Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Catherine Tabor, CEO and Founder of  Sparkfly, a cloud-based offer management solutions company maximizing customer acquisition by connecting real-time behavior with online and in-store sales. Catherine’s father was a physics professor, and she visited his university classes as a child. “I was mesmerized as he used math to solve real problems. I am a believer in technology solving problems, not just ‘tech for the sake of tech’.”  That was demonstrated when, as a Georgia State University undergraduate, Catherine was recruited by The Coca-Cola Company to manage their employee discount program.  “I grew it to manage 1 million employees, nationally, with companies like Delta Airlines, Suntrust Bank. It was a bulletin board, where companies would list offers.”  Employees would visit, use coupon codes, and make purchases.  But the system did not allow for customers to redeem personalized offers at physical locations nor enable merchants to get accurate data.  The resulting challenge was “how could we layer technology on top of antiquated POS systems, and make them do innovative things.”   Catherine began by convincing POS providers “that there was a gap.”  Her first integration success was with Radiant Systems, in Atlanta, (eventually acquired by the venerable NCR). Radiant “embraced my concept; agreed to integrate my platform; and then got acquired by NCR. By the nature of ‘being included in the fold’, it enabled build out, and networking.” After competing with larger, better-funded companies, “in 2017, we signed a contract with Chipotle.” Adoption of the SparkFly platform became the basis of Chipotle’s core digitalization transformation.  The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted SparkFly, as it has many businesses. Fortunately, SparkFly’s platform pushes greater levels of digital participation/presence leading to stabilization. Catherine instituted a weekly “all-hands” phone call so that her team continuously feels close. “I tell them all the time: I cannot promise you good news, but I promise that I will always tell you the truth.” Key leadership nuggets from Catherine Tabor include: “The driving force for me is having passion around the objective.” In the face of setbacks, it is Catherine’s core belief in what she is achieving that keeps her going. “Know your own value.” “There’s no reason not to take a chance. You just have to go for it.” Catherine looks at any potential failure and asks, “what is the worst that can happen?” Facing that answer realistically allows her to shed fear. “If you truly believe in what you’re doing, you never give up. I believe that ‘grit’ is the most important character trait leading to success.”  In juxtaposition, “I have had to learn to realize quickly when I’ve gone down the wrong path.” This has guided Catherine’s decisions about system nuances, doing business with the “right” customers, acquiring appropriate investors and advisors, and hiring/retaining employees. “Surround yourself with people who support what you want to do, and what you want to be.”

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Star2Star Communications, a global VoIP telecommunications vendor. Headquartered in Sarasota, Florida,  Star2Star offers proprietary, hybrid unified voice and data communications solutions, in “the cloud.” A well-known aphorism is: “Life is what happens, after we make other plans.” Michelle’s original aspiration was to be a Broadway star.  Discovering that Manhattan was an exorbitant place to live, she took her first job in sales and “wound up, really liking it!”  In karmic fashion, the CFO of a small technology company was at the front desk when a young Michelle cold-called with her resume. Infresco Corporation, (a joint venture with CA Technologies/Computer Associates), was “willing to take a risk” on her. “When I got there, I was so intrigued.” The company was creating “interesting technology” to convert “green screen” mainframe applications and databases and “make them look like really beautiful Websites.”  Very soon, “I was doing things I had never done, before,” like creating Access databases.  Her boss counseled her to reconsider becoming an attorney. “You have a natural aptitude for technology and people.” She took his advice and “never looked back.”  Within one year, CA Technologies merged Infresco into the larger corporation. Michelle began her upward CA trajectory. “They were starting a reference program at CA and needed someone who knew all the (Infresco) customers. I was recommended.” CA offered Michelle a $25,000 bonus to make the customers referenceable.  She misunderstood CA’s timeline for this, and beat it by a dramatic 11 months, enabling 200 customers to become referenceable in slightly more than a month vs. the year CA had forecasted. Within 6 months, she was managing a customer reference team in North America and, in a year, managing that globally. This was followed by stints in field marketing, product marketing, and sales enablement. All catapulted her into successively more important roles.  Along the way, Michelle gained valuable insights.  In field marketing, she noted how much was learned by “getting close to the customer.” In sales enablement she implemented “fun projects to motivate people.” She eventually became Vice President for digital transformation, “the biggest ‘leap’ because this was  when digital marketing was starting, and I was asked to take on a technology team, lead web design, architecture, and IT team. I learned a lot about ‘agile’ as a methodology.”   “Technology is always going to change,” said Michelle. Her mantra is “drop in with both feet.” Moving to Star2Star is a full circle story.  The company was co-founded by Norm Worthington, who was the co-founder of Infresco.   “It was Kismet,” she said. She started as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Actually, I was marketing employee #2.  My job was to build a team and strategy. We built every piece of content, and the Website; and recruited a great team.” She became Chief Operating Officer, mandated to drive operational systems’ excellence, and then President and Chief Revenue Officer.  “It has been really challenging to learn different aspects of running a technology company, driving it to the next level.”  She describes the broad offerings of Star2Star. “We offer so much: collaboration, contact center, text messaging, workflow integration of communications into every business process you can think of, mobile applications, text-based alerting, desktop communications as a service, and more.”  Michelle noted “we also have the only desktop solutions certified to work in a Citrix environment. We help you with your entire network.” Star2Star offers an optimized SD-WAN service to ensure call quality, essential when people are working from home. “We have proprietary technology that allows us to do things that our competitors can’t.” Industry analysts have noticed.  Gartner, has recognized Star2Star for six years as a Magic Quadrant leader in unified communications. Michelle, herself, has been named a channel leader for the last six years by CRN.   The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated Star2Star growth. In response to the crisis, Michelle is justifiably proud of the company’s stellar customer-focused philosophy.  All company employees moved into a work-from-home environment, using Star2Star’s own technology.  “Then we went to our base of customers.” Star2Star helped each customer deploy effective remote working scenarios and created innovative payment programs to support customers. “Communication is the lifeblood of any business. We didn’t want to be the bill that put any of our smaller companies over the edge.” Star2Star has also used this period to diversify even further. “We moved into digital transformation projects for customers in the restaurant and retail spaces, who needed curbside pickup applications.” Star2Star provided those. “Doctors’ offices needed testing.” Star2Star provided that.  Many customers needed enhanced employee alerting systems.  Star2Star provided them. For a nonprofit customer, and other health facilities, Star2Star provided text alert services. Michelle acknowledges that being a woman has only minimally affected her career. She and her husband juggle a large family of 6 children. Her husband serves as the “stay-at-home” parent, and “I see a lot of ‘reverse sexism’,” which is a challenge,” she says.  But she exults that “women are built to adapt” and feels capable of taking on many increasing responsibilities. If Michelle has a regret it is that “I should have gone into entrepreneurship” at her career advent. “I think balance is a fallacy,” opines Michelle. “Do things that you love, with people you like. And just have perseverance. Nothing is going to be perfect, anywhere.” Michelle’s essential advice is succinct. “Feel the fear and do it, anyway.” Seize opportunities; make the most of them. “You really have nothing to lose.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed cybersecurity expert, author, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and entrepreneur, Sandra Estok.  Creator of the international book series, Happily Ever Cyber, Sandra founded her own company:  Way2Protect LLC, after an extensive corporate career.   Originally from  Venezuela,  at age 11, Sandra and family were evicted from her childhood home. They found refuge in a shack.  “It had one window, one door, and no water or  bathroom inside,” she recalled.  She felt ostracized from other children in the neighborhood, who lived in more conventional conditions.  When she tried to join their neighborhood volleyball game, “one of the kids said ‘you’re never going to make it; you’re a loser.’“  Bruised, emotionally and physically, Sandra was grateful for a teacher’s inspiration: “Happiness is a choice.  No matter what, you can choose happiness.” She went on to master volleyball and life by choosing to become highly proficient at whatever she tackled, knowing that “whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve.” “Technology was, somehow, in my veins,” said Sandra.  When she graduated from high school at 16, with no money for college, she enrolled in a government secretarial training program that led to an internship at the Heinz Company.  There she rotated through departments including information technology.  She enrolled in night school, in a tech certification program, that led to full completion of college, and graduating as a systems’ engineer.  “Throughout my journey, I moved from company to company” (Kraft Foods, the Coca Cola Company,  PepsiCo and SC Johnson), “in tech-related roles, building all kinds of things.” SC Johnson, where she worked for a total of 19 years, transferred her to Wisconsin.  “It was my dream,” to live in the United States.   Sandra’s success secrets? “I was able to apply what I was learning at school to my jobs” and built a “connected” fabric between her academic and work lives. She also accepted new challenges readily.  Her hard work, focus, appetite for new technology created exciting opportunities along the way. Sandra advises ambitious tech women to anticipate the newest trends and evaluate them in terms of skills you must acquire. Then acquire those skills and “success will find you.”   Her final role, before leaving SC Johnson, was reporting to it’s Chief Information Security Officer, as Director, Global Information Security Business Operations.  Sandra developed and coordinated overall worldwide security business functions for SC Johnson on every continent. Her leadership advice is: “Always walk the talk. Don’t try to evangelize with words. Do it with your actions.”   In her transition to the U.S. with her working visa, Sandra underwent a watershed experience. Returning from Colombia, she was detained. Her passport was temporarily revoked.  A smuggler from China had appropriated personal information and had been smuggling women into the USA using her identity! Two weeks later, returning from a European trip, she was detained again.  Each time she traveled internationally, before she became a full-fledged U.S. citizen, Sandra had to prove her identity incessantly. “That negative experience ‘connected the dots’ and is driving me today.  Identity theft and cybercrime can happen to anyone!” Sandra’s gift for making complex tech concepts comprehensible to non-technical people, coupled with passion to make a much greater impact, outside of a single corporation, led her to become a startup founder.  “Leaving the corporate world is a big decision,” Sandra acknowledged. “But I say…just go for it!”  Like her 11-year old self, longing to play volleyball with kids who were rejecting her, she relied on internal fortitude, focus, faith, and fearlessness to make the leap. To transition, Sandra became a consultant in the first year of founding her company, which helped her evolve to the “entrepreneurship mindset” while maintaining cash flow.  An outgrowth of consulting is Sandra’s first book: HAPPILY EVER CYBER: Protecting Yourself Against Hackers, Scammers and CyberMonsters.   Through the stories she tells, it is clear cybercrime can affect anyone, at any age or walk of life. But if you understand cybersecurity basics, on a non-tech level, you will be galvanized to take action to protect what matters most to you. Her book encapsulates a very timely, scary subject and transforms it to be both non-threatening and empowering. “It helps you pinpoint what is most important to you, that you most want to protect. You can take measures to protect it.” An extension of the book is a foundation she envisions to help orphaned and foster children.  “There are 153 million orphans in the world.  And we have a global shortage of cybersecurity talent. So many kids can find their way through technology.”  Sandra exhorts listeners to always remember you are the architect of your own life. And you can build anything. She advises you to find a mentor, in the space in which you want to operate. Then cultivate coaches who can guide you to become better in any area you want to tackle.  Above all, marry the clarity in your mind with the feelings in your heart. “Don’t worry about the 'how.' Just get clear on the ‘why’ and act on it.”  Her final advice? “Practice gratitude in everything you do in your life.”  Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Amelia Ransom, Senior Director, Diversity and Engagement at Avalara, a tech company that ensures global tax compliance is done right.  Amelia is dedicated to “trying to solve a problem that the world has not solved.  It is not for the faint of heart.”  “I didn’t plan to be in diversity and inclusion,” Amelia said. She started in sales, moved to management and eventually was tapped to be the regional Diversity Director. “That role was pivotal for me. I felt like I was using my skills, knowledge and background to help make the company better.” After seven years in that role she moved into store management and later lead all the diversity initiatives for the company.   Amelia emphasized that it takes the full gamut of business proficiencies to tackle employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. Her diversity and inclusion skills have been self-taught, through reading, face-to-face management challenges, and trial and error. “You have to learn when to use your own voice, and when to pull back and amplify everyone else’s.” The role demands that she be “constantly willing to learn, shift and change as the community needs shift and change.” Amelia believes a key component of successful programs depend on noticing repetitive patterns coupled with “knowing what’s going on outside of the walls, in the world,” according to Amelia. “You have to be part of society.  You have to be asking constant questions.” To gain top-level support, Amelia critiques her own proposals and then goes to her “naysayers” to shoot holes in an idea. By the time she gets to ultimate decision-makers, she has bullet-proofed any concept.  Amelia joined Avalara in 2018, where she supports ERG’s (Employee Resource Groups) who she sees as “a conduit to deeper engagement, a tool to drive more community,”  beginning with a prototype woman-oriented global ERG, to “show everyone what could be.” . This was quickly followed by three other groups:  Ujima (for African Americans), Veterans of Avalara, and the Prism Group, geared toward LGBTQIA individuals. “They have been very instrumental in driving more inclusion, more voices, and more ‘safe space’ for those voices,” said Amelia.   Avalara measures the success of its inclusion programs through raw data, anecdotal feedback, the level of engagement of various populations, as well as metrics around recruiting pools and populations.  Amelia’s goal is that diversity and inclusion are “deep and rooted in the DNA” of Avalara, connected to “Avalara’s goal -- to be involved in every tax transaction in the world.” That implies reaching and engaging every possible permutation of population in the world, too.  Amelia’s personal practices for developing as a leader include 30 minutes each day to read about something she knows nothing about, and retaining mentors “who will tell me the absolute truth.” For her last birthday, she asked people to give her the link to a book that changed their life, so that she could “drive deeper relationships.” She loves to travel and bring those experiences back to others.  In her community life, she serves on the boards of Seattle’s Goodwill Foundation, Seattle’s Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, homeless advocacy nonprofit Building Changes,  the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and the advisory board of the Seattle chapter of ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals For America). “My job is to amplify the voices of the marginalized, and underrepresented.” In Amelia’s view, “the biggest threat to the planet, and business, is the untapped potential in people’s minds.”  She believes in plumbing that potential deeply. “I don’t have time to make people comfortable,” Amelia said. Instead she wants to inspire everyone to think, engage, evolve into their greatest potential, and “have seats at the table, which makes all of us better.”  Amelia noted that diversity and inclusion leadership can feel lonely, at times. When Amelia feels that, this quote of Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, famed poet Maya Angelou,  gives her strength: “I go forth alone.  I stand as ten thousand.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Dr. Nicki Washington,  author, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Winthrop University, founder at Washington Consulting LLC and passionate advocate for women of color, in technology. Winthrop University featured her work. “I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina,” site of world-class universities and home to Research Triangle Park. Her mother was a 32-year IBM programmer, and father was a K through 12 educator and administrator. “I was surrounded by black men and women who were educators, engineers, college professors, business leaders, attorneys, doctors and more: a network doing inspiring things in science and math.” Her mother purchased a new computer every few years and Dr. Washington assembled each one.  Her mother “introduced me to programming opportunities,” Pascal and Basic, then more advanced languages.  At Johnson C. Smith University, Dr. Washington’s path changed when an influential professor convinced her to concentrate on computer science. Dr. Dorothy Cawser Yancy, University President, nominated her for the David and Lucille Packard fellowship, a $100,000 5-year grant for students to pursue STEM doctorates, including annual week-long symposiums, with professional workshops and “honest safe spaces” for sharing.  Dr. Washington graduated as undergraduate valedictorian and won the award. “My trajectory changed from there.”  Dr. Washington became “a black woman in a program where only one other person looked like me” pursuing masters/doctoral degrees at North Carolina State University.  “I suffered from ‘impostor syndrome;’ and would lean on my community,” since her campus was 20 minutes from her childhood home. She often had to “armor up” every day and was fortunate to gain an empathetic advisor, Dr. Harry Perros, with whom she had “real talks” about struggles as a black woman in a post-graduate computer science program.  She won another fellowship in her graduate school: NASA’s Harriet G. Jenkins award, giving monetary support and other unique experiences tailored to graduates from historically black colleges/universities. Dr. Washington shared advice for programmers, technologists, application developers.  “When you reach a roadblock, take a break and step away. Sometimes you are so engrossed, you cannot see high levels.” She decried students’ misconceptions that they must “know everything” and advised “be unafraid to ask for help.”  When faced with bias, she said: “It is not you. You are not the first. You will not be the last. Take up space without losing yourself in the process. Maintain a level of self-care.” Dr. Washington’s message is “until there is a major shift in the narrative, we are going to see major challenges. Find the tribe who can get you through.”   Dr. Washington is now doing appreciable research in cultural competence in computing citing insufficiencies on the university level.  Approximately 85% of university computing faculty are Caucasian or Asian, not serving as full role models.  “We lose students in the middle ground, between K through 12 and careers.” She noted that while undergraduate curriculum emphasizes technology skills, it does not emphasize cultural competence. “We see, every day, technology announcements that are biased,” as a result. She cited self-driving car and healthcare database applications as two examples where “people developing them are not recognizing biases.” Dr. Washington proposes a long-overdue revolution: required assessment for cultural competence in computing. “I am trying to force a conversation around cultural competence for all computer science students before graduation,” beginning with a required 3-credit course called Race, Gender, Class and Computing.  Her aspiration is a country-wide movement on computing cultural competency, using the right role models, “people who live, eat and breathe this for a living.” During nine years at Howard University, Dr. Washington partnered with Google to bring a middle school course to 300 Howard University’s Middle School students; then co-championed an Exploring Computer Science program to bring computer science to Washington DC public high schools.  She helped establish the first Google In Residence program at Howard which “expanded to other historically black universities including Fisk, Morehouse College, Spellman and Hampton.”  Since relocating to Winthrop, Dr. Washington is working with Code.org to develop the nationwide framework for K through  12 computer science curriculum “as a blueprint in every state, so every student has access to computer science at every step.” She served as lead writer on South Carolina state’s K through 12 computer science and digital literacy standards and through Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., leads college prep workshops for students and parents.  Dr. Washington’s book: UNAPOLOGETICALLY DOPE,  “speaks to every black woman and girl who needs to know there was someone just like them who went through the same things.” She speaks to computer science departments across the country on her research.  