Jason Sobel, an experienced engineering leader helped build platforms and infrastructure at Airbnb and Facebook. He is a talented engineering leader with nearly 20 years of experience tackling high-scale technical challenges. 

Rekha is a product evangelist and technologist with a solid background in product management, strategy and engineering in leadership roles. She currently heads the eCommerce product team at Taco Bell and a firm believer in building simple yet delightful products with seamless experiences that help win both customers and business. Rekha is a strong advocate of Women in Tech, Data and Product and runs mentor circles to advance women in different functions. She's also a featured speaker at various events across the Bay area.

Melanie Francis is Vice President and Chief of Staff in the Office of the CEO at Akamai, where she serves as a key enabler and facilitator acting with, and on behalf of, the CEO. She maintains and executes the internal governance operating model while also providing operational and communications leadership at the senior executive level.

Francis joined Akamai in 2014, when she initiated Akamai’s change management organization. Prior to becoming Chief of Staff for Akamai’s CEO, she served the company across a broad spectrum of disciplines, including organizational change and transformation, business operations, marketing, and software development.

She has built a 25-year career as a catalyst for change in some of the world’s largest and best-known technology companies. She has spent the majority of her career focused on the information security industry, applying her expertise at the intersection of people, process and technology. She has a proven record of accomplishment in delivering successful business outcomes across a wide portfolio of technical and organizational transformations.

Before joining Akamai in 2014, she spent 12 years at Symantec, pioneering new roles in strategy, operations and marketing. She began her professional career as a software engineer for GTE, where she designed and developed communications software for the U.S. Department of Defense and also developed commercially-sold communications systems and encryption technology. She also served in product management and marketing roles for GTE CyberTrust and Baltimore Technologies.

A certified change management professional (CCMPTM), Francis is a founding member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and serves as President of its New England chapter. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in the Honors Program at Stonehill College, and an MBA from the Clark University Graduate School of Management.

In her role as Chief Product Officer, Radhika is responsible for the vision, strategy, delivery, as well as the product P&L’s for all Hitachi Vantara products and solutions spanning data storage, data management and analytics, and IIoT software. She leads the product development, product management, and product marketing functions for the company, in addition to go to market for Hitachi’s Lumada SaaS portfolio. Radhika possesses a unique combination of deep technical expertise and business acumen, and extensive end-to-end P&L experience. She previously held leadership roles at Lenovo, HP, Cisco, NetApp, and Nimble Storage, incubating and scaling several businesses.

Before joining Hitachi Vantara in September 2020, Radhika was executive vice president and general manager of 3D Systems software workflow business.

She has a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from San Jose State University.

Kamini is the Head of Infrastructure at Airbnb. She leads several key pillars for Infrastructure including Developer Productivity, Data and Cloud Platform and the Search Infrastructure team. Her teams enable  productivity of engineering teams, provide end-to-end data offering for customers to build and scale products and applications and also enable Search Infrastructure for Airbnb. Prior to Airbnb, Kamini spent 6 years at LinkedIn where she was leading the infrastructure and productivity engineering team for the flagship app for LinkedIn. In addition to her domain expertise, Kamini is a champion for diversity and belonging in the workplace

Specialization in Computer Vision, Blockchain, Ethereum, AI, Mathematics with 10 + years industry experience scaling and leading high growth team in the Bay Area. 

Monica Bajaj is a seasoned results-driven technology leader who is very passionate about Engineering innovation, engineering effectiveness while continuing building cool products. She currently serves as a Senior Director of Engineering and Product at Workday in Silicon Valley.  She brings in almost 20 plus years of industry experience across various companies such as Cisco, NetApp, Perforce and Ultimate Software. She has led products across SaaS, AI/NLP, Storage and Security industries. As an Engineering leader, she has always been focused on building high performing globally distributed Engineering teams aligning with developer productivity, product delivery, and customer satisfaction. 

