology, Innovation, Leadership

Gené Teare is Head of Content at Crunchbase. She is responsible for data on the Crunchbase platform, the community and venture partnerships who contribute to the accuracy of the dataset. She has been writing and presenting on the issue of gender equity, providing reports using Crunchbase data. Ms. Teare joined TechCrunch in 2008 to run Crunchbase within six months of its founding. Working from the Atherton ranch, Ms. Teare was also involved with the setup of TechCrunch50 and TechCrunch Disrupt events from 2008 to 2012.

Prior to joining TechCrunch, she was a Director of Marketing and Key Partnerships at RealNames, the company that provided natural language navigation in the browser bar. Ms. Teare began her early Internet career in the '90s by co-founding Cyberia, the original CyberCafe in London, with Eva Pascoe.


Soody Tronson

Founding Manager, STLGip

351 - Are YOU a Budding Inventor? Ever Thought of Getting a Patent?

303 - WITI Spotlights: Women Making Things Happen in Technology, Innovation, Leadership

After holding technical and management positions at Schering Plough and HP where she developed and took several products to market, and practicing law at Hewlett-Packard, a successfully acquired medical device startup, and two national law firms (HellerEhrman and Townsend and Townsend) - Soody Tronson formed the boutique intellectual property law firm STLGip, where she counsels domestic and international clients in IP and technology transactions in a wide range of technologies. In 2016 she formed Presque, a company developing solutions for mothers and infants. Ms. Tronson started with the vision for Presque after learning that a family member was not able to breastfeed her newborn due to insufficient milk. She continued developing that vision and recruited a team who shares the same vision with the mission to take the solution to market.

Ms. Tronson serves in board, advisory, and leadership capacities with several organizations including STEM to Market, a national accelerator started by the Association for Women in Science (AWIS); California Lawyers Association Executive Committee of the Intellectual Property Section, Licensing Executives Society USA/Canada Women in Licensing Committee, and the Palo Alto Area Bar Association. As well, she is an active hands-on volunteer with several civic organizations including Defy Ventures, an entrepreneurship, employment, and character development training program for currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth. Ms. Tronson holds a J.D., M.S. in industrial chemistry, and B.S. in chemistry, and is licensed to practice before the State of California and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She is co-author of "Women Securing the Future with TIPPSS for IoT: Trust, Identity, Privacy, Protection, Safety, Security for the Internet of Things." To stay energized, she co-founded HighNoteCoffee Co., a third wave coffee roasting company in Silicon Valley.


Xuan Yue

Co-Founder, Mentorkind

204 - Intergenerational Mentoring: Perspectives on Success

Xuan Yue is a mission-driven social entrepreneur who champions under-represented groups in the workplace. She is a Co-founder of Mentorkind, a diversity-focused career mentorship startup that seeks to elevate 2 million careers by 2020. Ms. Yue is currently focused on building up the Bay Area mentorship community through semi-monthly events. She strongly believes that a more diverse and inclusive workforce could emerge from mentor relationships which provide more equity in career opportunities for women and minorities.


Jane Zhu, Ph.D.

VP & GM to Mozy & Next Gen DP, Dell EMC

241 - Keynote Luncheon - Breakthroughs in Leadership: Here's How I Got to the Top!

Jane Zhu is Vice President and General Manager for Dell EMC Data Protection Division. She is responsible for the next generation of data protection and management, including End Point Data Protection, Application/Storage/VM Integrated Data Protections, Copy Data Management, and Analytics product lines.

Dr. Zhu most recently served as Vice President of Engineering for TIBCO Software, where she was responsible for Security Information and Event Management. Prior to that, she held executive engineering positions at IPLocks (acquired by Fortinet), Borland, and Compuware. Dr. Zhu has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry building the commercial enterprise products in the areas of data protection, big data management and analytics, application life cycle management, middleware, and network performance monitoring. She holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Kansas State University.


Breakout Sessions

Neveen Abel-Jalil

Supervisory Patent Examiner, U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

351 - Are YOU a Budding Inventor? Ever Thought of Getting a Patent?

Neveen Abel-Jalil is a resource supervisory patent examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Her primary responsibility is leading the San Jose regional office's newly-hired patent examiners through their first year at the agency. Before transferring to California, Ms. Abel-Jalil had worked as a Supervisory Patent Examiner in Technology Center 2100, Computer Architecture and Software.


Gary Albright

Senior Executive Consultant, Kerri Evans Associates

340 - TA Uncensored: Elevating Your Talent Acquisition Game

Gary Albright is a Senior Executive Consultant with Kerri Evans Associates (KEA), a female-owned executive search and consulting firm established in 2004, and based in Mountain View. Mr. Albright has extensive Human Resources experience in high-growth business environments. He's been responsible for developing strategies and implementing major initiatives across all areas of Talent Acquisition, workforce development, and HR systems.

Prior to joining KEA, he was the Director of Talent Acquisition at Amazon Lab126. Lab126 is the innovation engine for Amazon's consumer electronics devices including Kindle e-readers, FireTV, and Alexa speech platform devices including Echo, Dot, Tap, and Show. Mr. Albright built the processes, analytics, and recruiting team that enabled the business to grow out of stealth mode, from 240 employees (with one product in the market), to an organization of over 3,000 employees (with over 35 products in the market). Prior to Amazon, he held senior Human Resources positions at BEA, Trovix, Veritas, Cadence Design Systems, Advanced Micro Devices, and The Gap. Mr. Albright holds a Master's Degree in Political Science from the University of Florida and has served on the board of directors of Project Hired, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to assist people with disabilities obtain gainful employment.


Bonita Banducci

Lecturer, Gender and Engineering, Santa Clara U/Institute for Women's Leadership

114 - Demonstrating New Leadership Skills: Calling Out the Brilliance of Women and the Greatness of Men

292 - Gender Equality in Large Organizations

131 - Engaging Men in Women's Leadership

211 - Calling Out the Brilliance of Women

312 - Calling Out the Brilliance of Women

Named one of 100 Women of Influence of Silicon Valley by the 2014 Silicon Valley Business Journal 2014, Bonita Banducci is a coach, consultant, author, trainer and mentor, and university faculty member. She adds a powerful dimension to the development of men's and women's leadership through her Gender Competence and RISE methodology.

Ms. Banducci has worked across Silicon Valley; she represented the Commission on the Status of Women of Santa Clara Country at the UN NGO Forum World Conference on Women in Beijing, leading a workshop on Creating Partnership of Women in Business with Women in Development for Sustainable Global Development. At the 2017 UN Women NGO Parallel Conference, for the fulfillment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Ms. Banducci led a panel workshop, "Realize 50/50: Brilliant Women and Great Men in Partnership." At Santa Clara University, she teaches Gender and Engineering, a Core curriculum course, for the School of Engineering Graduate Program. Ms. Banducci is a founding Board member of the Global Women's Leadership Network, first sponsored by the Leavey School of Business, and a faculty member and coach for the Women Leaders for the World Program.


Aditi Banerjee, Ph.D.

Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer, LTIMindtree

293 - WITI WIN: Old Industries, Sexy Data: Machine Learning and Industrial IoT

Aditi Banerjee is Managing Director at Accenture. Previously, she was Vice President of IoT business at HCL, responsible for Global Business Development in HCL America across Lifesciences, Healthcare, Energy, and Utilities Industries. She has two decades of experience in Sales Leadership in Product and Engineering Services, Semiconductor Product Marketing, and Technology Development. Prior to HCL, Aditi led the Engineering Services business for Lifesciences, Healthcare, Semiconductor, and Railroad industries at Infosys Limited. Earlier, she worked at Texas Instruments (TI) for 17 years in various roles, beginning in Research and Development of Semiconductor Technology and rising to become a worldwide Business Manager for Security and Authentication business.

Dr. Banerjee holds three US patents and has authored 13 technical publications. She earned her Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from North Carolina State University; M.S. from Pennsylvania State University; and MBA from Southern Methodist University. She is a member of the Advisory Board for Women in Technology International (WITI); Lead Co-Chair of the Engineering and Technology Chapter of International Association of Outsourcing Professionals; and serves an Industry Advisory Board member at Southern Methodist University and at the University of Arkansas.


Barbara Bateman

Director, Strategic Network Initiatives, WITI

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Barbara Bateman brings more than 20 years of experience in executive leadership and consulting roles at both Fortune 50 (IBM and AT&T) and small privately-held organizations. Her focus areas have been strategic planning, business intelligence, marketing, communications, business operations, program management and sales - in the Information Technology (IT) and Healthcare industries.

Ms. Bateman's passion is focusing on the "Why?" and developing partnerships. She combines strategic thinking and creativity with "roll up your sleeves" execution and results. She graduated from Florida State University with a major in Mathematics and has completed certificates in Healthcare Information and Entrepreneurship and Innovation (University of Florida).


John Bates

Founder & CEO, Executive Speaking Success

251 - Mastering the Art of PitchCraft

122 - Speak Like a Leader Bootcamp

132 - Speak Like a Leader Mini-Bootcamp

212 - Speak Like a Leader Mini-Bootcamp

262 - Mastering the Art of Pitchcraft

159 - Speak Like a Leader Bootcamp (repeat of Session 122)

John Bates is the founder and chief executive officer at Executive Speaking Success and is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company, developing the curriculum of the programs, and leading the executive speaking staff. He is internationally regarded as a top communications trainer and keynote speaker, as well as a savvy entrepreneur. John has been actively coaching since 2005, working with CEOs and the executive teams of PlaySpan, Prescience Intl., Motorola, Goldstar, Oculus International, LAZ Parking, Johnson & Johnson Innovation Labs, Janssen Labs, DudaMobile and many others on their presentation, media and business skills.

Prior to his training career, John was involved in helping to found and start up Goldstar, BigWords.com (which raised over $80 million) and VirtualVegas (the first online virtual destination site). He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funds, successfully opened resistant markets for new products, and has run the customer service department for a multi- million dollar company. John is also a contributing author to the book World Class Speaking in Action: 50 Certified World Class Speaking Coaches Show You How to Present, Persuade, and Profit, which became a multiple Amazon best seller. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in sociology and social psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles.


Deanna Boyden

Director, Community & Mentor Programs, SANS Institute

352 - CyberSecurity: Women on the Frontlines of the Battle against Cybercrime

Deanna Boyden is the Director of Community SANS and Mentor programs with the SANS Institute. SANS is the most trusted source for information security training in the world; Ms. Boyden oversees the Instructor Development program ensuring that SANS content is delivered at the highest quality levels. Ms. Boyden also heads up SANS' Associations Relations (COINS) program and is passionate in her work to support all associations within the information security community, as well as supporting the growth of the instructors and speakers she helps to develop each day. She is a strong supporter of attracting and retaining female talent into the industry, and building partnerships with various groups to help connect dots, create awareness, and meet her goal of increasing the number of young women who enter this growing area.

Prior to joining SANS, Ms. Boyden's unique business experience combined Marketing, Operations, and Human Resources, having worked within the mortgage industry with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and previously working with Canadian Regional Airlines/Air Canada Jazz. In her spare time, Ms. Boyden enjoys taking time to travel and real estate investing.


Kelly Campa

Outreach Director, Code Circle

110 - Code Circle at the WITI Summit: App Design & Development for Girls

Kelly Campa is the Outreach Director at Code Circle, an international youth-driven non-profit working to provide engaging courses to teach middle schoolers the design, logic, and engineering behind computer science. Ms. Campa is a junior at Menlo School in Atherton, California. At Code Circle, she is currently responsible for creating and managing on-site partnerships with schools and volunteer organizations. She has become passionate about education through her global studies classes and her time as a kindergarten teaching assistant. She believes that the best path to unity is through global competency and is currently learning two languages, Spanish and Arabic.

In her free time, Ms. Campa is a member of her local Youth and Government delegation, works on Menlo's theatre tech crew, volunteers as a student tutor, writes for her school publication, and runs non-competitively.


