Meet Our #WITB22 Speakers

Kate Prouty is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Akamai. As CIO, she oversees Akamai’s Information Technology organization, responsible for business transformation including global strategy, development, and operation of the applications and IT infrastructure that enable agile and efficient user experiences for Akamai's customers, employees, and partners. She is based at the company's global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Prouty joined Akamai in 1999 and has led a long and distinguished career at the company, leading the transformation of Akamai's business processes with an emphasis on flexibility, agility, and user experience. She has been instrumental in developing systems that have been foundational to the company's growth and scale, including the implementation of Akamai's enterprise resource planning systems, the network statistics system that is used across the company to better understand how our customers are using our deployed network, and our network supply chain to ensure the smooth operation of the business and best serve Akamai's customers.

Prior to becoming CIO, she collaborated closely with leaders across the company in HR, Finance, Platform Engineering, Product Development, Services, and Sales. She brings to the role an adept understanding of the criticality of security, risk, and compliance across the industry and Akamai's business.

Prior to joining Akamai, she held a variety of technology positions including in network administration, system administration, database administration, and software implementation at Fleet Financial and Digitas.

Prouty holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Keene State College and is a graduate of the Greater Boston Executive Program at MIT's Sloan School of Management. She co-chairs the Executive Women's Network at Akamai and is a member of the board of directors of the nonprofit organization Delta Projects, which supports and empowers people with intellectual challenges.

Join Kate's session 'Avoiding Cybersecurity Scares in an Evolving Threat Landscape' on October 20th.

Jean Olive is the Chief Technology Officer for Best Buy Health responsible for technology strategy and architecture, product design and delivery, digital transformations, and operational excellence. Jean's career has been centered on global companies with a mission to improve and save lives where she progressed through a variety of engineering, supply chain and leadership positions at Raytheon Technologies, Royal Philips, and Schneider Electric.

Jean is a champion for advancing women in technology and leadership, and inclusion and diversity as a competitive advantage. She advocates for women to help other women through coaching, mentoring, career opportunities and taking the path with a heart – love what you do. Jean and her husband Stephen have five grown children, enjoy lake life and traveling.

Jean received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, is a member of the UConn Academy of Distinguished Engineers and serves on the School of Engineering advisory committee.

Join Jean's session 'The Tipping Point of Career Satisfaction in the Face of the Great Resignation' on October 21st.

Carolyn Duby is a cybersecurity and data expert who drives some of today’s most important tech topics, including hybrid data cloud, big data, privacy, becoming a data-driven organization, and careers in tech. With more than 30 years of experience in the industry, she currently serves as Field CTO and Cyber Security Lead at Cloudera. A trusted advisor to dozens of customers, from SMBs to the Fortune 100, she guides companies in banking, insurance, healthcare and more through complex transformations that help them use data as a strategic asset to impact their bottom line.

She regularly contributes blog posts, articles and commentary, including to VentureBeat, eWEEK, and Bank Info Security.

Fun Fact: I love cats so much I have four of them! I love to cook, bake and work out.

Join Carolyn's session 'Embedding Security by Design Principals' on October 20th.

Catherine is EVP and Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer at PTC, responsible for over seeing key strategic functions—including Corporate Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Sustainability, and Corporate Marketing.

She brings her strong business acumen, excellent systems thinking, and technology savviness to this role. Joining PTC in 2016, Catherine began as Chief Revenue Officer for the company's fast growing IoT and AR business units and then managed PTC strategic global alliances including those with Microsoft, Rockwell Automation, Ansys, Global Systems Integrators, and software and hardware technology companies.

In 2019 she also began leading our Mergers & Acquisition team, spearheading the acquisi tion of Arena Solutions—the largest acquisition in PTC history. Prior to PTC, Catherine suc cessfully held numerous strategy, corporate development, and go-to-market leadership roles. She was Chief Channel Officer & VP at Constant Contact, Owner and President at CHB Group, SVP of Corporate Development & Marketing at Candela Corporation, and SVP Marketing, Enterprise Services at Level 3 Communications.

Catherine earned a M.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a B.S. in Computer Systems from the University of Limerick in Ireland.

Join Catherine's session 'Driving Sustainable Innovation' on October 20th.

Sheryl Shinn is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at North Shore Bank. As CIO Sheryl serves as a strategic partner who understands how technology supports the business's service delivery and operational efficiency objectives. Sheryl is responsible for developing and implementing practical, customer focused solutions that streamline processes through the use of technology, combined with continual process improvement to enhance both the customer (internal & external) experience and financial results, while keeping ahead of the Company's growth.

Before joining North Shore Bank, Shinn held the position of Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer for Farm Credit Financial Partners, Inc., a provider of technology products and services to the Farm Credit System. Prior to that, she held executive positions in the banking industry. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Statistics from Mount Holyoke College and is a graduate of the Stonier National School of Banking and the Springfield Leadership Institute. She also received a Leadership Certificate from The Wharton School and holds an ITIL 4 Foundation Certification. Sheryl volunteers as a board member for the Central CT chapter of SIM (Society for Information Management).

Fun Fact: Sheryl has a passion for cooking and regularly hosts Sunday Family dinner with her best friend using a theme of "Around the World". Her love of food leads to her other hobby which is physical fitness. Sheryl makes sure to incorporate cardio (great stress reliever too) every day into her schedule and family vacations are often spent hiking, walking, or any other physical activity.

Join Sheryl's session 'Deepening Customer Engagement through New Technologies' on October 20th.

Kerry Munz is Chief Technology Officer at Vendr, a startup on a mission to help the worlds fastest growing companies revolutionize the way they find, buy, and manage SaaS. As CTO, Kerry is responsible for technical strategy, product delivery, and operational excellence across Engineering, Security, and IT to support Vendrs fast growth.

Prior to Vendr, Kerry was VP of Engineering at HubSpot, a marketing, sales, & services SaaS automation platform. Kerry led hundreds of engineers across multiple groups including Platform Infrastructure, Growth, Fintech, Business Intelligence, and the Revenue Product organizations. Kerry was responsible for HubSpot's cloud infrastructure of thousands of servers and services running in both AWS and Google Cloud and helped scale the company to hundreds of thousands of customers and $1B in sales.

With over 30 years of industry experience, Kerry also led teams and architecture at Cisco Systems, and was a key engineer for multiple security and networking startups. Kerry holds 5 patents related to communication software and security.

As a champion and mentor for women in technology and women in leadership, Kerry has spoken at Grace Hopper, Google NEXT, and multiple women leadership panels. She loves to teach about Infrastructure as Code, leadership development, and the art of negotiation.

Join Kerry's session 'Thrive Instead of Survive: The Anti-Fragile Way' on October 21st.

Abha Dogra is currently Chief Digital and Technology Officer (CDTO) and is a member of CAE's Executive Management Committee (EMC). As CDTO, Abha leads CAE's global technology teams by helping shape the company's broader strategic direction to maximize business growth, while overseeing the development of CAE's digital and technology roadmap. She is responsible for driving the strategic development of the technology function and fostering synergies between the digital and engineering teams to innovate intelligent products, operations, and services at scale.

