Sophie Ross is the Global CEO of Technology within FTI Consulting. She has more than 20 years of experience in company management, strategic leadership and operations in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Ms. Ross specializes in helping clients manage their data in the context of compliance and risk, and leads global Technology strategy and execution across Information Governance, Privacy & Security, Digital Forensics & Investigations, E-Discovery Consulting & Services, Managed Review, Corporate Legal Operations and Blockchain and Digital Assets practices. Her consulting expertise includes e-discovery and high-stakes document review through predictable pricing models, applying analytics and simplifying the complex layers of discovery management.
Join Sophie's session 'Altered State: Digital Risk Management In The Wake Of Business Disruption And Technology Acceleration'
Jameeka Green Aaron is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Customer Identity Cloud - Auth0, a product unit of Okta. She is responsible for the holistic security and compliance of Auth0’s platform, products, and corporate environment.
She is a recognized industry leader and brings 25 years of experience to the role, with a career that has spanned a wide variety of industries in both information technology and cyber security, including aerospace and defense, retail, and manufacturing, at both Fortune 100 and privately held companies—including Nike, Hurley, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. Navy.
Jameeka lives in Irvine, CA, with her husband Amilcar who serves as Diversity Equity and Inclusion Commission for the City of Irvine. She is committed to advancing women and people of color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. She has participated in the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program, the National Urban League Young Professionals and the National Society of Black Engineers. She is an advisor for U.C. Riverside Design Thinking Program, a board member of Digital Brands Group, a member of Chief and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Join Jameeka's session 'How Identity Is Driving Modern Businesses And Their Workforces'
Happy has undertaken a variety of technical roles through her 20+ year career, starting as a developer and growing into a seasoned executive leader. She's participated in companies in various tech sectors including financial, enterprise, and business to business. She's also built and managed teams in companies at various stage of growth including series A+ start-ups all the way through large public businesses. PayPal, ServiceNow, Fortinet, and Everbridge are but a few. Keys to Happy's success include a skillful ability to identify and apply technical talent and a strong customer-centric business acumen. Knowing what your customers want, and what motivates your teams, and being able to combine those is a rare and powerful talent.
Fun Fact: Happy was born in Shanghai. Despite being born in China, she received her English name, "Happy", because her parents wished her happiness throughout her life. Her Chinese name, "Haibei", followed her English name. Happy is a big foodie and loves to chase amazing restaurants around the world and to cook amazing meals of her own.
Join Happy's session 'Fireside Chat: Creating Valued Customer-Enabled Technical Teams'
Elaine Zhou is the Chief Technology Officer for Change.org, the world’s largest nonprofit-owned tech platform for social change with more than 450 million users worldwide. As Change.org's technical leader, Elaine leads a global engineering team of 70+ and growing to drive Change.org to the forefront of responsible AI, elevate the platform capability and scalability utilizing distributed cloud infrastructure, and engage repeat users through accessibility and a delightful experience.
Join Elaine's session 'Beyond Ethics: The Right Data Is Key To Business Profitability In The AI-Enabled Era'
Libo Cao Meyers is an engineering executive at Apple, a board member, and a veteran of Silicon Valley's innovative culture. She grew up in Northern China and was diagnosed with polio as an infant. Immigrating alone to the United States in 2000, she completed her M.S. and Ph.D. simultaneously in two different engineering fields from Ohio University by 2004. From there, she became an athlete by completing a 100-mile bike ride with the strength of one leg.
Libo loves to solve challenges and bring impact to this world. She cherishes her personal identity that stems from the deeply-rooted Cao family legacy dating back 3000 years. Libo lives in California with her husband and their two sons.
Fun Fact: I am currently pursuing a Black Belt in Karate alongside my two sons.
Join Libo's session 'Fireside Chat: The Power Of Perseverance: A Journey Through The Intersectionality Of Diversity And Women In Technology'
Helen Holder is the Chief Technologist for HP Personal Systems. In her time at HP, she has built a track record of delivering innovative products, features, and services based on high-impact technologies, including new computing architectures, IOT, printed electronics, and displays. She also leads HP's long-term research on the future of compute.
Before becoming Chief Technologist, Helen was a Distinguished Technologist in HP Labs, where she was a thought leader on ambient and distributed computing. Prior to that, her early career included groundbreaking work in sustainability, which led to her appointments to the National Academies of Science committee on the Evaluation of Safer Chemical Substitutions and the California Green Ribbon Science Panel, advising the state on green chemistry and alternatives assessment.