Donna Ceriani

Leadership Success Coach, Success Compass

371 - Drive Your Emotional Intelligence: What Every Leader Must Know about EQ

214 - Leverage Your Personal Brand to Achieve Your Goals

264 - Leverage Your Personal Brand to Achieve Your Goals

313 - Leverage Your Personal Brand to Achieve Your Goals

Donna Ceriani is a Leadership Success Coach, helping leaders in technology navigate career choices, enhance their leadership impact, and inspire their teams to achieve their best results.

For more than 25 years, Ms. Ceriani has held senior management roles leading teams across the U.S., Europe, and Asia in the financial services, health care, and technology industries. She was recently the Chief People Officer for SmartBear Software, winning a 2013 "Best Place to Work" award in Boston. Prior to that, she was an Executive Director for Global Client Operations for a company owned by Thomson Reuters and the DTCC, living in Boston, NYC, and Singapore. Ms. Ceriani now brings her vast experience to support her clients on their own journey to achieve their goals. When she isn't immersed in the adventures in today's workplace, she's counting the days until the next snowboarding season.


Nadia Chargualaf

Vice President, Human Resources, Telstra

292 - Gender Equality in Large Organizations

With close to 20 years of experience, Nadia Chargualaf is a strategic thought leader, with a strong track record of achieving complex sustainable change in large global organizations, by putting people, teams, and the customer at the heart of everything she does. Today Ms. Chargualaf is the Vice President of HR for the US operations of Telstra, a leading telecommunications and technology company with more than 36,000 employees across 23 countries worldwide. In this role she leads the US HR function providing strategic advice and support to the business in the areas of Organizational Development, Performance, Diversity and Inclusion, Talent, Recruitment, Compensation and Benefits Design, Compliance and Engagement.

Ms. Chargualaf holds a B.A. from The University of Washington, an HR Management Certificate from the Cornell School of Industrial Labor Relations and is certified as a Senior Professional in HR by the Society of Human Resource Management. She is also a member of the National Association of Professional Women, the Asia Society, and Women In Technology International. Ms. Chargualaf is originally from Guam and Washington State, and has lived in the continental United States and Asia-Pacific.


Susan Chritton

Author & Master Personal Brand Strategist

102 - Personal Branding: It's No Longer Optional

133 - Personal Branding: It's No Longer Optional

Susan Chritton, M.Ed., PCC, NCCC, is an Executive Coach, Master Personal Brand Strategist, and author of Personal Branding for Dummies. She guides professionals looking to engage their authentic self in the world through personal branding. With her wealth of credentials and extensive experience in career development, she is able to draw on her ability to identify each individual's uniqueness and then arrange the variables in his or her life to map out a strategic direction.

Among Ms. Chritton's many clients are Pixar, American Express, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, California Bar Association, and Ebay/PayPal. She served as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Counseling Psychology program at the University of San Francisco for eight years. She holds a Master of Education Degree in Career Education from St. Mary's College, a Post-Master's Certificate in Career Development from John F. Kennedy University, and is a Certified Professional Coach of the Hudson Institute. Actively embodying the principles of work/life balance, Ms. Chritton is involved with non-profit organizations that support her community. She serves on the Advisory Board for Wardrobe for Opportunity, is the Sustaining Director for the Junior League of Oakland/East Bay and is on the President's Leadership Council for John F. Kennedy University.


Sharon Crost

Social/Online Marketing Strategist

294 - Realize Your Potential in the $1.3 Trillion Social Economy

373 - WITI WIN: What If Smart Farming Is the Future of Sustainable Agriculture?

Sharon Crost is a Social Media and Online Strategist, helping businesses develop integrated go-to-market results, most recently with Hitachi in the Internet of Things (IoT). Ms. Crost has over 15 years experience leading digital marketing strategy in high-tech, bio, and non-profit organizations. Her results were awarded with the Information Technology Services Marketing Association's Gold Award for excellence in social media marketing and she was selected as a US Top 25 B2B Digital Marketer in 2012 and 2013.

Ms. Crost is passionate about smart and sustainable business models, with a particular interest in sustainable agriculture. She has owned a small organic farm since 1994 and has incubated and innovated micro businesses including organic community supported agriculture, permaculture, biogas research, and farmer's market sales. Ms. Crost holds an MBA from University of Colorado and spends several weeks each year teaching international MBA and MIB students for the Grenoble Graduate School of Business in France, London, and Singapore. She is currently based out of California.


Sam De Brouwer

Co-Founder & COO, doc.ai

363 - WITI WIN: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Sam De Brouwer is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of doc.ai, a computing linguistic company building medical dialogue systems and intelligent conversational agents for next-generation personalized healthcare. Earlier, she had co-founded Scanadu, which is developing a suite of medical-grade devices for the consumer market.

Ms. De Brouwer started her entrepreneurial career in 1996 with the Starlab research lab in Brussels, where she ran the business development department. That was her first experience with the MIT MediaLab, which specialized in blue sky research (aka BANG: Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes). In 1999 she started Jobscape, one of the first online recruiting platforms for the Benelux. From 2001-2004 she designed and implemented the first pilot for micro-entrepreneurship trainings in collaboration with the University of Antwerp and the European Social Fund. In 2008, Ms. De Brouwer served as advocacy director for the European/African branch of the One Laptop per Child Foundation, which secured funding for the deployment of laptops and training for over 50,000 children in more than 10 countries. As a member of TED, Ms. De Brouwer organized TEDxBrussels from 2009 to 2014, and has been organizing TEDxSanFrancisco since 2016.


Frank Del Fiugo

Founder, Del Fiugo Consulting

124 - Dealing with Difficult People

134 - Dealing with Difficult People

215 - Dealing with Difficult People

265 - Dealing with Difficult People

Frank Del Fiugo is the founder of Del Fiugo Consulting, an executive coaching firm that helps today's leaders acquire a psychological understanding of individuals to help drive organizational and personal performance. Mr. Del Fiugo has decades of experience working with emotionally charged situations, addressing and resolving personal and professional conflict, resolving peer disputes, addressing communication deficiencies, and fostering leadership development. He works with public and private companies in Silicon Valley, southern California, and nationally.

Mr. Del Fiugo is a professional speaker and provides training on leadership, stress management, dealing with difficult people, and high impact communication. He is also the author of a book focused upon aggression and anger management. He earned his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California, and his Master's degree in Psychology from JFK University.


Julie Desjardins

Head of Research, Athos

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

Julie Desjardins is Research Lead at Athos, a venture-backed startup developing a revolutionary product for the fitness and athletic market. "We are creating next-generation wearable technology that gives you real insight into how your body works as you move, and combining it with a beautiful user experience that will fit right into your existing routine. Our goal is to empower you to make more informed decisions while pursuing a healthy, active lifestyle."

Dr. Desjardins describes herself as having a passion for understanding how individuals make decisions. She has devoted all her postdoctoral research to this question and hopes to use this experience to better understand consumer and online social behavior. Her specialties include: Conducting research from conception to the presentation of results, managing multiple projects, overseeing employees, project budgeting, data analysis, experimental design, and communication of results both written and orally.

The author of numerous scientific and technical publications, Dr. Desjardins earned her Master's degree in Zoology from Western University and her Ph.D. in Psychology from McMaster University.


Danelle DiLibero

Director of Talent Acquisition, OnDeck

342 - The Future of Interviewing is NOW - and It's on Video

Danelle DiLibero has been an HR professional for over 15 years within various industries, including financial services (Goldman Sachs), consulting (BCG), engineering / manufacturing (Sensata Technologies), and technology (RMS and now OnDeck), with the primary focus on talent acquisition and employee experience. Her soft spot is University Relations and the ability to work with students looking for that first job.

Ms. DiLibero has hosted webinars for HCI and ERE and has been a panelist at multiple conferences discussing the topic of Candidate Experience. She has spoken at NACE multiple times and recently published an article for NACE Journal, titled "Could Video Interviewing Transform College Recruiting?" Ms. DiLibero received her B.A. in English and American Literature from the University of South Florida and her M.S. in Organizational Leadership with a focus on HR Management from Quinnipiac University.


Diane Ding

Founder, Ding Ventures

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

361 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Women's Employment in the Coming Decades

Diane Ding is the Founder of Ding Ventures, a venture fund that is focusing on hardware in the areas of food, agricultural automation, and Artificial Intelligence. Ms. Ding is also a partner at Shenzhen Valley Ventures, an accelerator focused on helping hardware startups prepare for the design for manufacturing phase.

Previously, Ms. Ding was head of admissions and China partner for Founder Institute, a world-leading startup accelerator and entrepreneur training program. She is also a Co-founder of Angelhere, a seed stage incubator and angel investment fund in multiple cities in China.


Jessica Earley-Cha

Director of Part-Time Education, Hackbright Academy

113 - Can Adults Learn to Code without a Computer Sci Degree? YES!

Jessica Dene Earley, from Calexico, CA, is currently the Director of Part Time Education at Hackbright Academy, providing avenues for women to get quality software engineering education. She earned her bachelor's degree in Sociology, Education: Applied Psychology from UCSB. Upon receiving her diploma, Ms. Earley started working in the nonprofit sector, spending almost a decade working with at-risk youth and people with mental health challenges in disadvantaged areas.

After years of supporting and encouraging others to pursue their dreams, Ms. Earley decided to pivot her career into tech. She is a full-stack developer who enjoys sharing knowledge and supporting others. She is active in Google Developers Group, Women Techmakers, Girl Develop It, Latin@s in Tech, and DevelopHerDevelopHim. You'll likely find Ms. Earley either listening to others' life stories or coding one of her many personal projects.


Candice Elliott

CEO & Founder, Nouvoyance

351 - Are YOU a Budding Inventor? Ever Thought of Getting a Patent?

Candice H. Brown Elliott is an executive, entrepreneur, and technologist/inventor in the flat panel display and semiconductor industries. She has held engineering and managerial posts in leading semiconductor firms as well as start-up ventures. She has founded several technology companies and led industry research consortia programs. She is a regularly invited speaker at international conferences, industry symposia, and universities. Ms. Elliott has over 100 US patents issued, with more pending. She was awarded the Otto Schade Prize in 2014 for her work in developing PenTile subpixel rendering technology for high resolution color displays, a technology now shipping in hundreds of millions of smartphones, tablets, notebook PCs, and UDTVs worldwide.

When not in the office, out in the garden tending plants, or working with her husband, Jeff, restoring their historic home, you may find Ms. Elliott at the local airport where she is an active flight instructor in single, multi-engine, and instrument airplane. She is currently writing a soon-to-be published Science Fiction novel entitled "All the Stars are Suns."


Gretchen Fox

CEO, MTO Agency

294 - Realize Your Potential in the $1.3 Trillion Social Economy

Gretchen Fox is a recognized executive and thought leader in social marketing. She provides a social vision and strategy for startups and Fortune 500 brands striving to take social to the next level. Prior to launching Made To Order (MTO), Ms. Fox served as Vice President of Social at Live Nation Entertainment, the world's leading live entertainment company, where she built an in-house social agency servicing over 100 live music venues and superstar touring artists including Pink, Rihanna, and Jay-Z.

Before joining Live Nation, Ms. Fox launched one of the first Social TV products to deliver interactive and live streaming experiences at NASPERS R&D project and Silicon Valley start-up, MediaZone. In this role, she managed online marketing for some of the world's biggest sport properties including: AELTC's Wimbledon Championships, IndyCar Race Control, Rugby World Cup, ING New York City Marathon, and NBC's Winter Olympics. Her work has earned her the Billboard Magazine Top Women in Social, regular press coverage, and a role as contributing writer for Forbes online.


Paige Freeman

Co-Founder, Women in Bitcoin

250 - FinTech, Blockchain & Bitcoin: Trends, Opportunities, Challenges

Paige Freeman is a well-respected leader in the blockchain community, most recognized for being at the forefront of merchant adoption of bitcoin. As founding member at Bitpay, she personally signed Tiger Direct, Newegg, Sacramento Kings, and thousands of other companies to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. Ms. Freeman is now Chief Marketing Officer and Director of Sales at New Alcheny, a software company offering strategy and technology services. She also serves as San Francisco Chapter Director for the global professional women's network, Ellevate.


