The Career Advice Clinic is your unique opportunity to gain a different career perspective from our speakers who will provide guidance gained from their wealth of experience and provide practical next steps.
Create deeper connections with Career Advice Clinic speakers in an intimate setting that can flourish into long-term mentoring partnerships.
During the Résumé Review hour find out how to make your profile stand out to help you land your dream job.
Regina Lawless is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Leader and Organizational Development expert with 17 years' experience in the HR field. In 2020, she joined Meta as the Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for Instagram and is now the DEI Leader for Meta’s suite of apps.
Regina is also the Founder of Equality Defined LLC, a boutique coaching firm providing career development services to women of color. She is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento in Communication Studies and holds a Master of Science degree in Organization Development from University of San Francisco. She is a founding Advisory Board Member of the University of San Francisco Engineering Program and joined the Board of World Woman Foundation in 2021.
Regina is a California native and currently resides there with her family. In her spare time, she is an avid reader, loves listening to music and practicing yoga.
Specialist Topics: Career Reset, Pivoting After a Setback, Transitioning into New Roles/ Industries, Career Advancement
Marla Sofer is the Lead and Industry Solutions CTO for Financial Services at Microsoft. She has led partnerships at high growth Fintech companies since 2015, driving partner-related revenue through integration, collaborative marketing, co-selling, and corporate development initiatives. Before diving into Fintech, Marla led institutional partnerships at BlackRock and J.P. Morgan quantified in billions of dollars. She has been a champion of gender diversity, founded two employee women's networks, and served as a non-profit leader dedicated to social justice.
Specialist Topics: Nonlinear career journeys, finding opportunities in new industries and valuing experience gained in different context, parenting as the primary breadwinner, growing personal brand, networking, resume coaching, sponsorship & mentoring, negotiating salary and terms in a new job, how to make the most of a conference experience.
Cynthia Long is an award winning Continuous Improvement Leader and Strategist. Over the last 20 years, her passion for Lean Six Sigma has led her to create, innovate, and be a Revolutionary Leader for Continuous Improvement. She is based in San Diego.
Specialist Topics: Lean Six Sigma, and of course Mentoring.
Aji Oliyide is a PMO Mission Lead at Google, writer, and podcaster based in Northern California. An experienced operations leader, Aji's work is focused on building systems and relationships that cultivate understanding and support 'big picture' initiatives.
With over a decade of operations and management consulting experience, Aji has solidified her expertise in operations in both educational and professional settings. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business with an MBA, and Eaton Corporation's General Management Development Program for engineers, Aji spent several years as a Management Consultant.
Today, Aji leads large-scale operational projects for Google, a range of mapping and geographic products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google My Business. Her interest in operations management is inspired by her love for innovation and innate problem-solving capabilities; it's these traits that ignite her creative, analytical mindset.
Specialtist Topics: Promotion, Self Promotion, Finding Sponsors, Career Pivots, Changing Roles
Chelle Johnson is the CEO and Founder of her company, Best You Career Advantage, and the Denver-based networking group, Colorado Career Connectors. She has over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition and human resources leadership roles. She now helps high achievers and diversity allies discover and amplify their strengths and purpose and realize abundance in their careers and lives.
Fun Fact: Chelle is also a Zumba instructor and is fluent in Spanish
Ramona Shaw is a certified professional leadership coach with the mission to help develop confident & competent leaders people love to work with. Through coaching and training, she helps managers develop leadership behaviors, skills, and habits to go further, faster while managing stress, self-doubt, and overwhelm.
After graduating with a Masters in Finance, Ramona entered the field of private equity and soon led key strategic projects and international teams in Switzerland and the United States for 9 years as a VP at a renowned global private equity firm.
She now specializes in designing and delivering coaching programs and workshops for new and mid-level leaders to strengthen their communication skills and confidence, and to increase their contribution to the organization through enhanced leadership effectiveness and improved team engagement.
Fun Fact: My first book will be published the week after the conference :-)
Specialist Topics: I would like to help new, first-time managers who recently transitioned from an IC into a management role.
Selam! I'm Mary. I am a writer, and tech business leader. I write because, it's my passion, and because I can share my stories and my vision. When I'm not actively writing, I'm working to build a company. My company plans to teach girls and women technical skills, so they can code and experience the future. I believe education and tech were my key ingredients towards the financial freedom I enjoy. I am looking to share my story in my upcoming book - African Born: An American Feminist Story. There, I also share my plans to take a project team and kick off my company, set to pilot in 2023 in Ethiopia, Africa.
I used to work at, and personally hired talent at large companies like Amazon. I also speak to students on career strategy planning. I understand what companies are looking for in your resume and I’m happy to share that insight today.
Innovator Focused on The Human Element & Changing Paradigms Connector | Executive Career Coach | Visionary Recruiter | Ex - Fortune 10 Executive
Urvi is a Master Connector, emotionally wealthy and a nomadic personality. She is a 20 year, reformed, Fortune 10 corporate executive. (AT&T, IBM, Coca-Cola, Walmart). The consistent thread in her career is her innovative mindset. Her mindset is driven by her nomadic lifestyle and connecting dots on a global scale. Her vast network and the trusting relationships she has built over the past 20 years, continue to collaborate with her and others to build the future of tomorrow.