Dr. Washington’s key advice for women tech leaders, especially women of color, is: “Be unafraid to ‘take up space’ and own your narrative. Be intentional with everything you do. Recognize it’s always bigger than you. It’s not just happening to you. Make sure your intention is the best possible.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Sunitha Vinnakota,  tech/IT security leader for General Motors Company, a trailblazer in automotive solutions for almost a century.  Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, global GM employs over 180,000 people; serves customers on 6 continents across 23 time zones in 70 languages; and focuses on pushing the limits of automotive engineering, while maintaining stewardship of the world’s environmental resources. Currently #10 on the Fortune 500 list, GM is the largest U.S. automotive manufacturer, and is led by Mary Barra, the first female CEO of a major automotive company.  Sunitha brought 25-plus years of evolving technology skills, intellectual curiosity coupled with drive, and broad business acumen.   Sunitha was always interested in technology, encouraged by her mechanical engineer father who urged her to “look at the science all around you.” One of two siblings, growing up near Hyderabad, India, she was fascinated by the logic underlying every invention, tool, process, in her life. All her close male relatives were engineers.  Sunitha said, “from childhood, I wanted to do something different from everyone else.” That fascination led her to concentrate on math, physics and computer science. She completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science and master’s degree in computer applications at Osmania University.  During university days, Sunitha instructed high school students in math and physics.  She moved to teaching Unix at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science; and was offered a professorship at Osmania.  However, Sunitha turned down university life in favor of working on the development of SAT and ACT tests, for 11th/12th graders, at Indotronix International. Following her 2000 marriage, Sunitha migrated to Michigan.  During that first year, she worked part-time, teaching Java and C# programming, on the weekends.  After receiving her H1B visa, she became a Java consultant and developer at Chrysler Corporation, now FCA Group Intl.  She then moved to GM as a consultant and systems analyst, deployed by TAC Automotive Group.  After the birth of her first daughter, Sunitha took a leave of absence.  Then she chose Ford Motor Company, the fifth largest automotive company in the world, where she was a systems analyst and then a business analyst over the next six years. In 2013, Sunitha moved back to General Motors full-time, as a senior business analyst in vehicle ordering and management systems. She mastered that before moving over to learn ecommerce, in-depth. “It was completely new. We were developing an e-commerce application.” After that achievement, she became a “quality evangelist” maintaining the integrity of IT applications in global sales and marketing working with 1100 people across the globe.  Then, in 2018, she began to work on cybersecurity for GM, worldwide. She now leads security compliance for 230-plus applications, globally. One of Sunitha’s mantras is that everyone must “stay abreast of the latest technologies today” since data is rapidly exploding. Her job encompasses the breadth of GM technology from the “C suite to application owners to the grassroots” and focuses on ensuring that “GM customers know their information is safe with us.”  Sunitha characterized her major strengths as intellectual curiosity, ambition, learning agility, and passion.  “Whatever I do, I dive in deep,” she said.  She wants her stakeholders to say: “I have given this job to Sunitha.  It gets done. I can sleep!” Sunitha was honored by a 2019 IT All Stars Women of Color Award for her work in improving GM application quality by 49% in less than 8 months, achieving 95% in standard compliance in record time. Sunitha’s method of tackling subtle sexism in work situations has always been to “double down.” She increased her skill sets and made a case for traveling, performing at levels above and beyond what is required. Her greatest fear is “not staying abreast of technology. I want to be indispensable.” Sunitha’s words of wisdom for women leaders in technology are: “Don’t be hesitant to explore and learn.  It’s ok to fear, and fail, but don’t let it stop you. Don’t be afraid to ask someone” for help or guidance and “don’t be in your comfort zone for long.” Sunitha has benefited from family mentors: her mother, her father and her mother-in-law, who she admires for having overcome many significant obstacles. Since she loves to teach, Sunitha often works with college “mentees” who she urges to explore every opportunity.  She also is a big believer in developing strong self-respect, and in pragmatically rewarding yourself for achievements. “Don’t just buy a tech gadget;” ensure that you fully understand the gadget’s use/application and then “feel proud” of yourself.   In her community life, Sunitha kicked off the internship program for the Michigan Council of Women In Technology Foundation, and is on the technology advisory board for Canton Michigan high schools.  Additionally, on weekends, she teaches business analysis skills online for women. Through that,  “I have changed 16 women’s lives, so far,” she stated, because “life is too short; let’s take advantage of it. Don’t give the remote control” away.  Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Linda Rose, merger and acquisitions advisor at RoseBiz Inc., and author of GET ACQUIRED FOR MILLIONS ---  offering wisdom and a practical roadmap to business owners interested in divestiture.  Linda has owned four companies and has served hundreds of others.  In 7th grade, Linda knew she wanted to become a CPA, after visiting with family friends in that field, who had an idyllic lifestyle. Fortunately, her PSAT’s pinpointed strong math proficiency. She graduated with a bachelors and a master’s in accountancy from San Diego State University and spent four years at Arthur Andersen “working on very esoteric tax applications and issues.”  Since her future husband was in the running for a partnership, and there were strict firm policies on fraternization, “I left and went to work for a customer of the firm.”  Then, many life circumstances converged simultaneously. Linda got pregnant; laid off; and became a Southern California homeowner, an expensive proposition. “I found myself implementing an accounting package for a company that needed assistance. That’s what got me into tech!”  Once in the technology field, “I never looked back. I didn’t aspire to have my own business, but I did like what I was doing.” She recruited others as independent contractors, and after several years incorporated. “I really liked the work, and the flexibility it gave me as a mom. And I hired a lot of other moms.”  Then, Linda got “the growth bug,” and began hiring other experts. Her clients spurred her to diversify into staffing, and data center hosting. “For ten years, I had three companies at three separate locations. That forced me to hire very capable people, to delegate, to not have the businesses centered around me.” Linda’s epiphany was “I loved the flexibility and the control that having my own company afforded me.”  Beginning in her 40’s, Linda took five years to self-reflect, analyze markets/trends, make hard decisions, and architect a plan. She sold her staffing company;  then the others, including her final 2017 divestiture of RoseASP, a Microsoft channel partner and MS dynamics hosting company, “which I sold for millions.” “I was at a crossroads.”  Inspired by the self-discovery odyssey in WILD, Linda trekked 40 miles around Mount Hood and then took a 6-week 500 mile hike of the Pacific Crest trail. She concluded “I had this knowledge of selling three companies and buying another company. And I wanted to put that knowledge into the book.” Linda took 18 months to write her book, aimed toward an underserved niche:  smaller companies, in technology channels, “written from the owner’s viewpoint. It’s a book that prepares you for the process” of selling your business.  Linda shared some wisdom for women in leadership roles.  Her advice included: Take control of your finances early.  “Find a mentor or mentors you can depend on, who really care about you.”   Build your “home team.”  This is whomever you can rely on to help with all aspects of life:  nannies, transporters, personal chefs, errand-doers and more.   Create your personal brand. Linda’s own “brand” is centered on “always about being fair, ethical, and servicing my customer --- doing what’s right for the customer and doing what’s right for the employee.  It’s important to decide what you stand for.” One of her recent insights is that “each of us has our own ‘glass ceiling’ “and most of the time, it is lower in our minds than it should be, when viewed objectively. “So, it is important we break through our own limiting beliefs first” before tackling big challenges. During her 500-mile trek, Linda said: “I raised my own personal glass ceiling.” She faced bears, rocky trails, boulders, and other frightening challenges. She overcame them, and found a renewed, exhilarating empowerment, and new paths, including her specialty of consulting on mergers and acquisitions. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Jeanine Heck, Vice President, AI at Comcast, the world’s second largest broadcasting and cable television company; the U.S. largest pay television, cable TV and home internet service provider; and third largest home telephone supplier in the U.S.  As a child, Jeanine sometimes felt like “the lone soldier” as a female “mathlete,” consistently drawn to numbers, and science. “I loved things that had to do with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Engineering popped up” as she chose a college major. “I loved programming.”  As an undergraduate, she felt fortunate to graduate with her BSE from the University of Pennsylvania, which also housed  Wharton. “I got a really good, well-rounded perspective on both tech and business.” Post-graduation Jeanine spent six years at Gemini Systems (now EssexTec), serving the New York Stock Exchange, first as a programmer.  Then “my main responsibilities, over time, shifted. I raised my hand pretty often to become one of the people who decided what we were building: a business analyst role.” One watershed project was a Java-based visual tool/system that helped monitor and regulate the behavior of individual NYSE traders. “I liked all the technical challenges.  But I didn’t have a passion for the financial markets,” Jeanine admitted. With a “career switcher mindset,” Jeanine entered Columbia University to get her MBA, and “discovered that I missed technology.”  She landed two internships, first at Google in advertising sales and then at NBC, where she worked on an online Web video player. “In both jobs, I was not on the software team, but craving to be.”  The good news was “I found an industry that I loved: the digital media industry.” Jeanine honed in on getting a role at Comcast. “It was more of a humble culture, which stood out in the media industry” and a great opportunity for her to return to Philadelphia.  Her first role was as a product manager for TV Planner, “the first time we brought together all content in one place.” With 1.5 million unique users, “when you have that kind of scale, you see amazing trends, patterns and data insights.”  Jeanine became impassioned about data discovery and “I have built a career, on that, since then. “ One of the key products that Jeanine managed is Comcast’s Voice Remote,  “the most loved” of Comcast products “synonymous with our brand.” Shifting into team leadership, directing 70 employees, has been “a little bit bittersweet for me,” Jeanine admitted.  But she has enjoyed mentoring team members, sharing her experience, leading and learning from “the brilliant people” on her teams. Jeanine’s immediate Comcast goals include “developing products that people become attached to” like the successful Voice Remote. She is on a quest to find “the next big product that will take us to the next level of love from our customers.” She has tasked her team to discover “brilliant products” to bring to market. The biggest impact that Jeanine sees in AI developments has been in productivity, and quality. “It (AI) helps you do things more efficiently.” Jeanine’s success-oriented qualities are optimism, collaborative inclination and urgency married to agility: “One of my philosophies is ‘no day but today.’  If we have an idea, I am constantly thinking about how we get that out to customers, sooner.” Jeanine has spent introspection on the essential role of women in business. Personally, she has inculcated wisdom from Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and concentrated on being taken seriously as an executive. She has also stayed open to feedback in her evolution, going so far as to assess her vocal presence and presentation skills to achieve “gravitas” as a leader. Jeanine has also become a devotee of Brene Brown. “I think she has the right idea.  She talks about being a wholehearted person: being comfortable, taking risks and being vulnerable.” To achieve family balance, she works on putting down her phone, and assiduously listening to her 4 kids. In her community life, Jeanine works with two different high schools to encourage young people to consider technology as part of their life paths: her alma mater, St. Hubert’s in Philadelphia and  Lower Merion High School.  “The fulfilling part for me is that you show them:  you can do this, too, and it opens their minds to the possibilities.”  Jeanine’s pragmatic advice to women aspiring to lead is three-fold.   Have a plan. “Ensure that you are ‘in the driver’s seat.’ Think about what you would like and a path to get there.” Don’t be shy about stating what you want/need. “Speak up for the things you want, and someone will help you find it.”  Cultivate personal resilience. “There’s always a way out of a negative situation. “ Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Liz Armbruester, SVP, Global Compliance, at Avalara, which helps businesses get tax compliance right. Avalara partners with ERP providers, accounting, e-commerce and financial systems companies, to deliver cloud-based tax compliance solutions, for all transactions. Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Avalara was founded in 2004; went public in 2018; and has offices across the world  From her early years, Liz was a multitasker. “I thrive on doing more than one thing at a time.” Her early aptitudes were in science, and math.  From Villanova University, she transferred to the  University of Arizona. Originally planning to be a doctor, Liz graduated with a major in molecular/cellular biology. It was during this formative college period that she learned “how impactful my instinct was and to listen and trust it.”  This was a life-long lesson Liz applied many times, even with her own son, who made a similar decision in 2019 to transfer universities in pursuit of his dreams. Liz decided against medical school but “easily got jobs in the medical field.” Working with physicians,  she “kept finding my way to the front office. Application software was coming to the fore.” Liz grasped an “opportunity to do something different.” She migrated to semiconductor provider, Zilog where she spent  eight years. Then Liz moved to Vubiquity, a content distribution tech company, owned by tech media giant Amdocs.  Vubiquity connects content owners to video providers, so that entertainment can be delivered to consumers on any screen.  At both Zilog and Vubiquity, Liz wore multiple hats; worked on innovative projects; and often operated in between highly technical development teams and customers “as a translator” of requirements. Liz left Vubiquity, six years later, as Vice President of Operations, and Procurement, because she found herself “not showing up for dinner...which was not ok.”  Moving from Vubiquity to Avalara, Liz made it clear that balance was key. Yet she committed to “operate, and scale like hell” to empower Avalara’s aggressive evolution.  Liz accepted the challenge, to again “be the translator” between the vision, the partners who build/deliver solutions, and “an infinite number of customers.” Avalara teams, “are just brilliant and bring together all of the pieces; and cohesively work together” as the company’s client base has expanded. “Our finish line changes all the time,” Liz explained, because taxing authorities’ rules are ever-changing.  Liz believes that transition to collaborative teamwork leadership is particularly hard for talented STEM experts.  Often, she noted “one day, I am a ‘fixer’ and the next day, I have to be a ‘facilitator,’ and that transformation can be kind of tough. You can’t do it, all.  You have to let go; let others.” Key to that is teaching, mentoring and inspiring colleagues and teammates. Avalara is also highly committed to a positive “intentional culture” including diversity in its ranks.  Liz praised Amelia Ransom, the company’s Senior Director of Engagement and Diversity, “who has really raised the bar for us.” Working on  D/I initiatives has been eye-opening and allowed Liz to empower diversity transition, including all of Avalara leadership “locking arms. It isn’t a project; it doesn’t have a beginning and an end and has shifted our perspective. I have seen hiring practices change,” said Liz.  “I have seen the transparency with which we talk about bias radically change.” Liz would encourage anyone, at any career stage, to continuously “take a step back and look at the bigger picture” as it relates to “what you do, what you like to do, and what you're passionate about” in a disciplined fashion. “What are the things about what you do that make you successful?” Knowing your intrinsic aptitudes and how they apply to any challenge, is vital to personal progress.  “Don’t just think about the tactical things you are doing. Take a step back and think about your skills, your unique characteristics.” Then apply them to your future goals. “It opens up and reframes your possibilities!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Liz Siver, former Microsoft executive for the U.S. Central Region, now General Manager for NeoPollard Interactive, a breakthrough company, leading  transformation of state lottery systems online.  Liz credited her “network: the people I knew and encountered” for introducing her to technology. She attended the  University of Dayton, graduating with a degree in English. “I kept it simple. It was hard to identify all opportunities, so I took a generic path.”  Liz worked her way through college. Among other assignments, she worked for Girl Scouts of Western Ohio; government of Montgomery County in Ohio; Berry Yellow Pages; and the university in a fund-raising role.  Post-graduation, Liz entered fund development, at Hospice of Michigan, largest state provider of care to those facing end-of-life challenges. “Whether it was grant-writing, special event planning or working with donors, it was an array of interesting experiences.”   After 5 years, “my network came to me,” alerting her to an opportunity as an event manager for the launch of The Somerset Collection in Southeast Michigan.  She worked for Forbes Properties managing that massive development and hired The Disney Company to implement the mall launch.  Through more networking Liz moved to her next challenge, as a marketing manager at Deloitte, a global professional services organization, providing audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services to companies, worldwide. “I spent the majority of my time on the audit side of the house, driving business development,” she said. After 3 years at Deloitte, “my network came to me again,” Liz said.  A PR firm worked with both Deloitte and Microsoft and connected Liz to one of the largest technology companies, of the 21st century. Two decades ago, “Microsoft had 23,000 employees, and now the company has 170,000 employees,” marveled Liz. “I went from learning technology to embracing and selling what the potential of technology could be. Fun times!”   Liz’s Microsoft tenure spanned 18 years, and 11 different roles. “The theme was learning, developing; and always be networking, keeping your eye out on the next potential opportunity to learn and grow.” She spent a lot of time on the road and jumped at any chance to lead teams or projects with diverse teams, as many as 100 people.  She also spearheaded the development of the Central Region’s Microsoft Women’s Leadership organization.  Liz “had the privilege” of spending time with (then-CEO) Steve Ballmer, “who always had a passion” for Detroit, and Southeast Michigan. “He was a visionary.  That vision became really broad.”  Liz loved and learned from tenure at Microsoft.  But, when she considered transitioning, “we had sold all states on ‘the cloud’. At my age, and career point, I thought ‘I have more to give. ‘What I wanted to do was to learn something new. And if I had the privilege of trying to transform an industry, wouldn’t that be exciting?!”  In a year of self-discovery, Liz said “the opportunity presented itself to run a joint venture.” She assumed the management of NeoPollard Interactive, with a parent company in Tel Aviv and Michigan-based HQ in Lansing.  NeoPollard is 50% owned by Israel-based NeoGames and a Winnipeg, Canada company in the lottery industry for decades.  “They have gaming legacy and deep relationships, globally, in the lottery industry.”  The company, “born online” and currently employing 82, works with state lotteries to move into the cloud; and “then provides services to be successful.”  In current mobile device-dominant environments, NeoPollard is trying to “help state lotteries build an additional opportunity for people to play the lottery” outside of traditional “cash and carry retail environments.” What inspires Liz is “the money from state lotteries goes to all the great causes” funded within each individual state.  In addition to doing good, “the fun part is transformation” ---- the opportunity to marry technology passion with belief in what technology can do for humanity. While NeoPollard has dominant market share, they are only currently in four of 50 U.S. states. “I am excited about being on the front end of the industry.” Over her career, Liz has developed leadership philosophies.  One is “be authentic. You can’t be anything better than yourself.”   Also “my responsibility as a leader is figuring out how I make others great.” In defining personal strengths, Liz says that “defining a business opportunity and its challenges, and then understanding how to address those challenges with the right people, partnerships and solutions” is one of her personal attributes.  She strives to “be present” at all times. Throughout her career, Liz feels fortunate that “networking with other women exposed me to interesting people, interesting thoughts; and I like to ‘lean in’ to help people get support.”   For Liz, “it is not about work/life balance, it is about work/life blend.”  The mother of twin daughters, Liz wants her daughters to be open-minded and “able to think through an opportunity, weigh the risk and reward of things, and realize the importance of just getting out there, and making an impact.”  