Heather Furby

CEO & Director, Camp CAS

103 - Lead with Impact: The Value of NOT Fitting In

136 - Being Influential: Getting Comfortable Presenting Wild (or Not So Wild) Ideas

217 - Difficult Conversations: Navigating Communication as You Move into Leadership

267 - Being Influential: Getting Comfortable Presenting Wild (or Not So Wild) Ideas

158 - Lead with Impact: The Value of NOT Fitting In (repeat of Session 103)

158 - Lead with Impact: The Value of NOT Fitting In (repeat of Session 103)

Heather Furby is a business strategist and innovative leader who works with high-potential individuals to create lives of meaning and financial freedom. Through consulting, executive coaching, and personal development programs, she helps clients to masterfully navigate the special needs of today's business environment and become persons of influence whose ideas are heard, respected, and sought. As a business strategist and innovative leader, Heather has worked with businesses including Apple, IntelliTools, Institute of Noetic Sciences, and other cutting-edge companies to develop products that break the mold and make a difference. Her newest program is a Business Leadership Summer Camp, where participants can explore and discover new levels of leadership without risking their reputation, business progress or trusted teams. Heather is lead author of the Amazon Best Seller Women of Influence, proving you don't have to follow the rules to make a difference and lead with impact.


Alina Galimova

Admin Team, Code Circle

110 - Code Circle at the WITI Summit: App Design & Development for Girls

Alina Galimova is a member of the Admin Team at Code Circle, an international youth-driven non-profit working to provide engaging courses to teach middle schoolers the design, logic, and engineering behind computer science. Ms. Galimova is currently a graduate student pursuing her Master's Degree in International Business at Hult International Business School, San Francisco. She became fascinated by technology in 1999, when she was six and got her first computer as a birthday present. Since that time her main interests have been in ICT, Math, and Statistics. She is also into Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.

Ms. Galimova is a certified Data Science enthusiast, Python programmer, and member of the Committee on Science and Development in Harvard National Model United Nations. Her professional background includes strategy and management consulting in such companies as PwC, Deloitte, and JLL. At Code Circle, she applies her knowledge leading Business Development and Finance teams to ensure steady growth of the organization. In the near future, Ms. Galimova aspires to start her own Fintech business venture, a consulting agency for small businesses, and earn an MBA in Innovation Management.


Doreen Galli, Ph.D.

WITI

351 - Are YOU a Budding Inventor? Ever Thought of Getting a Patent?

An IBM Master Inventor and Distinguished Engineer, Doreen Galli holds eight patents, including technologies you use every day, and some of the most profitable in IBM's portfolio. She created the IBM Global Services IP program accounting for some 50% of IBM IP revenues today; as well, she led the Strategy and Innovation for AT&T's System Integrators segment, creating a pipeline of new and unique products with the potential to add over $1 billion in revenues over the next two years.

As an innovative executive in emerging technologies, Dr. Galli has led global teams in excess of 2000 people and business units, with P&L approaching $4 billion. She has served as a corporate officer at Global Fortune 10 Deutsche Post World Net serving DHL Mail as CIO/CTO; her Fortune 50 executive appointments include IBM, Dell, and AT&T. Also an active entrepreneur, Dr. Galli was involved with WebMD from its inception; she founded InfoEgis and Patient Forward, a tele-wellness solution.

Her career is built upon a solid foundation of five degrees by age 25, including a triple-major Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Waterloo (Canada), complemented by a recent AACSB Honors MBA. An All-American Athlete Collegiate Runner, Dr. Galli enhanced her formal education with process improvement certifications of Black Belt, Lean Six Sigma, and Pull Thinking, along with Technology and Network Transformation Certifications from AT&T. She is a Top 25 Women on the Web recipient and a published author with over 100 articles and her first book by Prentice Hall in English and Chinese. Dr. Galli currently serves as Network Director for WITI Las Vegas, and advises WITI on Corporate Memberships.


Andrew Gardiner

Co-Founder, The Hire Key

304 - The Inside Track on How to Be Discovered/Hired

340 - TA Uncensored: Elevating Your Talent Acquisition Game

Andrew Gardiner is a Talent Acquisition (TA) and HR subject matter expert with over 25 years of hands-on experience helping employers address their unique pain points across all disciplines of TA recruitment/hiring, sourcing, retention, and employer branding platforms and solutions. As the founder of BAJobs.com, San Francisco Bay Area's popular job board, Mr. Gardiner is able to feed his passion for connecting companies with the right candidates by prescribing his diverse clientele with the most creative, strategic, and cost-effective TA solutions. He keeps abreast of relevant trends and emerging technologies in both TA and candidate-facing platforms to ensure his insights are both relevant and strategic.

In addition to several hundreds of TA-related demos, Mr. Gardiner comes by this impressive body of knowledge and expertise through a unique combination of running his own recruitment ad agency (ADVANCE Recruitment Solutions), founding a job board (BAJobs), and personally pounding the pavement to ensure he understands and meets each client's unique hiring goals, wants, and needs. A close-to-the-heart endeavor is helping our Veterans transition into the civilian workplace through support of organizations like BraveHire, WorkForWarriors, and VetsInTech. Mr. Gardiner is also a proud sponsor and supporter of the Women In Technology International (WITI) Summit.


Isabelle Guis

VP Product Marketing | Sales Cloud, Salesforce

253 - WITI WIN: Integrating AI and VR/AR into Your Professional Life

Voted among the Top 100 Most Influential B2B Tech Marketers in North America in 2016 and the first woman Chief Strategy Officer in a cloud company, Isabelle Guis is passionate about developing and bringing to market innovative SaaS solutions leveraging analytics, machine learning, and block chain technologies to solve business-critical problems.

She was the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Egnyte, leading portfolio and market expansion with the creation of a new content governance solution. She previously served as EMC's VP of Marketing for the Public Cloud Solutions Group and Enterprise Storage Division. Ms. Guis helped companies shape and grow the Software-Defined Networking industry and was part of the executive team at Big Switch Networks, one of the pioneering SDN start-ups. She was founding Chair of the Market Education committee at the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Prior, she managed the P&L of Avaya's Small and Medium Enterprise Communications Business Unit as its General Manager. At Cisco, she was instrumental in the post-acquisition integration of the WLAN start-up Airespace with Cisco Go-To-Market and also led several Mobile Vertical Solutions from design and testing to launch. Ms. Guis holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Supelec in France and an MBA from Harvard Business School.


Amanda Healy

Senior Marketing Manager & Social Media Storyteller, TIBCO Software

112 - Making LinkedIn Work for YOU

269 - Making LinkedIn Work for YOU

316 - Making LinkedIn Work for YOU

160 - Making LinkedIn Work for YOU (repeat of session 112))

160 - Making LinkedIn Work for YOU (repeat of session 112))

Amanda Healy is an award-winning B2B marketing manager and social media expert, national speaker, and syndicated blogger. She currently works as a Marketing Manager for TIBCO Software, overseeing a global budget of $1.5M+ and leading a team of three to devise and execute multi-touch, multi-dimensional campaigns for lead generation. She runs all corporate social media accounts for TIBCO, as well as the company's internal social advocacy platform, PostBeyond. Ms. Healy also writes for PersonalBrandingBlog.com, interviewing thought leaders and celebrities such as Jonah Berger and Michelle Phan. The site has over 100,000 monthly readers and is syndicated by AOL, Yahoo!, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur magazine, among others.

Prior to TIBCO, Ms. Healy managed a $1M+ marketing budget for Akamai Technologies and spearheaded the company's delivery of the 2013 Winter Olympics. Previously at CA Technologies, Ms. Healy created the first-ever social media training academy for the firm's 14,000+ employees. She was recently featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal best-selling author Dan Schawbel's book "Promote Yourself" and was spotlighted by the Washington Post.


Glenda Humiston, Ph.D.

VP, Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of California, Office of the President

373 - WITI WIN: What If Smart Farming Is the Future of Sustainable Agriculture?

In 2015 Glenda Humiston was appointed Vice President of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of California. She came to UC ANR with more than 25 years of experience working on public policy development and program implementation supporting sustainability. Dr. Humiston was born in California and raised on a cattle ranch in Colorado, where she was a member of 4-H. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia, as executive director of a nonprofit organization advocating farmland preservation and value-added agriculture development, and spent several years as a consultant on environmental and agricultural issues throughout the West.

Dr. Humiston served President Clinton as deputy undersecretary for natural resources and environment at USDA from 1998 to 2001. She managed the Sustainable Development Institute at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in South Africa and the 2006 World Water Forum in Mexico City. In 2009, Dr. Humiston was appointed by President Obama to serve as the California State Director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Rural Development. She produced a widely acclaimed guidebook on "Access to Capital" and has led efforts to bring rural issues to the forefront of the state's Economic Summit and policymakers throughout California. Dr. Humiston earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in 2009, with research focused on U.S. Farm Bill policy. She has a master's degree in international agricultural development from UC Davis and a bachelor's degree in animal science from Colorado State University.


Radhika Iyengar-Emens

Managing Partner, DoubleNova Group

363 - WITI WIN: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Radhika Iyengar-Emens is Managing Partner of DoubleNova Group, a Silicon Valley-based blockchain consultancy and ICO advisory. She is a TEDx speaker, a Silicon Valley Woman of Influence, a serial entrepreneur, a crypto investor, and an expert in blockchain, digital health, and global entrepreneurship. She is raising a new blockchain VC fund named StarChain Ventures focused on foundational blockchain technology and enterprise blockchain solutions.

Multilingual in 9 languages, Ms. Iyengar-Emens is a global business advisor to high-tech startups and digital health companies from Europe, Israel, Asia, and Latin America. She is an expert in ICO and Silicon Valley fundraising, international expansion and business acceleration. As well, Ms. Iyengar-Emens is an advisor to governments and has set up and run accelerators and US market access programs for top startups. She has raised over $100 million for advised startups. A passionate advocate for women in technology and diversity, Ms. Iyengar-Emens is an Advisory Board Member at Women in Technology International (WITI) and an active speaker on Women in Blockchain panels and at global women's conferences. She holds an A.B. from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA from Chapman University.


Zahra Jamshed

Sales Director, Wipro

250 - FinTech, Blockchain & Bitcoin: Trends, Opportunities, Challenges

150 - Strategic Alliances Roundtable

150 - Strategic Alliances: How to Spot Them, Leverage Them, Grow Them

Zahra Jamshed brings a wealth of strategy, leadership, and trusted advisory expertise in applications, infrastructure, cloud, data center/managed hosting, and SaaS sales and solutions in financial markets, health care, and public sectors. She has held leadership roles in strategy, alliances, business development, and complex solutions development and sales at Savvis (now CenturyLink), Thomson Reuters, VCE and EMC (now DellEMC), where she drove revenue through complex solutions sales. Prior, Ms. Jamshed had served in management consulting roles at Deloitte, AMS (now CGI) and various boutique consulting firms, providing leadership in program management and systems integration to the financial vertical.

Over the course of her career, Ms. Jamshed has managed key client relationships and solutions partners to jointly come up with innovative applications and infrastructure solutions offerings. She also serves as an advisor to various FinTech startups, and currently leads the FinServ and FinTech Women's Industry Networks for Women in Technology International (WITI). As well, she is an active contributor to WITI.com as a columnist.

Ms. Jamshed attained an Executive Program in Strategy and Innovation from MIT Sloan School of Management, and a certificate in Fintech: Future of Commerce from MIT and IXL. She holds a Master's in Computer Information Systems from the University of Detroit, and a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering with Honors from UET, Pakistan.


Sudha Jamthe

Author & CEO, IoT Disruptions

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

Sudha Jamthe is the CEO of IoTDisruptions.com and a globally recognized entrepreneurial business leader, with 20 years of digital transformation experience from building organizations, shaping new technology ecosystems, and mentoring leaders at eBay, PayPal, Harcourt, and GTE.