She is the Founder | Chief Coach of a coaching & recruiting technology platform focusing on the candidate first. Peppercorn Discovery is an online career coach guiding candidates through a journey of self awareness to develop their marketing portfolio so they can focus on finding a role, in the right company for them.
She has built her advisory services upon the passion of changing the paradigm of how we live, work and play by connecting people, places and projects across the world. She is the bridge between ideas and ... action - with a focus on the human element. She focuses on reality versus the ""path"" we are expected to follow.
She is a connector between the past, present and the future integrating the human element into the technological and cultural paradigm shifts happening in our world to individuals or organizations. One long term project, (20 years) is to build floating cities providing a new life platform for innovators, futurists, global thinkers and nomads.
Urvi is an avid endurance athlete completing 2 half ironmans, marathons and long distance bike rides. Urvi used to live a very nomadic lifestyle and it continues in her personality. She is based in Silicon Valley where she lives with her French partner and his kids building a new age family.
FUN FACT: Urvi loves and only wears Cowboy Boots :)
Mary has over 10 years experience across corporate strategy and the financial markets. She is currently Head of Finance & Operations at Applied Intuition, a Series D enterprise software company with 8 global offices. Mary started her career in equity derivatives at the New York Stock Exchange, and in corporate mergers & acquisitions in New York City. She then joined Bertelsmann's venture fund where she led investments in Series A-C technology companies and served on a variety of company Boards. Mary moved to Silicon Valley to lead business development strategy at Google for the Google Assistant. She graduated with a B.A. Economics from Yale University. In her spare time, she enjoys staying active outdoors.
Fun Fact: Mary has surfed in 5 countries and her favorite surf break is in Nosara, Costa Rica.
Trupti Shiralkar is a security engineering manager at Datadog. She is passionate about implementing a holistic approach to security and privacy by design and believes in scaling product security through ""Shift-to-left"" transformations. She holds a Master of Science degree in Information Security from Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI) and several security certifications. Trupti's industry experience ranges from Fortune 500s to startups, including Illumio, Amazon, Hewlett Packard, Q2ebanking and ATSEC Information Security. She holds a patent for secure and anonymous electronic polling.
Fun Fact: Trupti is also a certified meditation instructor and loves teaching meditation techniques to strike work life balance.
As the first Asian woman to complete the Explorer's Grand Slam, Lei has been a sought-after international motivational speaker since 2010. She has inspired people across the world to dream big and really achieve that fulfilling life, work, and relationship that they are truly excited about.
Today, as an executive coach, Lei helps business leaders accelerate their careers to exciting new heights with ease and grace, lead their organizations to make a bigger impact, and connect deeper with the community they serve.
In 2004, Lei, who grew up as a Beijing city girl who had no athletic training, set out to climb Mount Everest. She was on a promising career track in finance with an MBA from Wharton. But she was excited about proving that an ordinary person could climb Everest. That excitement empowered her to not only climb Everest but to become the first Asian woman to complete a journey to the summits of the highest mountains on each of the 7 continents and to the north and south pole, a feat called the Explorer's Grand Slam. As she endured outstanding hardships and overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she made an astonishing discovery. She discovered that excitement is the driving force that motivates and empowers every one of us and the secret to innovation, peak performance, and extraordinary achievements. Today as a coach, speaker, author, and adventurer, she travels the world to ascend new summits and empower individuals and organizations to dream big, take a leap of faith, and tap into the power of excitement to realize their potential and reach the heights of success.
Anu Ramraj is Vice President cloud solutions at Unisys and is responsible for cloud platforms, partnerships and portfolio management. Her charter includes accelerating digital transformation for client globally using AI, application and data modernization and ensuring cybersecurity is addressed for enabling secure cloud journeys for clients. Prior to joining Unisys, Anu held senior leadership positions with Hewlett Packard, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and DXC. As director at DXC, she was responsible for leading and scaling out Cloud practices and established credibility with global clients and partners. Anu led operational engineering efforts for Hewlett Packard Enterprise's cloud business and launched several successful products during her tenure with HP Software. Anu holds a master's degree from the California State University at Chico. She has 3 patents and multiple cloud and agile certifications.
Fun Fact: Founded a non-profit to support daughter's efforts with STEM and robotic outreach globally. I am based in Northern California with my husband and daughter and have 2 mini-dachshunds who believe that they are huge guard dogs
Shalini Kasliwal is the Founder & CEO of JoinEight, the first AI-powered intelligence platform to provide a strategic approach to candidate sourcing and engagement. A serial entrepreneur with deep insights into the inside workings of recruitment at all levels, Shalini has used her cool and creative approach to build strong teams across the US and APAC, and EMEA. With a global mindset and a keen eye for improvement opportunities, Shalini was at the forefront of critical strategic directions for renowned companies, VMWare, Metromile, and Couchbase. For Amazon, she has built a strong R&D software engineering team of more than 200 engineers in less than a year.
Specialist Topics: How to prepare for behavioral questions.
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