In 2020 she was nominated as one of the Top 60 Women technical leaders to watch by the Girl Geek X Community across fortune 500 companies . She serves on the board of Women in Localization driving their Technology Programs as a Board Member and Chief Compliance Officer for Women In Localization, a global non-profit organization focused on Women mentorship and localization activities.  She is an active speaker and a blogger across several forums in Silicon valley and internationally focusing primarily on diversity, and uplifting women and young girls. She also serves as a mentor on Plato and Everwise. While she is not working she is either spending time with Boy Scouts, hiking or creating cuisines.

She can be reached on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobajaj/  or at twitter @mbajaj9. She believes in : “Live, Learn, Lead Challenge, Empower and Lift each other”

Kalina Bryant serves as the Global Head of Customer Advocacy at Asana. She oversees executive customer engagement and advocacy efforts, business development, and customer program strategy for Asana's customers base across the globe. Kalina also runs an engaging podcast and community amplifying the voices of women and underrepresented groups in the technology industry.

Ms. Bryant is also the founder of UnapologeTECH. An e-learning and coaching platform focused on changing the face of business with diversity and providing an inclusive and equitable environment for all. Kalina focuses on career development training and coaching programs for people to thrive in the technology industry and provides resources and community for technology companies to source top talent and current and future employees to reach their full potential.

Kalina has a passion for creating and innovating and has found success in three successful IPOs (Marketo, Anaplan, and Asana) throughout her career. She sits on the advisory board for Saint Mary’s College of California Science Department and the customer advisory board of Crowdvocate. In addition, Adobe has recognized her as one of the 50 Fearless Marketers in the world through her marketing efforts in Silicon Valley.

Tanu is a passionate AI Strategist and Evangelist, bringing in years of experience running complex Digital Transformation Initiatives. She likes to work at the intersection of Business and Technology. She holds an undergrad degree in Computer Science and an MBA in Strategy and Marketing from Indian School of Business. 

Jutta Williams is lead PM for Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability at Twitter. Formerly, Ms. Williams was a Sr. Tech Lead at Facebook's Central Privacy Office and led regulatory, privacy and security efforts for Google Health, an AI research arm focused on teaching machines to diagnose illnesses. Formerly a Security Engineer and Product Manager for DoD working on crypto systems, she also served as the Chief Privacy, Security and Compliance Officer for two large integrated healthcare companies. She is the former Head of the US delegation to ISO for AI Standards. Ms. Williams graduated with highest distinction from Carnegie Mellon University, earning a Masters of Science in Information Security, Policy and Management. She's married with Beagles, enjoys reading, skiing and HGTV. For the purposes of this panel, Jutta has been working remotely since March 2020 for both Facebook and Twitter - and fully onboarded to my latest position without setting foot in an office.

Erica was born Eric in the early 1970's. Sid and Marty Kroft were on every Saturday morning with random ideas that on the surface seemed completely nonsensical but on deeper evaluation they made perfect scene, or at least that is the way Erica saw things. These worlds with talking flutes and hat people mixed with weekends painting with her grandmother and a dash of ADHD where the fundamental ingredients needed to shape the way Erica would see the world around her and approach all future challenges that came her way.

Not one for ever accepting "We do things this way because its the way it has always been done" Her mother would describe her as "always marching to the beat of her own drum." This mindset has guided Erica down a career path that is uniquely her, full of fun and hair raising problems to solve.

In 2018 Erica joined PayPal to lead a small internal design team at PayPal that is responsible for all of the tools and platforms used to build and run PayPal's business. The task was a daunting one not for the week of heart, it was just the anxiety induced problem that excited Erica most. Two years later Erica and her team have successfully changed the way the organization operate and think about the user.