Ms. Jamthe is the author of three IoT books: "IoT Disruptions," "IoT Disruptions 2020" and "The Internet of Things Business Primer," as well as the recent book "2030 The Driverless World" about the junction of autonomous cars and cognitive IoT. She teaches the first IoT Business course at Stanford Continuing Ed School. She is the producer of "The IoT Show" on YouTube. Ms. Jamthe is a champion for STEM programs and Girls Who Code, and hosts mentor programs for kids at Devcamps and Hackathons.

She has been a venture mentor at MIT and a Director at Bay Area Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Meetups. As a respected Technology Futurist, she actively contributes to TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, Venturebeat, and blogs at HuffingtonPost. Ms. Jamthe serves as the chair of the strategic advisory of Barcelona Technology School. She has an MBA from Boston University.


Suzzette Jaskowiak

Divisional VP, Pharmacy, Healthcare & Customer Engagement Technology, Walgreens

292 - Gender Equality in Large Organizations

Suzzette Jaskowiak, Divisional Vice President - Pharmacy, Healthcare and Customer Engagement Technology for Walgreens, is responsible for the technology that enables 10,000 stores to process more than 3 million scripts on a given day. Suzzette leads both operations and application development for Retail Pharmacy, Specialty Pharmacy, Healthcare Clinics, and Technical Field Services. She created and is the executive sponsor of Walgreens InclusivIT resource group. With more than 25 years of experience across application development, infrastructure, and operations, Suzzette has a broad spectrum of experience in consulting, technology, and the creation and management of lines of business for organizations as diverse as Accenture, ABN AMRO, and Forsythe. Suzzette is committed to encouraging girls to participate in STEM through organizations like Girls Who Code, Lumity, Girls on the Run, and her local school districts.


Miku Jha

Founder & CEO, AgShift

373 - WITI WIN: What If Smart Farming Is the Future of Sustainable Agriculture?

Miku Jha, Founder and CEO of AgShift, is a passionate entrepreneur and product executive with a proven track record of successfully launching and scaling products across multiple startups and companies such as VMware and IBM. As part of senior leadership and product teams, Miku helped build and scale multiple storage, mobile software startups into well-known global companies. She was instrumental in growing the storage business as a Founding Engineer at Ariodata, which was acquired by Xyratex. She helped grow and scale mobile business and product at Worklight, which was acquired by IBM. She led several mobile and IoT initiatives at IBM - under the Mobile First portfolio. She was responsible for the successful execution of the mobile virtualization initiative at VMware, under the office of the CTO.

Miku serves on the advisory board of BetterMDM, PlainMark, and MergeLane. She holds an MBA from Cornell University and a BS (Hons.) in Computer Science from the University of Mumbai.


Brenda Jin

Staff Engineer, Slack Technologies

113 - Can Adults Learn to Code without a Computer Sci Degree? YES!

Brenda Jin is a Staff Engineer at Slack Technologies, where she writes software that makes work better and more productive for millions of people every day. She launched the Slack App Directory in 2015, and later built and designed the first-ever RESTful DLP/eDiscovery APIs, enabling HIPAA and FINRA for Slack's Enterprise Grid.

Before Slack, Ms. Jin launched the first responsive shopping experience at Macys.com. She is a Board Member and volunteer Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It (GDI), a non-profit organization that teaches thousands of adult women software development every year. GDI's workshops remove the barriers to participation that have kept women out of technology.


Silvia Johnson

Vice President, Global Talent Organization, Symantec

352 - CyberSecurity: Women on the Frontlines of the Battle against Cybercrime

Silvia Johnson is the Head of the Global Talent Organization at Symantec Corporation. Sitting on the HR leadership team, Ms. Johnson oversees the end-to-end talent cycle from attract, to hire, retain and develop. Born in El Salvador, Ms. Johnson and her family immigrated to the U.S. when she was only two years old. Her tenacity and drive have served her throughout her life as well as her career where she now brings over 15 years of industry experience working with executives at all levels.

Prior to Symantec, Ms. Johnson had founded her own consulting firm, Outside the Cubicle, where she worked with leaders to develop strategic plans to grow their businesses. Earlier, Ms. Johnson had a four-year stint at Intuit as a Human Resources Business Partner for the Quickbooks organization, and five years at Xilinx as a Human Resources Manager overseeing mergers and acquisitions, college recruiting, and HR shared services. Ms. Johnson holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis.


Coleen Kane

Innovation & Engineering Center of California, Volkswagen Group of America

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Coleen Kane brings more than 20 years' professional experience in Recruiting, Staff Augmentation, and HR, specializing in technology in the autonomous driving space. She heads up Talent Acquisition for the Volkswagen Group of America, Electronics Research Lab - the R&D arm for the brands - where she leads efforts to effectively manage internal and external resources while defining strategy and policy.

Ms. Kane has been closely involved with the WITI organization for 10 years and serves as the Membership and Events Chair. She brings to WITI solid expertise to further enhance existing memberships, partnerships, and services while working to establish new relationships that support regional and national growth. Ms. Kane holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Reed College and an MBA from Chaminade University.


Diana Kelley

Global Executive Security Advisor, IBM

352 - CyberSecurity: Women on the Frontlines of the Battle against Cybercrime

As Global Executive Security Advisor to IBM Security, Diana Kelley manages the IBM Security Newsroom, leveraging her 25+ years of cyber-risk and security experience to provide advice and guidance to CISOs and security professionals. She is a regular Contributor to SecurityIntelligence and X-Force Research, and she co-authored IBM's Securing the C-Suite study.

Ms. Kelley is a faculty member with IANS Research and serves on the advisory boards of InfoSec World and Structure Security, and on the Executive Women's Forum's Content Committee. She was an IEEE "Rock Star of Risk" in 2016 and speaks frequently at major conferences. She co-authored the book Cryptographic Libraries for Developers, and wrote the chapter on "PKI and Directories" for the PKI: Wiley Tech Brief.


Bill Lamond

Human Potential 2.0

291 - Finding and Using a Powerful Voice

318 - Find and Using a Powerful Voice

231 - Making Yourself a Priority - So That You and Everything Around You Thrives

For more than 30 years, Bill Lamond has been a champion of women in leadership. He is the inventor of Fulfillment-based Thinking (FBT), which transforms the commitment-driven, working-harder ethic into one that is based on passion, partnership, and the intuitive and heartfelt way of thinking that women are famous for.

Mr. Lamond's clients are women who want to produce sustainable results in the style that women cherish: one of growing, developing, loving, acknowledging, and sustaining. His clients have included a Tony-nominated Broadway producer, a championship bodybuilder, a founder of a national breast cancer non-profit, a nationally recognized visionary architect, thousands of women business owners, saleswomen, and executives from such leading companies as Microsoft and Google.

As a featured speaker at the Microsoft Global Women's Conference, Mr. Lamond's talk on developing and using a powerful Voice was broadcast to the 20,000 women of Microsoft around the world. In his own words, "Voice is not a rehearsed speech. It is the ability to develop your own deepest relationship with yourself and to announce it to the world around you in ways that have magic happen for anyone listening."


Renessa Boley Layne

Founder, Perfect Work Academy

254 - How to Go From Bored, Burned Out, Unfulfilled in Your Current Career - to Doing Work You Love!

140 - Conversations in the Fast Lane: Insider Secrets to Redesign Your Success

220 - Conversations in the Fast Lane: Insider Secrets to Redesign Your Success

319 - Conversations in the Fast Lane: Insider Secrets to Redesign Your Success

Renessa Boley Layne is author of the book Fast Lane, Wrong Direction: Insider Secrets to Redesign Your Success. She takes high-achieving women who have grown bored, burned out, or unfulfilled in their current career and helps them create their "Perfect Work" - be it radically changing careers, starting a business, or bringing a big idea to life. Renessa's mission is to equip women everywhere to discover, design, and get highly paid doing work they love!

Renessa has appeared as a leading authority on ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX TV affiliates across the country. She has also been featured in publications such as Career Builder, CNN.com, Heart & Soul magazine, and The Washington Post. Renessa holds an Industrial Engineering degree from Stanford University and brings 20 years of corporate and entrepreneurial success to her training. Her skill set ranges from keynotes and facilitation to career and life design coaching.


Amy Logan

Founder & CEO, Gender Innovation

292 - Gender Equality in Large Organizations

Amy Logan is the Founder and CEO of Gender Innovation, a training firm that helps corporations enhance performance and competitive advantage by integrating gender equality into their business cultures and systems. She presents keynotes and workshops and offers a proprietary executive coaching program, leadership training, and consulting services. Ms. Logan's business background includes co-founding and selling the first online database for the health care supply chain.

A multi-award-winning global women's human rights activist, novelist, and documentary film producer, Ms. Logan has served since 2015 as President of the Board of the US National Committee for UN Women San Francisco Bay Area, where she led a turnaround of the organization and served as a Delegate to the UN's 60th and 61st Sessions (2016-2017) of the Commission on the Status of Women and the 2016 White House Summit "The United State of Women." An expert speaker on call for the US State Department, Ms. Logan has given talks at TEDx, UN Foundation, World Affairs Council, International Women's Forum, Oxford, NYU, and more.


Kathy Lomax

Vice President, Office of the CIO, First American Title

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Kathy Lomax is Vice President, Office of the CIO at First American Title. In that role she manages the business of IT within the Business Technology Services organization, which includes budget, marketing and communications, training, service desk, organizational change management, portfolio management, IT performance, governance, process, and methodologies. As an IT executive with over 25 years' experience in leading financial services and healthcare, Kathy has led a variety of global teams across IT disciplines including infrastructure, web administration, application quality management, application support, IT finance and vendor management. Prior, Kathy served in roles as Deputy CIO at L. A. Care Health Plan, IT Vice President and Sr. Manager at Capital Group Companies, and as Administrative Director at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Fueling her passion in supporting women, Kathy led the WITI (Women in Technology International) Orange County regional network for four years, earning her a seat on the Global Advisory Board since 2017. Additionally, Kathy has served on the board of SCSIM (Southern California Society of Information Management) since 2018 and is currently serving as Programs Chair.


Will Marre

Founder, SMART Power Academy

241 - Keynote Luncheon - Breakthroughs in Leadership: Here's How I Got to the Top!

101 - Supercharge Your Career and Work Like a Genius

111 - Supercharge Your Career and Work Like a Genius [continued]

121 - Supercharge Your Career and Work Like a Genius [continued]

364 - Why We Need Women To Lead

374 - Get What You Deserve: Create Your Own Workplace Equality with Bias-Busting Behaviors

Will Marré (rhymes with "Hooray!") is the co-founder and former president of the Covey Leadership Center which brought The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to millions worldwide. Today, his focus is on developing Smart Power leaders through his Smart Power Institute. The Institute is research-based and develops thinking tools, behavioral skills and leadership practices necessary to be effective in the new disruptive economy. Smart Power is based on gender synergy - how men and women can use gender-based strengths to lead and work together to multiply positive results.

Mr. Marré is the author of Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner, and Supercharge Your Career and Work Like a Genius, as well as his soon-to-be-released book Why We Need Women Leaders to Win. He was featured by the University of California TV (UCTV) for his online course, Turn your Superpower into your Career. Mr. Marré is a former Leadership Scholar in Residence of The University of San Diego, and currently serves on the leadership faculty of UCSD Extension.


Jen McClure

Program Director & Advisory Board Chair, The Conference Board

294 - Realize Your Potential in the $1.3 Trillion Social Economy

Jen McClure is CEO of JEM Consulting & Advisory Services. She is a board member, adviser, and consultant with extensive experience in many key business functions, and is one of the original authorities on digital and social media. More than a decade ago, she anticipated the significant impact these technologies would have on business, media, culture, and society, leading her to co-found a research foundation and think tank in 2005 focused on these technologies. The Society for New Communications merged in 2016 with The Conference Board, for which Ms. McClure now serves as a Program Director and Advisory Board Chair.