One of Liz’s favorite axioms is “attitude is altitude.”  According to her, “how you show up every day, in your personal life, or your professional life is incredibly important to the people you touch.” For Liz, the best approach to every situation is “a super-positive attitude and open-mindedness.”  This is particularly important in driving innovation because “many people are not where you are.” She also is clear that it is “important to say: I don’t know everything.” She fears the day that she would ever become risk averse. “I would say to my ‘younger self’, take more risks!  Open doors can present closed doors which then present other open doors. You need to have some grit.” Knowing all this, Liz places emphasis on “the ability to recruit other people” to “the cause” who have appropriate skills, appetite for innovation, drive and agility. Liz also places strong value on empathy, in colleagues and her children, and spends time supporting the development of that in both. “We’re too harsh, today, in passing judgement.  At the end of the day, we’re all just people, and should be supporting each other.” Liz was raised in a tradition of “giving back.” She is Vice President of her teenage girls’ high school sports organization; sits on different committees in her church parish; and is co-chairing South Oakland Shelter’s efforts to house the homeless, through her church.  “Your words and your actions mean everything,” said Liz. “Always give back.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Sireesha Mandava, CIO and VP of Innovation at Greenpath Financial Wellness, a nationwide nonprofit with a mission to empower people to lead financially healthy lives, and realize their unique dreams, at all stages of life.  With  a family legacy of social justice, Sireesha was born near Hyderabad, India. “My grandfather was a great activist, who gave up everything he had for the village he grew up in,” she explained.  He passed away in his 40’s, and exhorted Sireesha’s grandmother to empower their children. “I don’t care if you even feed them but make sure the girls are educated,” he declared.  Sireesha felt inspired by her aunts, so she matriculated at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, in Pilani, India.  She graduated with an electrical and electonics engineering degree; but took all electives in programming; and performed her senior year internship at a company where she became proficient in Oracle databases. Sireesha’s first post-university job was supposed to be in electronics engineering at a New Delhi, India company but they needed her Oracle experience. Several years later she moved to TGK, another Indian company, whose innovations included a new variation of SAP software called “i-SAP” an ERP system.  I learned so much there,” and also met her husband at TGK.  Confiding in the company’s managing director that she was going to leave, he referred her to Metamor Global Solutions, with a position in Detroit, Michigan.  Her soon-to-be husband simultaneously moved to Detroit and “a year later we got married.”   Sireesha took a job in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for Triad Guaranty Insurance for less than a year but came back to Michigan for a position at NSF International.  With a mission to improve global human health, non-profit NSF develops public health standards and certification programs to protect global water and food supplies, consumer products, and environment.  Starting as a Project Manager, Sireesha developed her NSF career over 18 years. While there, Sireesha enrolled at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where she obtained her MBA, which “gave me a 10-year acceleration” in career evolution. Promoted to Business Applications Manager, and Director of Business Applications, her team “built this wonderful application” which they pitched as a global spin-off, that morphed into an NSF subsidiary (NSF TraQtion). This gave Sireesha “the ride of my life, doing everything as an entrepreneur.”    Having fun running that new NSF division,  Sireesha was approached by Kristen Holt, CEO at Greenpath, to take a “culture walk” at the nonprofit’s headquarters in Southeast Michigan.  “The culture of ‘human centered design’ thinking, putting people in the center” is part of Greenpath’s organizational evolution. The staff showed clients “a path to get out of crisis and achieve their dreams.” Greenpath offers financial education, counseling and aid to people in dire circumstances, and serves 200,000 households annually, with free counseling “I want to make the most impact.” So Sireesha was hooked on Greenpath’s BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to “remix the American dream so that it works for everyone, because everybody deserves a chance to attain dreams.” As a financial organization, “everything runs on technology” and Sireesha’s team of 28 IT professionals ensures internal technology always works.  Her vision includes “technology as a differentiating factor” in everything that Greenpath accomplishes. This includes a significant investment in mobile applications for clients so “they can engage in self-service, see their progress, and be encouraged.” One of her other technology investments is current tech solutions, to enable the services team to operate at highest efficiency.  The personal traits that have marked her success include courage, flexibility and intellectual agility.  Sireesha’s Greenpath colleagues have pointed out she possesses a rare “multidimensional thinking capability, applied to problem-solving” complemented by a propensity for strategy and results-orientation.  She also counsels young people to make career and education choices through SAT and ACT coaching for high schoolers. Sireesha’s greatest fear is that she will “accept mediocrity.” So, she picks a handful of meaningful activities (work, church, mentoring/coaching) and focuses on those. In the greater global community, Sireesha strives to make an important impact by supporting another non-profit founded by her husband and herself in 2005.  It is Sphoorthi (which means “inspiration” in Sanskrit). Completely funded by them, this nonprofit is focused on providing food, clothing and education for underprivileged youngsters in Vizag, India. “It is my husband’s dream, but his dream is actually bigger,” Sireesha said. “We have helped 125 kids, thus far. Our goal is to have an orphanage, and a senior citizens home, together. We want to bring them together so seniors’ experience will help the kids.  The kids, in turn, will rejuvenate the seniors.” Their plans include the orphanage, a holistic health center, a school, and a senior center, centralized together in a single positive community, powered by sustainable energy. Sireesha’s counsel to striving women and girls includes some practical advice. “The way you portray yourself is exactly how others will see you; network, network, network.”  And “always make it a point to make a difference for someone other than yourself.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Teri Takai,  former CIO for the U.S. Department of Defense; former CIO for both the state of California and state of Michigan; and automotive industry technology executive.   Today, Teri is the Executive Director for The Center for Digital Government, a division of eRepublic. Teri’s parents grew up on the U.S. West Coast where “in World War II, Japanese-Americans were interned in (concentration) camps.” Her mother and father were fortunate. The University of Michigan entered the camps to help. “If you could get security clearance, you could (with $25 and one suitcase) take a train to Ann Arbor and get a job.” Wistfully, Teri said: “My dad wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. but didn’t feel that as a Japanese American, he could, so he decided to go into civil engineering.” However, the concentration camp, and move, disrupted his plan.  Instead, he became a draftsman in the automotive industry, working for small automotive suppliers.  “I wasn’t interested in technology, at first, but I was good at math. It was the problem-solving,” Teri said. Valedictorian of her high school, she matriculated at the University of Michigan as a math major.  A friend of her mother suggested she pursue computer programming. Teri devised an individualized curriculum of statistics, industrial engineering and more. Graduating with strong Fortran skills, she joined a  small division of Ford Motor Company, focused on tractors, and developed a fascination for “the way technology impacted the business.” This inspired her to go back to school for a Ford-financed MBA. Teri worked in engineering, manufacturing and traveled internationally, staying for a decade, and enjoying promotions, many of which involved people management.  Teri feels fortunate that, prior to “diversity” being acknowledged as integral to progressive workplaces, she had a Ford boss who supported her taking a formal leave of absence to move to Germany, along with her husband, who was transferred as an engineer --- before Ford had a formal policy for working spouses.  The leadership lesson Teri frequently shares is “what we need to do is follow our belief systems. Do what is right.” At the end of 10 years in the tractor division, Teri got the opportunity to move to the mainstream side of Ford, as part of a consulting team working to build Ford Latin America. This opened her eyes to how people, from different cultures, might view her, as a colleague/leader. Teri did that job for 5 years, and then moved to a Ford thinktank directed to meeting the competitive threat of GM’s innovative Saturn division.  “I am pretty good at getting things done.  I am not necessarily your leader for ‘big picture’ strategies. I am focused on how you organize, bring people together and deliver a product.”  As part of Ford’s software development, Teri worked on complex internal ERP and administration systems, a large supply chain initiative (CMMS), and then moved to the assembly division, managing plant floor systems. Then Ford gave her an overseas assignment, in the United Kingdom, where she led the development of a global purchasing system, which involved the expansion of a European-based purchasing system all over the world. Then Teri came back to the U.S. to Ford Credit, for a large system launch. Then she moved back into leading CMMS.  Teri completed her 30 year career at Ford involved in the acquisition of Land Rover, and Volvo, and then in strategic planning. “My time at Ford was about delivery.” Teri took a two-year position at EDS, because “I felt the wave of the future was not going to be big, internal IT organizations.” She learned the technology services business and had the chance to work directly with GM.  Soon she was approached to join Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Michigan cabinet. She became CIO and Director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology.  “The governor said to me, now is the time for giving back, for public service,” Teri said.  “I am forever grateful to her for that.” Teri inherited a single precedent-setting government organization that centralized all information technology staff for the state.  She and Governor Granholm were “great colleagues; I understood her strategic planning initiative, and what she wanted to do.” Teri came to a deep understanding about the collaborative nature of government, and how to effect lasting change.  She stayed for 5 years, then was approached by the State of California, which had been without a CIO for over 5 years. “Governor Schwarzenegger, at the time, had gotten advice, from tech companies, that California needed a CIO,” she said.  She became that CIO, and created the Office of the CIO from scratch, fully operational, in a 3-year timeframe, simultaneously with the state’s budget crisis. While the learning curve was challenging, Teri grew through it, and “a number of women reached out to me, there; influential women in Sacramento.”   Toward the end of three years in California, “a friend of mine had become President Obama’s Chief Information Officer. He called and asked me to interview for Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense.”  Despite a lack of federal government experience, she was offered the job. “It was the hardest, most stressful, job I ever had. You have a role that is accountable to all men and women in uniform.  Everything thing DoD did, for security and protection, was based on technology.” She worked for four different Cabinet Secretaries for Defense in her 3-year tenure interacting with other members of the cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (“amazing leaders”).   Having left the Federal Government, Teri is now leading the Center for Digital Government, a division of eRepublic. “The overall role is to link technology companies with state and local government.”  Teri personally guides key programs. “We do surveys, so cities, states and counties can compare themselves to each other, and get rankings/grades.  We share best practices and celebrate!” Teri also provides advisory services for technology companies, in government and works with cybersecurity start-ups, to bring tech to the market.   Teri strongly believes her unique background, and skills, emanate from both success and failures. “Sprinkled through the good stuff was a lot of learning, mistakes, and setbacks. I learned, later in life than I should have, the importance of collaboration. It takes time to understand how important all the different viewpoints are.” Teri defines ultimate happiness as “having a mission in life and giving back.” Her advice to other evolving women leaders is: “Be patient with yourself, as you are going through your career.”  Teri is proud that colleagues have called her “a survivor” because she learned from every obstacle. “Believe in yourself. Stay the course. Keep moving ahead.” And finally, “follow your intuition; do what feels right.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Noramay Cadena, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at MiLA (Make in LA) Capital, an early stage venture fund, in Los Angeles.   Launched in 2015, it is a “high touch” VC, founded on two major beliefs: hardware technology can be brought to market more frugally; and LA is an ideal place to do it.     Born in Colima, Mexico, Noramay emigrated to California’s San Fernando Valley. “My parents worked in factories,” she said. “I didn’t quite know where I wanted to be, or what I could be” until “I was tapped on the shoulder by a returning high school alumnus.”  He inspired Noramay to matriculate to MIT to earn her BS in Mechanical Engineering. Later, as she worked at The Boeing Company, she obtained her MIT MS in Systems Engineering, and MBA in Business. “It not only changed my life but changed the course for my parents and my siblings.”    “When I got to college, I met lots of other women, like me, who had been tapped on the shoulder,” Noramay shared.  Further inspired, she co-created The Latinas in STEM Foundation. “It is still active, inspiring and empowering young (Latina) women,” supplying programs, scholarships, bilingual content and role models for them, their parents and communities.  At the end of her Boeing tenure, Noramay “realized there were forces that I couldn’t control, and I was not going to grow any further” there.  Fortunately,“the experience of Latinas in STEM, scaling, and building community,” instigated co-founding MiLA which finds “smart people around the world; invests in them; and builds community around them to make them successful.” Since it launched, MiLA has invested in 19 companies; sponsored five accelerator cohorts; and is raising its second capital investment fund.  Looking forward, MiLA is exploring its ability to help supply chains networks become more efficient. The fund is very “hands-on” working daily with prospective founders to overcome challenges. Noramay is proud that over 33% of MiLA’s companies have female CEOs and is focused on high opportunity verticals including mobility, health, food tech, and “manufacturing 4.0.” A key value of MiLA is to help with “de-risking the solution and building a capital-efficient corporation to enable the team to attract investment.”  Noramay has high expectations. “I want our fund to be seen as the primary source of deal flow for Series A investors,” over the next 3 years. “I have been on the receiving end of incredible mentorship.”  When Noramay was offered her MIT scholarship, a woman at Boeing read about it, and extended an internship at the company.  “She became my mentor throughout my full 10-year tenure at Boeing.” Another mentor of hers (“a geek”) advised her to examine her career inflection point “as a system” noting  when “the inputs no longer affect the outputs.”   Noramay ‘s personal strength emanates from circles, friends, and family. As the new mother of  two-year old “I really rely on groups like ‘Moms In Tech’ for support, and my ‘WhatsApp’ chat strings with my girlfriends.”   Noramay’s first daughter is a rising senior in college, and her mother said “it’s about resilience, character and grit. I see it in her. She has an incredible compassion and sense of service for others.” Noramay’s key advice for other women is: “Clear your closets.” Divest “the baggage” that does not contribute to positive momentum (“the experiences of parents, or past relationships”).  “It’s important that we power through and clear what we are carrying so that we’re not unconsciously perpetuating” unproductive behavior. “Recognize there might be something in your past that makes you more vulnerable” to being manipulated; face it and get rid of it. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed the dynamic Michelle Greene, Vice President of Information Technology at Masco Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of home improvement and construction products. An $8.5 billion conglomerate, comprising more than 20 companies, Masco operates nearly 60 manufacturing facilities in the United States and over 20 in other parts of the world.  Michelle was raised in Valdosta, Georgia. “My mother believed that, due to my close relationship with my aunt, I might be a school teacher.”  But “what I recognized quickly was my ability to lead” so she obtained her business bachelor’s degree at Valdosta State University, and a masters’ degree in higher education and information sciences from Florida State University. She entered the workforce as a business analyst at Mellon Bank, in Pittsburgh, Pa.   After two years, she migrated to Raleigh, North Carolina for another analyst position at Sony Ericsson a global leader in mobile communications.  Michelle progressed from business analyst to project manager, and then a Sony Ericsson global program manager position. “I went to Sweden on a short-term assignment,” Michelle said.  That assignment doubled in duration, helping Michelle recognize “my own ability to make it work, wherever I am. If the opportunity and the job is good, I will figure the rest out!” She shepherded the formerly outsourced data center back inside the corporation. Then Michelle moved to a service management job back in the states, then the global management of Sony’s network services, and to her final Sony Ericsson job, Director of Business Infrastructure worldwide. In that role, Michelle directed an annual budget of $70 million; managed all global infrastructure resources on three continents; and led global outsourcing, partners and suppliers for information technology. “My reputation preceded me. I was someone who could get things done. I was a bit of a ‘turnaround’ person.”   Within a year of her return to the states, “The CIO for Sony-Ericsson (Colin Boyd) who previously moved to Johnson Controls” was instrumental in recruiting her to that larger company. Michelle stayed with Johnson Controls for nine years, first working in their Buildings Division in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; then heading up the Automotive Electronics and Interiors  Division in Holland, Michigan. Then she moved back to headquarters as Vice President of Business Partnership, for the entire enterprise. Michelle credited her mentors for inspiring and empowering her. “I have had some very good coaches, along the way.”  When Masco reached out to recruit her, “I had people I could go to” who provided advice. Following mentors’ advice, in 2018, Michelle joined Masco, in her current role.   “I’ve made it my practice, when I take over a new team, to do one-on-ones with every member, so I can understand.  I can meet you, where you are.” She emphasized that her mission is to offer “authentic and strong leadership” in her current role, and all future roles. “I feel like we don’t have enough leaders in IT.  I have the ability to effect change because of my leadership style.” Michelle noted that her personal strengths include authenticity, being a life-long student of leadership best practices, and wielding “influence without authority” in order to “get things done.”  Michelle’s primary rule is “take chances.” She is a strong believer in clear communication.  “I am finding, day-today, our biggest source of issues is you did not have a conversation with someone, or you did not take the time to be effective in the way you were getting across your message.”  Her future plans include extending the information technology organization throughout the larger global organization, not just at headquarters. “We don’t always leverage and maximize our spending, our licensing, our approach, our solutions.”  Along the way, when she experienced gender or race bias, Michelle candidly said: “I recognized, I cannot wear it on my sleeve. That’s their problem; not mine.” Her key pieces of advice when contending with prejudices are: “Don’t take it personally.  And don’t give away your power. Don’t let it define you.”  Michelle recommended a book by Carla Harris called EXPECT TO WIN, which outlines ten proven strategies for thriving at work.  Michelle also enthused about Marshall Goldsmith’s WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE, which exhorts leaders to examine the small “transactional flaws” that can keep high-performing individuals from reaching the next pinnacle . “We do need to make adjustments” along the way, according to Michelle.  Key success tips Michelle offers to girls and women are: “Understand WHY you are doing something. Know yourself. Be true to yourself.” Don’t give in to limits nor allow barriers to success. Find the balance between “sharing too much” personal information and being authentic and personable. Cultivate empathy. And the earlier you get a mentor, the better it will be for your career development. In her volunteer life, Michelle sits on the board of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Goodwill and PEARLS for TEEN GIRLS, a unique leadership development program serving middle schoolers and high school girls.  She also just joined the board of Michigan’s DPTV, viewer-supported public television in Southeast Michigan.  The elements of Michelle’s joy include: “great career and great wine!”  She also stressed that “failure, for me, is not an option. I keep it in the back of my mind, to keep me grounded.  But I am not allowing it to be an option.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Sonja Gittens-Ottley, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Asana, a leading work management platform that helps teams organize, track, and manage work.  (Dustin Moskovitz, aco-founder of Facebook, is also co-founder of Asana). Sonja’s mission is setting standards to drive inclusivity and equity in the workplace.  