Helen received her Bachelor of Science from MIT and her Master of Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She has written many technical papers and holds 21 patents.
Fun Fact: I'm a professional singer and conductor.
Join Helen's session 'The Future Of Computing And Immersive Experiences'
Emily is the quintessential Silicon Valley native - born and raised here, her father spent his career actually building the robotic arms that made silicon wafers. She attended Duke University but the Valley beckoned her back for law school, and she’s stuck around ever since. She was tempted over to tech and after stints at Google and SurveyMonkey (which more than doubled in size during her tenure), she joined her current company, Signifyd, where she has led all things People and Culture since 2016.
She has been responsible for building and scaling a business-driven, proactive, human-centric HR and Talent Acquisition strategy across their entire global workforce as it has grown more than 5X in headcount and over 25X in ARR. Customer compassion has been a north star at Signifyd, and weaving it into all functions, even technical orgs, has been a critical element of their success, so she's incredibly excited to speak on this topic with such incredible, proven leaders.
Join Emily's session 'Fireside Chat: Creating Valued Customer-Enabled Technical Teams'
Alex Baren has spent his entire career helping companies achieve big things. Over the last 14 years, Alex has been the driving force spearheading global Transformation Processes by navigating acquisitions/integrations, organizational turnarounds, and business strategic shifts. Alex has recently been recognized for his achievements by being named MPA Magazine's 2021 "Rising Star." As part of the executive team at IPC, he is a foundational pillar exercising his keen knowledge of market needs, decoding operational barriers, and understanding the intricacies involved when implementing new organizational strategy focusing on customer centricity.
Alex graduated from The George Washington University, Cum Laude, with a bachelor's in business administration. He continues to advance his education with certificates from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Join Alex's session 'Embracing The New Age Of Organizations: Navigating Transformation And Empowering Employees For Success'
Throughout the past 18 years, Meeghan has continued to focus on unlocking the people potential in an organization; facilitating bigger outcomes by ensuring the company’s philosophy supports each individual's unique skillset, experience and perspective. As part of the Executive team at IPC, she continues to grow the business by adapting people centric technological advancements, applying her knowledge in Organizational Psychology, creating streamlined communication platforms, and implementing progressive policies to make sure people have a path to grow and excel.
Her mission is to grow a dynamic global culture by spotlighting similarities and differences in our space around the world. Meeghan leads with a transformational approach, looking at the landscape daily, incorporating best practices from the marketplace, partnering with senior leaders and sponsoring the idea of constant improvement with a "we row together" mentality. In her words, part of the CPO role is to not to focus on optimizing work outcomes but unlock the flow of work by connecting opportunities internally and getting the right people in the same room and a seat at the table.
Join Meeghan's session 'Embracing The New Age Of Organizations: Navigating Transformation And Empowering Employees For Success'
As Senior Vice President of Corporate Operations Strategy, Leah drives Oracle's business operations and M&A integration strategies. This includes a focus on the operational changes required across Oracle's people, processes, and systems to support customer success, partner success, employee success, and ultimately, Oracle's ongoing growth and operational excellence. In addition, Leah is responsible for strategic communications and Oracle's executive sponsorship program, which matches Oracle executives to strategic clients to ensure they maximize their investments and achieve superior value.
Since 2014, Leah and her team have managed the integrations of more than 20 acquired companies, valued at more than $15 billion, and they have led Oracle's transformation from a product-oriented company to a service-oriented company, with a multi-billion dollar cloud business that is growing rapidly.
Join Leah's session 'Fireside Chat: Creating Valued Customer-Enabled Technical Teams'
Eileen spearheads IVC's digital and technology innovation team, ensuring digital activations and experiences are executed to the highest standards. With 20+ years of expertise crafting break-through digital solutions for Fortune 1000 brands, she fuses strategy, creativity and technical insight to create proprietary technology (apps, custom CMS) installations, virtual experiences and digital campaigns for brands like DuPont, Siemens, Amway, Fresenius Kabi and Oracle.
With 20+ years experience, Eileen spearheads IVC's digital and technology innovation team, creating proprietary technology installations, virtual experiences and digital campaigns for brands like DuPont, Siemens, Amway, Fresenius Kabi and Oracle.