Katica Roy is a gender economist and the CEO and founder of Denver-based Pipeline, a SaaS company
that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity. In 2020,
Katica was named the 2020 Colorado Entrepreneur of the Year.
Ms. Roy is driven by a passion to eradicate economic inequality and champions the rights of refugees,
women, and children.  An award-winning business leader with more than two decades of experience in
technology, healthcare, and financial services, Katica is credited as a rare combination of expertise in and
passion for gender equity, people analytics, and sales operations. She pours her knowledge and unique
lens into several community and global initiatives, including as a member of Fast Company’s Impact
Council and Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum as well as a former board member of Edge of Seven,
Isabella Bird Community School, University of San Francisco’s Women in Leadership and Philanthropy,
and Book Trust and a member of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, as well as a 2018 Colorado
Governors’ Fellow.  
In 2017 Katica was named a Luminary by the Colorado Technology Association and in 2019 a Top 25
Most Powerful Woman in Business and a Stevie Entrepreneur of the Year, Gold Award. She is also an
industry entrepreneur, thought-leader, and frequent editorial contributor and speaker.  Katica’s articles
have been published by World Economic Forum, NBC, Fast Company, Fortune, Financial Times, Forbes,
Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, The Hill, The Advocate, Salesforce and Morning Consult.

Pascale Diaine is a Partner at Storm Ventures, a VC firm investing in early stage B2B software. She focuses on sales & marketing automation, AI/ML, IIoT, retail tech, AR, computer vision, and robotics applied to the enterprise space.

Before joining Storm, Pascale founded Orange Fab, the corporate accelerator of the European Telco Orange and managed cohorts including Talkdesk (today worth $3B), Wonolo, Rallyteam (acquired by Workday), Verdigris, Pixlee, and many more.

She also started an alliance of corporations piggybacking on Orange Fab’s deal-flow and helping cohorts land their first Fortune 500 customers. She holds a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Technology at Compiègne (UTC). Originally from France, she now lives in the US with her husband and two-year old son and is a big beach volley-ball player.

Suzanna Khatchatrian is a Director of the Data Engineering team at Slack. Prior to joining Slack,
Suzanna worked for IBM for almost 20 years and in her last role she was in charge of Watson
Data Platform Security and DevOps teams. As one of the founding members of the Armenian
International Women's Association (AIWA) San Francisco affiliate, Suzanna currently serves on
the AIWA SF board, where she is leading scholarship committee and internship programs.
Suzanna holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and
an M.S. degree in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

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.

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.

Parinita has a blend of product operations & technology consulting experience. In her current role with Google, Parinita manages global partner ecosystem & strategy for Engineering product operations & services. Prior to Google, Parinita helped fortune 100/500 companies transform product and quality operations through Global consulting firms such as Deloitte & Accenture. 

Over the years, Parinita was able to build successful win-win partnerships with customers and partners, thanks to her negotiation and collaboration skills. Negotiation has been an integral part of Parinita’s day to day duties whether negotiating a partnership agreement for Google or convincing her 4 year old to eat veggies. Parinita has identified the lack of negotiation skills in women and is on a mission to empower fellow women in tech to get better at negotiations through proven concepts & frameworks.

Anusha is a senior software engineer at AWS with 6+ years of industry experience. Working with AWS S3, she leads the design and implementation of a distributed storage service that operates cold storage technology at extreme scale. She has a master's degree in Computer Science from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from College of Engineering Guindy, India. Anusha is passionate about helping women grow in the tech community. Outside of work, she volunteers for Girls Who Code, and is also a scratch programming teacher for middle school and high school students

