Denzel Washington once said "Show me a successful individual and I'll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don't care what you do for a living--if you do it well, I'm sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor."
TEKsystems Women's ERG and Women in Technology International (WITI) are excited to announce our panel discussion, "The Art and Science of Mentorship".
Join us for an evening of discussion surrounding the importance of mentorship in the workplace. It is never too late (or too early!) to find your mentor or to find someone to mentor. This topic will uncover questions that you might have encountered already such as "How can I mentor others?" or "How can mentorship positively affect my success?"
Regardless of your career path -- this evening is for you! We will begin the event with a presentation on mentorship, followed by a panel of highly experienced IT executives who will share their experiences on being mentored and providing mentorship to others. There will also be an opportunity for Q&A and to network with other attendees at the event.
Featured Speaker(s)
Lena Haviland currently serves as a Regional Director of Global Services for TEKsystems. She has 12+ years of experience in the Technology Services Industry and currently manages a team of 20+ Sales Executives who are responsible for serving customers across California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. At TEKsystems, Lena’s team focuses on Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Healthcare and Technology to offer end to end solutions in a creative way to their customers.
Celeste Blodgett is VP of Human Resources, Learning and Development and the Knowledgebase teams for ESET, an internet Security company. She is a passionate, strategic person who brings over 28 years of education, training and management to ESET. A former educator, Celeste takes a tactical and comprehensive approach to managing people, encouraging and leading teams and enhancing the workplace, culture and environment. Healthy living and wellness programs are the motivating factors of what drives Celeste. Through her creation in developing a robust wellness program, employees are seeing the benefits of the fitness activities, challenges and daily tracking program.
Celeste is active in three mentoring programs for USD, SDHR forum and ESET’s management training program. Being a female and underrepresented in the STEM field, she saw a need to help support other women, particularly in the technology space. She created a women’s leadership group called WOW, ‘Women of the Workplace’. She also started a Women in Cybersecurity scholarship program which is now in its fourth year and nationally recognized. She has certifications in CPBA “Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst” and CPMA “Certified Professional Motivators Analyst”. She is on the San Diego Police Foundation board where she has been the chair and committee member for the Women in Blue event and currently is the liaison for Safetynet helping educate the youth of San Diego.
Ophira Bergman is the Vice President of Quality at GreatCall. She was a developer that hated testing her own code so she automated it before any tools were readily available. Ophira’s career spans 20 years working in development, automation and quality in cyber security, mobile devices, video codecs and healthcare.
Maria Uyeda is a Software Engineer at Intuit where she develops innovative products to meet the company’s mission of powering prosperity around the world. Raised by a relentless and hard-working immigrant mother, Maria was taught to be a calculated risk-taker while pursuing life with grit and determination to leave the world a little better than she found it. Maria demonstrated these values when she transitioned to her role at Intuit after a career in public service as a teacher.
Maria knows that designing for delight is a value Intuit has built its brand on so she brings customer empathy into every user experience she develops for the TurboTax web app. She works on internal testing tools to guarantee code released meets high quality standards. She has worked on the TurboTax Android app to provide its innovative products across all platforms.
Maria supports and inspires young people in various mentorship and recruitment programs. She enjoys teaching her four-year old daughter how to use power tools to build whatever the endless imagination conceives. Maria holds a BA from UCLA and an MA from NYU.