Join Eileen's session 'Embracing Our AI Workforce'
Maria is MuleSoft's VP of Engineering at Salesforce where she leads a distributed organization of 200+ engineers across North America and Argentina. MuleSoft is in the forefront of application integration and hyperautomation. As a technical leader, Maria focuses on enabling MuleSoft's customers to automate their software systems, regardless of whether they are on-prem, in the cloud, or legacy.
Prior to MuleSoft, Maria spent 5 years in Salesforce Analytics Cloud where she led an engineering team in the Data Platform area. The portfolio of products she was responsible for included a cloud ETL tool, external connectors, data prep tool with ML, and integration with Salesforce’s ecosystem.
Earlier in her career, Maria worked on various database products.
Fun Fact: Maria has a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance. She dreamt of playing the bassoon in the New York Philharmonic which was never realized. Today she uses her performance skills regularly in her role as an engineering leader.
Join Maria's session 'Embracing Automation - Key To Scaling Your Business'
A Global executive in leading strategy, planning and transformations, while driving product/program portfolio with operational excellence in high growth mode. Driving change in ambiguous and conflicting environments while leading global cross functional teams in highly matrixed and complex organizations.
Proven to deliver business results with strong business partnership and "customer first" mindset. Leadership in driving complex initiatives that require strategic change management, to develop the change vision for success, implementable roadmaps for the "big picture", and attain measurable business outcomes.
Fun Fact: I have visited more countries in the world than states from my home country!
Join Rani's session 'How To Lead Complex Change in Uncertain And Disruptive Times'
Kshama Swamy is Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Support, and Delivery at Punchh, a Par Technology company. Her leadership at Punchh is focused on collaborating with customers to facilitate their digital transformation journey, which includes loyalty, mobile, and web solutions. In addition, she is also the executive sponsor of the WIT Initiative at Punchh.
Kshama's experience in enterprise software spans more than two decades and includes leadership positions at Intapp, IBM, Cognos, and the Department of Defense. Her customer-centric approach has resulted in her being responsible for maximizing customer acquisition, retention, expansion, and profitability. She is proficient in Customer Success, Services Strategy & Operations, Customer Support, P&L Management, and has experience managing global teams at Mid to Late-Stage Growth and Pre-IPO companies.
Join Kshamy's session 'Revolutionizing Customer Experience: The Power Of Technology In Acquiring and Retaining Customers'
Nupur Srivastava has over 20 years of experience working for Microsoft, Google and Cigna and other companies in Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Retail. Her immense customer focus and her work experience in leading teams, sales, business and technology with resilience have guided her career journey. She is a Strategic Director - Client facing CTO leading one of the largest customers for Microsoft.
She Engages with Business and Technical leaders helping them digitally transform their business with the next generation innovation on emerging technologies and business model development. She has a deep technical expertise in Enterprise Technology, Cloud, SAAS, Data and AI and has been a chief architect for several large-scale platform implementations like AI & ML Platform and COE, Azure OpenAI Practice center, customer 360, ML and Data fabrics.
Nupur speaks in various conferences like MS Inspire, Digital Transformation Academy, Women in AI, Silicon Valley Technology Conferences, CIO conferences and Career transition discussions. Nupur is an Electrical and Computer Engineer and has an executive master’s in technology management from Columbia University. She also has recently completed her Venture Capital Executive Program from UC Berkeley HAAS school. She is a UC Berkeley Skydeck Accelerator Advisor and an Angel Investor on an upcoming AI Startup.
Join Nupur's session 'Transforming The Way We Work: Unlock The Power Of OpenAI, ChatGPT And Large Language Models'
Priya Devanand is an Engineering leader with extensive experience driving application security through Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) processes and delivering several billions of dollars worth of products with robust security and privacy capabilities. She spearheaded the development of cryptographic protocols, crypto key and certificate management, authentication, privacy-preserving techniques and identity management solutions. Priya has headed secure SDLC processes and application security initiatives to scale through automation, training and definition of well-defined secure development processes.
Join Priya's workshop 'Lightning Talk: Building Relevant And Effective Security Programs' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Kanika works at the leading cybersecurity posture management startup Balbix as a senior director of product. She is responsible for the holistic strategy and roadmap of the risk based vulnerability management solution at Balbix.
She started in engineering, then founded a startup in the consumer mobile marketplace space where she led product, customer acquisition and fundraising, and then returned to Security. Her passions intersect at Security and Design. Her career spans both consumer and enterprise product roles in both corporate and startup jobs - including Cisco and Yubico.