Abha supports all global business operations, strategies, and optimization of investments to ensure the company's continued market leadership role. She is responsible for the growth of IT, engineering, and digital talent to accelerate the development and safe adoption of world-changing innovations. She will champion innovative thinking across CAE and within our customer and supplier ecosystem. She will also incorporate green IT and engineering in alignment with our ESG goals.

Abha Dogra is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, driving commercial and non-commercial software products strategy and development. She is a senior product and software development advocate with extensive knowledge in diverse areas of Enterprise Solution Delivery and SaaS-based business services (XaaS), including Product Development, Enterprise Architecture, Digital Customer Experience and Operations Excellence. As a strategic thought leader, she has worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop high-density skilled teams across different geographies to benefit from diversity of thoughts in problem solving.

Prior to CAE, Abha held a dual role at Schneider Electric as their North America Chief Information Officer and the SVP of Global Digital Technology. Her focus was to drive both digitization and digital transformation. Throughout her diverse career, she has worked as a senior technologist in different industry verticals, for example Industrial vertical at PTC, Security & Content Delivery Network (CDN) at Akamai, Information Storage at Iron Mountain, and Human Capital Management Solutions at ADP. Abha holds her master's in computer science from Boston University and her master's in Business Administration with majors in Finance and International Trade from NMIMS in India.

Join Abha's session 'Sustainability in Technology and Evangelized Sustainable Tech' on October 20th.

As Chief Product Officer of Definitive Healthcare, Kate leads the company's product innovation and market strategy. She also works in support of operational initiatives across sales and marketing that drive market penetration and execution. Before joining Definitive Healthcare, Kate worked on the product development team within strategic services at Blue Cross Blue Shield. She began her career as a health analyst at RTI International, an independent non-profit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition worldwide.

Fun Fact: Kate spends a tremendous amount of time working on her wildflower garden at her house (weather permitting!). She and her husband fell in love with gardening when they moved into their last home – not only does it provide a release to help manage any stress, but it allows Kate to get outside regularly and bring her creativity to an entirely new landscape!

Join Kates's session 'Elevating the Customer Experience through Data-Driven Insights' on October 21st.

Alyssa Robinson is the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer for HubSpot. She leads the engineering teams responsible for securing HubSpot's public cloud infrastructure and application development. Alyssa joined HubSpot in January of 2019. Prior to HubSpot, Alyssa has held positions in security and infrastructure at Cisco, Kantar Media, the Broad Institute, and Akamai.

Outside of work, Alyssa is active in the League of Women Voters and a coach for Girls on the Run. She loves hiking, climbing, running, and snowboarding with her husband, kids, and dog.

Fun Fact: In addition to degrees in Computer Science and Information Security, Alyssa graduated from the Culinary Certificate program at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.

Join Alyssa's session 'Test-Driven Security: How Do I Know My Controls Are Working?' on October 20th.

Fariha is an empathetic and collaborative leader who thrives in fast paced, innovation-led organizations. As an expert in personalization technology, she has created innovative marketing solutions for the healthcare, insurance and consumer industries. Also, as an agile pioneer, she has led the successful integration of corporate acquisitions at the technical, product and process levels.

Fariha's career spans large companies, startups, non-profits and government organizations. As Partner for Product & Program Velocity at Digital Innovation Inc, she worked to create an innovative product design and development process to complement the firm's internationally recognized corporate innovation framework.

As President of the Boston chapter of OPEN, she is responsible for building and promoting an ecosystem for professionals, innovators and entrepreneurs in the Boston area, to grow their careers and business.

She is currently leading a team that is responsible for development and go-to market for innovative solutions in the digital health space, for a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company.

Join Fariha's session 'Product Velocity: Getting Great Products to Market Fast' on October 20th.

Bela Labovitch is a passionate technologist and engineering leader whose career in software spans many decades. She is currently a Vice President of Engineering at athenaHealth, a healthcare technology company that aspires to build an ecosystem that provides accessible, high-quality and sustainable healthcare for all. She has held a variety of positions - CTO, VP, Architect and developer at companies that range from start-ups to larger enterprises. Bela has a Masters in Computer Science from Northeastern University and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Brandeis University.

Bela is particularly interested in attracting and keeping women in the technology field and raising women leaders. She is on the steering committee of the Women's Leadership forum at athena and founded their Women in Technology initiative. She is a STEM mentor and speaks at organizations such as Girls Who Code. In 2019 and 2020, the Healthcare Technology Report named her as one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare.

Bela serves on the Board of the non-profit Parents Helping Parents and is a long-time parental stress counselor. She is a mother, runner, yoga practitioner, reader and avid traveler.

Join Bela's session 'Becoming an Authentic and Empathic Leader' on October 21st.

Erin Molgaard is the Head of Mainstreet Card & New To Credit Technology, leading a team of 150+ associates across multiple locations. In this role, Erin leads the technology organization and is accountable for the overall Technology & Architecture Strategy that supports the Mainstreet & New to Credit Card Business Segments. Erin is a strong supporter of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DIB), and is passionate about Mentorship and Women In Tech (WIT).

Erin holds leadership roles supporting Boston WIT, Allies and Coders chapters while also serving as a formal mentor as part of the Year Up Internship Program. Since joining Capital One in 2020, Erin has held several leadership positions, including as Sr. Director accountable for modernizing data and technical capabilities for Financial Analysts, Data Analysts and Line of Business CFOs supporting the Global Finance Business.

As a technology leader in Finance Tech, she was also accountable for integrating with and contributing to enterprise data and machine learning platform capabilities. Before joining Capital One, Erin was with Fidelity Investments in Boston, MA. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Management Information Systems from Iowa State University and Master of Business Administration with a concentration in International Finance from Suffolk University. Erin lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her husband (Peter).

Join Erin's session 'Achieving Success Through Resiliency and Perseverance: My Career Journey' on October 20th.

Find Erin on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-molgaard-430b066

B, as she likes to be called, took one of the biggest gambles in her life and uprooted from Singapore and moved to the States in 2005 for a job. In her current role as the VP of Engineering in Fidelity Labs for Project Apiary, she is growing the core development team and fostering an environment that empowers developers, increases collaboration across teams and promoting the founder mentality with the common goal of delivering a high quality, user centric product.

Fun Fact: Travelled the world for a year while working remotely and racked up 23 countries. One of the best memories was celebrating Halloween in Romania @ Bran castle. Current country count stands at 40.

Join Bharati 's session 'Navigating Career Pivots to Achieve Career Satisfaction' on October 21st.

Maayan Arbili is the VP of Global Customer Success at Aqua Security where she's built the Success team from inception to a global team of 30. She is responsible for the full customer journey, maximizing product adoption, identifying customer needs, and retaining customers. In her time with Aqua, she's exceeded goals with 120% retention and maintained above average NPS scores.