Prior to founding JEM in 2015, Ms. McClure was Vice President of Digital and Social Media at Thomson Reuters, where she founded and led the company's Digital Center of Excellence and oversaw the Digital Communications team. Prior to that, she was Chief Marketing Officer of Redwood Collaborative Media, Managing Director of Albrycht McClure and and held marketing, public relations and financial management roles at Ziff Davis and Ketchum Public Relations. Ms. McClure received her Bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and her Master's degree from Stanford University. She also holds a certificate in Nonprofit Management from California State University, East Bay and a graduate certificate in History, Politics, and Society from Oxford University.


Amelia Merrill

People Strategy & TA Leader, Guardant Health

340 - TA Uncensored: Elevating Your Talent Acquisition Game

Amelia Merrill is currently the VP of People at Guardant Health. Prior to Guardant Health, she was the SVP of People Strategy at RMS, Head to Talent Acquisition/Management at Juniper Networks, WebMethods, and held a variety of HR related roles at VeriSign. Her HR career has varied greatly from leading the People function, creation, development and implementation of M&A, and workforce reduction programs to Talent Acquisition Leader. Ms. Merrill is also an advisor for Wepow, RolePoint and HROnboard.


Robert Miranda

Admin Team, Code Circle

110 - Code Circle at the WITI Summit: App Design & Development for Girls

Robert Miranda is a member of the Admin Team at Code Circle, an international youth-driven non-profit working to provide engaging courses to teach middle schoolers the design, logic, and engineering behind computer science. Mr. Miranda is currently a junior at Menlo School in Atherton, California. After taking computer science classes at Menlo, he has developed a love of coding which he hopes to share with the world. To do this he is currently working to develop a python course for Code Circle. In addition, Mr. Miranda is a competitive cross country and track runner and an avid amateur astronomer.


Katie Mishra

Founder and CEO, Code Circle

110 - Code Circle at the WITI Summit: App Design & Development for Girls

Katie Mishra is Founder and CEO of Code Circle, an international youth-driven non-profit working to provide engaging courses to teach middle schoolers the design, logic, and engineering behind computer science. Ms. Mishra, currently a junior at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California, created Code Circle's App Design & Development curriculum after seeing the lack of engaging programming material at Boys and Girls Club and seeking to share her own love of computer science. For her efforts she has won numerous national awards, been featured in newspapers, and spoken at international conferences.

In her free time, Ms. Mishra is Scouting and Strategy and Research and Development lead on her all-girls robotics team, writes and publishes novels, and develops apps. In college, she wants to double major in computer science and business to become a leader in the technology sector.


Michael Neuendorff

President, Bay Area Executive Coach

252 - Success Secrets of the Super Achievers

223 - Grow Your Small Business

Michael Neuendorff, PCC, is the president of Bay Area Executive Coach. The firm provides coaching, training, and assessments for small and mid-size businesses that are committed to excellence in leadership, and organizational health. Mr. Neuendorff has been in the professional development field since 2008; he is certified by the International Coach Federation and is a Master Certified Coach Trainer via the Center for Executive Coaching.


Sean Norris

Managing Director, Randstad Technologies

304 - The Inside Track on How to Be Discovered/Hired

Sean Norris has over 16 years of experience in the technology recruitment industry. He has held numerous roles throughout his career at Randstad, including Technical Recruiter and Strategic Account Manager. Today, as a Managing Director, Mr. Norris runs the Northern California recruiting and consulting operation for Randstad Technologies. His current role and responsibility includes full oversight on a 51 million dollar recruitment and consulting operation, serving both Fortune 500 companies as well as Tech Startups.


Maria Ogneva

Global Head of Community, LinkedIn

294 - Realize Your Potential in the $1.3 Trillion Social Economy

Maria Ogneva is the Global Head of Community at LinkedIn. She has a social media bent and extensive experience in various roles in community management, social media, customer development, and marketing. Ms. Ogneva is passionate about building communities and loves helping businesses better connect with their customers and employees. She enjoys writing and speaking on the topic of operationalizing social business, and building strong communities.


Elaine Orler

Founder & CEO, Talent Function

342 - The Future of Interviewing is NOW - and It's on Video

Considered the recruiting technology industry's premier thought leader, Elaine Orler has been designing and implementing global HR solutions as a practitioner and a consultant for more than 20 years. A much sought-after industry expert, Orler's hands-on approach has enabled multi-national organizations to transform and optimize complex recruiting processes through contemporary technology-driven talent acquisition practices.

She has presented her vision for the future of talent technology in the U.S. at SHRM Annual, the HR Tech Conference, the Talent Acquisition Technology Conference, and HRO Today Forum. She has been asked to present at major HR conferences in the U.K., Netherlands, Turkey, New Zealand and Australia; most recently at the Australasian Talent Conferences. Her expertise has been cited frequently in Wall Street Journal, Human Resource Executive magazine, Workforce magazine, Talent Management magazine and HR Magazine.


Preethy Padman

Solutions Marketing, Nutanix

363 - WITI WIN: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Preethy Padman is a Senior Manager of Solutions Marketing at start-up Nutanix, a leader in hyperconverged infrastructure. Ms. Padman heads VDI and healthcare marketing at Nutanix, and has a passion for delivering use-case focused solutions solving customer pain points.

Prior to Nutanix, Ms. Padman held marketing positions at Dell Cloud Client computing division and Cisco TelePresence services group. She has built a strong career in technology across engineering, management, and marketing. She is also an accomplished singer and has composed popular music albums fostering world peace. Ms. Padman holds an M.S. in Information Systems from BITS Pilani, India, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.


Reema Poddar

Senior Vice President - Global Product Development, Teradata

293 - WITI WIN: Old Industries, Sexy Data: Machine Learning and Industrial IoT

Reema Poddar is a seasoned senior executive who heads the operations and business development for AdFender Inc., a security software startup that focuses on online privacy, eliminating malvertisements and helping users enjoy an annoyance-free browsing experience. Until very recently Ms. Poddar led GE Digital's Core software technology team that drives thought leadership and execution of the digitalization strategy. She was responsible for identifying and executing on growth levers that leveraged IT, Operations, Security, and Go-to-market functions across GE's Product and Application portfolio on PREDIX platform for Industrial Internet Initiatives. While at GE Ms. Poddar held several strategic roles, leading such varied business verticals as Industrial Automation, Manufacturing, Energy Management, Oil & Gas, and Healthcare. Prior to GE, she was the technology leader for Intellution, a Boston startup focused on Industrial Automation Software that GE acquired in 2002.

She is very passionate about talent development and strongly believes in creating high performance organizations. She dedicates time for coaching and mentoring to create a driven and motivational team. She strongly believes that transparency, collaboration, teamwork and humility are key to high employee satisfaction and lead to high customer satisfaction. Ms. Poddar has created and led several programs within and outside GE to support this cause through affinity groups and technology adoption. She holds a Master's in Computer Science as well as a Master's in Electronics.


Helay Rahimi

WITI Leadership

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Helay Rahimi sits on the WITI Sacramento Network Leadership Council, serves as Social Media Director, and supports establishing strategic alliance partnerships. She is a Microsoft- and Cisco-certified professional with academic excellence and a proven record of professional work experience. Ms. Rahimi is a management consulting professional at KPMG with several years of diverse technical and business experience serving Fortune 100 client engagements with a focus in Technology enablement, and Data & Analytics services.

Ms. Rahimi is multilingual; her knowledge and experience also includes strategically aligning IT with business goals, helping to create opportunities that facilitate change, driving profitability and delivery of quality products. She has been an active member of the KPMG Network of Women at her workplace, is passionate about technology, and encourages women to embrace challenging and rewarding roles in the technology industry. Additionally, Ms. Rahimi serves on the leadership board for the TDWI Silicon Valley Chapter and stays up to date with trends in Data space. Aside from her corporate and professional association work, she is active in pursuing a healthy lifestyle, philanthropy activities, and is a big advocate of promoting literacy and giving back to community.


Brenda Rogers

Head of People & HR, Electric Imp

304 - The Inside Track on How to Be Discovered/Hired

Brenda Rogers, PHR, CPC, ELI-MP is Head of People and HR at Electric Imp, a leader in the IoT space in Silicon Valley, the UK, and China. She is passionate about connecting the talent in an organization to the business results, developing mindful leaders, driving critical business initiatives, cultivating high performance organizations with talent acquisition, development, planning and execution in technology companies where human capital is a key strategic advantage.

Ms. Rogers has successfully led teams through major global change initiatives at Seagate Technology. She drove the hyper-growth at Portal SW (now Oracle) with a hugely successful lPO, and headed up the people and culture strategy at Perlegen Sciences during a major turnaround and commercial launch. At Roku Ms. Rogers built the HR/Talent function, created compensation strategy, and exceeding all growth goals by 3x yoy, attracting exceptional talent to support the business road map. She is also the founder of HR Strategies. Ms. Rogers holds a BA degree in Communications from UCSC and studied at the University of Michigan's Advanced HR Executive Program, under David Ulrich. She is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), and an Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner.


Maryanna Saenko

Senior Associate, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

253 - WITI WIN: Integrating AI and VR/AR into Your Professional Life

Maryanna Saenko recently joined the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Previously, Ms. Saenko was Director of Ventures at A3, focused on developing and supporting seed-stage investments in aerospace and adjacent domains. Prior to that, she led Lux Research's autonomous systems group where she traveled the world and spoke about robots. Ms. Saenko completed her undergraduate and Master's degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, following which she became a research engineer and worked on projects ranging from autonomous vehicles to MEMS devices for wireless power transfer.


Tara Scarrow

Director of Development, Heartwood 3D

253 - WITI WIN: Integrating AI and VR/AR into Your Professional Life

Tara Scarrow is Director of Development at Heartwood 3D, a developer of 3D interactive training applications utilizing mobile and VR/AR technology. Ms. Scarrow leads the company's development team and is well known in the industry for driving a relentless quest for quality. Right beside that passion, her purpose is to take the notion of customer service to a level that is almost inspirational. She emphasizes that "a customer is never out of warranty, even if the product is."

On a day-to-day level, Ms. Scarrow facilitates communication to align with customers' vision, and creates processes that empower the team to develop innovative, intuitive, and simple-to-use applications. Being customer-obsessed, she is able to hold that vision while encouraging the team to push the limits of the technology. Most weekends, she may be found taking in the glory of the Northern California outdoors or enjoying one of the many local festivals.


Jodi Schiller

Founder & CEO, New Reality Arts

253 - WITI WIN: Integrating AI and VR/AR into Your Professional Life

Jodi Schiller is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur, keynote speaker, consultant, essayist, and digital marketing expert. New Reality Arts grew from her passion for interacting with information and each other in new and immersive ways. Her background as a theater professional, writer, producer, and director inspires her to bring the expertise of stagecraft to the development of augmented and virtual reality experiences, including those using brain-computer interfaces.

Ms. Schiller speaks on AR/VR topics worldwide. She is the founder of ARVR Women, listed by Meetup as one of the "Most Active Meetups in the World" with the goal of achieving gender parity in the industry within five years. She is also an active member of the IEEE VR Standards Board and the Digital Senses Initiative, which seek to explore the boundaries of how technology can augment human perception.


Nicole Shanahan

Founder & CEO, ClearAccessIP

361 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Women's Employment in the Coming Decades

Nicole Shanahan is an attorney in California and a research fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center of Legal Informatics, a joint center between Stanford Law School and Computer Science. Ms. Shanahan is the founder and CEO of ClearAccessIP, an automated patent management and valuation platform, and a legal technologist who specializes in the legal applications of neural networks, structured databases, APIs, UI/UX, automation and SaaS.

Apart from the practical applications of legal technology, Ms. Shanahan is formulating an economic theory entitled "Coasean Mapping" to predict the pace and nature of society's adoption of legal artificial intelligence.