Kanika lives in Menlo Park, CA with her husband and two young children. She is very passionate about mentoring and coaching upcoming product leaders solving large scale problems for the world. She also invests in enterprise startups and through her alma mater's alumni fund Oxford Angel Fund.
A Fun Fact: I love angel investing! My investment thesis revolves around niche markets poised for explosive growth.
Susan M. Lockwood is the Director of Technology for Mindera in the United States. She has more than 20 years of experience in the design and implementation of software and architecture solutions for Fortune 500 companies, government, and small businesses. Susan is an award winning software engineer and a published technical author who is passionate about mentoring the next generation of technologists.
Fun Fact: Susan is a classical guitarist and an award winning composer.
Join Susan's workshop 'The Future Is Coming, And You've Been There Before' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Milou Meier is the Director of Compliance at Merit International, a verified identification platform. She oversees the organization’s compliance and privacy programs, which includes implementation of security controls and testing against industry standards. She is passionate about building compliance programs that go beyond checking the box and focus on building a culture of compliance within an organization.
She is a licensed attorney who provides legal and compliance advisory services in data privacy, information technology, cybersecurity, enterprise risk management, international corruption, and general corporate compliance and ethics matters for companies in the U.S., E.U., U.K., and AUS. She has lead SSAE 18 SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 9001, CSA STAR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST, NIST, CMMC, GDPR, Cyber Essentials, UK GCloud, and AUS IRAP audit assessments for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS companies. She has overseen data protection office responsibilities, managed security incident response and data breach recovery, as well as commercial contract negotiations.
Milou lives in Austin, TX with her husband, dog, and two cats, including a bengal who frequently contributes loudly to her meetings. Most recently he caused her to miss an afternoon of meetings while exploring the crawl space between the floorboards and ceiling during a home renovation.
Join Milou's session 'Modern Privacy Requires Proactive and Repeatable Action'
Kristen Harris is the Technology Transformation Practice Director at Propeller, a leading management consulting firm that helps Fortune 500 companies thrive in a fast-changing world with impact-driven solutions. Kristen is a business transformation expert focused on people, product, execution, and delivery, specializing in agile solutions and successful digital transformations. She is a people-first leader who thrives in the adventure of discovering customer pain points and solving complex problems.
Kristen has over 20 years of experience leading large-scale technology transformation programs at some of the country's most sophisticated tech companies. Prior to Propeller, she served as the Director of Web Data Engineering at Sun Microsystems and as Director of Application Development at Oracle. Most recently, Harris was Vice President of Service Delivery at Zia Consulting, where she drove resources, scalability, and strategy on enterprise digital transformation and process re-architecture consulting engagements.
Join Kristen's session 'Enabling Business Momentum Through Technology Delivery'
As a Global Client Director, Christine Soussa consistently delivers exceptional value through a customer-for-life approach focused on cultivating long term relationships. With over 25+ years' experience in sales, strategy, alliance and business development, and leadership, she uses her passion for working alongside people and enthusiasm for technology to deliver significant impact to her customers, community, teams, and organizations.
As a leader at Equinix, the world's leading digital infrastructure company, she helps enterprises define and execute their digital, business, and cloud strategies. Her standards for excellence paired with her curious entrepreneurial nature and "unlimited mindset" results in meaningful business outcomes. She enjoys deconstructing and unraveling complexity to discover a valuable path forward, especially in our ever-evolving world.
Join Christine's workshop 'The Art Of Negotiation' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Cia is the Director of Engineering and Operations for T-Mobile building one of the fastest 5G networks in the world. Cia has been in the wireless industry for over 17 years working with several telecommunications and engineering companies, including Metro PCS, AT&T, Black & Veatch and T-Mobile.
She holds a B.A in Sociology, Master's in Political Science and Doctorate of Jurisprudence, as well as a certificate from Yale in Fostering Diversity and Inclusion. She uses both her legal and political interest in siting advocacy to bridge the gaps between municipalities, private and public sectors for wireless facilities in order to achieve one of the most expedient build-outs of a telecommunication network in California.
Her past personal, professional experience and education allows her to see the world through many lenses giving space for complex viewpoints from social, political and legal perspectives. She is a passionate champion of change for diversity and inclusion and one of the driving forces behind T-Mobile's Women in Technology's diversity and inclusion community.
For fun, Cia hosts a podcast called, The Cogent Code, which offers perspective on a variety of topics in a humorous and educational way.