Maayan has over 20 years of experience leading, defining, developing, and delivering products and complex projects. Prior to Aqua, she held various leadership positions at Comverse Technology, Inc. (acquired by Mavenir). Maayan is an advocate for women in technology and is an active member of the community as a volunteer with the Israeli Scouts and the Israeli American Council Community Leadership Forum. She has Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from HCJ Israel.

Fun Fact: Maayan is very active and a bit of a workout junkie. She enjoys a range of activities including Pilates, Soul cycle, lifting, biking, running and triathlons. She also has two German Shepherds – Brandy & Whiskey!

Join Maayan's session 'Driving Growth with an Elevated Customer Experience During Economic Uncertainty' on October 20th.

Shweta is VP of Engineering @GBG, agile advocate and a servant leader, bringing diverse teams together across the globe.

She believes in empowering her teams to establish best practices for supporting continuous integration, delivery and deployment models for their products.

Her goals are to provide a safe environment where all ideas are encouraged; establish best practices for building global teams with continuous delivery and deployment models in order to scale.

She lives by the mantra "Change is the only constant".

She is a proud mother of a boy, a girl and a puppy, tennis enthusiast and a hobbyist chef!

Join Shweta's workshop 'DevOps Mindset in AGILE Service Delivery' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Lakshmi has over 17 years of experience in data analytics and product innovation for the insurance industry. At CMT, Lakshmi leads the strategic development of telematics-derived scores and risk features using best-in-class machine learning and analytical capabilities in collaboration with our customers.

Before CMT, she held senior management roles at Guardian Life Insurance, Liberty Mutual, and Verisk Analytics deploying high revenue generating analytic products across the insurance value chain including actuarial pricing, underwriting, claims, and marketing. Lakshmi holds an MBA from Boston College and a Masters in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.

Join Lakshmi's workshop 'Leading Cross-functional Teams to Accelerate Innovation' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Asa Kalavade is a General Manager in AWS, leading a portfolio of products for sales engagement and revenue intelligence. Asa drives overall business management with a global team including product and design, software development, data science, business operations, enablement, and customer success. Previously, she was operating several AWS hybrid storage and data transfer services. Asa is passionate about entrepreneurship, having served on the TiE Boston Board of Directors, and has experience launching several new business - inside AWS, as well as, two venture-backed startups. She is based in Boston and is actively involved in the mentorship of women and those interested in STEM.

Join Asa's session 'Innovation: Converting Your Ideas Into a Scalable Business' on October 21st.

Erin is CTO of ezCater, the most trusted provider of corporate food solutions. As CTO, Erin leads both the engineering and data functions that power the nationwide food for work marketplace. Prior to joining ezCater, as VP of Technology at Vistaprint, Erin led a large geographically distributed engineering organization through an agile transformation and transition to a microservices architecture. Her focus is connecting technology to business needs and fostering strong relationships across the organization.

Erin also held roles in data and analytics, and was a member of the Evanta Chief Data Officer Governing Board. Erin has a BA from Boston University and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Fun Fact: Erin is an ACE member - American Coaster Enthusiast.

Join Erin's session 'Empowering Resilient Technical Hybrid Teams' on October 21st.

Anesha Dennis is an IT management professional, regarded for directing systems implementation delivery within complex IT environments and developing successful technical solutions for industry leaders, through experience and relationship building. She is skilled in project management, specification and execution processes, enterprise infrastructures, SaaS, and cloud architecture. Anesha has expertise in the design, installation, and configuration of systems to drive company growth and technical innovation.

Join Anesha's session 'Sister Circle: How To Network and Climb the Career Ladder' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

A pioneer in the software industry, Pam is currently a Senior Director of Software Engineering at Salesforce, leading several teams in the areas of scale. The life cycle of Pam's career includes large companies, startup companies and consulting firms. A mentor to women engineering students, she gives freely of her time implementing technical solutions to move non profits to the cloud. In a career where she was often the only woman at the table, with unstoppable determination and strategy, she evolved from a software engineer into senior leadership, always with a passion for building top notch products and healthy cultures. Pam holds a patent for her work at Groove Networks, which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft.

Fun Fact: In her free time, Pam enjoys Trail running and Alpine Touring with her Border Collie Maggie Mae!

Join Pamela's session 'Sister Circle: Navigating Your Career as a Woman in Technology' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Mariann Hyde, Director of Central Data Science for the Americas at Boehringer Ingelheim holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Hartwick College, NY and an MBA from The University of Connecticut. Based in Ridgefield, CT, she is a self-proclaimed "foodie" with a passion for travel.

Mariann is dedicated to leading her team and fostering a healthy diverse working environment for people to thrive within. Along with her team, Mariann develops data-driven applications for all business units in Human Pharma and Animal Health, changing lives for the better with generational goals.

Mariann has over 25 years of experience, developing custom software applications across a variety of industries including, financial services, global relocation & insurance. She has held positions in development, customer support, & project management, as well as leading corporate integration initiatives for mergers and acquisitions. As a respected leader, Mariann's strength is bridging the communication gap between business partners and technology teams to support diverse business objectives, drive improved performance, and achieve project deliverables.

Join Mariann's session 'Reigniting The Fire For Your Career To Light The Way For Others' on October 21st.

Tara Seppa is the Director for Google Cloud Northeast. In this role, Tara leads teams that help enterprise organizations who have urgent innovation agendas and see Google Cloud as a necessary and meaningful path to realize their potential.

Before joining Google in 2018, Tara spent 15 years at Microsoft in various leadership and sales roles including a 5 year period from 2009 – 2014 spent living abroad and working for Microsoft Central Eastern Europe & Russia where she helped launch and establish Microsoft's Azure business for the emerging and highly dynamic market of 30+ countries, 25+ languages, and 15+ currencies. Tara graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and spent several years as an Application Developer in the early part of her career.

Outside of work, Tara is an avid reader, hiker, runner, skier, and amateur chef and baker. She's a proud and inspired wife (Brandon) and mom (Maeve (6), Shae (4).

Join Tara's workshop 'Career Staging: Charting Your Path with Intention' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Beth leads the Data Science Team at Roku. The team develops automated algorithms that provide business value, particularly in newer areas where there is high uncertainty.

Beth is a seasoned Data Scientist and leader with 20+ years of experience in a variety of big data fields: advertising, speech, music, biology and medical. She has over 30 publications and 13 issued patents.

Fun Fact: Beth loves being outside and can often be found walking or running in Boston or hiking in New England.

Join Beth's session 'Defining Your Data Science Strategy' on October 20th.

Erin Buonomo is the Executive Director of Design at IBM, focused on the design of AI-powered enterprise solutions in the asset management and engineering domains. In this role, she is on a mission to help clients transform and build more resilient and sustainable business operations by marrying human-centered design and technology to deliver intelligent workflows and insights. She leads a global, multi-disciplinary team of design professionals tackling complex problems and designing innovative experiences utilizing Design Thinking.