As a first generation transplant to the United States, she immigrated from The West Indies.  “I am the mother of a 4-year old boy,” Sonja said. “I am bringing up a child in this society. How can what I do, today, impact his life, and shape his opportunities for the future?”  Growing up in The Republic of Trinidad/Tobago, Sonja did not have aspirational limits placed on her. Growing up “we had really structured expectations of what were ‘cool’ jobs.”  Sonja became an attorney, with a bachelor’s of law degree from The University of the West Indies in Barbados, and a graduate degree from The Hugh Wooding Law School.  She worked at both the Ministry of  Legal Affairs/Office of the Attorney General and  the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.  Now she is adamant that “Inclusion includes thinking about all the opportunities; ensuring that everyone has access; not being confined to what society says you should be doing.” Sonja’s transition from law to tech was prompted by her move to the U.S. that was originally planned as a two-year stint. “But I got the option to work at a company called Yahoo.” There she implemented project management and legal internal consulting. When Yahoo established a human rights program, Sonja played a significant role. That led to working with Yahoo’s corporate policymaking for diversity and inclusion. From Yahoo, Sonja moved to Facebook as the company’s Global Diversity Program Manager and then to Asana as Head of Diversity and Inclusion.   To empower Asana’s diversity, she focused on two strategic pillars: recruiting and employee evaluation and growth. She stressed that “the culture is really supportive” and that neither pillar can exist without the other; diverse recruitment and nurturing culture must work in tandem.  She works closely with the company’s University Recruiting team, and targets events that attract diverse attendees. To enhance existing culture, she is working on a variety of supportive initiatives like ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) for internal communities “making space for the community, and space for allies to learn more…”. There are three:  Asana Women, Asana Gradient (for people of color), and Asana Team Rainbow (for LGBTQ employees). Each group autonomously sets its objectives, but all three are aligned, overall, to the greater Asana mission. One practical approach that Asana initiated  to support inclusion is the Asana Real Talk series where people engage in honest, authentic discussions about overcoming challenges, communicating purpose and driving change, individually and in the greater world/workplace.  Sonja also does an onboarding session with all Asana team members emphasizing how vital inclusion is to the company. Asana’s liberal Family Leave policy is an example of progress. Sonia proudly exclaimed: “The beauty of Asana is that it is really transparent. People are not shy to ask questions.” Sonja’s leadership is enabled through wielding influence.  “Be clear about what you are trying to achieve. Be honest. People want clarity on an objective --- possible issues, risks involved, and probable results.” For candidates, she advised “You have power. It can be as easy as asking: ‘You say you do diversity and inclusion; what are the actions you have taken?’ ”   For companies initially adopting diversity and inclusion programs, Sonja recommended a company-wide engagement survey with questions about “belonging” to gauge employee’s perspectives. “Think of it as an audit to see where you are.”  She also pointed to mundane vital questions a company can ask: “What is our restroom situation? Should we have ‘all gender’ restrooms? Are we thinking about ‘mother’s rooms’?” For recruiting, in companies without a dedicated diversity expert, she suggested: “You should be thinking about interview skills and training.”  To measure success, Sonja said: “At Asana, we look at it as we would look at any other objective, in terms of both qualitative and quantitative data. What’s our new hire rate? How is it mapping to goals? Through surveys, tracking employee engagement and sense of belonging in terms of the overall company, and in terms of how specific groups are doing, and the intersectionality of groups.”  The intersectionality data can offer “very different pictures.”  To keep momentum, Sonja and Asana do numerous things including monthly All Hands meetings, use a companywide Slack and Asana to consistently share diversity data, and hold “Office Hours” and Ask Me Anything sessions dedicated to inclusion/culture. In addition to the Asana Real Talk series, Sonja is proud of the recent apprenticeship program the company launched, AsanaUp. “We were really thoughtful and intentional about widening that funnel of great candidates coming from non-traditional backgrounds.”  The AsanaUP apprenticeship welcomes those without university computer science degrees (with other degrees, from coding schools, or parents returning to the workforce) to join the company for 6-9 months to work alongside software engineers. Sonja characterized herself as “an eternal optimist.”  In her view, “everyone can make a difference. Children are the future, and they have no limits.”  She exclaimed: “There are people out there, who don’t have access to the opportunities,” she said. “I plan to be working on lengthening that pipeline. This has to be done with really great partners like Grace Hopper Celebration conference”. “We forget that this is new and uncomfortable for a lot of people: to talk about race or gender or any of the other identities that people possess. Getting people to a place of comfort is how you change things!”  Everyone much develop “a real sense of empathy; people might look different than you, might sound different, but we are all trying to do the same thing.” And the most important thing she would like to do is “remind people of their own power and their own worth.  It makes a difference in what you can achieve!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed actor-turned-technologist/evangelist, Chloe Condon , Cloud Developer/Advocate for Microsoft.    Chloe is a passionate supporter of women in technology, with an extensive social media brand following, and  “non-traditional background,” since she “grew up doing musical theater in all shapes and forms.”  Chloe’s father is a director/playwright. Her mother is a theatrical costume designer and graphics designer.  “So, I grew up in a trunk!” She had little exposure to tech. “I had blinders on. I just knew that I wanted to be an actress.” After performing arts high school, Chloe matriculated at San Francisco University for a bachelors’ degree in theater performance. “I booked my first starring role, playing Kira in Xanadu,” a San Francisco stage production.  Reality brought Chloe up short when “they handed me $500 for three to four months of rehearsal.” She addressed cash flow through “bizarre 9-to-5 jobs to support my nights/weekends in theater.” She took numerous retail jobs, then landed an Account Executive position at (pre-IPO) Yelp. She became fascinated by the startup, tech environment, but “was terrible at sales.”   She “stumbled into other tech roles” including Zirtual, the first virtual personal assistant company.  There she met Ben Parr, (then editor-at-large of Matchable), who co-founded VC fund The Dominate Group. Ben has gone on to be a columnist at Inc., a sought after speaker, and philanthropist. During this discovery period, Chloe was unhappy, from a deficit of free time combined with minimal personal autonomy.  Then she attended a Google-sponsored talk focused on girls interested in programming. It inspired her to find a bootcamp for coders (“these can be life-changing”).   She chose “HackBright Academy, since it was all women. It felt very empowering.”  Hackbright’s message, to the male-dominated programming world, is “change the ratio!”  Initially, Chloe suffered from “Impostor Syndrome” which she thinks is more pervasive in technology than other field. A key to making progress, at the bootcamp, was to adjust learning style from simply reading about concepts to reading AND doing.  “I had to think of it like choreography,” she said. Her tenure at the focused camp culminated in a project: a social media application that rigorously timed postings to achieve optimal exposure, no matter your time zone. As she prepared for “Demo Night,” Chloe’s revelation was that “building the app was hard; talking about it was not. I had always viewed my theater degree as a setback but I use my theater degree, every day, as an engineer, and doing public speaking.” Initially interviewing for junior engineering roles, Chloe experienced “a significant change” when she “pivoted my brand to be more ‘developer relations’.”  Her blend of speaking, performing, and communications merged with newly minted programming skills. She was hired by start-up Code Fresh, specializing in Docker innovation.  After a year, Chloe left Code Fresh  to join Sentry.io, a company focused on error-tracking for developers working in open source. She lauded the company’s culture.  “You wanted to go to work, every day. The people were so fun and cool.” There, she reveled in creative, fun projects. Through that work, she collaborated with Microsoft, who gave her “an offer I couldn’t refuse.” At Microsoft, Chloe currently works with the cloud-based Azure platform.  Most recently, she concentrated on cognitive services, infusing applications, websites and bots with intelligent algorithms to interpret in natural language. “I built an app that analyzes images of Cosplay Mario Kart characters to determine their mood and emotions. 95% of my demos are funny, quirky or solve a unique problem. I try to have fun elements in everything I do.” Chloe shared classic advice. “Treat people like humans. As they say in The Book of Mormon, let’s just be really nice to everyone. It’s not that hard.”  When faced with a challenge that seems insurmountable (like code not working) Chloe advised: “Take a walk and come back with the solution.”  She also counseled people to take breaks to achieve higher productivity. And “ask for help!” She cited Twitter as a rich source of feedback and advice.  Chloe is amazed by the generosity of experts in the tech industry. “People are willing to help. This community is welcoming and warm.” Chloe has evolved to revel in her differences.  “I do not look like an engineer. And I fully embrace that,” she said, discussing the male, middle-aged technocrat stereotype. “I think it educates people” when she is the keynote speaker at a tech conference.  In 2017, she wrote an article matter-of-factly describing how it feels to be a sole woman at a tech conference.  It went viral because it allowed others to empathize without judgement. To protect herself, from Internet intrusion, she wryly said “I am very sharp, and witty, on Twitter.  Anyone who comes at me, publicly, will get destroyed by my awesome jokes!” More pragmatically, she is building a bot to respond to inappropriate DM’s. In terms of job-hunting, Chloe urged women to be selective.  “Work at a place you are comfortable.” She cited “red flags” like a company uncomfortable with negotiation; or a company displaying paucity of women leaders in the interview process.  Positively, she expressed appreciation for companies who cultivate sensitivity to diversity issues. She also cited Ru Paul’s advice to “silence your inner saboteur” and proceed with confidence. Chloe noted the industry is missing the mark by not considering those with degrees that are not technical. “If you are going to claim you are a diverse company, be open to hiring people from bootcamps! Put your money where your mouth is.” As an evangelist for Microsoft, Chloe measures success by “folks approaching me and telling me that the work I am doing changed something fundamental for them.  At the end of the day, if I have affected one person, or opened eyes to something new, that is success for me!” For other women in the field, she urged “be authentically you. Don’t feel like you must act like one of the guys. We need more ideas, and diverse thoughts.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Linda Cureton, veteran U.S. government tech leader, turned entrepreneur.  Linda “was always fascinated with numbers.” Facetiously she recalled doing a math as a youngster to compute how old she would be in 2000.  “I remember coming up with the age --- 41.” She thought: “Oh my God. I’ll be dead. I better hurry up and do things!” Linda has had many chances to “do things”  (BIG THINGS), although she resisted technology in early life.  Originally aimed toward Washington D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Linda wanted to take calculus in 12th grade so matriculated at Howard University, instead, as a senior in high school in an advanced calculus program. She began university as a pre-med major, (“I hated it”) until a mentor counseled her. “You will be successful if you do what you love and enjoy.” Linda switched her major to mathematics.  “I wanted to do pure math, but the counselor insisted I take computer classes.” As she began to take programming classes (IBM Assembler, Fortran, etc.), “I really enjoyed them.” After graduation, she interviewed at the National Air and Space Administration (NASA). “That’s how I got into technology,” she said.  At the time, it felt like “punishment.” Clearly, that feeling dramatically changed. Linda was a mathematician/programmer for 2 years at NASA, then moved to the U.S. Navy, working in the weapons systems development program, to become a program manager in undersea warfare.  “After 6 months, I realized I didn’t like it, at all” so she moved to become a systems programmer at the Seattle naval base.  Post-divorce, Linda moved to Maryland to become a systems programmer at the U.S. Department of Justice.  She was at DOJ for 16 years, in a variety of technology management jobs and eventually became Deputy Director of the DOJ Data Center.  Then she began applying for senior executive positions in government. “I was told I was not qualified,” she said. She recognized a need to focus on building coalitions, and whole organizations, “from dirt, from the ground up.”  Engaging in that developed “executive acumen.” She went to the U.S. Department of Energy as Associate Chief Information Officer for operations for several years. “I was the only African-American career executive in the department, and the only black female; it felt very lonely.” But, from that experience she grew immensely. Subsequently, Linda became Deputy Assistant Director of Science and Technology and then Deputy CIO for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), as a female executive in a male-dominated agency where she “built a very strong team.”  Following that, she spent 8 years, again at NASA – first as CIO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, then as CIO for the entire NASA agency. (“My boss’s boss was President Barack Obama! The buck stops there.”)  At NASA, she spent most of her time “debugging” the nationwide agency and bolstering it. In evaluating her government career, Linda admitted “I was a pretty terrible programmer, but I was good at debugging.”  She still considers that a major strength: the ability to find the “bugs” in an organization and solve them. Linda had no formal mentors in her career but learned “the best way to have a mentor is to be a mentor,” and mentors can be found outside of your organization.  While at DOE, feeling isolated, Linda reached out to Gloria Parker, the first African-American female working at a Cabinet level, as the CIO for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Gloria generously shared invaluable advice about how to effectively serve as a CIO. They have remained friends to this day. After retiring from NASA, Linda founded Muse Technologies, branded to reflect the concept of “goddesses of inspiration.”  She wrote a book: THE LEADERSHIP MUSE , about things in the physical and spiritual world from which she drew leadership inspiration (“from hummingbirds to owls to notions about numbers and infinity and music…” and more.) In Linda’s eyes, “the job of leadership is so difficult, and impossible, it takes divine inspiration, sometimes, to get through it.”  Her company supports Federal executives who need change support, supplying them with innovative problem-solving, process support, strategic planning, project/program management, technology recommendations and “soft skills” training for staff. Linda expressed gratitude for the setbacks and disappointments she experienced over the years.  “They have made me what I am, today.” Her greatest joy comes from contemplating “the vastness of the world we live in, God’s creation.  It gives me a chance to decompress….to understand more about my purpose in life.” Conversely, Linda’s biggest fear is potential failure, which “I have pivoted to have the courage to succeed.”  Having recently seen “Hidden Figures,” (about African-American women overcoming discrimination to strongly contribute  to the U.S. space program), Linda left the theater “annoyed” because so many people were rejoicing, thinking that 1965 barriers faced by the film’s protagonists no longer existed. “Dude,” she said. “That was so last week. Maybe they don’t give you the trash to take out, but I had my share of more ‘nuanced’ attitudes!”   On work-life balance, Linda commented: “Life is not 50/50.  It is 100/100. I am 100% who I am all the time.” Three of her career lessons for women are: you can cry, but keep on moving; don’t apologize for being a woman – use female advantages to succeed:  and never sell out; “it’s better to quit a job than do something you think is wrong.” In her community life, Linda gives back by being an active board member for the DC Youth Orchestra for K-12 children and a newly-formed regional group called Pink Architecture, convening tech women to share insights, knowledge and support.   Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Tarsha McCormick, NA Head of Diversity and Inclusion, for Thoughtworks,  a global software consulting company, driving a socially, economically fair and moral world, by bettering humanity through software.   The company has won multiple awards as a top company for women in technology. “For us, diversity and inclusion are about righting some societal ‘wrongs’ – particularly as it relates to race, gender, and sexual orientation.” Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Tarsha is the youngest of seven children.  Her parents emanated from southern United States in the 1930’s and “faced a lot of segregation in the ‘Jim Crowe’ South. Statistically speaking the odds were against me.”  Tarsha inadvertently entered the technology industry but is “impassioned about diversity and inclusion in the space.” Her journey is an example of “just because it isn’t your plan, doesn’t mean it isn’t your destiny.” Tarsha was a social worker for the State of Illinois specializing in child welfare. With a political science undergraduate degree from Illinois State University, and master’s degree from Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University,   she carved out a path in human resources, working for Hewitt, then joining Thoughtworks almost twenty years ago. There, she has “had the opportunity to wear many hats, roles from recruiter to generalist to benefits manager to HR manager.”   Thoughtworks established the People Division in Atlanta, Georgia and Tasha moved to the role of Human Resource Business Partner, there, responsible for The Americas in 2010. “We started having some of those tough conversations about inclusion, at Thoughtworks, that some employers shy away from --- privilege, and sexism, and race in America,” she said. In 2015 she became the company’s first Head of Diversity and Inclusion.  This promotion allowed Tarsha to create a diversity strategic plan and overall vision. “I was the first person in the role. I felt a little overwhelmed!” Thoughtworks was “probably at the forefront” of diversity work in the tech space, which has led the company to honors including being named a leading company for women in technology at the Grace Hopper 2018 Celebration of Women in Tech. For recruiting, “talent doesn’t have a face or a background,” said Tarsha. “We don’t care if you are self-taught, went to a bootcamp, or the more traditional route of a 4-year university.  If you have aptitude, attitude and experience, then Thoughtworks can be a home for you.” Thoughtworks has significantly expanded sources for talent. “We look for candidates outside the computer science department,” as an example, when conducting college recruiting. They also attend tech conferences, visit schools without computer science curricula, historically black colleges and universities, community colleges, and more. Tarsha stressed that it is important to closely examine your recruiting process; “are you mitigating bias in the process?” Diversity does not stop with recruitment of people with different backgrounds, creeds/races/colors/ages/belief systems/socio-economic statuses.  Equally important is “inclusion.” At Thoughtworks, the company has created a place where “people feel they have a voice; that they matter.” The team has re-architected learning/development, benefits, communication methods/content and channels, and methods of promoting high potential employees, in new, more inclusive ways.   Thoughtworks mantra is “once you learn more about a person, their background, their situation, it will hopefully broaden your perspective. You can empathize and sympathize.” To institutionalize best diversity practices, the company has established employee-led resource groups for women’s interests, LGBTQ interests, and African Americans.  There is a consistent feedback mechanism to gauge employee needs. Prior to any major policy roll-out, interest groups are polled. “An example of that is when we rolled out a policy for gender transitioning on the job,” Tarsha said. “We hired an outside expert to come in and do training, not only for our leadership team, but all our employees. We had appropriate groups review the policy. We created the preferred pronoun buttons. We take them to our career fairs and have available in all our offices. We want to be sure we are being respectful of people, and how they self-identify.”  To measure the success of its programs, Thoughtworks administers a diversity survey annually, and deploys “Measures of Success” --- a benchmark tracking. For companies motivated to establish diversity programs, Tarsha shared advice. As a first step, any company should start with holistic assessment, to identify areas for enhancement, gaps, and priorities. Then map back to strategic goals, and methodically, progress from step to step. For individuals looking for new roles, Tarsha recommends asking questions about a company they are considering, including what diversity policies are; the backgrounds of leaders; leadership development opportunities, and how candidates are selected; the average tenure for an employee. Also try to speak with other employees about their experience. Tarsha emphasizes that this work cannot be done in a vacuum.  “I can create the vision, and the initiatives. But it takes all of us to live it and breathe it every day; and make people feel welcome and included.” Tarsha wholeheartedly agrees with Diva Tech Talk. “One person can’t do everything. But everyone can do something!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.  