Join Cia's workshop 'Developing Executive Presence In A Technical Space' (Exlusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Bavyaa Vasudevan is Head of Engineering at Point overseeing all of engineering within the company. Prior to joining Point, Bavyaa was Sr Director, Engineering at Salesforce, where she was overseeing product engineering across multiple product pillars within Field Service Lightning. Bavyaa has held leadership and engineering roles, building out scalable user interfaces at Symphony Communications, Cisco, VMWare and several other startups. She is passionate about building high performing organizations and creating a culture that helps people bring out their authentic self!
Bavyaa is an active mentor at several platforms including SheTO and Plato. She has also been a panelist in multiple workshops and conferences - focused on engineering leadership and elevating women in tech.
Outside of work, Bavyaa spends time with her young daughters Laya and Meera along with their 9 year old golden retriever. She loves travel and music.
Fun Fact: I am a trained Indian classical music singer and I have never slept a day without listening to some music!! I appreciate all genres.
Join Bavyaa's workshop 'Ask-Me-Anything: (Almost) Everything You Need To Know About Making It As A Woman Engineer In 2023'(Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Anya Gupta leads product strategy and development for a neurology clinical trials-focused solution at Roche Information Solutions. She is experienced in the commercialization of diagnostics, biomarker and health data products: from needs discovery and competitive intelligence, through differentiation, development, launch, and market leadership. Anya cares deeply about building motivated teams, having managed both commercial and engineering-focused groups throughout her career. She has a MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a BA in economics from the University of Virginia.
Join Anya's workshop 'Redefining Success: Pioneering New Frontiers with Resilience, Innovation, and Empowerment' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Pranjali Kokare is a Lead Backend Engineer at Omneky, bringing with her a wealth of experience from her previous roles at Meta, Google, and Adobe Research. She earned her Bachelor's in Computer Science from IIT Patna and her Master's in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, where she was awarded multiple scholarships for her academic achievements.
Throughout her career, Pranjali has been recognized for her contributions to the tech industry, including receiving the Adobe Research Women in Technology and Google Travel Grant awards.
In addition to her impressive academic and professional achievements, Pranjali holds a patent, has published multiple research papers in Computer Vision and Machine Learning, and is passionate about making a positive impact in the world through technology.
Fun Fact: Pranjali Kokare is a published author, with her book 'Journey of IIT-JEE' launched on International Women's Day in 2015. She also has a YouTube channel, where she talks about the preparation strategies for a Master's in the US.
Join Pranjali's workshop 'Lightning Talk: Protecting Your Career Growth Amid Growing Layoffs' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Michel Narganes is a partner in Manatt's San Francisco office. She has guided venture-backed startups and other, established clients—including various technology companies, media and gaming ventures, financial institutions, health care companies and others—through licensing, technology and commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), financing matters, and developer and publisher agreements for more than 15 years.
Michel also works with disruptors in the growing cryptocurrency space with respect to blockchain-based technologies and transactions in the Web3 ecosystem. She was an early mover in this area, representing the platform that facilitated the highly publicized sale of an American digital artist’s nonfungible token (NFT) artwork in the first digital auction held by one of the largest global auction houses. She is sought after for her business-minded counsel on the convergence of cryptocurrency with other emerging industries, including the rise of tokenization in gaming and transactions in the nascent metaverse.
Before joining Manatt, Michel served as in-house counsel at a large technology company, where she played a key role in the growth of global strategic partnerships, M&A and corporate compliance operations. Michel is also an entrepreneur, having founded her own legal services firm, providing her firsthand experience tackling the gamut of challenges emerging companies face throughout their life cycles.
Join Michel's roundtable 'Building The Company Of The Future' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Rene Shimada Siegel is partner at Armanino, an innovative and entrepreneurial Top 20 consulting firm. After spending a decade entrenched in Silicon Valley tech firms of all sizes, Rene founded the marketing and communications consultancy Connext to support understaffed tech industry leaders. In 2021, Connext merged with Armanino, bringing a portfolio of clients and thousands of marketing consultants nationwide.
Rene's superpowers include connecting clients, colleagues and communities—and empowering others to live fulfilling lives. She currently serves on the Armanino Foundation Volunteer Vacation committee. She is also on the Dean's Advisory Board for the Lucas College of Business at her alma mater, San Jose State University, where she was also a Public Relations adjunct professor for seven years. Rene is also a member of ASCEND, the largest Pan-Asian non-profit for professionals and lifetime member of the International Association of Business Communicators.