Erin has been with IBM for 17 years and held a variety of roles leading initiatives and teams to deliver enterprise software and innovations at scale. She has experience that ranges from strategic product planning, organizational leadership, and agile product design and development. Erin holds a M.B.A from Bentley University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is passionate about fostering inclusivity and building future leaders through her activity in women and local community groups.

Fun Fact: Avid Peloton fan and mom of twins.

Join Erin's workshop 'How to Design a Sustainable Multi-Faceted Career Journey' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Stephanie Louis has held many titles in her career – her current role is senior director, digital client experience, where she leads a new digital client experience team for Pega's IT function. She started with Pega as a product manager, during which she launched, led an acquisition, and matured Pega's mobility capabilities. She also served as senior director of community and developer programs, during which she revamped the Pega Community ecosystem to increase growth and engagement.

Prior to Pega, she worked across startups, consulting organizations, and large enterprises to develop and launch enterprise software, create project and release management teams, and lead account management for critical clients. Stephanie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Math and Computer Science and an MBA from Bethel University.

Fun Fact: I was a salsa dance instructor for many years.

Bhavana is passionate about bridging the gap between Engineering and Business to apply what matters most. She has intensive experience in designing complex enterprise solutions, customer needs, quality and performance with an eye for details. She has driven the projects from inception to delivery using SDLC and Agile principles in Healthcare, B2B and B2C digital market with high quality and on time delivery.

Bhavana Laad is a Lead Director of Digital Engineering for Health services at CVS Health.

Bhavana has a 25+ years of wide engineering experience. She has done her MS in Computer Science from UMass and has held many engineering and leadership roles in startups, consulting firms and large organization like Lotus, IBM and Sensormatic.

Fun Fact: Bhavana is involved in many cultural events and enjoys painting and drawing in her spare time. Bhavana works with Ekam organization to support underprivileged children. During the onset of the pandemic, she worked with members to make masks and PPE for hospitals and communities in need.

Join Bhavana's session 'A Path to Digital Transformation by Following DevSecOps Principles' on October 21st.

Laura Tenney is a Director of Software Engineering at Dell Technologies focused on delivering Software Defined File (SDNAS) capabilities on a variety of high-performance block storage platforms, ensuring customers the flexibility to both store and retrieve their valuable data easily. In addition to leading a global software development team driving innovative high quality solutions to solve customer needs, she is also an active member of Dell Technologies CD&I Champions (Culture, Diversity and Inclusion), ensuring everyone has the tools, resources and opportunities needed to succeed and excel as their true selves.

Laura has been with Dell Technologies for 7 years but has over 30 years of experience in the software development industry including several startups, large companies and even running her own Agile consulting business for several years. Laura has worked in a variety of industries including adaptive technology, workforce management, home health care, home networking and several others during her varied career.

Fun Fact: For over 7 years, Laura has volunteered her time as the VP of her neighborhood board which is responsible for approximately 45 Acres of conservation and common land, ensuring and monitoring the health and maintenance of the neighborhoods land and lakes. Laura also enjoys travel, boating, swimming and time with her family.

Join Laura's session 'Automation to Drive Success' on October 20th.

Pooja is a Director of Engineering on Fintech teams at Toast. Her teams build systems that enable restaurants to process payments seamlessly through the Toast platform. She is passionate about building teams that deliver impactful software while nurturing leaders on her teams and believes that the secret sauce to successful teams is a feedback-driven culture. Over the course of her career, Pooja has accumulated over 13 years of experience managing engineering teams as well as writing code.

After being on parental leave when her second baby was born during the pandemic, Pooja struggled at first on her return to work. She realized that planning for her return from leave was as important as planning for going on leave. With a supportive manager who was eager to learn how to best support a new mom's return, she was able to take some more time to plan a successful comeback to work.

Outside of work, Pooja is learning how to paint using watercolors, but only after 8:30 PM when both her little children are asleep.

Join Pooja's session 'Women Returners: Establishing Boundaries' on October 21st.

Mary Beth Findlay Sisti is the Director of Web Experience & Strategy for GE Healthcare, an $18B medical technology company, where she is the marketing web leader and product manager for 32 GEHealthcare.com sites around the world, overseeing company-wide content and design strategy, optimization, execution, and performance.

Prior to GE, Mary Beth was at iRobot, overseeing digital experience strategy for their 34 direct to consumer (D2C) sites around the world, leading a diverse team of project managers, merchandisers, platform administrators, and scrum masters. With extensive experience architecting and executing best in class digital experiences for both B2B and D2C companies, Mary Beth believes in creating intuitive digital experiences that delight users and drive KPIs.

Fun Fact: I'm a retired attorney.

Join Mary's workshop 'Fearless Leadership: Asking for What You Want and Trusting Your Gut' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Bethany is the Director of Privacy and DPO for iRobot, Corp. Prior to iRobot, she was the Head of Compliance and DPO at Unbounce Marketing Solutions, Inc. in Vancouver, CA, provided GDPR consulting services across industries and organizations, and developed an approach to privacy rooted in data ethics, human rights, and consumer trust. Bethany has an LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar researching international courts.

Fun Fact: Bethany has been taking voice lessons for the past several years, but that didn't save her from spraining her ankle in an unfortunate karaoke accident.

Join Bethany's workshop 'Creating a Privacy-by-Design Framework' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Sumita Palanisamy is a Director of Engineering at CarGurus. As a Director of Engineering, Sumita is working with product and business leaders across CarGurus to build a better user experience for dealers and consumers alike. With over 15 years of experience, Sumita has also lead various teams at athenaHealth to build a better thriving healthcare system for all. She has been nominated for the Moxie Built-In Award this year for her work in community and for the technology industry.

Sumita is a AWS Solution architect and has a passion for new technologies and has proposed and implemented new processes such as Chaos Engineering practices at athenahealth. In addition, she is passionate about volunteering and has been an Evangelist at Women who code Boston, a mentor at Girls who Code and a Big sister. Join Sumita's workshop 'How to be your biggest cheerleader at work?' to learn how to overcome imposter syndrome and recognize your worth.

Join Sumita's workshop 'The Art of Self-Promotion: Becoming Your Biggest Cheerleader At Work' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Amita is responsible for elevating CyberArk's profile in the new Identity Security space, for managing, developing and revitalizing the company’s brand strategy and our thought leadership programs. These thought leadership programs include critical cybersecurity topics such as Zero Trust, Ransomware, Secure SW Supply chain, as well influencing innovation roadmap at CyberArk. Amita is responsible for maximizing the experience for customers, prospects, partners, employees and job candidates - across every touch point consistently - is critical to driving awareness and favorability on topics related to Identity Security.