Vidisha Suman is a Partner with Kearney’s Digital Transformation practice in the Chicago office. She has
over 15 years of industry and consulting experience in the digital space, serving leading companies
navigate the complex journey to become digitally enabled and position themselves for growth through
digital, while safeguarding their business from cyber exposure. She has worked extensively across North
America, Europe, India, Japan, and Australia with leading high-tech, and asset-intensive firms.  Prior to
Kearney, Vidisha worked in the tech industry in India and US with International Business Machines (IBM)
and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). 
Vidisha is an active voice for Kearney in the market on digital and cyber security strategies. She is the co-
author and leader of Kearney’s globally renowned Global Services Location Index (GSLI), a ranking of 60
countries on their potential and fit to deliver business services to global companies, based on financial
attractiveness, people skills and availability, business environment and digital resonance.
She strongly believes that engaged women leaders are fundamental to our commercial success. With
the objective of mentoring women, she founded, and continues to lead, the Women@Digital advisory
board at Kearney with senior client executives operating in the digital and technology space. Her
accomplishments were recognized with the Future Leader award from Consulting Magazine in 2019. She
is also part of the Leadership program class of 2022 run by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Naz is a software engineering manager at Netflix leading the Animation Studio Operations team. She is passionate about UI Engineering, Career Development and growth skills.Prior to Netflix, she worked in the Finance industry as a Software Architect, Principal Engineer and Tech Lead.

Naz is dedicated to advancing and growing careers of many engineers across the world 🌎 . She is an active Career Coach on MentorCruise. She also volunteers with Hour of Code teaching high school girls how to code and serves as a member of MentorCruise and BuiltByGirls to coach engineers.

When she’s not working, you’re most likely to find her exploring the world 🌱, playing games, or curled up with a good book and a cup of coffee.

Professor Kostas' research interests lie in the intersection of dynamical systems, robotics, control and machine learning. Specifically, he seeks to develop new mathematical and computational tools for resilient (semi-)autonomous robot navigation under uncertain and stochastic effects that arise naturally during robot deployment in real-world settings. Some representative areas of his research include modeling and control of nonlinear uncertain and stochastic systems, uncertainty quantification and probabilistic model validation, as well as motion planning, navigation and control of underactuated small-scale legged and aerial robots under uncertainty.

Heather H. Wilson is the Chief Executive Officer of CLARA Analytics. Most recently she was

the Chief Data Scientist and Head of Artificial Intelligence of L Brands. Prior to, Heather

was the first-ever Chief Data Officer of AIG and was appointed to the US Treasury OFRAC

in Washington, DC given her leadership and experience in leading some of the largest

financial services organization data programs.

Before AIG, Heather was the first female Chief Data Officer at Citigroup and promoted to

the Global Head of Decision Science and the Head of Big Data analytics for the bank,

where she was responsible for the billion-dollar data program as part of regulatory sanctions to

architect and implement a risk and finance data architecture with associated data quality and

data risk indices. Heather was tasked with briefing the mayors of New York City, Chicago,

Boston and San Francisco quarterly with her team’s leading economic indicators and was

recognized as one of the Top Big Data Experts in the world.

Prior to Citi, she was the Global Head of Information Strategy at Kaiser Permanente

leading the next generation data platforms and advanced analytics and was promoted to

the Global Head of Innovation at Kaiser running the Advanced Technology organization

focused on next generation health solutions across analytics and digital with focuses on

telemedicine, streaming data medications, operating room of the future and robotics with MIT.

Heather is a Board of Director member of Equifax serving on the Audit Committee and

Technology Committee. She is a Trustee at Shenandoah University (the youngest trustee

ever appointed in 2003) serving on the Finance and Investment Committees and serves on the

Future Business Leaders of America Foundation Board that she started the age of 18.

Heather’s most recent five-year work at L Brands included advising the brand CEOs and

spearheading several first-of-a-kind artificial intelligence and data analytics initiatives. She

created and designed a new business model for the brands to scale their businesses and reach

new growth revenue goals with the introduction of a fashion marketplace.

As the CEO of CLARA Analytics in the Silicon Valley, Heather was named one of the 30

Most Inspiring Leaders of 2021, The Executive Headlines Magazine named Heather as the

Changemaker of the Year for 2021. She has led CLARA to be named one of the best

AIFinTech100 companies of 2021, one of the 13 best Predictive Analytics Startups in Santa

Clara by The Startup Pill and one of the 101 most Innovative California-based Predictive

Priya Sodha, M.S. & Certified Gallups Coach, is the founder & CEO of Innergem, a career strategy company with the mission to help women move up the career ladder through workshops & coaching.  Priya cares deeply about inspiring women to tap into their inner potential & spends her time developing content & speaking on the topic of identifying your professional brand. Her specialty lies in transformational workshops focused on guiding individuals to develop a deeper understanding of self promotion. Priya is also a certified facilitator and delivers high impact trainings to employees at companies such as PollEverywhere, Bank of America, Assemble HR & more. 