Fun Fact: Rene is obsessed with the Broadway musical Hamilton and has seen it 18 times, including twice with the original cast.
Maryanna Saenko is an early-stage venture capitalist and cofounder of Future Ventures. She invests in frontier technologies that make the world a better place, and don't prey on human frailty. Recent investments have been across a wide swath of sectors, including nuclear fusion, sustainable agricultural and land management, bee immunology, women's reproductive longevity, and the application of AI to everything from the construction industry to medical therapeutics.
Previously she was at Khosla Ventures, and prior to that DFJ. She was also an investment partner at Airbus Ventures where she led a series of venture investments strategically aligned with Airbus' future-of-aerospace initiatives. Before Airbus, Maryanna was a consultant at Lux Research and a research engineer at Cabot Corporation. She's worked on lunar rovers, martian landers, driverless cars, and long-range low-frequency communication systems.
Maryanna graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in BioMedical Engineering and a BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering.
Join Maryanna's roundtable 'Building The Company Of The Future' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Sasha is a C-Suite Executive, who has led marketing communications strategies, influencing pop-culture trends combining fashion, sustainability and technology for over a decade. A curator and futurist, she has connected physical, digital, and virtual experiences at global brands, agencies and start-ups, in-house at H&M, Nike, SOREL, Superplastic, and agency side, at HAVAS. Her Web3 journey began in 2015, when founding Blockchain Style Lab, to using blockchain data to inform design and transparency and build community in the wearable fashion space.
This has evolved to launching NFT, gaming and metaverse solutions for heritage brands who are entering the Web 2.5 space. Sasha has been invited to speak globally at CES, New York, London, Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks, Economist Impact, SXSW, Sundance Film Festival, Web Summit, House of Beautiful Business and translating Web3 on podcasts and media interviews.
Fun Fact: In addition to her work in Web3, Sasha is an avid health and wellness advocate, who spends her free time outdoors, hiking, kayaking and exploring new natural ecosystems.
Join Sasha's roundtable 'Strategically Implementing The Metaverse' (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.
Shanelle has spent 17 years working across several industries with companies at various stages. From building the People function infrastructure from scratch to helping scale companies for high growth, her passion for people and innovation has shown through in every aspect of her roles and allowed her to help organizations build long-term value. She is currently the Chief People Officer of PresenceLearning, an EdTech Saas company with a workforce that is 75% women and 50% women at the executive level.
Fun Fact: Shanelle is a 22 year Golden State Warriors season ticket holder and shot a social media commercial with Klay Thompson.
Vidya is a Staff Software Engineer at Intuit building safety into applications by automating the integration of security tools at different stages of software development lifecycle. She develops solutions for the security data platform by streamlining vulnerability data collection from various different tools that not only assess the security health of applications and drives remediation workflows but also enable methods for risk reduction.
Vidya has 13+ years of tech experience including software development, automation testing and data engineering. Prior to joining the Cybersecurity team at Intuit, she worked at a couple of mid stage startups. When she's not working, she enjoys hiking, road trips and finding out ways to build a peaceful relationship between her two cats and a dog.
Join Vidya's workshop 'Building Security Within The Software Development Cycle' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Eva Medilek is a Certified High-Performance Coach, International Speaker, and #1 Best-Selling Author. She works with men and women in the areas of high-performance, personal development, leadership, creating inclusive environments, and mastering habits for success.
Eva specializes in helping busy entrepreneurs create successful businesses while working their day jobs. She shows you how to generate the energy needed to reverse the burnout and overwhelm you experience from trying to do it all.
She uses her personal experiences along with her leadership, relationship and high-performance training to teach you how to have it all without sacrificing your health and relationships.
Fun Fact: I was featured on House Hunters International in 2015 after purchasing an apartment in Berlin, Germany.
Join Eva's session 'High-Performance Leadership; Advance Your Career Without Sacrificing Your Personal Life'
Sydney teaches leadership and management at UC Berkeley and is an advisory board member of the Berkeley Innovation Squad at Haas. She has 20 years of experience in corporate marketing working in technology for large corporations and startups. She owns and operates Ocean SF a stainable sailing apparel brand she founded in 2016.
Fun Fact: Sydney and her daughters Siena and Paris all share place names.
Miriam has been a Coach & Facilitator for over twenty years. She started her practice focusing on female executives & entrepreneurs. She has closely studied the overlap between business and psychology to support her clients in finding simple ways to be authentic and effective simultaneously.