Amita started her career in India with Reliance Industries and ZDNet before moving to the United States. For nearly 16 years, Amita served as an analyst with IDC [International Data Corporation] a renowned worldwide market research company across various capacities - pricing, storage and finally, as Director of Future of Trust Global Research Practice. Amita has had the fortune of engaging with many tech decision makers, hence identifying trends and market dynamics that helped CIOs and CISOs to innovate and address their challenges. Her work related to Trust has earned media coverage across various top tier publications worldwide including The Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times and The National (in UAE).

Amita strongly believes in picking each other up and dusting each other off in times of distress and to truly rejoice in each other's success.

Fun Fact: Amita can speak 5 languages and loves spending time with her two daughters, who despite being high schoolers keep their house alive with their Tom and Jerry-like antics.

Join Amita's session 'Enable a Zero Trust Strategy with Identity' on October 20th.

Kiersten is a leadership and talent development expert who shares her 30 years of experience in matrixed, international, high-tech organizations through stories and humor. Audiences love her practical strategies and advice for applying them professionally. With a career spanning business and people operations, Kiersten is credible to all audiences.

Kiersten's education spans undergraduate work in Business Communications from the University of Rhode Island, continuing education in Alternative Dispute Resolution, being a trained Mediator in the state of Massachusetts, and multiple certifications related to her career. Kiersten has been sought as a speaker, judge, and coach for professional organizations, negotiations, meeting facilitation, and any other place where communication skills are essential to success. Today, as Worldwide leader of ENOVIA Brand Sales Enablement & Learning, Kiersten uses her unique mix of talent development, business acumen, sales operations, and SaaS skills to transform the Enablement landscape at Dassault Systèmes.

While Kiersten has spent a career figuring out how to enable performance, she knows that experience is the best teacher of all. She credits her ability to work seamlessly in team environments to two things: 1) years racing sailboats as part of a 12-person crew , and 2) living and working overseas. Sailing taught her how to be part of an efficient machine that is only great when everyone works in one fluid motion, and her time overseas taught her the humility of struggling to succeed in a place where you are different.

Join Kiersten's session 'How Digital Twin Technology Is Crucial To Meeting Sustainability Goals' on October 20th.

Neema Uthappa was born and raised in Coorg, a picturesque countryside in Southern India, also known as the 'Scotland of India'. Brought up in a tight-knit family and influenced by a culture considered even in a country as diverse as India, she has always boldly ventured down the road less traveled.

An engineer by education, Neema began her career as one of the first 3 women executive officer s(works) in the Indian Navy, followed by stints in key management roles across various industries such as Real Estate, Banking, Healthcare, Utility etc. Neema has held several Senior leadership positions in various large corporations in the US like American Express, McKesson Corporation and is currently the Head of Engineering/Associate Partner with McKinsey & company. She has excelled in the corporate world and has been awarded 2 US patents and Platinum Genius medal by American Express.

Neema has always sought simplicity in life, breaking things down to basics. Her creative mindset has inspired her to pursue such varied interests as painting, wine making, artwork, and has penned several of her life experiences in a book called “The Cinderella Elephant”, a collection of short stories.

She volunteers as board member for Girls In Tech Organization and ASU Art member during her free time.

Fun Fact: Neema is a certified Hypnotherapist, who has trained under world famous hypnotherapist Marisa Peer and can help people overcome problems such as OCD, Stress, depression, anxiety, eating disorder, pain management etc. in both adults and children through effective use of the RTT Technique.

Join Neema's session 'Modernizing Tech Infrastructure By Design and NOT by Default' on October 21st.

Samantha Rudolph is the Head of the Office of the President & Chief Product Officer of SAP SuccessFactors. She helps bring the SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite to life by retaining customers' trust and focusing on their continued success. Sam has spent 16 years at SAP focused primarily on customer enablement, product documentation, and user assistance. She is a passionate and customer-centric leader who is dedicated to building and maintaining a sustainable and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. Sam fully embraces and celebrate the power of diversity in the workplace, which enables a unique perspective in leading global teams.

Join Samantha's session 'The Power of Technology in Building a Sustainable Workforce' on October 20th.

Amy is a decorated US Navy Veteran with over 20 years' experience in the B2B space. In her role at Micro Focus, she works directly with the CMO to transform the business operations of the entire Marketing organization to streamline internal processes. Focusing on lead management, KPIs, Employee Engagement, Career Growth and Development, and Return on Marketing Investment.

Amy is deeply involved in D&I and social responsibility at Micro Focus as an ERG leader and an ambassador for our INSPIRE program which encourages volunteerism and allyship across the globe. Personally, Amy is an active member of Women in Technology of Atlanta and is involved in many volunteer and fund raising activities locally.

Join Amy's workshop 'Allyship in the Workplace and Beyond' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Anitha Rajagopalan is Senior Director of Applications Development, in the Manufacturing division at ECI Software Solutions. In this role, she is responsible to lead multiple engineering teams with strategy and product delivery excellence for ERP and automation software.

Prior to joining ECI, Anitha held various roles in FinTech, at Fidelity Investments and Bank of America, as well as healthcare IT at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. She has over 25 years of experience in software development and management. Anitha believes that the core of a good software engineering organization is its focus on solving business problems through technological innovation.

Anitha holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree from Bangalore University in India, and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati.

Outside of work, Anitha volunteers at a non-profit that aims to increase educational access. She also teaches an after-school cultural education class for special needs children.

Anitha enjoys cooking, gardening, reading and music. She loves to entertain and spend time with her family.

Fun Fact: Anitha is fluent in 4 different languages, passable in a fifth and currently learning a sixth.

Join Anitha's workshop 'Creating Tech Resiliency in the Cloud' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Senior Director of Software Engineering by day, mom of two by night. I've spent 20 years in a variety of technical roles, with experience in SaaS application development, backup and recovery, 3rd party integrations, high-scale e-commerce, digital marketing, marketing automation, multivariate testing, data warehousing, and custom software development.

My passion is working with talented and diverse teams. Bringing people together and working across functions to drive continual business success fuels me. Through these partnerships, I am constantly learning to better understand problems and opportunities, and leading across teams to solve for them.

I hold a firm belief in cultivating an engineering culture of trust and respect. In fostering an organization with higher levels of psychological safety, my teams are able to amplify delivery of extraordinary business results through collaborative partnerships.

In my personal time, I enjoy visits to the Caribbean, reading, roasting marshmallows with my kids, enjoying food from around the world, and making unforgettable memories (think sky-diving, snorkeling, laser tag with our engineers).

When not focused on scaling engineering teams, I actively support and promote women in technology and underrepresented employees. I believe in the power of inclusion, am an avid advocate of agile principles, and a proponent for servant leadership.

Fun Fact: For the past 3 years I've been an Engineering Leadership mentor with Plato, mentoring Engineering Managers across the globe.

Join Charlene's session 'Increase your Ability to Influence and Persuade' on October 21st.