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Gail Bernard, Director of Sales, Americas for Cybernoor, a leading provider of Oracle platform solutions. In Gail’s childhood, she was fascinated by science and attended the University of Washington where she entered pre-med. “I saw technology, originally, as enabling medicine,” she said but additionally “I saw we could use technology to solve business problems, life problems.” She migrated to management information systems and transferred to the University of Michigan, to complete her BBA in MIS.   During two internships at Chrysler Corporation. she managed the personal computer rollout for the entire company. Then she began working at Chrysler, full-time, after graduation as a systems analyst in their product development group. Her team produced a complicated engineering BOM (Bill of Materials). “I got to work with amazing, brilliant people!” After Chrysler, Gail moved to consulting and gained in-depth experience in inventory and supply chain technology deployment. Then she moved into technology consulting sales to “deliver the breadth and depth of services” required by a number of very large Michigan clients. “Being around diverse groups of people taught me how to conduct myself in any given scenario,” Gail said.  Gail then migrated to founding and leading the Detroit-based office of Interactive Business Systems, when their full portfolio of products/services expanded into Michigan. While Gail enjoyed the sales and consulting work, she became intellectually restless. She also underwent a bout with breast cancer, and “realized that having healthcare choices, in retirement, was big.” So, she decided to get her PMP certification, passing her exam on the first round.  That led Gail to her next career chapter as the Project Management Officer (PMO) for the U.S. District Court, Eastern Division, in Michigan ---- one of the largest consolidated court systems in the U.S.  Prior to her tenure, the court “no had created the point of service, but we were able to digitize the probation and pre-trial functions so that we ended up with the lowest recidivism rates of offenders, in the nation.” Now Gail has returned to a consulting role at Cybernoor, which is “new to Michigan.”  Its founder, Ahmed Alomari ,  was the Vice President of Application Development at Oracle Corporation but left a decade ago to create an improved portfolio of products and services, founded on Oracle platforms.  What most excites Gail, in her role of driving sales throughout North America, is the fact that Cybernoor is a leader in full, organic digital transformation for large organizations. Gail’s career success stems from her intellectual agility, the propensity to move/evolve at the speed of disruptive change, and constant quest for greater meaning in her work, which truly motivates her.  To stay joyous, she fully recognizes and basks in the glow of small and large accomplishments. “I don’t necessarily separate my professional life and my personal life,” she said. Having faced a significant health challenge, when she triumphed over cancer, she has only two fears today:  physical heights, and failure! She also gives back, regularly, to others dealing with that disease by “being a buddy” when she finds someone who needs support. Gail’s leadership lessons included: “Don’t take shortcuts. Accept that males and females are different.  Lean into it! Celebrate it and pull the best out of it.” And “Empower, rather than command.” She also counseled to live in the moment and understand that life’s goal “is not a destination, it is a process.” Seizing the day, she giggled: “I say live your life like you stole it!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk was honored to interview Shuchi Sharma, Global Head and VP, Gender Equality & Intelligence, SAP, the software giant  that creates enterprise software to manage operations and customer relations for Fortune 500 companies all over the world. Shuchi never intended to enter software.  “I studied chemistry, with the aim of being a doctor,” she said “because it explains the ‘why’ behind everything. But I excelled in economics. I combined science and economics and got a degree in public health.”  She obtained her bachelors of science at the College of William and Mary, and her masters of public health at the University of Michigan.  “I took courses in maternal and children’s health and HIV policy,” Shuchi said. “I knew that I wanted to focus on women’s issues, in some form.” She began in management consulting working for The Advisory Board, among others. “I worked with technology for many years. Then I had an opportunity to move overseas to Germany.” She worked, in Heidelberg, for SAS, a leader in software analytics, running software consulting across eastern, central and northern Europe.  “That was great fun.” However, “women were not really helping each other. I saw opportunities missed. I thought ‘what can I do about this?’ “ What Shuchi did, in her personal time, was create The Heidelberg International Professional Women’s Forum (HIP), to bring together women to exchange ideas, learn from each other, and develop skills to enhance success.  “I spent five years, building and leading that organization. It made me realize that this is what I would like my life to be about.”  Among HIP ongoing results were “people finding new opportunities; people starting businesses; people developing new friendships that carried great impact to their lives; creating new ventures they never thought they could achieve.”  There were many new partnerships and businesses, and significant events including “a big summit to fuel entrepreneurship in the community.”  Shuchi is still amazed at “the multiplier effect that something like this can have on lives.” In 2008, Shuchi left SAS to join SAP, to grow the consulting business in northern and southern Europe and the USSR.  “I have been at SAP for 10 years. Now in my fourth role, I feel so blessed,” she said. “I started in business consulting, and after I had my second daughter, I wasn’t ready to travel.”  Shuchi was lucky. Her empathetic boss asked her to build a marketing organization. Over the subsequent 5 years, she built a marketing function for business consulting. Then she was asked to lead a digital transformation team in North America for SAP’s Success Factors, delivering dramatic improvement in the way companies handle their workforces. She had great fun helping customers use design thinking to envision the state of their workforces 5 years in the future.  In her volunteer life, Shuchi became a salary coach for AAUW’s SmartStart Program, and worked with organizations like Moms Rising. “I stayed very involved in women’s topics.” She then evolved into her current position “changing the mix of gender in the organization and creating that very inclusive culture --- a strategic transformation. It was a wonderful opportunity to bring my skills and interests together.” Shuchi is determined to deliver on SAP’s mandate: “to ensure that we, as an organization, can meet our target of having 30% of women in leadership by 2022.” She tackled leadership in process-oriented fashion.  “First we look at data, to see where we are, where we have to go, and how we are going to get there.” SAP has amassed internal data on their own enterprise analytics platform and use dashboards that track many areas:  gender, early talent benchmarks, diversity and inclusion categories, and more. The analytics tools “help us slice and dice the data by so many different dimensions.” Using it, Shuchi’s team drives the revamp of corporate processes and organizations that have implicit bias. “We use data to have discussions with Level 1 managers” to encourage individual plans to reach the 30% goal.   Shuchi’s team has worked on projects including re-certification of SAP under the IMF’s EDGE (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality). “It is very robust analysis that involves data, review of policies and practices, an employee survey, and a third-party audit. Through that, we understand how we are progressing from leadership and development, pay equity, recruitment and promotion, and flexible work culture, perspectives.  That data is going to help us drive change for the next 6 years.” Her team is rolling out programs centered on male allies, sponsorship and mentoring and “return-ship” – recruiting those who dropped out for life reasons, but now want to come back. Nothing can be accomplished in a vacuum, so her team is working on collaborative partnerships with other visionary organizations to help achieve SAP’s target of 30% by 2025. For other companies fielding inclusion programs, Shuchi shared SAP’s ingredients for success: strong executive sponsorship, an effective ecosystem, with diversity and inclusion team members scattered throughout the company, and employee network groups. SAP is thrilled to have received much deserved recognition for their progress in diversity and inclusion. The latest is being named one of the top 5 companies for women technologists  by the Anita Borg Institute. Shuchi offered wonderful wisdom for women.  On pay equity, she said “if you are in university, seek out resources that the AAUW provides. You can find a workshop to  teach you the skills to negotiate salary, which is something you must do in every facet of life. Just become comfortable with asking. JUST ASK.”   She also recommended books including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Why We Should All Be Feminists and watershed works by Dr.  Louann Brizendine, particularly The Female Brain.   In her own career, Shuchi is joyful about her SAP role. “Women are going to change the world…for the better.  If you look across history, women are almost always at the heart of every positive social construct.” But she isn’t free of stress. “I worry that entrenched biases we have seen will continue to exist through our technology. We need to take a very active role to ensure that there is no prejudice; that it is open, available to everyone, and people have opportunities regardless of their race, color, appearance. NOW is the time.”   Shuchi’s two daughters are her personal inspiration. “I want to equip them with everything I can to help them overcome what they might face in the workplace.”  She proudly mentioned that one of her daughters recently beat a boy in a footrace, and when one of his buddies commented that he was beat by a girl, her daughter turned and said: “that’s a normal thing; get used to it!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Patricia Howard, veteran instructional designer/developer, whose employers and clients have included General Motors Corporation,  AAA Life Insurance,  the Auto Club Group and MSX International. Patty came to the technology field by happenstance. “When I was a little girl, technology did not exist as it does, today,” she said. “I didn’t touch a computer until my senior year of college!”   She pursued a fine arts bachelor degree with a minor in business at The University of Southern Colorado, “..and had to write a paper for a finance class,” Patty said. “The system was DOS!” After college, she moved to Michigan, and her first roles were at a national historic landmark and nonprofit, Pewabic Pottery, as a tile presser, potter, mold-maker and technical design reviewer, checking and validating specifications.  Her intellectual appetite led her to explore technology and a friend “gifted” his 486 computer to her. Exploring her options, Patty left Pewabic and took short-term administrative assignments as she explored various industries. After this investigatory period, she exclaimed “I feel like I got the ‘Willy Wonka Golden Ticket’ because I landed a job as an entry-level Web Designer, with no experience” at MSX International, where she worked on websites for internal customers. “They were looking for someone with an artistic eye.“ Patty is forever grateful for her MSX tenure of 6 years, where she learned HTML, Illustrator, Wireworks, ImageReady, Flash, and Photoshop as well as “soft skills” including conflict resolution training.  Patty was blessed with an excellent manager who told her to “design it the way you think it should be, and I’ll make it work!” Then “the economy unfortunately contracted.” Patty was among the last of her team to be let go, in the depths of the recession/depression, as the company dramatically downsized. Her MSX experience awakened Patty’s realization of her affinity for organizational development.  She worked at The Creative Group, a division of Robert Half International, as a temporary contract employee, deploying Web development skills.  Eventually she landed at Gradepoint working closely with instructional designers. Then she entered Wayne State University, for a masters’ degree in instructional design with a focus on interactive technology, and human performance improvement.  Post-recession, “when I emerged with my degree, the economy was on the upswing.” Patty took an internship at Auto Club Group, and then a full-time position at AA Insurance, where she spent 5 years as a courseware designer. “I did more courseware development and was also the LMS (learning management system) administrator.”  Leaving there, she began working as a contractor, through TTI Global, at General Motors.  The November, 2018, announcements of GM consolidations and plant closures  resulted in contractors ending projects. Now she is actively seeking her next challenge. Patty’s advice for creating an interesting career included: “Find out what you don’t know.  Ask more questions.” She noted that, when younger, she didn’t explore all her options as thoroughly as she would recommend others do.  She characterized her own skill-sets as having a propensity for gleaning information and making logical sense of it; a passion for making data useful; and a thirst to build something comprehensive from scratch. Patty loves to “put all the pieces together into this beautiful, inherent piece of training that is going to make someone’s life easier!” Her three greatest strengths include organizational ability, creativity, and a high degree of empathy. “Trying to see what the learner is going through to understand what they need” is key in doing instructional design. “I feel like I have great skills to make a difference, now.” With all the changes through which she transitioned, Patty said “I don’t have any ‘pit of the stomach’ fears, any longer.” One of her lessons for other girls and women is “fear can be a motivator or a show-stopper. New technologies can be intimidating.  Don’t let that stop you. Let that motivate you!” Patty has learned much from her volunteer work, since it gives a person the chance to “do something they would like to do,” increasing knowledge. Some of the organizations she mentioned are the Association for Talent Development, the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and  Inforum Detroit . In all her volunteer work Patty said “I try and give without resenting it” to avoid crossing the line into imbalance.  To sum up Patty’s humorous viewpoint: “The glass isn’t half empty; it isn’t half full. It is twice as large as it needs to be, because no one did a proper needs analysis!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Rebekah Bastian, Vice President of Community and Culture at Zillow Group, leading efforts focused on equity and belonging, social impact and cultural engagement. Rebekah was one of Zillow Group's first employees, moving from Microsoft in 2005. She has spent over 13 years leading product development and evolving into her current role. Rebekah originally started as a music major, but shifted, reassessed, and went back to school taking courses at her local community college. This led to math and physics. Her epiphany was that “[she] can do well at anything [she] works hard at.” Rebekah has been proving that lesson to herself ever since. She encourages others to “work hard at things you enjoy, are passionate about, and things you are good at.” She transferred to the University of Washington where she completed her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and continued on to UC Berkley, for a masters in that field. She applied to Microsoft  and her work included development of the pervasive Outlook email platform.   Subsequently she found Zillow Group, which was in full start-up mode and working under the radar. She took a flyer because she had faith in the founders, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, from their success with Expedia.  Ultimately, Rebekah loved the mission of Zillow Group, the ability to start something from scratch, and the chance to get experience with many different roles. She began working on the first version of the Zillow website, which has since become the largest real estate marketplace in the U.S. Rebekah worked on building product until about 8 years ago, when she was promoted into people management. As she progressed, leaders under her grew.  She was able to launch a side project, paving the way for her current role. Zillow Group’s diversity program began by reviewing how to build diverse points of view and people’s experiences into the organization, while shaping culture more intentionally. Rebekah also starting thinking about how she could use the Zillow platform to solve social issues like access for underserved populations to fair, affordable housing. This community work is her real passion.  Rebekah believes in setting employees up for success by removing barriers while affording autonomy. She benefited from this philosophy personally with her own side projects at Zillow Group. Based on the introduction of the Apple iPhone, she assisted on a project that led to the mobile Zillow application. When it launched, it got attention from Apple and gained fast popularity. Zillow Group created the formal mobile team and she became its first mobile product manager. This opened more doors for her career. In her Community and Culture Vice President role, Rebekah organizes and leads the Zillow Group team focused on equity and belonging, cultural engagement, housing stability, and social impact. She believes “power comes from combining these components together” into one unit. That team creates a space where everyone can bring their best selves to thrive at work. This includes  hiring diverse employees, and ensuring that after onboarding, they possess a strong sense of community. There are also affinity equity networks, and a team of “Equity and Belonging” ambassadors. The ambassadors receive tools, resources, and through those, offer support for “every employee in the community to apply an equity lens to their line of work.” Zillow Group is also encouraging internal mobility within the company, bringing everyone to a level playing field for success despite any past inequities in backgrounds. Rebekah believes no organization has proposed and implemented the perfect formula for leadership in diversity, community, inclusion, especially in corporate tech. Rebekah professes that she “love[s] problems that need to be solved that haven’t been totally figured out yet because that is what we do at Zillow Group, --- innovate! We need to be bringing everyone along.” More importantly, “everyone is on the equity and belonging team. It can’t be just one team of a few people doing this work for the company. We have to create systemic change.” Active prioritizing is key when there are so many ideas and directions for a team like this. Rebekah’s product manager experience/role comes into play as she handles the sheer backlog of potential projects that fall under this mission. The team examines metrics on where they are and where they are trying to go to select the most impactful projects aligned with overall strategy. Reviewing employee engagement can help, so she gets that data through various surveys. “In term of deciding the exact priority, you want to have a big vision of where you are trying to go. Zillow Group wants to create a space where every employee can be heard” and positively impact everyone with whom Zillow interacts. Zillow Group also created an internal pathways model called “get involved” so every Zillow team member can easily get immersed in equity and belonging, and give back, or just have fun. They use various technology and channels to share these opportunities. This work is exciting for Rebekah. For example, “Kids Day of Engineering” is an annual Zillow Group event where employees bring their children to participate in engineering activities. Another example is Zillow Group’s “Community Pillar” which takes the rental marketplace and allows individuals with credit or rental barriers find housing --- a great example of “incremental work that can be done on top of an existing product to create a new feature that can solve social issues.” Overall, the approach is to “creates pathways for everyone to get involved. We are really trying to channel all the passion and skills our employees have to do some great work.” Rebekah exclaimed. Rebekah believes every woman should “speak up and advocate” for herself  “asking for what she wants.” Her career breakthroughs began by simply asking. On the topic of balance, Rebekah finds times for things like aerial acrobatics as a “physical outlet, social outlet, and creative outlet.” Rebekah is a big fan of making a list to help her keep everything straight as a mother, leader, and philanthropist. Rebekah ended the Diva Tech Talk interview with one of favorite quotes, from the Girl Scouts:  “Leave it better than you found it.” She thinks that can be “applied to anything you are doing and is needed in our world today.