Deanna Shaw

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

Deanna Shaw leads the groundbreaking design team for the Internet of Things Business Unit. This includes innovating with clients worldwide to push the boundaries of current technology and helping to transform businesses. She is also the content leader for IBM Watson IoT Munich HQ, helping to build a unique experience for clients collaborating in this new technology space. In the past 20 years Ms. Shaw has created, launched, and matured product for IBM, focused on emerging markets.


Anna-Katrina Shedletsky

CEO & Founder, Instrumental

293 - WITI WIN: Old Industries, Sexy Data: Machine Learning and Industrial IoT

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky is the CEO and founder of Instrumental, a manufacturing data company that uses machine learning to find anomalies on consumer electronics assembly lines. Ms. Shedletsky has two degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, and went on to work as a Product Design Engineer at Apple. During her six years there, she designed mechanical components for three iPods and led system product design for the Apple Watch Series 1. After spending over 300 days in China finding and fixing issues on manufacturing lines, she started Instrumental to build an intelligent quality system to modernize manufacturing. Instrumental customers range from startups to Fortune 500s and span consumer electronics, apparel, and more.


Naveed Sherwani, Ph.D.

President & CEO, PeerNova

250 - FinTech, Blockchain & Bitcoin: Trends, Opportunities, Challenges

Naveed Sherwani brings over 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship, technical engineering, and general management. Dr. Sherwani has founded and co-founded nine companies in systems, software, and services. His recent focus has been on enterprise software, data analytics, and blockchain technologies. Prior to Peernova, Dr. Sherwani co-founded Open-Silicon, a leading provider of ASIC and system solutions. As the founder and General Manager of Intel Microelectronics Services, he pioneered Open methodology for EDA. He also founded Brite Semi, a leading solution provider in China/APAC. He has served on the boards of various companies, including Touchstone Inc., and Integration Associates.

Dr. Sherwani is a noted author, having written several books and over 100 articles on various aspects of algorithms, parallel computing, and EDA. In particular, he wrote the leading textbook on algorithms for chip-design automation, which is currently used in universities worldwide. Dr. Sherwani served as a Professor at Western Michigan University, where his research focused on algorithms, EDA, Combinatorics, and parallel computing. He received his Ph.D from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.


Ruth Simone

Executive Coach, Luminare Coaching & Consulting

362 - Re-Align, Re-Design, Re-Fine Your Leadership Advantage

280 - Essentials for Your Strategic Career

326 - Leadership Presence: Your Career Advantage

Ruth Simone is dedicated to high-trust client relationships. She has collected a rich palette of leadership skills from extensive experience in managing teams for the development of office buildings in San Francisco's Financial District. Subsequently, she founded, developed, and sold her wealth management business, and launched Luminare Coaching and Consulting in 2004 to serve Silicon Valley leaders.

Ms. Simone has presented at the San Francisco Business Round Table, Microsoft's Certified Solution Partners, Right Management, and the Northern CA Business Marketing Association. She serves on the Watermark Strategic Development Board, and offers Pro Bono Advising for ASTIA's entrepreneurial teams. She is a Certified Integral Coach of New Ventures West in San Francisco, and a long-term member of the International Coach Federation. Ms. Simone enjoys mentoring, community development, and all things cultural.


Anshuma Singh

Regional Network Director, WITI India Bangalore; and, Project/Program Manager, Applied Materials

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Anshuma Singh is a Global IT Service Delivery Manager in Applied Materials, and also serves as President of the Women Professional Development Network. Ms. Singh has over 12 years of experience in software product development, program and delivery management. She is a B.Tech in CSE from NIT Hamirpur. She is passionate about diversity and strategic organization development, leading many successful country-level programs. Ms. Singh has participated in many internal and external panel discussions both as a moderator and panelist. She is actively engaged in Women Tech Forums and is dedicated to the cause of education.


Janet Sosa

Independent, Health Care Technology Consultant

363 - WITI WIN: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Janet Sosa is Head of Implementation Services at Wanda, a remote-monitoring healthcare analytics and management company for primary care patients with chronic diseases. The MyWanda product blends predictive analytics and behavioral science to enrich the remote health and patient management experience.

Ms. Sosa is an experienced leader with proven abilities in strategic planning, improving efficiencies in operations, client success, and team building. Both analytical and process-driven, she has over 12 years of demonstrated success in leading and supporting innovative programs. Ms. Sosa is especially passionate about leveraging innovative technology to improve health outcomes.


Niharika Srivastav

363 - WITI WIN: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Niha Srivastav is the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Sanovatech, a services company focused on simplifying cybersecurity for non-techies, business managers, and executives. Niha has extensive experience in information technology and is very passionate about educating people on cybersecurity threats and risks. She is associated with various non-profit organizations in the Bay area that work towards the education of underprivileged children.


Roxy Stimpson

CTO, IOT World Labs

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

Roxy Stimpson is Chief Technology Officer at IOT World Labs, with 19+ years experience in software development and design. IOT World Labs provides end-to-end Enterprise IoT solutions. It is a product and integration company that helps customers choose, design, and integrate IoT solutions to solve business problems.

Prior to IOT World Labs, Ms. Stimpson participated in creating company vision and strategy; planning and building company technology and product roadmap with C-level executives and business stakeholders in various capacities, namely Enterprise Architect and Chief Technology Officer. Ms. Stimpson has helped startups and fast-growing companies succeed, cope, and mitigate growing pains. She has specialized in Enterprise Applications and Systems Integration including ERP, Logistics, Warehouse Integration, Continuous Process Improvement, End-to-end Software Development to Operation, Research and Development.


Yuki Takarabe

Regional Advisor, WITI Japan; and, CFO, Glad Cube

123 - WITI WIN: How to Utilize WITI Regional Networks & WINs as Tools for Your Career

Yuki Takarabe has more than 15 years experience working for small and large companies. Her specialties include: Management, Marketing, Leadership, E-Commerce, Web-Marketing, Sales, Social Media, Internet Advertising. She is the COO of Glad Cube, Inc. Glad Cube has been helping companies improve their web performance for almost 10 years; clients include B2C and B2B companies in retail, education, advertising, E-commerce, and many others.


Imo Udom

Co-Founder & CEO, Wepow

342 - The Future of Interviewing is NOW - and It's on Video

Imo Udom is the Co-founder and CEO of Wepow, a video interviewing and talent engagement platform that helps hundreds of organizations improve recruiter productivity, deliver engaging candidate experiences, and make the right hires.

Prior to Wepow, Mr. Udom held a number of posts at Lockheed Martin, including Deputy Lead Systems Engineer and Proposal Manager, where he managed a diverse team and evaluated project success. Mr. Udom received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and his M.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.


Dale Thomas Vaughn

Co-Founder, Better Man Conference, Director of DEI, Good Men Project

341 - Luncheon with Keynote Panel: How To Be a Behavioral Change Agent in the Workplace

292 - Gender Equality in Large Organizations

354 - Male Millennials: Allies or Obstacles in Gender Equality?

Dale Thomas Vaughn is an activist for gender equality and healthy masculinity. If you've seen NEVERTHELESS, the award-winning #MeToo documentary, you will remember him as the guy who says "sexism is the anchor that is holding society back." As co-founder of the Healthy Masculinity Initiative and the Better Man Conference, he has presented alongside leaders like Gloria Steinem, Sheryl Sandberg, and Tony Porter.


Sophia Viklund

Co-Founder, Silicon Valley Deep Learning Group

361 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Women's Employment in the Coming Decades

Sophia Viklund is a co-founder at New Sun Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based technology company working on implementing an innovative idea and bringing it into the market. Previously, she was a founder at backCODE (based in Los Angeles), building serious games that blend education with immersive game technology to teach complex skills. One of the early founders of PyLadies, Ms. Viklund is fluent in people, progress, C++ and user experience. She is passionate about guiding new generations and building communities. As a main organizer of Silicon Valley Deep Learning Group, she mentors innovative teams such as the Caltech Entrepreneurs Forum and organizations centered around entrepreneurship and education.


Brad Warga

Consultant, Global Technology & CHRO Practice, Heidrick & Struggles

340 - TA Uncensored: Elevating Your Talent Acquisition Game

Brad Warga is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles' San Francisco office. With a focus on human resource officers within the Global Technology Practice, he advises boards, CEOs, and investors on acquiring world-class HR leaders.

Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Mr. Warga served for four years as senior vice president of customer success and later as vice president of sales for Gild, an early-stage SaaS recruitment platform that was sold to Citadel LLC. Previously, Mr. Warga served as vice president of corporate recruiting at Salesforce.com from 2010 to 2012. From 2003 to 2010, he was corporate vice president of talent and employee engagement at Caesars Entertainment based in Las Vegas. He has also served in recruiting leadership roles for Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young, and Sapient Corporation. Mr. Warga holds a bachelor of science degree in business from Rollins College.


Michael Watson

Principal Talent Acquisition Recruiter, Workday

304 - The Inside Track on How to Be Discovered/Hired

Michael Watson is passionate about helping people realize their potential and setting them on a path to achieving great things. For the past 2 1/2 years, he has helped Workday scale their hiring from 1,500 to over 7,000 employees, all while being recognized as a great place to work. Before joining Workday, Mr. Watson was a Senior Manager of Global Talent Acquisition for HGST, where he drove the global recruiting, branding, and diversity strategies. Prior to HGST, he was Polycom's Talent Acquisition Manager for the Americas, driving their programs around diversity, university recruiting and employee referrals.

Mr. Watson's expertise lies in understanding how to attract, engage, and recruit top talent. His unique personality, sense of humor, and humility make for an engaging conversation about all things talent related. He currently volunteers his time with several organizations including Vets in Tech, Women in Technology, and Grace Hopper. When not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children and volunteering at their school. Mr. Watson holds a degree in Criminology from Fresno State University.


Grant Weinberg

Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition, TriNet

340 - TA Uncensored: Elevating Your Talent Acquisition Game

Grant Weinberg studied Finance in South Africa before joining the Gaming Industry. After an eight-year career in Casinos in various management roles, he decided to transfer his Human Capital skills into the Recruitment Sector. His career has covered Agency, Onsite, In-House recruitment and HR Management across multiple sectors with a strong focus on Recruitment Business Partnering excellence.

Grant is currently the Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at TriNet. His skill set combines both strategy and operational excellence across Talent Acquisition/Management, combined with HR best practice, all underpinned by a strong business acumen. In 2013 Grant was independently recognized as one of the 11 most influential In-House Recruitment professionals in the UK.


Shelley Westman

SVP, Alliances & Field Operations, Protegrity

352 - CyberSecurity: Women on the Frontlines of the Battle against Cybercrime

Shelley Westman is currently Senior Vice President, Alliances & Field Operations at Protegrity, with responsibility for alliances and field operations, which include pre-sales and post-sales support. Prior, Ms. Westman was with IBM for 18 years, most recently as Vice President, Operations & Strategic Initiatives, IBM Security. As part of this role, Ms. Westman led the University Programs for IBM Security and was involved in several IBM boards and committees on hiring and skills. She was the founder of "WISE" - Women in Security Excelling, an IBM group devoted to advancing women in security. Prior to joining IBM, she practiced law in Raleigh for five years, concentrating her practice in the area of civil litigation.

In 2016, Ms. Westman was appointed to a three-year term on the Board on Higher Education & Workforce for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine. She is a 2016 Honoree of "40 over 40" - 40 women who are making an impact in their fields. Additionally, she received a 2016 Executive Women's Forum Women of Influence Award in the category of Security Corporate Practitioner. Ms. Westman holds a JD, with honors, from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she graduated cum laude.


Amy Wu

Founder, From Farms to Incubators

373 - WITI WIN: What If Smart Farming Is the Future of Sustainable Agriculture?

Amy Wu is a writer for women's ag and agtech movement and the founder and chief content director of From Farms to Incubators, which has a mission of expanding the profiles of women in food, farming, and tech. From Farms to Incubators includes a documentary and a forthcoming book that spotlights women leaders in ag and agtech. These have been screened and presented at SXSW, Techonomy, the Forbes AgTech Summit, EcoFarm, and The New Food Economy.