As a Director of Software Engineering at Capital One, Marina is partnering with risk and audit technical executives and business leaders on building innovative data driven products that empower our customers with intelligent risk insights. In this role, she is leading and growing new engineering teams for Risk and Audit organization in Boston, MA.

With over 20 years of experience, Marina held engineering leadership roles at Thomson Financial (now Thomson Reuters), Computershare, Genscape and Linedata where she was recognized for her passion for new technologies. In her last role, as a head of new platform engineering team, Marina led Linedata's effort in building the first cloud native real time trading platform, delivering a first Linedata production solution in a public cloud and building innovative continuous integration and delivery processes. Marina has extensive expertise in platform engineering, evolving legacy systems to cloud microservices architecture and leading agile transformations.

Marina holds a Masters degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University of Engineering and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Join Marina's workshop 'Personal Branding for Technical Workforce' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Narmatha Balasundaram is a Software Engineering manager in the Commercial Software Engineering team (CSE) at Microsoft with over 15 years' experience. CSE is a global engineering organization that works directly with the largest companies and not-for-profits in the world to tackle their most significant technical challenges. She is a full-stack developer with extensive background in web and mobile applications for which she received the Global Stars Excellence award. Irrespective of the industry or tech, Narmatha loves the envisioning process, figuring out 'what could be possible'. Narmatha is an active contributor, organizer, and participant in many organizations, from hackathons to Women in Tech and is a passionate mentor.

Join Narmatha's session 'How Properly Applied Observability Practices Can Take The 'Chaos' Out Of Testing' on October 21st.

Nupur is a pioneer in transforming the way Fortune 500 companies discover, define, and deliver digital solutions. She instills the product mindset and customer centricity at all levels. She has enabled 250+ product leads, published thought-provoking product content, hosted unparalleled training programs, and paved the path for product strategy across multiple divisions for her clients.

Prior to coaching, as an empathetic product lead, Nupur leveraged technology and teamwork to solve critical market problems in various industries. With her tenacious attitude and people-centric approach, she has turned ambiguity and chaos into well-aligned, data-influenced, and strategic outcomes.

You can call her a coach, consultant, leader, trainer, team builder, product manager, or simply a super-duper-nupur-go-getter.

Fun Fact: Nupur is a small part of the revolution where food is a driving force in promoting mental wellness. She makes and sells cold-pressed herbal wellness shots. At one point, she built fully IoT vending machines to overcome a regulatory challenge.

Join Nupur's workshop 'Driving Product Strategy with a North Star Metric' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Karen Gondoly combines executive leadership and technical skills to head up Leostream, a leading connection management platform for virtual desktop infrastructures, where she serves as both CEO and VP of Product Management.

She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in aeronautical/astronautical engineering.

A literal 'rocket scientist,' Karen Gondoly leverages her extensive skills in software development, technical writing, GUI design and usability to further Leostream’s position as the leading Connection Broker for enterprise remote access and desktop connection management.

Karen earned her B.S. and M.S. in aeronautical/astronautical engineering from MIT, working summers at NASA's Langley Research Center on a variety of projects from heat transfer models to LIDAR experiment designs.

When she isn't 'running' the company, she can be found pounding the pavement training for her goal of running a marathon in every state. To date, she has complete marathons in 45 states and 3 countries.

Join Karen's workshop 'Using Technology to Empower The Modern Hybrid Workforce' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Carla Dreyer is the Senior Director of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering and Security at VIZIO. Since 1995, she has worked in leadership positions across various technical disciplines such as Software Engineering/Development, Product Management, and Program Management. She's held technical roles at Nordstrom, Microsoft, LexisNexis, CenturyLink Cloud, The Pokemon Company International, and Vizio.

Carla is a certified Agile Leader and has been a practitioner of many Agile frameworks for over 22 years, from Lean Software Development (LSD) to Scrum to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), to list a few. Throughout her career, she has lead a number of initiatives supporting DEI and Women In Tech--she founded the Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (ANHPI) Employee Resource Group (ERG), and built the ERG Leadership team as well as, served as an advisor for the Women in Tech ERG. She lives in Seattle area with her family and enjoys both sports and video games.

Fun Fact: I have a black belt in Shotokan Karate, was a professional skateboarder at 12 years old and played basketball at the collegiate level.

Join Carla's workshop 'Sister Circle: Overcoming Tech Bro Cultures in the Workplace' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

I am a product designer building McKinsey's design system. I have 3 years of experience designing digital and tangible experiences, and my strength lies in creating enterprise solutions. I hold a bachelor's degree in Industrial Design from the National Institute of Design, India and an MS in Engineering Design from Carnegie Mellon University. I have been practicing taekwondo for the past year and really enjoy the rigor it instils. I look forward to it after work, and I am so excited to be sharing it with everyone at this conference!

Fun Fact: Other than martial arts, I love to cook and take care of hard-to-kill plants.

Join Harshika's session 'Meet Up: Martial Arts for Technical Professionals' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Devika is a product strategy leader passionate about building bridges between tech and policy. She currently services as the Director of Market Intelligence at Technology Transformation Services in the U.S. General Services Administration.

Devika started her government career as a product manager at 18F, an office of federal employees that helps other government agencies build, buy, and share technology products. Before taking on her current role she served as the first product manager from her organization to detail to a Congressional committee where she co-led the first engagement for the House Digital Services.

Devika's interest in technology developed while organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Having been at the ground floor of the first "digital" campaign she was eager to explore other ways technology could be used for social change. This interest led her to Google, where she spent 7+ years across finance, strategy and business development. While at Google Devika worked on some of Chrome's earliest distribution deals, helped commercialize Google Glass, and drove product and market expansion for CSquared, a pan-African internet infrastructure project. As the regional business development lead Devika had the opportunity to relocate to Kenya for 4 years, where she developed her passion for contemporary African art.

Devika received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Michigan. She’s a Mayoral Appointee for DC’s Innovation and Technology Inclusion Council and a founding member of Chief, a network focused on connecting and supporting women executive leaders.

Join Devika's workshop 'Influencing without Authority: Stakeholder Management Workshop' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Elizabeth Garber is a Customer Experience and Innovation expert leading initiatives that will change the landscape of Digital Identity. In 2021, she co-edited/co-wrote the GAIN Digital Trust whitepaper, which called for a globally interoperable solution to high-trust identity online. It was signed by 150+ identity experts worldwide. She co-chairs the OpenID Foundation’s GAIN technical Proof of Concept, which explores the challenges of global interoperability. She also participates in working groups with the Open Identity Exchange and Institute of International Finance.

In early 2022, she left her role in Digital Products at Santander Bank to co-found IDPartner, a startup that will put you in control of your identity and play an important role building trust on the internet. IDPartner has been backed by top VCs, including Abstract Ventures and Foundation Capital, and has recently been accepted into the Stanford StartX accelerator.

Join Elizabeth's session 'Creating a Trusted Digital Identity Framework' on October 20th.