Miriam specializes in coaching individuals and teams focused on high growth. She has coached founders/executives at a dozen $1b+ companies. She has often supported companies from Series B all the way through going public. Her clients include Slack, Flatiron Health, Tropic, LinkedIn, Hims & Hers, Glassdoor, Glossier, Notion and 100s of start-ups across industries and regions.
Miriam's credentials include an MA in Organizational & Management Development, a BA in Business & Psychology. She is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching and a member of Forbes Coaches Council. Her work exists in the sweet spot blending left-brain research and right-brain creativity.
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' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
Susannah Baldwin, Ph.D. is a seasoned executive and communication coach who combines her experience as a clinical psychologist with corporate expertise to help clients lead diverse teams in demanding environments. She has a track record of 15 years working in top technology and biotech companies. She is the author of Women, Language and Power: Giving Voice to Our Ambition, a new book adapting her popular workshop for women leaders into lessons for all career stages.
Fun Fact: Hosted a weekly radio show - "Parent Talk" - interviewing authors for 7 years.
Join Susannah's workshop 'Defining and Presenting Your Message For Senior Leaders' (Exclusive to Premium Ticket Holders Only)
As an engineering leader with over 20 years experience at top companies including Apple and Stripe, Tara has experienced the challenges of developing products in high pressure environments. Her experience includes leading the software performance team for the first Apple Watch, running the mobile team at Stripe, and setting direction as the VP of Engineering at LTSE. She is a Co-active trained coach, combining well established coaching methods with her own insights.
Elyse Kaye is a former marketing executive turned 4X founder turned business coach. She is currently the CEO of Bloom Bras – a line of patented activewear designed to lift vs squish for curvy women. When the pandemic hit, she pivoted and co-founded SF Pro-Tex mobilizing US-based factories manufacturing PPE for government entities and corporations.
She also cofounded Cobalt - an online marketplace connecting North American manufacturers to SMBs to bring their products to life raising over $4.1 million with a waitlist of close to 10,000. Elyse has spent her career leading innovation and marketing teams launching dozens of brands and hundreds of product lines. Recent successes include the turnaround of the Four Paws® Brand for Central Garden & Pet, the launch from ground up of the House of Marley Brand from HoMedics and the expansion of licensed brands for Black & Decker through her product development consultancy, AHA Product Solutions.
Elyse holds several dozen patents. Elyse was a contributing author in The Product Manager’s Handbook and gives talks around the globe regarding building a brand, bringing innovation to life and female mentorship. She turned her energy towards coaching after feeling severe burnout.
Fun Fact: My first paid job was to be a clown's assistant at birthday parties when I was 6. It paved the way for the rest of my career.
As a Co-Active Training Institute certified coach, Annette Blum Pearson brings her lived experiences, intuition, industry expertise, and coaching tools to the work she does with individuals, teams, organizations, and communities. She partners with everyone from entrepreneurs to seasoned corporate leaders as they focus on values driven career development, burnout reduction and personal fulfillment.
Annette has worked in product management, sales enablement, solution and brand marketing for over 10 years in both big tech and startups. She's driven large-scale marketing & community initiatives with creative passion and a growth mindset, allowing her to cultivate thriving teams and organizational success.
Her passion for community led her to also create Shalon, an organization built to drive vital conversations that connect and educate participants. As part of her 1:1 and Beyond Burnout team focused coaching practice, these Shalon style conversations allow individuals and groups to uplevel and inspire their gatherings.
Fun Fact: One year after having my son, I summited Mount Kilimanjaro with a group of 10 incredible women (not without the support of the absolute best guides in the world!)
Christopher Nelson is an 20 year technology executive who went through 2x IPOs (SPLK, GTLB), and he is also the Co-Founder of Wealthward Capital a Private Equity Firm with $400 Million of Assets Under Management (AUM).
Today Christopher is the host of Tech Careers and Money Talk - where tech employees get real world career and money advice and the Author of "From No Dough to IPO, a proven playbook for how to trade your time and talent for tech equity".
Christopher's passion and mission is educate over a thousand tech employees on how to grow their careers, build wealth, and live well.
He is always willing to have uncomfortable conversations; especially regarding money.
Fun Fact: He and his wife, Regine, are raising their boys tri-lingual to prepare them to be global citizens.
Join Christopher's session 'Unlocking The Code To Successfully Trading Your Time And Talent For Tech Equity'
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