Amy is an award-winning journalist with significant international reporting and teaching experience, and has reported on agriculture and agtech for The Salinas Californian in Salinas, Calif. She has also worked at Time magazine, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and the USA Today Network; and has written for The New York Times, HuffPost, and Wall Street Journal. She spent six years working in Hong Kong, widely reporting within the Asia-Pacific region including Shanghai and Singapore. Amy earned her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.


Vanessa Xi

CEO, YONO Labs

353 - WITI WIN: IoT + Machine Learning Make Things Intelligent?

Vanessa Xi is founder of YONO Labs, which built the world's first in-ear ovulation predictor. Ms. Xi holds a Master of Science in Management degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business.


Yinglian Xie, Ph.D.

Co-Founder & CEO, DataVisor

352 - CyberSecurity: Women on the Frontlines of the Battle against Cybercrime

Yinglian Xie has over 10 years of experience in security. Her work has focused on fighting large-scale attacks, where she combines parallel-computing techniques, algorithms for mining large datasets, and security-domain knowledge into a new theme of solutions in "big data for security." Earlier, Dr. Yinglian worked at Microsoft Research and collaborated with many product groups to improve the security of hundreds of millions of online users. She received her Ph.D. degree from the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University.

In 2013, Dr. Xie and Dr. Fang Yu co-founded DataVisor, when they envisioned a new fraud technology that automatically adapted to attackers without human intervention.


Jean Xin

VC Associate, Data Collective

361 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Women's Employment in the Coming Decades

At Data Collective, Jean Xin focuses on applying artificial intelligence to novel and high-impact problems in the real world (e.g., manufacturing, materials, agriculture, healthcare), as well as improving the workplace through better enterprise technology. Prior to joining DCVC, Ms. Xin worked at McKinsey & Company, where she advised executive teams on company-defining decisions, including data and technology strategy and M&A. Her favorite project gave her the opportunity to define McKinsey's perspective on automation, the future of work, and machine learning.

Ms. Xin holds an S.B. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Management Science from MIT, where she focused on computational cognitive science and finance, respectively.


Niousha Zadeh, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO, Brite Health

361 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Women's Employment in the Coming Decades

Niousha Zadeh is the founder and CEO at Brite Health. Her Ph.D. in Experimental Medicine, along with her background and professional experience in Computer Science, Machine Learning and Data Science, led her to bridge the gap between technology and medicine. Brite Health aims to be the leader in brain health improvements, using smart data and AI. Dr. Zadeh's academic publications have over 100 citations and are covered by major media including The New York Times.


Coaching Circle

Tina Ambrosini

Success Coach, Creativosity

261 - Energy Leadership: The Most Powerful & Empowering Way to Lead

311 - Expectations vs. Agreements: How to Create a Powerful Outcome through Collaboration

Tina Ambrosini is a professional development coach who works with purpose-driven individuals, to enable them to break free from limitations, identify their true passions, and create a roadmap for success to thrive in all aspects of their personal and professional lives. Tina offers customized programs to individuals and small businesses that are ready to take action and achieve rapid and profound change. Within SF Bay Area Coaches, she creates and coordinates events outside of monthly gatherings to add value to the membership, connect with the community, raise awareness about the benefits of coaching, and provide ongoing opportunities for members to collaborate with fellow coaches and grow their skill sets.


Holly Berkley

Founder/CEO, Bliss:Smart

213 - How To Be Relaxed, Confident, and Super-Effective in Interviews

263 - Ditch the Doubt: The Secret to Eliminating Impostor Syndrome

Holly Berkley, CNLP, COT, CBP, QEP, is an Energy Psychology expert with 20+ years experience freeing female professionals from the negative emotions and limiting beliefs inhibiting greater success and happiness. In her early career, she was a fixed-income arbitrage trader on Wall Street, and a technology strategy executive for Sun Microsystems and American Express.

An innovative thinker, Ms. Berkley distills complex neuro-technology into accessible personal development tools designed to produce immediate and profound results for women in STEM fields seeking to eliminate self-confidence issues and become effective, influential leaders.


Carol Evanoff

CEO, Mapping Your Career Success

135 - Changing the Perceived Success Molds: How to Get Noticed When You Don't Look Like the Boss

216 - Getting Mentors to Help: How and What to Ask for

266 - Growing an Organization Through Delegating

314 - Manage Meetings - Don't Let Meetings Manage You

Mentored 1,095 proteges and 3,000 employees in 40 years. 36 years in Leadership in Aerospace supporting the deployment of the Trident Missiles including: Engineering, Digital Engineering, Model Based Engineering, Manufacturing, Product Assurance, IT, Calibration, Machining, Composites, Electronics, Chemical Processing, Tooling, Maintenance, Transportation, Warehousing, Human Resources, Safety, Security, Explosive Processing for DoD/DoE with 100% Mission Success. 167 consecutive successful Trident Missile Launches. Currently working for Systems Planning and Analysis on strategic planning for the next 60 years of Trident II D5 Missile.


Diana Gaffney

Creator, DigPop Digital/WomenWorkRemote

272 - Recognizing, Facing, & Addressing a Toxic Workplace

232 - Recognizing, Facing & Addressing a Toxic Workplace

Diana Gaffney is a digital and business consultant with over 20 years leadership experience in operations and the digital workspace. Throughout her career in the UK and the US she's supported diversity in the workplace and mentored women to break in and successfully establish careers in tech. Regardless of industry, Ms. Gaffney recognizes the power of collaboration, empathy, and critical thinking to build strong professional relationships among teams and leadership. Ms. Gaffney is committed to supporting women and diversity in the workplace, workplace flexibility and healthy work environments.


Aurelie Guerrieri

Founder, Akila One - Your Growth Engine

137 - How Not to Succumb to Self-Doubt When Putting Your Public Persona Out There

218 - How Not to Succumb to Self-Doubt When Putting Your Public Persona Out There

268 - How Not to Succumb to Self-Doubt When Putting Your Public Persona Out There

315 - How Not to Succumb to Self-Doubt When Putting Your Public Persona Out There

Aurelie Guerrieri is a leading global catalyst in mobile advertising and a champion for gender diversity. She is the Founder of Akila One, a growth-focused consultancy working with CEOs of digital companies such as LoopUp (IPO'd), Madison-Reed, Udacity. Most recently, Akila One helped Inventhys (IBM IoT channel) evangelize successful business models in IoT, MobPartner expand to the US and get sold to Cheetah Mobile and Viber launch in-chat m-commerce.

Ms. Guerrieri is President Emeritus of Women in Wireless, which she grew to more than 12,000 members worldwide. She is the author of The Mobile Native's Guide to Marketing, and a contributor to several media publications. In 2016, she was named one of 25 Mobile Women to Watch by Mobile Marketer.


Gabrielle Hildebrand

Principal, Wild and Brilliant

138 - Standing your Ground in Emotionally Charged Situations

Gabrielle Hildebrand has coaching certifications from the Hendricks Institute and Bay Non-Violent Communication. At the Hendricks Institute, she co-directed the Leadership and Transformation Program and provided advanced skills sessions. In addition to her private coaching practice, Ms. Hildebrand teaches and sponsors Hendricks-based workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her forte is translating cerebral concepts into tangible experiences that generate epiphanies.


Janet Janssen

Principal, Sales Consulting & Coaching Services

219 - Changing Habits Is Changing Our Minds

270 - You Can Predict the Future: Innovative Strategies for Goal Achievement

317 - Seven Seconds to Making a Great and Lasting Impression

Janet Janssen is a distinguished Toastmaster International speaker, coach, and trainer. She has provided successful coaching circles with WITI for five years and in her Power Play Purpose business for nine years, helping project managers, leaders, and everyday professionals learn the skills on how to go after what you want in life-career. Her programs include sales and goal achievement strategies and tactics, positive mindset principles, and public speaking and storytelling skills. Her work uses positive psychology, neurolinguist, and practical hands-on practices. She is a member of the Women's Networking Alliance since 2012, Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce Board member, and monthly Strictly Business columnist, at the Press Banner.


Nancy Kazdan

Founder & CEO, Market Share International

139 - Creating Your Irresistible Value Proposition

271 - Creating Your Irresistible Value Proposition

331 - Creating Your Irresistible Value Proposition

Nancy Kazdan has built a solid executive communication, sales, and marketing consulting firm providing tailored coaching, consulting, training, mentoring, and project management expertise. Ms. Kazdan is known for helping business professionals distill, communicate, and translate complex information into messages and stories their target audience/s will understand, resulting in action. Over 20 years, Ms. Kazdan has developed a strong portfolio of successful client projects in technology, media, and financial services. She works with individuals and groups from startups, small businesses, corporate, and international organizations.

She has worked with technology organizations such as IBM, Apple and many others, increased Request for Proposal wins by 300% for Intech Investment Consultants and advised 17 startups. U.S. born and Silicon Valley raised, Ms. Kazdan received her B.Sc. focusing on Behavioral Science from the University of California, East Bay, and as a guest lecturer in Sydney, Australia at the Graduate School of Management. She has certifications in Cognitive Behavioral Coaching and Sales Behavioral Preference Assessments. On a post-graduate level she focused on Organizational Development, Transformational Leadership, and Strategic Market Management.


Diane Malnekoff

Principal, DM Consulting

273 - Mastering Gender Communications & Interactions

333 - Mastering Gender Communications and Interactions

Diane Malnekoff brings a powerful combination to executive coaching, first as a corporate executive in the aviation industry then as a business psychologist. By combining what executive experience brings to the table with an in-depth savvy of human behavior, she can provide a unique perspective, providing expertise in both contexts. Dr. Malnekoff has built DM Consulting over 20 years, coaching C-level executives, senior leaders, VC's and smart, successful professionals. Dr. Malnekoff's Mastering Gender Communications & Interactions coaching and workshops offer concrete tools and techniques to work with both men and women in a smarter way.

Dr. Malnekoff holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto University. She is a graduate of the Executive Coach Academy and holds a coaching certification from the International Coach Federation. She is a licensed psychologist and expert in leadership & human behavior.


Anne Martin

Principal, Daring Reinventors

149 - Reinvent and Thrive thru Transition

281 - Navigating Your Career Crossroads

336 - Reinvent and Thrive thru Transition

Anne Martin is a speaker, Reinvention Strategist and Certified Professional Performance Coach with the mission of empowering women to achieve meaningful success. After 15 years of practicing law in such diverse environments as the U.S. Navy, Carnegie Mellon University, and K&L Gates, she reinvented herself as an award-winning sales leader for a leading international consumer products company, where she coached women in entrepreneurship, personal development and leadership.

As an executive coach and speaker, Ms. Martin blends the lessons learned from her legal practice with her experience as a leadership trainer, to mentor women executives to break through the barriers that keep them from thriving in their professional and personal lives. As an associate of Career Generations, a Palo Alto based career coaching firm, she coaches people on how to reinvent themselves and offers the Reinvent Your Work-Life program, which helps professionals navigate career transition. She has presented to corporate and professional audiences on such topics as Breaking Your Confidence Barrier, Thriving through Transition, and The Subtle Art of Shameless Self-Promotion.


Lisa Monzon

Events Director, ICF SF Bay Area Coaches

152 - Hacking Your Future: Debugging Your Internal Blocks & Glitches

332 - Working with the Dark Side: Learning to Engage Your Inner Critic

Lisa Monzon is an impact coach and consultant. She offers personalized coaching, strategy, leadership, and organizational advisory services for non-profits as well as coaching, strategy, and partnership services for businesses involved in social sector impact initiatives. Her coaching specializes in growing high-impact leadership. Ms. Monzon works with ambitious women who want to thrive in their careers and personal lives. She served as a Program Officer with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation from 2007-2014, leading the Foundation's work in sustainable market initiatives. In her role, Ms. Monzon led a team and consultants in strategy, market transformation, NGO network development, movement building, learning and evaluation, business partnerships, as well as enabling organizational effectiveness and leadership development at a global scale.