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Nafisa Bhojawala, Studio Chief for Cloud Design at Microsoft Corporation. Nafisa, the daughter of an engineer dad, and an art teacher mom, grew up in India, and Dubai, UAE.  “We grew up, drawing, painting, working on embroidery; just basically making things! But I also loved the clean rules of math and physics.  I learned to appreciate how the world works around me.” When Nafisa chose her university major, she wanted to specialize in fine arts. But her parents persuaded her to “pick a useful profession.” She decided on architecture and emigrated to Chicago to study at Illinois University of Technology. She spent one year, before she realized she was hooked on design, “looking at problems, and solving them, even on a smaller scale.” She logically matriculated into the design school. Nafisa then discovered computer technology.  “I used it first as a tool, as a designer, but very soon I began running into these frustrating situations while using the computer,” which prompted her to think about how challenges could be circumvented. She began “sketching out ways of doing it,” and taking programming classes to “go deeper, to understand how code is written.” Nafisa’s Capstone project was an interaction endeavor: a learning tool targeted to high school students. To gain confidence, she accepted an internship at Morningstar, the respected global financial firm offering influential investment research and recommendations, managing over $200 billion in institutional assets, and providing software/data platforms for investment professionals.  There “I worked for close to a year on a CD-ROM project,” Nafisa said. “They were converting their stock data into an information tool that financial planners could use. It was the first time I was working as a young designer, figuring out how to apply my visual skills to interaction design.”  After obtaining her degree, Nafisa joined The Doblin Group, a global innovation firm dedicated to solving complex problems through rigorous interdisciplinary approach.  It was another evolution for her. “Their work is very diverse. I learned how to do research there; apply business strategy to problems.”  It was there that Nafisa realized that “I like to design things that become real, and that I can see people using.” Through a friend, 19 years ago, Nafisa successfully interviewed for a design position at Microsoft. “When I joined my team, I felt like I had found my tribe: very talented people, supportive of each other. I had a great manager, and a fantastic mentor.  I could learn everything!” As she has moved into more senior leadership, she has come to the realization that “It takes a culture that supports growth and exploration…where people feel like they can take creative risks, and actually try things.” Nafisa shifted into program management and learned she needed to “lean on others.”  The key was also “being humble about it: being a learner,” she said. “Now I’m not afraid of pivoting.  I can figure it out. “ One of her revelations has been that early in her career she focused on how to get things done, (“because you need to perfect your craft”) but later in her career, she has had to “focus on the big picture, because I needed to solve bigger problems, that were more ambiguous.”  She takes pride in the fact that she feels comfortable “being the person who asks the stupid question.” That exercise often results in pinpointing the most innovative solutions. For example, working as a program manager for Microsoft Azure (Microsoft’s primary cloud platform providing a full portfolio of technical services for IT developers), Nafisa realized that there was a “weak link:  the customer research piece.” Accessing customer feedback was a complex issue as the product line was being developed. “There were various stakeholders, timelines were crazy, and we did not have resources.” In less than 6 months, she had created and led a “high trust” team, to “do research at a very fast clip;” and work with diverse user “personas” encompassing developers and IT professionals, to ensure high feature quality and useful deliverables across a decentralized product set.  Azure is robust and successful in part “because we figured out how to pump data through our decision-making process, from the time we decide what we want to build to actually building something.” Nafisa has now moved to leading the UX (User Experience) for Microsoft’s Power BI (Business Intelligence), PowerApps, and Flow, tools designed to elegantly provide the highest level of productivity to developers and others deploying BI rules inside the enterprise. “Now we are adding artificial intelligence and machine learning.  The responsiveness of systems is just at another level. You suddenly feel like you have more power, working for you.” Nafisa acknowledged: “I have a need to create. Art has always been the place I go to, my sanctuary.  It has, also, been a way for me to connect to a very different community, that I would not be connecting with in business. Her art “informs” her career and vice versa. It has taught her useful leadership precepts: “be optimistic about the process and the outcome; pour your soul into it; take risks along the way; recover from the failures you encounter.  You will discover you are very resilient. You know more than you think you do.” Nafisa also characterized her art as essential because “It helps me understand the ‘creatives’ I manage. It is a journey all of us go through.” As a busy mother, as well as business leader/artist, Nafisa achieves balance by “not thinking about perfection.” She works on doing a little bit better each time, bringing heightened awareness to each project.  And “I lean on others,” she said. “My partner who has an equally busy and chaotic work-life is my partner in parenting, too.” She stressed that “we can all be present in all parts of our lives, if we have a strong community to work with, that we trust.” Additionally, “I am very selective about what I spend time on.  I am a little bit ruthless, setting those boundaries.” Nafisa’s final piece of wisdom was simply “anything you choose to learn, can be learned. You get to decide. But keep doing it, because that is how you keep growing.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Ford Motor Company’s Smart Mobility and Tech Engineering Leader, May Russell. “I loved mathematics,” May exclaimed, “but it’s not like I had access” living in Kuwait, from which her college physics professor father and civil engineer mother emigrated to the U.S. when she was in college.  “It’s beautiful but limited in resources. There was one bookstore in the whole country.” A self-described “reading nerd,” May “exhausted every single sci-fi book they had!”  She recognized her first “thirst for, and love of technology” through a “very aspirational” science fiction passion. She pointed to Isaac Asimov and his Laws of Robotics, and mentioned that, today, she still refers to those, in her work.  Her first computer science class at age 15, allowed May to innovate, using an Access database with a Visual Basic front-end, so that a video store owner could catalogue the entire inventory of VHS tapes. She became computer science valedictorian in her high school class. Matriculating, she had the chance to either enter the school of dentistry at Cairo University or the computer science program at the American University in Egypt.  Urged to “try both,” May simultaneously began first semesters at both institutions. Quickly though, “it became clear” that May loved computer science, so she focused on technology.  She has never regretted that decision. In her senior year, her family moved to the U.S where May entered the University of Michigan - Dearborn. It is another decision May has never regretted, lauding the U.S. tradition of “respect for humanity…the value for human life and civil rights, comparatively speaking” and “the ability to effect change.” Graduating, May had job offers from E&Y,  Texas Instruments, and Ford. She accepted the E&Y offer. “My advice to anyone is accept the most challenging opportunity; do the thing that scares you the most, the thing that is riskiest to you.” E&Y gave her the chance to work in many industries with many different clients. Post 9/11, she reached her 5-year E&Y anniversary, having “learned a lot.”  Combined with “fatigue from the pace” of 80-plus hour weeks, she discovered “I wanted to work for a company where I got to ‘own’ things.” So, she applied to Ford and moved there, 16-plus years ago. May learned a valuable lesson: careers are not always linear. “My goals, staying in the technology field, were to join a large company where I had purpose and mastery and got to ‘own’ products. And I didn’t want to have to travel, Monday through Thursday.”  Within the first year at Ford, however, her salary returned to the E&Y level, and her hard work was recognized. Her admonition is “do what is right for you, at the time it is right for you, as long as it aligns with your goals and values.” May’s first Ford project overhauled the entire dealer parts order fulfillment system. Then she became the leader of a 150-person development group working to transform the intricate Ford global order system She progressed to manage all business-to-consumer and dealer ordering and communications systems development, where she led a much larger organization, with a variety of team leaders managing sub-teams inside it. “That takes a different skill-set, more strategic thinking, supplier relationship management, and deep thought on how we execute B to C” she said. She then moved on to lead the transformation of Ford’s worldwide human resources systems and then began to work in “emerging technologies.” There she led a team to create Ford’s initial “best-in-class” consumer-facing mobile application, empowering consumers to command and control their vehicles. May helped create a “software engineering company within a company” ---- recruited talent, built an entrepreneurship culture, adopted the agile processes of a software development company. Starting with just handful of  developers, that organization has now grown to 500 colleagues, and four software development labs on 3 continents. Their products on the drawing board had to be developed in months vs. years, (in an organization traditionally unused to that speed) and deployed globally. May is proud that this first application (“Ford Pass” and “Lincoln Way”) has been the “highest rated application in every app store”; won the global 2017 Mobile Marketing Design Award from MMA;  and has been recognized as a leading application for connected cars by Gartner.   May sees her top strengths, in addition to confidence instilled by her family, brilliance and developed leadership skills, as perseverance (“I just keep going”) and learning to “enjoy the journey.” Her philosophy is that “at the end of the day, you spend more time at work. So, if you enjoy the journey, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy” that you will achieve great things. Discussing female leadership, May shared that “I did feel the burden of being a woman when I had children.”  But two of her “greatest career catapults” at Ford occurred within two months after the births of her two children. May acknowledged that while she had educational and career advantages and has a very strong support system in her husband and parents, not every mother is that lucky.  “There are women out there, who have had children too early. And childcare is too expensive if you make a decent income, and cost-prohibitive if you don’t. It becomes a vicious cycle.” While very courageous, May admits to two fears: “A primal fear that something will happen to my children; and that both my kids, and I, may not realize our potential.” In becoming a leader, May’s lessons included: “Every opportunity is an opportunity to excel and shine.  It doesn’t matter how small the assignment is, it is your opportunity to do your best.”   “Master something” before you move on.  “Always leave something better than you found it.” To achieve happiness, May constantly reminds herself to be grateful and “that instantly makes me happy.”  In her technical leadership role, May received great advice from a former Ford CIO: “you are the CEO of your own business.“  The technical leader is fully responsible for everything (P&L, human resources/talent, product development and delivery etc.) as well as the established technical vision and future technology path. Summing up, having “a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose” creates May’s personal joy.     Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Wanda Castelvecchi, National Practice Manager for Security and Enterprise Networking at ePlus, (https://www.eplus.com/), responsible for over $500 million, annually.    Wanda did not enter the technology industry in traditional fashion. In the mid-1980’s she was a law librarian, using Lexis (https://www.lexisnexis.com), and Westlaw (https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/westlaw) research databases before most attorneys became adept in them.  “I worked for a large law firm in downtown Richmond, Virginia, until my son was born,” she said.  During her maternity leave, the law firm closed. “So, I found myself as a brand-new Mom, with a brand-new baby at home, with no job.  I had to figure out how to make this work!” She became the “Renaissance Woman” at a smaller firm, doing reception and recruiting duties, working in the law library, handling billing, marketing and more.  That firm acquired their first computer. So, she evolved into becoming the firm’s internal computer expert. Wanda saw this as a strong learning challenge, which she mastered. From that firm, Wanda was hired by a technology systems integrator. She proceeded to obtain both Novell certification, and Microsoft certification, within the first 6 months and “thus launched my crazy career in IT!”  After entering the field, she noticed the paucity of women. “It felt like a huge challenge to me not only to be accepted as a newbie in the technology field, but to be accepted as a woman.” At the company, Wanda was promoted into sales from systems analyst but immediately encountered a resistant manager, who stated she would probably “be gone in 90 days.” Wanda decided to prove him wrong. Through sheer persistence, she wound up as the top salesperson of the quarter, during that very first quarter.  “As women, we could let those words crush us, or we can take those words and say ‘I’ll show you what I can do…” Having moved from a technical role into sales, Wanda counseled that the path is not for every technologist.  “What people don’t understand are all the mundane tasks” with which sales professionals cope, including paperwork.  The role requires empathy for deeper psychological issues underlying customer satisfaction, as well as the need to acknowledge and attempt to rectify mistakes when they are made.  She also emphasized that being honest, genuine, reliable, considering yourself an advocate for the customer, and never losing the tendency to ask many questions of a client, as part of sales discovery, is key to success.   Wanda moved from the smaller system integrator to Sycom Technologies (https://www.sycomtech.com/) where she spent the next decade.  She performed at a very high level, becoming Professional Services sales leader of the year for multiple years and then “I became a sales manager. While I had a really good run at it, what makes a good salesperson doesn’t always make a great sale manager!” But she learned valuable lessons from sales leadership: patience with a diverse team; understanding that individual motivation is different and not all team members are driven to excel; and how to listen, set expectations, and create plans with achievable goals.  But above all, Wanda “learned to keep moving and always learning.” From Sycom, Wanda briefly did a short stint at another Cisco partner company,  and then moved to ePlus, (https://www.eplus.com/),  an engineering-centric technology solutions provider working in key technologies from data center to security, cloud, and collaboration.  She has been with ePlus for 9 years. There she was fortunate to get her “best boss” and is absorbing more leadership lessons.  One is selflessness. “Nothing he ever talks about is about himself. Imagine that you wake up every morning and you have the ability to create your own path. And you have a manager who is 100% supportive of that, who has always got your back!” Selfless, herself, Wanda has been active in several nonprofits giving back to the overall community including a role on the Board of Directors for the Richmond Animal League (https://www.ral.org). But her newest endeavor fills her with the most passion. GRIT (which stands for Girls Rock’In Tech) introduces middle school girls to various tech careers, with a specific focus on cybersecurity.  “In addition to there being an overall shortage of women in technology, there is a huge shortage of experts in cybersecurity,” according to Wanda, up to 1 - 2 million jobs going unfilled each year.  So, from her vantage point, it is logical to encourage girls to explore the field. She noted that women are often more risk-averse, have excellent project management skills, and a concern for safety, so the field could be attractive.  “Organizations who don’t have women in their cybersecurity practice are probably less secure,” as a result of the deficit, according to Wanda. Currently active in 4 schools, with plans to be at 6 by 2020, and then growing even more rapidly, the GRIT program’s name has a double meaning since “one of the things we want to be able to develop is grit” (the ability to persevere against all odds) in the young women it serves. “You can be really great at math, engineering or science, or anything you want, if you work really hard,” is GRIT’s mantra. Wanda shared other additional success tips. Among them are:  as you progress, pull people up with you; honesty and integrity are paramount; learn to laugh at yourself; and take your vacations. Most importantly, she emphasized: “Always be learning. Every day, learn something new.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Monica Bailey, Chief People Officer at GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com). At 18 million global customers and 8,000 employees, the 22-year old company is an indisputable market leader, as the largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar in the world, four times the size of its closest competitor. Monica came to her role at GoDaddy “having seen a lot of things I love about the technology industry and having seen a lot of things that I didn’t want to repeat.” The daughter of a social worker mother and a residential builder father, Monica was raised in a “rough and tumble fishing town” on Washington State’s coast, populated by “amazing people” who “had to be as fierce as the ocean to survive there.”  She graduated from Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communications with a double major in psychology and communications, and a special focus on women’s studies. Early in her career exploration, she knew “I wanted to help people; I wanted to make an impact.” Fate intervened in landing Monica’s first job. Armed with her resume, she visited a friend at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington and spotted her third cousin, who facilitated interviews. She was hired as a technical recruiter. “I feel so fortunate. Tech is a place where we don’t ponder too long. We experiment, try things, iterate, and hopefully make change in the industry, and the world.” Her career at Microsoft spanned many roles including recruiter, recruiting team captain, senior human resources generalist working on Microsoft’s consumer internet group, manager of Microsoft’s merger and acquisitions, senior talent assessment manager supporting President/CEO succession and development planning, and also did a stint as HR partner for Microsoft’s Research arm. Monica is a life-long champion of diversity, shaped by enlightening lessons from her 17-year Microsoft tenure. She has the highest regard for Microsoft’s current CEO but “I grew up in a work environment that was internally competitive,” she said. “There was no shared, core criteria that was fair and accessible to employees.” Learning from that, she believes “there is enough pie for everyone. I don’t want to compete with folks. I don’t want my folks to compete with each other.” In her industry, and company, “we are better together.” Monica defined diversity as “having different perspectives around ‘the decision-making table.’ The more folks you bring around that table, from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different socio-economic classes, the more holistic you get to be.” She stressed that if you don’t have diversity, as an organization, you can “miss the market.” Her transformational work at GoDaddy has been propelled by a partnership with Stanford University’s 40-year old Clayman Institute, a nonprofit extension founded to inspire innovative solutions that advance gender equality. After their in-depth review with unprecedented access, “They said: you have two choices.  You can continue to refine your hiring to reduce unconscious bias, similar to what many companies are working on. Or you can go for the ‘Holy Grail:’ career advancement for women, knowing that there is very little research in this area, at this point.” Making the Holy Grail choice, GoDaddy revised their unique performance review process encompassing the “what” (targets, objectives, activity,) and “how” of achieving goals. “We want wonderful people doing wonderful work,” Monica said. “So, we had to reimagine the ‘how’ in order to strive for true diversity. The ‘how’ is how you exemplify our values; how you live them every day; how you help each other do great things for our customers.  We included ‘how do you introduce diversity and different perspectives ‘around the table’, in order to innovate.” Monica stressed that there has also been a robust effort to block unconscious bias in every human resources’ process as a result of the Clayman Institute counsel. “We just decided to build diversity into everything we did. Diversity is not siloed. It lives in every piece of work we do. The bummer is you’re never done!” GoDaddy is making great diversity progress.  “Our employees are super-clear about our culture and values. They come to GoDaddy because it is a really different culture --- hard-charging, yet collaborative. We overtly talk about it and more importantly, our people talk about it.” Monica said. “And we have record low attrition.”  She proudly pointed to a recent survey that shows that 89% of GoDaddy’s top individual contributors and leaders would recommend the company to others. By following Clayman’s recommendations to break down all the work into a simple, clearly accessible set of behaviors, “women and men have a statistically equal shot at top performance in the company…We pay a dollar for a dollar, women to men.”  And, “last year, we were at 31% women in our most senior roles.” Monica’s  diversity recommendations for other organizations include: thoughtfully and creatively formulate your vision of success and act on it; examine performance by every possible human criteria to strive for absolute fairness; methodically and constantly survey your talent base, and customers, on what is working and what is not; and engage in systems like “promotion-flagging” to ensure that those who don’t “self-promote” are still fairly recognized. Monica was emphatic about the positive return on investment that diversity represents for all companies. At GoDaddy “We believe that diversity creates better innovation, better products and services for our customers.” Her mission at GoDaddy is “making the company we all want to work for!” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com on Twitter @divatechtalks, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechalk.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Scarlett Ong Rui Chern,  entrepreneur, founder/ CEO of Peerstachio.  Scarlett is the epitome of entrepreneurship:  courageous, persistent, agile in approach.  She grew up in a small town in Malaysia and left to pursue higher education in the United States. “I had one year of community college in Kuala Lumpur, and then transferred as a freshman into the University of Michigan (https://umich.edu/).”  As a 10-year old, Scarlett said: “I was interested in tech, especially the gaming field. I was always interested in the collaborative aspect of tech, the basis of what I am working on, now.”   Scarlett matriculated to the university, after looking for a sense of “community” among colleges. Everyone was friendly. However, “my first year was not a very good year. But I really believed in myself, although I was struggling to adapt to the whole situation,” she said. “Besides being an international student, I was a first-generation college student in my family. And I didn’t have family members around.”    Scarlett initially faltered, academically. “It was a shock to realize that I was coming from behind. Not having enough peer support, in an academic sense, brought me into a space where I felt alone, and not sure of what I was doing.”  She had to “figure out strategies of how to reach out” for help. Scarlett initially closed herself off, but now “I have grown to be a more open person, more self-aware” knowing when to ask for help.  “There are a lot of other students that face this issue, too.” Scarlett joined the university’s “optiMize Social Innovation Challenge” in freshman year. Her first project created a “gamified” classroom experience for elementary school students.  She then entered the university’s business school, with an emphasis on consulting.  “I joined a pro bono consulting club on campus.” There, she worked with the famed Zingerman’s, and created a  framework to enable past employees stay in touch with the current Zingerman’s community.   She discovered that consulting was NOT her personal life mission. “I am the kind of person who likes to get her hands dirty, make ‘hands-on’ impact, see things through,” she said. “This is when passion comes into play. Not only did I pick myself up, but I wanted to create something that would help others pick themselves up.” Scarlett discovered U of M’s Zell-Lurie Institute, dedicated to advancing knowledge and practice of innovation.  “They offer a lot of support in terms of mentorship, grant-funding”  She also joined the Michigan Venture Capital Association, as a summer intern, where she worked on the association’s 2017 annual landscape guide and “changed the game” in terms of its data collection, data collation, and interactive reporting.  She entered U of M’s CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE competition, which “reimagined” techniques and spaces for teaching and learning in the 21st century.  Scarlett and her partners tried to create a “study mentor” using artificial intelligence (AI). Her team was one of 5 finalists that had the unique opportunity to meet with Amazon’s Vice President of Development.  From this, Scarlett learned one of her key life lessons: “What makes a startup successful is not just a cool idea.  Ours was too far in advance.  There wasn’t yet a market for it.”  Scarlett shed the original team, and took the kernel of that concept as the foundation for Peerstachio, conceptually launched in September 2017. Scarlett takes both computer science classes and Udemy courses. “But I knew, deep in my heart, that even though I love tech, I wouldn’t be a professional coder. I partnered with a friend of mine, who is currently our CTO (Chief Technology Officer).”  She also recruited a UX designer to implement the “front end” of Peerstachio, while the CTO manages the back end.  Scarlett manages fundraising, the company’s overall vision, market research, marketing, competitive analysis, and sales.   Peerstachio’s main mission is to help students improve grades by connecting underclassmen with a trusted cadre of older students, to get academic questions answered in a highly responsive fashion. The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is launched on django, html5, scss and javascript coding stack Website, and sqlite3 (PostgresSQL in future) on the back-end of the site.  Scarlett ensured that she validated real customer need by conducting detailed surveys of potential clients.  (At the time of our Diva Tech Talk interview, the Peerstachio team had interviewed 110 students, globally.)  Scarlett is becoming a highly experienced entrepreneur.  For instance, she said “If any startup tells you there is no competition, they need to do more research.”  For Peerstachio, “I feel fortunate we have competitors.  That means there is a market, and room for us to improve.” Scarlett thinks that passion, perseverance and sense of purpose are propelling her as well as empathy for the customer. “I would add one more: positivity,” she said. “A ‘growth mindset’ has kept me going.”  Scarlett’s fond hope is that she, and others like her, can show that “if you have some goals, and try to get what you desire, that is ultimate happiness.”  Her biggest fear is missing something that she could accomplish. Scarlett’s leadership lessons include: develop deep listening skills, collaborate, be confident and decisive, and lead by example. She stressed that, in a startup, “there is no such thing as 9 to 5. Work and life are intertwined.”  To balance that, Scarlett follows a “process of layers of priority” to juggle multiple goals, successfully. Many of those goals are tied to making life better for others. She also recoups energy through exercise and reading, watching videos, and reflecting.   Note:  Peerstachio has received grants since this interview including DTX, at TechTown Detroit: https://techtowndetroit.org/?press-release=u-m-startup-peerstachio-receives-inaugural-10000-gm-go-award. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com on Twitter @divatechtalks, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechalk.

The Diva Tech Talk team was grateful to have the amazing experience of attending Grace Hopper Conference 2018. We highlighted many conference details, discussed the Abie awards, and shared the voice of attendees on the Episode 73 Podcast. If you didn’t get a chance to listen, please check it out here: http://www.divatechtalk.com/blog/ep73 There was so much material and insight that we had to create another article and episode for our listeners to stay with us on this journey. This podcast has a special announcement for our listeners. One incredibly worthy outcome of the Grace Hopper Conference and the AnitaB.org effort is the Top Companies report for women in technology. This is a national program that identifies key trends around the representation of women in the workforce. First launched in 2011, it pairs wonderfully with the conference “vibes.” Although there are many other female technologist benchmarking programs, this is the only one that measures technical employees using a rigorous, standardized definition of the technical workforce. The 2018 Top Companies report was compiled with participation by 80 companies, 628,000 + technologists with 150,000 + women technologists in that group. Congratulations to the companies who took top honors for female tech diversity for 2018. Special Diva Tech Talks “shout-out” to Tarsha McCormick and Shuchi Sharma, two leaders in that cohort we were fortunate to interview. Check out the full Grace Hopper Conference 2018 Press Release on Top Companies here: https://anitab.org/news/press-release/2018-top-companies-report/ In addition to the keynotes, and breakouts on topics ranging in complexity from exploratory data analysis to mentoring, there were also some amazing women with whom we spent time to capture their experiences for our Diva Tech Talk audience. After reviewing their insights, the Diva Tech Talk team is proud to announce a new Diversity Leadership Series, following this event. The series will feature senior level leaders from a variety of organizations, who lead diversity and inclusion programs in their respective organizations. In this Grace Hopper Event Recap podcast, we include audio teasers for these full-length episodes, rolling out over the coming weeks and months. Here are some of the women we will include in our upcoming Diversity Leadership Series: In this episode, we feature short clips from the following amazing women in technology that we interviewed.  Later, we will publish their full stories in our newly announced Diversity Leadership Series: Monica Bailey, Chief People Officer at GoDaddy   Sonja Gittens Ottley, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Asana Tarsha McCormick, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, North America for Thoughtworks   Rebekah Bastian, Vice President of Community and Culture at Zillow Group   Shuchi Sharma, Global Lead for Gender Intelligence at SAP Paulette R. Gerkovich, PhD, Senior Director, Diversity and Inclusion, Micron   We hope you enjoy this teaser and look forward to the upcoming series as much as we do. Make sure to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com on Twitter @divatechtalks, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechalk.

The Diva Tech Talk team was ecstatic to attend the 3-day 18th Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing #GHC18 (ghc.anitab.org) --- the world’s largest gathering of women in computer technology --  September 26 through 28, 2018 in Houston, Texas. The conference has taken place since 1994, with a yearly cadence since 2006. Named for U.S. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, many continue be inspired by her work on the Mark I computer and creation of one the first industry compilers, that eventually led to the development of COBOL, still a relevant programming language today. Grace paved the way for many women to follow her in technical careers. The Grace Hopper Celebration convenes many thousands of women in computing in a single venue to discuss topics of interest, and share research related to women in technology. Students flood the halls to get exposure to tech companies and tech departments; and many engage in onsite career interviews. There are a variety of presentations, poster discussions, and meet-ups throughout the week. It is also an ideal gathering for veteran tech women, employed in the field, to present and listen to each other, while networking and meeting the next generation of upcoming tech women. This year’s conference boasted a record attendance of over 22,000. This episode is full of audio highlights from the event including: Event overview from Hotwire Interviews with two past Abie Award Winners Teaser into an interview with Noramay Cadena We are Here montage Sneak peek into future Diversity Leadership Series We encourage listeners to visit us online for a full blog write up at: www.DivaTechTalk.com This blog article covers even more details on the speakers, awards, and top companies report. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com onTwitter @divatechtalks, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechalk.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Stephanie Espy, Founder and CEO of MathSP (https://mathsp.com/) and STEM Gems (http://stemgemsbook.com/).  Stephanie shares a common goal with Diva Tech Talk (www.divatechtalk.com) to support the next generation of female STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) practitioners. Both of Stephanie’s parents are engineers and three of her siblings are connected to STEM. “Engineering and science are two main career paths my family has taken.” Stephanie was also influenced by “really fabulous teachers”as early as elementary school, extending through secondary education and college. After high school, Stephanie moved from Georgia to Massachusetts to attend MIT (www.mit.edu ). There she “thrived because of the community” and obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering.  Her penchant for bonding with others in her dorm, in her major and “with other women of color on campus” got her through the “difficult moments.” Stephanie successfully completed research projects and worked at many internships which “helped solidify my understanding of how engineers make a difference in the world.”  She matriculated to the University of California, Berkeley (https://www.berkeley.edu/) for her graduate degree in chemical engineering.  She also accrued corporate experience, working with polymers in a manufacturing plant; using various rubber-producing plants at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve quality and yield of U.S.-grown natural rubber; and as a chemical engineer in the oil and gas industry at BP (www.bp.com).  She also decided to get a business degree to complement her graduate degree in chemical engineering.  “I landed at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School” (http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/) where Stephanie earned her MBA.  At Goizueta, she “shifted gears; I got this entrepreneurial ‘bug’ and that drove me to want to create something, my own way of helping to close the gender gap in STEM.” Stephanie said “most of my experiences had been in male-dominated environments. I yearned for more representation” by women and people of color.  She founded MathSP a decade ago. “S stands for strategies; and P stands for problem-solving.” The company’s premise is “in order to enter a STEM career, you must have a solid foundation in math and science.” Her venture helps male and female students at all levels “uncover gaps in their foundation and close them, helping them become more ‘STEM-fluent:’ better problem-solvers, independent thinkers and life-long learners.”   She also saw a need to serve girls “in their own special way.”  In 2014, Stephanie founded STEM Gems (http://stemgemsbook.com/), which began as a book but has morphed into “a movement.”  Its aim is “to expose girls and young women to careers and role models in STEM.”  It offers its audience exposure to career opportunities that “they did not even know existed.”  In addition to the variety of career choices, STEM Gems also give girls exposure to role models working in science, technology and math.  “These are things you, as a girl, can do!” The STEM Gems book features 44 different women and their diverse careers, like data science, global health science, environmental engineering, archaeology, entomology, biotechnology, animation and a plethora of others.   “There are so many careers out there that people don’t really think about,” Stephanie exclaimed.  STEM Gems is shining a light on many of them. “A lot of research went into finding STEM women leaders, highlighting their accomplishments and advice, interviewing all of them,” and spotlighting the biggest thing: “how they make a difference in the world and help people.”  A challenge was also to put those stories into the language of children “so a 10-year old girl could pick up the book, read it, and understand. It has touched so many lives, both through the book and the STEM Gems Clubs!” The clubs focus on groups reading the book and following a curriculum (with adult community members leading). They began in the last 12 months, and have spread through the United States.  “It is a ‘tribe setting,’ and shows you that you are never alone in your pursuit of greatness,” Stephanie said. Stephanie has learned many leadership lessons throughout her career: “Never, ever, give up, despite the odds.”  Do not be intimidated. “Walk into a room and sit at the table…” invariably letting your voice be heard. Speak up and speak out. And “you cannot shy away from a challenge.” Get comfortable “being a trailblazer.” Stephanie’s parting tips for women and girls to succeed include: “Be a part of the community. You can’t do much alone.”   To that end, she recommends membership in many of the national and regional professional associations that offer resources, support and fellowship. “Be a mentor to the next generation. Be a role model to many; and pick a few for whom you can really have an impact on their journey.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Growing up in rural Canada, Lori completed her undergraduate BBA in marketing, through a scholarship as a star Division One Volleyball player, at Ohio University. She moved on to complete her MBA at Bowling Green State University,  with a minor in MIS (Management Information Services) and discovered that she was fascinated by data. “Having that understanding of how you run a business and putting it together with tech and data creates a holistic lens” on any endeavor according to Lori. Her career started at a “Big Four” professional services firms.  Her work was exciting and diverse. “I’ve had a chance to work with some of the best companies, either on process optimization, data analytics, or enterprise-wide implementation programs.  She received experience in a number of transformation projects. “One of the things I learned was really how to refine messaging, how you spoke with the executive-level team about the risks and challenges they could encounter and the value you can deliver.”    Lori also absorbed how large organizations implemented, managed, navigated and adapted to major change. She is grateful for the 15 years she spent at PwC. “I got a chance to work with some of the best leaders.” Along the way, she tried to envision her future: “where did I want to be in 5 years, 10 years?” Her answer was: “My goal was to be a CEO.” Lori then spent 2.5 years diving deeply into the startup world in Detroit and realized: “When you go from big corporate Fortune 500 world to the startup world, you are in two different worlds!”  Lori made her first move by relocating from the northern suburbs of Southeast Michigan to the heart of Detroit and learning from the start-up groups there. Then, she founded her company. “My vision is that Whim-Detroit does really cool things with really cool companies. We focus on digital transformation: the future of technology, people and processes. We focus on transformation, implementing systems, data and processes.”  