Prior to launching Innergem, she was the Executive Director for the Youth Business Alliance where she spent her time addressing the opportunity gap for youth by providing students in underserved communities the resources & tools to leverage their career. In addition to her work, you can find Priya teaching yoga & mindfulness to women in C-Suite to create balance & wellness in the workplace. Priya is a certified RYT Yoga Alliance teacher, mindfulness & meditation coach. Her motto is: It's not a work/life balance but rather, a life/work integration.

Bringing women into the meaningful, flexible, well-paid work of tech through education and inspiration. We are committed to furthering the presence of women in the tech field through the promotion of the techy mindset. You are techY!

Ling has spent her career driving several successful Start-Ups and credits her success to “building from diversity.” By understanding that a team is successful, with different personalities and different backgrounds, the focus is on the mission. Everyone can get distracted. It's been Ling’s job to guide the energy and focus on the mission. Ling has led as Chief Customer Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief of Staff, VP Business Development & Strategic Marketing, at companies like EdCast, Amdocs, Jive, Savvion and Nortel.

Ingrid Lestiyo brings more than a decade of product strategy experience to her role. She joined the
company in 2016 as VP of Product Monetization. Ingrid currently leads Unity’s Operate Solutions
business unit that delivers Game Services to help customers acquire, engage, and monetize their users as
well as scale their games. In this capacity, she oversees a global team consisting of product management,
engineering, data scientists, sales, marketing, and partnerships.
Prior to joining Unity, Ingrid was SVP of Corporate Strategy for the Rubicon Project, which she joined
through the acquisition Mobsmith, Inc., where she led the mobile ad-serving platform as its co-founder
and CEO. Prior to that, she worked at Yahoo! Inc., and Flickr. Ingrid started her career as an investment
banking analyst at Morgan Stanley in London and Singapore.
She holds a BA and MEng in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard
Business School.

Meshell Baker is the Owner of Meshell Baker Enterprises, founded to help female founders, women
business owners and women leaders empower their teams and employees to develop high-
performance resilience and unstoppable confidence. Meshell, along with her team, leverages her 25+
years of sales and leadership success in more than a dozen countries, to inspire energetic and
collaborative communication. Her clients acquire the knowledge, skills, and support to integrate
success principles and fundamentals resulting in markedly improving confidence and sustaining
profitable results.

Meshell Baker understands that many sellers struggle with fear of rejection, doubt, and imposter
syndrome. She is on a mission to establish confidence as a core tenet for success.
Meshell masterfully and artfully guides her clients to capitalize on their current conditions and
leverage obstacles as opportunities and reenvision their problems as possibilities. She is renowned
for her authentic value-based and no-nonsense approach to selling that inspires clients to confidently
convert more conversations into raving fan clients. Meshell has phenomenal results, accolades,
awards and has compiled an incredible track record of raving recommendations with clients over the
years.

Miriam Haart currently stars in the top 10 hit series, ‘My Unorthodox Life’ on Netflix. Miriam is attending Stanford University and is on track to graduate in 2022 with a degree in Computer Science. Miriam is the youngest teacher at Stanford University. She teaches a class in the Computer Science department on Virtual Reality development. She built several skills within the fields of virtual and augmented reality as well as quantum computing. Miriam has built numerous iOS compatible apps, some of which she’s won awards for. She is the co-founder of Eazitt, a consumer goods app in South Africa. She also served as a project manager at the tech company Yewno, where she created a platform that allows students to research, collaborate, and publish articles in peer-reviewed journals.