Ms. Monzon graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and attended graduate school at University of Michigan's Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, a dual Master's of Business Administration and Master's of Science program. She was named a Goldman Sachs Fellow, an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow, and a Latino Board Leadership Academy member. Ms. Monzon is a trained as a Co-Active coach through the Coaches Training Institute, certified as a coach through the Coaches Training Alliance, as well as a facilitator for the DiSC assessment tool (for teaming, communication, and productivity).


Dada Nabhaniilananda

Mindfulness and Creativity Consultant, The Monk Dude

141 - Meditation & Creativity: Managing Your Mind State to Drive Innovation

221 - The Mindful Edge: Develop a Peak Performance Mindset through Meditation

274 - Meditation & Creativity: Managing Your Mind State to Drive Innovation

321 - The Mindful Edge: Develop a Peak Performance Mindset through Meditation

Dada Nabhaniilananda is a yoga monk, a keynote speaker, an author and a musician. He teaches a holistic lifestyle centered around meditation, yoga, and social service, believing that service to the community and engagement in progressive social and environmental action are an integral part of a full spiritual life. A journey of self-discovery took him away from his home in New Zealand at an early age, and ultimately to India. He has been guiding and teaching students all over the world for more than 30 years.

He has appeared on stage with the Dalai Lama and spoken for TEDx, Google, Facebook, Cisco, and Intel, about using meditation to develop such leadership qualities as creativity, compassion, and wisdom.


Rajkumari Neogy

Principal, Disruptive Diversity

142 - A Neurobiological Approach to Inclusion

322 - A Neurobiological Approach to Inclusion

Rajkumari Neogy works with individuals and organizations to make transformative and sustainable shifts. She is fascinated by workplace culture, especially in the tech arena. Over the last 20 years, she has worked with organizations worldwide such as Cisco Systems, Facebook, Sony, Adobe, JVC and Amazon. She is the author of The WIT Factor: Shifting the Workplace Paradigm by Becoming Your Optimal Self.

As a Certified Master Trainer and Neuro-Linguistic Programmer holding a Master's Degree in Transformative Leadership Development from the California Institute of Integral Studies, Ms. Neogy sits comfortably at the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and culture. Possessing a rare blend of techno-babble and touchy-feely, she believes that the qualities of passionate self-reflection and dedicated curiosity (two sides of the same coin) define true leadership.


Manuela Pauer

Career & Leadership Coach, Pauer Coaching

224 - Secrets to Happiness: Be Happier at Work and in Your Life

323 - How to Find Your Ideal Career

Manuela Pauer is a Career and Leadership Coach in Silicon Valley. She works with professional women in their mid-career who are craving more meaning, fulfillment, and happiness. Through her signature "Create a Career and Life You Love" program, she helps them uncover their purpose, passions, and strengths and clearly define what they want to do, so they can create a fulfilling career and life they love. Manuela has over 20 years of experience in helping professionals thrive in their life and career. She is an ICF-certified Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from UC Berkeley. She had a successful corporate career spanning Strategy Consulting at Bain & Company, Product Management and Strategic Development at a Silicon Valley startup, and Executive Director of Product Management and Strategic Planning at AOL.


Judy Peebles

Principal, The Knowledge Series

143 - What Are You REALLY Communicating? 14 Assumptions in the First 7 Seconds

Judy Peebles - an international speaker, trainer, and coach - is creator of The Knowledge Series™, High Heeled Haven™, The Journaling Jenius™, and Journaling Jems™. An NLP Master Results Coach and Performance Consultant, Ms. Peebles is known for her dynamic and playful style while delivering interactive presentations and trainings designed to be not only informative, but transformational.

After a successful corporate career, Ms. Peebles now works with driven, tenacious individuals and groups, who are committed to their own success, and looking for that extra edge and guidance to assist them to reach the next level.


Theresa Pidcock

Founder, Theresa Pidcock Consulting, L.L.C.

225 - Think You Need the Title to be a Leader? Think Again!

276 - Communication: What You DON'T Say Could Be More Important than What You DO Say

Theresa Pidcock is an executive advisor and leadership/life coach. After working as a corporate Regional Vice President and in executive management for over a decade, she started her own executive advising and consulting business to help others solve problems that plague them every day. She helps clients strategize on issues, including team building, morale, strategy, sales, leadership, recruiting/hiring/interviewing, and problem-solving.

Ms. Pidcock works with individuals in two main capacities to address both business and personal goals: Strategic Corporate Advising, where she coaches and consults with C-level, senior business professionals and entrepreneurs on identifying business needs and gaps, defining strategies to address change and solve problems; and Leadership/Life Coaching, providing in-depth research analysis with special emphasis on those seeking senior management and government positions.


Miriam Reiss

Executive Coach, Wisdom Executive & Career Coaching

144 - Career Coaching for Introverts

226 - The Reluctant Speaker

277 - Rock Solid Confidence

Miriam Reiss helps women in technology grow their skills, maximize their professional success, and increase their level of sustained self-confidence and well-being. As co-author of Branding & Marketing Mastery, Dr. Reiss is an executive coach, former marketing director, and consultant. Her coaching clients have ranged from biotech professionals to women in engineering, at companies including Boeing and Microsoft. She is Past President, Washington State Chapter, International Coach Federation (ICF), and a Master Certified Coach, the ICF's senior ranking. Dr. Reiss holds a doctorate from Peace Theological Seminary, degrees from Cornell and Columbia Universities, and a master's degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica.


Kristy Rogers

Founder & Leader, KristyRogersConnects

145 - How to Build Your Network to Make Business Happen

227 - How to Build Your Network to Make Business Happen

278 - How to Build Your Network to Make Business Happen

324 - How to Build Your Network to Make Business Happen

Kristy Rogers leads the Be Business Friendsâ„¢ movement. She's not talking about being friends-at-work; she's talking about raising your consciousness to honor results and relationships when interacting with others. Her Business Friends Philosophyâ„¢ comes from 24 years of leading and producing monthly networking events, 15 years of learning partnership distinctions, and 6 years of success mindset studies. Kristy Rogers is connecting personified. Who would guess that she once felt shy, insecure, and a bit socially ungraceful? Now an influential, award-winning community leader, Kristy was recognized as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal's Women of Influence, named Managing Director of the Year for her work with the San Jose eWomenNetwork chapter, and voted Royal Schmoozer by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Chamber of Commerce. She was named one of the "Best Business Connectors in the San Francisco Bay Area" by the US Small Business Conference. In 2017 she was awarded a Peacemaker Award from the Global Prosperity and Peace Initiative. Kristy holds a B.S. in Business Administration, International Business from San Jose State University, where she was an Alpha Phi.


Sheryl Root

Director/Assoc. Professor, Carnegie Mellon, President and CEO, RootAnalysis

228 - Create Roadmaps to Achieve Your Career Goals

Sheryl Root is currently Director/Professor for the Masters in Technology Ventures and Professor for Masters in Software Management at Carnegie Mellon University, Silicon Valley. Ms. Root is a strategy, marketing, and product development executive with over 18 years of experience at Hewlett-Packard Company and 10 years of software systems experience and leadership in the financial and computing industries. Her strategic and program leadership experience focused on the definition and delivery of technology-based products and solutions, and her marketing operations experience has been in creating new business models, organizational structures, cost reductions, and revenue generation programs. She has demonstrated proven leadership in business strategy development/execution, marketing operations, and software systems delivery working across departments, functional areas and geographic regions.

In addition to her work at CMU, Ms. Root is President/CEO of RootAnalysis, and consults in business strategy creation and execution, program management, and marketing effectiveness for companies including HP, PeopleSoft, Santa Clara University, Novell, and Philips.

Ms. Root sits on several boards, including Sloan School of Business, WITI (Women in Technology International), Teach for America, and the Stanford Institute on Research in Women and Gender. She holds a Sloan Master's in Business from Stanford University.


Deep Sahni

Founder/Executive Coach, Global Now

146 - Psychology of Success: 7 Traits of Successful People

229 - Unconscious Competence: How to Find Your Superpower, Gain Additional Visibility, and Make an Impact

279 - How to Transition Your Perspective from Surviving to Coping to Managing to Driving

325 - How to Successfully Advance Your Career While Caring for Aging Parents

Deep Sahni has been speaking and coaching for 20+ years. He has worked, traveled, studied, and lived in 30+ countries.

Mr. Sahni excels at high-level relationship building, networking, public speaking, inspiration, ideation, creativity, story-telling, sound-boarding, emotional intelligence, and out-of-box strategic thinking. He coaches worldwide, and is an expert at identifying leakage inside organizations and helping individuals reach for their potential. Mr. Sahni has devoted 30,000+ hours coaching MBA alumni, entrepreneurs, and aspiring executives; and 12,000+ hours interviewing 6,000 aspiring executives from 40 countries on behaviorial psychology, decision making, chaos threshold, emotional intelligence, and cultural differences.


Joie Seldon

Principal, Joie Seldon EQ Executive Coaching & Consulting

147 - How to Harness Your Emotions for Powerful Leadership

Joie Seldon is an innovator in Emotional Intelligence and the founder of WINGS Professional Success Program, which integrates one's skills, talents, experience, ambition, and innate personality into effective leadership. She addresses the interpersonal aspects of business by teaching clients how to utilize their emotions as a powerful tool for building leadership skills while reducing stress and frustration.

For 15 years, Ms. Seldon has helped business professionals step into their personal power, improve relationships and take effective action, coaching coached clients at AT&T, PMI, Blue Shield, Wells Fargo, and more. She holds a master's degree in Somatic Counseling Psychology and is the author of "Emotions: An Owner's Manual" coming out in July.


Abha Singhvi

Life / Organizational Coach

230 - Interview Skills: Take the Lead and Get the Job

327 - Creating Results through Clear and Powerful Requests and Promises

Abha Singhvi is a Life/Organizational Coach and a Business Consultant, passionate about empowering her clients to discover their unique gifts and live their life with purpose. As well, she is currently an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University. Ms. Singhvi brings her experience from founding two successful businesses. She was co-founder and VP of Finance and Administration at Paperfly. And, as founder and CEO of Stratascape, she was responsible for all aspects of the business and eventually sold the company to TMP Worldwide (now Monster.com).

Ms. Singhvi has been a supporter and has worked with non-profit organizations throughout her career. She is co-founder of Global Women Leadership Network and serves on the boards of Maitri, and Arati For Girls. She holds an MBA from Sacred Heart University, CT, and certifications in Life and Organizational coaching from JFK University, CA .


Sue Steinfeld

Principal, Sue Steinfeld Coaching

148 - STOP Downplaying Your Successes and Overcome the Imposter Syndrome!

328 - STOP Downplaying Your Successes and Overcome the Imposter Syndrome!

Sue Steinfeld is a Leadership and Business Success Coach, supporting leaders and entrepreneurs to increase their impact. She works collaboratively with clients in the areas of leadership development, relationships, increasing clarity, goal setting, and strategy. Ms. Steinfeld supports clients to lead from a place which honors their values and personal mission. She brings 16 years of experience leading teams for Whole Foods Market, Northern CA as the Director of Technology & Director of Learning and Development. Her education includes an M.A. in Psychology from Boston College; as well, she is a Certified Coach through Coach Training Institute (CTI).


Yael Wagner

Chief Product Officer

329 - My Name is Inigo Montoya. Own Your Personal Brand. Hint: It's Not About Selling Yourself

With over 20 years in tech product management and marketing, Yael Wagner has lived and worked in Israel, Canada, China, and while in the US, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and since 2006, Silicon Valley, with companies large and small, including Lucent, Avaya, Lifesta, Amdocs, and Sun Microsystems, leading and launching hardware, software, mobile, and enterprise platform products. This rich and diverse experience gives Ms. Wagner depth and insights that she uses to continually drive success, of products and people alike.


Speakers and Sessions are Subject to Change