Lisa Curhan is a Principal Program Manager supporting Data Management and Business Analytics for Oracle Supply Chain Operations. She earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MS in System Design and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lisa has been working in computer hardware development and manufacturing for over 30 years. This includes experience in semiconductor manufacturing, hardware systems engineering, New Product Introduction, Engineering Management, Business Intelligence and Quality Program Management.

Join Lisa's session 'Meet Up: Martial Arts for Technical Professionals' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Francesca Lazzeri, Ph.D. is an experienced data and machine learning scientist with over 15 years of experience in academic research, tech industry and engineering team management. She is author of the book "Machine Learning for Time Series Forecasting with Python" (Wiley) and many other publications, including technology journals and conferences.

Francesca is Adjunct Professor of machine learning at Columbia University and Principal Data Scientist Manager at Microsoft, where she leads an organization of data scientists and machine learning engineers building intelligent applications on the Cloud, utilizing data and techniques spanning from IoT, time series forecasting, computer vision, natural language processing, reinforcement learning and open-source frameworks. Before joining Microsoft, she was a Research Fellow at Harvard University in the Technology and Operations Management Unit.

She is also Advisory Board Member of the AI-CUBE (Artificial Intelligence and Big Data CSA for Process Industry Users, Business Development and Exploitation) project, the Women in Data Science (WiDS) initiative, machine learning mentor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and active member of the AI community. You can find her on Twitter: @frlazzeri

Fun Fact: I love ballet and I studied it for more than 10 years when I was a child. I think that ballet is a very strict and classical dance form and requires a lot of practice and rehearsal.

Join Francesca's workshop 'Developer Toolkits to Enable End-to-End ML Systems' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Veronika Durgin is a database professional with over two decades of experience. Her passion for all things data led her on an incredible journey from a Junior SQL Server DBA to her current role as the Head of Data. Multiple stops on that path of database administration, data engineering, platform architecture, data modeling, and analytics and insights taught her to appreciate the complexities, synergies, and tremendous value each functional area brings to the business.

As a Certified Data Vault Practitioner and Snowflake Data Superhero, you will see Veronika occasionally blogging and often speaking to anyone who would listen about both Snowflake and Data Vault.

Outside of work, Veronika spends time mentoring high school kids and young professionals who want to get into the data field. Veronika holds a master's degree in software engineering and lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two boys, and a Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Fun Fact: I have a weakness for nice shoes and have a very large collection to prove it.

Join Veronika's session 'Today is Tomorrow's Legacy: Building Resilient Data Ecosystems' on October 20th.

Kate Reynolds McLeod is Interim CEO for the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC), an organization whose mission is to foster a strong and inclusive technology community and to amplify the Massachusetts innovation ecosystem and its network effects. Since joining the Council in 2016, Kate has focused on business and financial operations, working closely with the team on membership, marketing, and customer success. In earlier roles, Kate was on the founding team at The Grommet, an ecommerce platform for product discovery, and worked in corporate communications at Robert Half International. She serves on the board of the MassTLC Education Foundation and has a degree from Cornell University.

Fun Fact: My current craft project is a hand-knitted temperature blanket. Every day for a year, I tracked the temperature at our family's house on Lake Ontario in a spreadsheet, and on nights when I have time, I knit. Each row represents one day, and each color represents that day's temperature.

Sara Fraim is Vice President of Programs and Policy for the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC). Sara is responsible for setting strategy for all programs, events, and research for the Council. Sara also leads policy, ensuring that MassTLC members and the greater tech community's interests are represented on a state and federal level.

Sara served on the Massachusetts Broadband Equity Commission and continues to serve on the US Policy Committee at the Technology Councils of North America (TECNA), a global organization representing technology industry organizations. Additionally, Sara serves on the Board of Directors for TECNA and is Executive Director of the MassTLC Education Foundation, where she champions building an inclusive tech pipeline.

NOT SO FUN FACT: I've run two full marathons (both after having my second child), ten ½ marathons, and have aspirations to run a 50K.

Donna Gregorio is a veteran corporate IT project manager, published author, and college graduate school instructor. She is the department head of the IT Project Management Office at The MITRE Corporation and guides her teams through a high-stress and fast-paced environment. Her book The Successful Project Manager tells first-hand stories of complex projects, highlights what went wrong, and describes how to apply game-changing tools to address challenges.

Fun Fact: Donna is the lead singer and guitarist in an 80’s cover band.

Join Donna's workshop 'Circling Back: The Remote Impact of Meeting Overload' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Rama Pyarasani is an Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. She earned a BS in Electrical & Electronics engineering and MS in Physics from BITS Pilani, India. She is a firm believer in continuous learning and successfully completed Leadership Principles program at Harvard Business school and the Applied Data Science program at MIT. She has been practicing martial arts at Tae Kwon Do Karate Club with her kids since 2017 and has taken a break since the COVID-19 pandemic. She experienced tremendous growth in her technology career by applying the learnings from Karate.

Rama has 15 years of experience in software architecture, implementation, analytics, and quality assurance of enterprise solutions. She is an evangelist for cutting edge technologies and promotes the adoption of cloud, data analytics and machine learning tools.

Rama co-founded a Women's Leadership community in New England in March 2020 and led the fast-growing community. One would think starting a new community during the start of the world's pandemic would be nothing but challenging, but 1 year later, this community was going strong with 900+ members from 5 different continents.

She has been a moderator/panellist/speaker at many events. She mentors many engineers and is committed to helping others grow by sharing her experiences.

Fun Fact: I am a technology, karate, dance and fitness enthusiast.

Join Rama's session 'Meet Up: Martial Arts for Technical Professionals' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Dr. Denise Arruda is the Senior Manager of Software Electronics for Fire Suppression Products at Johnson Controls. She is responsible for leading a global development team to implement the right digital solution to solve the right business problem. Dr. Arruda is a leader of leaders, driving strategy, vision, and technology direction while leading, coaching, motivating, and inspiring her team to deliver on their commitments. She is located in Cranston, RI.

Dr. Arruda brings a strong technical and project management background to this role. Before becoming a Sr. Manager, Denise was a technical Program Manager driving execution excellence to exceed stakeholders' and customers' expectations. Dr. Arruda received her doctorate in IT, specializing in Project Management from Capella University in 2019. She has been a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2004. In 2018, She extended her knowledge to include Agile practices and obtained a Professional Scrum Master (PSM-1) certification. Dr. Denise Arruda is an adjunct professor of Project Management at Boston University in the Metropolitan College Administrative Sciences program.

Fun Fact: During the Covid lockdown, I learned how to build and program robots for fun. I have a collection of three different robots I built.

The first one is driven manually and has a claw that I used to pick up the tennis balls my dogs did not retrieve. The second looks like a car. It is programmed to follow a line. I laid out a track with black electric tape on my kitchen floor. The third is a two-wheel robot that uses a gyroscope to balance.

Join Denise's workshop 'Communication and Leadership Workshop' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Rizel is a Developer Advocate at GitHub. She moonlights as the Advisor to the Director of Programs at G{Code} House, an organization aimed at teaching women of color and non-binary people of color to code. Rizel believes in leveraging vulnerability, honesty, and kindness as means to educate early-career developers.

Join Rizel's workshop 'GitHub Actions to the Rescue: Building a Resilient CI/CD Pipeline' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Jessi Bull is a product strategy leader who is passionate about building teams that change the way critical services work for the people who depend on them. She has worked in both the private and public sector over the last 14 years in product management, program management, business strategy, and operations. In her current role, she leads an anti-fraud initiative for Login.gov, an identity and authentication solution for public services. She is an experienced coalition builder and has led multiple nation-wide technology transformation initiatives, including transitioning the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) from paper-based benefits processing to digital- one of the largest changes to the program since the internet. Prior to joining the Login.gov team, Jessi managed the growth and strategy practice at a technology consultancy that built custom products to improve experiences for vulnerable populations. She is an active member of the impact-focused technology community and served on the Board of the Digital Services Coalition, a collection of small businesses working to transform government service delivery, from 2019-2021.

Fun Fact: Jessi is an avid cook and has worked as a professional and semi professional chef in parallel to her other jobs. This includes a brief but memorable stint as the executive chef for a high-end fishing resort in the mountains of Tasmania, Australia in 2014.

Join Jessi's workshop 'Influencing without Authority: Stakeholder Management Workshop' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Pooja Salpekar is Head of Engineering at Babbel Inc.

With over nine years of software development and team leadership experience, Pooja drives technical strategy for the teams to meet company OKRs and partners with PMs to advise, innovate and deliver on key priorities.

Pooja is leading two cross-functional engineering teams in NYC and Berlin, Germany to drive customer engagement and conversion. She is enabling software teams to deliver the features in smaller iterations that target the key performance metrics of users’ journeys.

Join Pooja's session 'Sister Circle: Challenges of Engineering Management' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Rachel Rapoza has over 12 years of marketing experience at small start-ups, SMBs, and enterprise technology companies. She currently serves as the lead product marketing manager for UKG, a large B2B tech company, where she is responsible for developing messaging and positioning and driving awareness for their solutions. Between her career that has spanned across all the marketing disciplines, from events to demand generation to product marketing, to her experience of going through multiple mergers and acquisitions - she's developed a unique set of skills and perspective on messaging and positioning.

Outside of her day job, she also serves as the Chair of PRIDE at UKG – UKG's employee resource group dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community.

Fun Fact: Outside of work I love to stay active by playing hockey and golf.

Join Rachel's workshop 'How To Nail Product Messaging' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

I am an experienced Software Engineer working under the Dealer Org at CarGurus. Learning about new ways of developing and integrating them into my current work is something that keeps me motivated. To me software engineering is like assembling furniture, the more you invest time in it, the better techniques you evolve with.

Fun Fact: Once while being on a work shift at university, I realized I have a collection of quarters with signs of almost every US state and for the next year or so I didn't use them but kept as a collection to showcase.

Join Payal's workshop 'The Art of Self-Promotion: Becoming Your Biggest Cheerleader At Work' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Carrie and the PowerSpeaking, Inc. team are passionate about helping organizations—at corporations like Genentech, eBay, Autodesk, and Gilead Sciences—develop powerful communication skills that inspire people and get results.

"A large part of our client base is in the high-tech and biotech sectors, so many years ago, we researched and developed HighTechSpeaking®, which helps technical professionals become more clear, strategic, high-impact communicators," Carrie says. "And in 2018, we launched Confident Speaking for Women, to meet the unique challenges women face in the workplace. Both are now among our most popular programs."

Prior to joining PowerSpeaking, Carrie enjoyed more than 30 years' experience in the learning and development industry, where she led award-winning teams. Then, as now, she believes that "Our purpose is to make great people even greater at what they do every day."

Fun Fact: Outside of work, Carrie loves watching her son compete in the 800 run.

Amy is such a stellar coach and trainer, she heads up all US trainer certifications and mentoring for PowerSpeaking, Inc. In addition, she leads fundamental and executive-level presentation skills workshops for technical and non-technical audiences. She also provides one-on-one coaching for those preparing for conferences or other specialized presentations.

Amy began her career in nonprofit literacy and taught public speaking for the communication studies department of several colleges. She has a passion for working with adults and children whose native language is not English. She has developed and leads public-speaking workshops for advanced ESL students; trains elementary school faculty and students in public speaking; and coaches an award-winning elementary speech and debate team.

Fun Fact: If a swing song comes on, you can guarantee Amy will be dancing with a big smile on her face.

Join Amy's workshop 'Powerful Storytelling: Presenting Technical Ideas in a Highly Relatable Way' on October 20th (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Liz Myers is an executive leadership coach and consultant specializing in creating authentic, balanced leaders and cohesive, human-centric teams. She has been professionally facilitating virtual meetings for over ten years. She is now a bonafide meeting snob and has a hard time attending other people's meetings.

Liz earned a Masters degree from Stanford University in engineering and earned her coaching certification through the International Coaching Federation. Learn more about Liz at https://www.integrative-leadership.com/ or www.linkedin.com/in/liz-myers.

Join Liz's workshop 'Engage Your People: Coaching Skills for Leaders' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Julia Geisman, founder of CareerAgility, is dedicated to building and sustaining work environments in which everyone thrives regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic background, or physical abilities. As a woman in business for 30+ years, Julia has intimate knowledge of the challenges, societal behavioral expectations, and self-limiting stories women face throughout their careers.

Her workshops cover the skills, attitudes, and behaviors women need to advance in their careers, integrate their personal and professional goals, and build their career cachet. Julia coaches executive and senior leaders, has conducted hundreds of workshops nationally and internationally, and provides career counseling and coaching to professional women throughout the US.

She is the author of "Building Your Career Capital: Using your career to live the life you want," published numerous articles in national publications, and speaks at national conferences on the topics of women issues, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Join Julia's workshop 'Think You're Suffering From Imposter Syndrome? Think Again!' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).

Ayelet is a senior leader with over 20 years of experience in the technology and information security industry, with a diverse background in Product management, R&D, marketing, and professional services. She recently held the role of SVP of Marketing at BioCatch, focused on helping financial institutions fight fraud and financial crime.

Prior to BioCatch, Ayelet spent 11 years at RSA Security in various roles in both the Fraud Protection and Enterprise Identity solution areas. Ayelet also held various roles at IBM, focused on innovation.

In addition to her main responsibilities, Ayelet has also been an active member of the Women's Leadership forum at RSA, leading a series of Ted Talk sessions that showcased successful women in the organization who shared what inspired them in their career, and triggered open and honest conversation about women in the workplace.

Fun Fact: Although I am an expert on online scams, I recently got scammed.

Join Ayelet's workshop 'Tackling a Global Problem Like Online Scams' on October 21st (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only).