And Whim-Detroit solutions are “in the space I love the most,” said Lori, “fashion and sports!” Whim-Detroit has two main components:  a consulting practice and an innovation lab.  “Part of what I am trying to do is create a sustainable model, using one side of the business to support the other side.” Consulting has helped create cash-flow so that Whim-Detroit can bootstrap product development offerings.   Lori “works with really great brands. Most of them are with products that I am either a supporter or a customer of.” In the consulting practice, a current representative Whim-Detroit client is a premier athletic club, that is part of the historical foundation of Detroit.  On the innovation side, Whim-Detroit just delivered the first fashion and technology hackathon in the city’s history. To do that, Lori worked with Pure Michigan Business Connect (part of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation) and Bedrock Ventures. Lori thinks some of her strengths are courage, the ability to eloquently communicate, her penchant for creating a vision, creativity and persistence. “In this new entrepreneur space, never give up! Passion equals resiliency.” While rarely experiencing gender discrimination at a younger age, more recently Lori has faced challenges related to being a woman leader. “I started to have typical scenarios: ‘mansplaining’ or being demoted to work under a peer.” One of the solutions she suggested is “having ambassadors, mentors or ‘table-pounders’ to help you navigate through things” in your career.   A revelation for Lori was that “life will be about what you don’t like vs. what you do like!” She carved her path by process of elimination.  As an entrepreneur, Lori acknowledges: “you don’t have balance’ in the traditional sense. But what you do have is a rounded and exciting career that merges work, passion and interesting people.” Lori believes that women have the gift of unique perspectives, based on valuable compassion and empathy. “Compassionate leaders, historically, have built stronger, more long-lasting, organizations.” As a leader, “you should be the last to speak. You’re there to listen; you’re there to inspire. You’re there to bring in the other, best, people you can find….and unlock talent.” For Lori, conscious gratitude is a way to get through the startup hard times. “During the tough times, there is always something you can be grateful for!”  Having passion is also key. “It brings a lot of joy and can overcome the need for other things, material things.” She struggles with fear of failure, despite knowing that the path to success is often paved with failures. To overcome that fear, she “does it in small pieces.” Her athletic mantra has always been “left/right, left/right, one step at a time; just keep moving forward.” And her motto since college athletics has been “you can cry but you can’t quit!” To give back, Lori has enlisted Whim-Detroit as a FOUNDERS FOR CHANGE company, taking the pledge to #changetheratio and encourage diversity on her teams, boards and investors. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Kanika Tolver, Washington, D.C. native, Founder and Product Manager at BrandDMV Inc., (http://branddmv.com/), a digital transformation agency that creates Digital Mobile Visuals. With a fascinating career in our nation’s capital, Kanika has consistently focused on improving U.S. government effectiveness.  Along the way, she has developed impressive technology proficiencies, while consistently connecting those skills to improving the “human experience.”  Kanika is also a career coach, author and mentor. From high school, Kanika was fascinated by the interconnectedness of the world.  “Initially my mom wanted me to be a pharmacist,” Kanika said. “But I said ‘no’ I want to go into computers! It was fun, to me, to be on the Internet.”   Kanika went to Bowie State University (https://www.bowiestate.edu/ where she majored in computer science, with a focus on Internet technology, programming in CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  “That’s when I started to say, ‘wow, I really love creating Webpages and Websites’.” She worked part-time at the U.S. Department of Urban and Housing Development  (https://www.hud.gov/) , while attending university. After college, Kanika’s first opportunity was at Verizon (www.verizon.com/ ) as a leader at their network control center in Virginia. Then she returned to government service, first working for 2.5 years as a SaaS developer for the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/  and then moved to the U.S. Department of Transportation (https://www.transportation.gov/ ). “That was where I really got into digital strategy,” she said. With a considerable tenure in the public sector, Kanika left in 2014 because “I had such an entrepreneurial spirit; I had an innovative way of thinking.” She was excited to take a role at Deloitte (www.deloitte.com/ ) and “learned the global aspect of business. “  In the private sector, for the first time, she faced the challenge of working in predominantly white male environments.  “I learned I had to ‘boss up’ “, Kanika said. “I had to come to the table with subject matter expertise. If I was going to have a seat at the table, I had to merge my personal brand as a woman of color with my technical experience.” Kanika has formed strong opinions about digital transformation. She believes it is less about the technology tools and “more about  people, processes, and structures.” She sees digital transformation as pervasive. “It encompasses social, cloud, security, data, and governance. As a tech community, we haven’t caught up with digital transformation.  It’s hard to get it right, because it’s so many pieces. And we work in silos, a lot.” Evaluating her own success, Kanika’s credits her penchant for collaboration, laser focus on her goals, fortitude, and fearlessness.  She also has changed her perspective, along the way. “Now I look at failures as accomplishments, rather than defeats,” she said. “If I learned something, and was able to move forward, it makes me a conqueror.” In addition to founding her company, Kanika is also the author of LIFE REHAB: DON’T OVERDOSE ON PAIN, PEOPLE, AND POWER written in 2013.  To assist others, Kanika authored this journey of self-discovery, which catalogued “letting go” of relationships which didn’t work, pain that was unnecessary, and superficial things which didn’t matter. Kanika is a strong proponent of in-person networking, supplementing online connections.  “For people who want to maximize their opportunities, it’s so important to go out and meet people at conferences, workshops, seminars” Additionally, she meets people regularly online, using tools like LinkedIn, including the LinkedIn Groups function. She also gives back often through mentorship. “Mentoring shouldn’t be looked at as a job; it should come from a place of passion and purpose.”  Her advice for potential mentees is to concentrate on creating a meaningful relationship with potential mentors, before asking for assistance. In her own life, Kanika’s “dream team” of mentors are diverse, spanning fields, ages, races, and talents. Kanika is a champion of diversity in the tech field.  In 2014, she expressed her candid opinion of tech hiring in a CNN MONEY ECONOMY column entitled “Google Should Hire Me” and said that Silicon Valley companies, in order to diversify, must “come out to where the people are,” including universities with large minority populations.  Kanika is planning to develop a diversity roadmap and publish it in a blog. It would include other diversification recommendations like companies should join alliances dedicated to diversity (like Black Girls Code); create a database of HBCU’s and aim recruiting campaigns there;  and also make investments in early childhood STEM education programs focused on girls and minorities. Kanika recommends tools for keeping up-to-date in the fast-paced technology world.  She reads a minimum of one tech book per month. Her other tools include podcasts which focus on tech, Udemy, the technology learning site (https://www.udemy.com/ ), tech information sites like Tech Republic (https://www.techrepublic.com/) and meetups which connect a variety of diverse tech experts, in a networking environment. Kanika’s advice for other women is: “DEMAND respect in a respectful way. You want to be firm in who you are. You have to take the high road.” Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses; capitalize on your strengths. To keep up, read a minimum of one or two focused articles per day. “Look for ‘virtual’ mentors,” if you can’t find the right kind of mentor, in-person. Her overriding message to women is “just strive toward equality --- with pay, and opportunity. Keep moving forward; keep evaluating what culture fit is good for you.”  Her philosophy is “We need to evaluate what kinds of organizations work for us, so we can thrive.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Christine Rice, formerly President of VisionIT (www.visionit.com), and now CEO/President, of its IT staffing division: VisionPro (http://www.visionproteam.com/). VisionPro has 20 offices throughout the U.S., and is also global with offices in Canada, Mexico and Brazil. As a child, Christine had not been partial to technology subjects. “I got involved through my siblings,” she said. Both her older brother and sister worked at EDS (Electronic Data Systems). While she was in high school, “hearing my sister talk about IT, and the projects she was working on,” spurred Christine.  When she graduated high school, she also worked EDS, while simultaneously attending Wayne County Community College in Detroit (www.wcccd.edu/), and then Central Michigan University in Midland, Michigan (https://www.cmich.edu/) obtaining her B.S. in business management. Christine’s first EDS position was as an orientation specialist and then she moved into employee relations/human resources. “Our job was to lower the company’s liability in hiring, firing, and disciplining employees.” Over 15 years, she worked her way up to regional HR manager, with a substantial team, collaborating with EDS leaders at every level. Christine left EDS to join her brother, David Segura (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidseguravisionit/) after he founded VisionIT in 1997.  VisionIT, today, is a global software development company, systems integrator, reseller of key solutions (like SAP), and innovation lab for the development of new applications.  But at startup, it was a technology services and Web development venture. As David realized his need for increasing talent “He came to me for help. I didn’t realize helping would quickly turn into a full-time job. What a journey!”   “As a startup company, you really wear multiple hats,” Christine acknowledged. “I started selling and promoting the company.”  Due to her strong network of established relationships she cemented large clients quickly, and the customer base multiplied. She concentrated on human resources, hiring/firing, fostering talent at VisionIT. “As we were serving companies, doing application development and a variety of projects, they would come back to us,” and ask for resources to make additional progress. So, Christine decided “why don’t I concentrate on building the staffing side of the business?”    Two of Christine’s strengths are the ability to clearly communicate, and consultative business-building. “I like being in front of the customer,” she stated. “As a company, it is where we get our best ROI, because I truly take an interest in the customer’s problems, and how we can solve them.”  She also points to her relentless work ethic: “I was wired to work hard and deliver. And people will focus on that.” Christine shared lessons for entrepreneurs.  “When you are hiring people,” she said, “hire slow, but fire fast.”  As a leader she stressed that “integrity is very important,” and any leader needs to “build trust with your organization.” To do that, she deploys consistent transparency.  Christine’s personal happiness emanates from caring for her family (two college age sons and her husband) and “corporate success and hitting our goals.” To achieve balance, she stresses time management: carving out time for things that have the most priority and being disciplined in using your time well. Christine’s guiding principles for aspiring leaders include: surround yourself with other strong leaders; get involved in your community; listen, attentively, and never stop learning. In her philanthropy life, she works with children and young adults of Hispanic origin. “It’s important for inner city kids to see people who look like them be successful,” she said. She speaks frequently to students and gives presentations on behalf of Latina/Latino organizations who concentrate on education and careers. Her advice, especially for “the young folks” is: “Take that risk.  If you’re not making yourself uncomfortable” according to Christine, you are not making progress and “dress for success --- mentally! Focus on the positive.” Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Monsoon Strategy Partner, Pam Metivier, Co-Creator of STEAMTeam ®5, a children’s series to get girls excited about STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math. Pam considers this not just a series but “the beginning of a movement,” that tells the stories of five girls who use science, technology, engineering, art, and math to accomplish their goals. The books are available on Amazon (www.amazon.com) or on their own website (www.steamteam5.com). Pam was always a tech maven. “As a child I always liked to take things apart.  I took apart my favorite Christmas gift: a Timex watch, when I was about 8,” she said. “And I’ve also been interested in writing my entire life.  So, I got a degree in technical writing” from Oklahoma State University (https://go.okstate.edu/). Pam’s early career focused on writing technical and design specifications. Her first job was as a senior tech writer at hospitality software company, Sulcus Hospitality Group.  “I started out writing manuals,” she explained. “In doing so, you identify opportunities to make the product better.” Her next career step was product marketing. “In 1995, I was working for a software company (First Data Corporation: https://www.firstdata.com/)  that decided it wanted to create the first online banking application. I taught myself HTML.” Pam was recruited into First Data’s product development team, “defining requirements, and stuff like that.” In 1997, Pam moved to Silicon Valley, as a tech writer, for Vantive, subsequently acquired by PeopleSoft, then swallowed by Oracle Corporation – www.oracle.com -  in 2002. From technical writer, Pam was promoted to direct Vantive’s Website development.  “Then I moved to co- found my first startup, and it was a little scary but very exciting” Pam said. She headed product marketing at Clip2, her company, which was one of the first social bookmarking sites.  Pam said that “I’ve always kept my hands dirty. I can always use the tools that I recommend my clients should use.” She is highly enthusiastic about STEAMTeam®5.  “My business partner and I created this series.  He invented it while he was playing with his daughter.  He wanted to infuse education into their playtime.” The real breakthrough came when Pam attended the Washington D.C. WOMEN’S MARCH in January 2017 (https://www.womensmarch.com/). “I left there wondering: What can I do to contribute in a positive way to the issues that I care about most, which are education, science, women and girls, and their equality?”  STEAMTeam®5 was her answer. “I had an ‘ah ha’ moment, where it was clear that an answer would be to flesh out these theme characters, and create a book series aimed toward little girls, and boys, too, to help normalize girls and STEM and STEAM”. Girls reading it would “identify with role models, who are young and fun and someone they would like to be, someday.” As far as tech industry equity, Pam said: “The problem starts with girls younger than we thought.  We need to start with girls when they’re very, very young --- even preschool age.” While STEAMTeam®5 was written for those from 7 to 11 years of age, the audience for the series can be kids as young as 3, with their parents reading to them.  If a parent or teacher connects simple things to engineering and science, children will understand that “science is fun!” She stated: “You don’t have to exceptional to be equal.  I think that is a message that young girls need to hear. My goal is to normalize seeing women and girls in STEM/STEAM courses at school, and in tech careers.” As a busy Mom and entrepreneur, Pam focuses on “one day at a time.  Did I balance on that particular day?” Also, “I take little breaks from work to check in with my child to just make sure that he is engaged; or we’ll do something fun together.”  Additionally, she said: “I’m working really hard on putting my phone away.” Pam Metivier can be reached on Twitter at @metivier. Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Diva Tech Talk spoke with Eboni Mack, Senior Manager, Analytics, at GTB (www.gtb.com). In high school, Eboni originally had her eye on a thespian career, but instead decided to focus on communications studies in college (“the way people think and how they consume media.”).  During her college years at the University of Michigan (www.umich.edu), Eboni benefited from a public relations internship at Lapides Publicity Giragosian, a media internship at Fox 2 News (http://www.fox2detroit.com/), a writing stint at the Michigan Daily (https://www.michigandaily.com/)  and an internship at Radio One (https://urban1.com/radio-one/).  Post-graduation, her first job was as an account executive for AT&T (www.att.com). Simultaneously she went back to school for her MBA, with a dual concentration in marketing and management, from Wayne State University (www.wsu.edu).  Two years in, Eboni moved into a market analyst position, a role she held for four years.   She then shifted to MRM McCann (https://mrm-mccann.com/), a large advertising agency (part of the global MRM Worldwide Group) that specializes in helping large companies effectively convey their brand value and deeply connect with customers.  Eboni’s initial MRM McCann assignment was as senior data analyst for General Motors (www.gm.com).  She dove into CRM (customer relationship management) analytics, dissecting email campaigns for Buick and GMC, then a senior site analyst role, evaluating consumer behavior across all GM brands. Eboni then migrated to Team Detroit, going through a brand change to GTB ( Global Team Blue), and is proud of their heritage as a full-service agency to Ford Motor Company (www.ford.com) .  “We have creative, project management, strategy and a huge marketing science unit, that has different analytics disciplines from media to online search to attitudinal and survey.” Eboni exclaimed.  “Bringing all those disciplines together to serve our singular client,” is GTB’s key differentiator in the competitive advertising world.  Eboni’s current role is focused on website optimization. Eboni sees her key strengths as diligence, drive, and inquisitiveness. “I am always looking to learn,” she said. “Technology is an industry that is always changing. You need to constantly be feeding your brain with knowledge and information just to keep up!”  She said that “being a woman of color has definitely shaped my experience.  Throughout my career, there have been many times when I have been ‘the only’ in a room! But it has shaped my experience in a positive way and has allowed me to bring a different perspective to the table.” Eboni is ambitious.  “Within a few years, I see myself moving into a director role, where I am leading a division or department. Long-term, I see myself exploring entrepreneurship.”  She also plans to get her PhD, at some point in the future, to teach at the university level, later in her career. For Eboni, “happiness is about being fulfilled in whatever it is I am doing.”  Her current sources of happiness include her stimulating career, strong relationships with friends and family, and traveling the world.  “That criteria may change as I enter different parts of my life.”  Eboni acknowledged that “I have a fear of failure. My greatest fear is allowing my fear of failure to hold me back. When I leave this earth, I want to know that I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. I don’t want to miss out on anything because I was afraid to take a risk.” Eboni’s advice to women destined to lead includes: “Always be in a constant state of learning.” “Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.” “Give back along the way.” Eboni served as an advisor to the Dr. Betty Shabazz Delta Academy for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated (http://www.deltasigmatheta.org/educational.html).  “I also studied abroad, in South Africa, so I did a lot of volunteering with youth, including the St. Philomena’s Children’s Home and LoveLife, a health awareness organization geared toward youth in South Africa.” “What I would tell the ‘younger Eboni’,” she said “is that you don’t have to have it all figured out. I literally thought I was going to be ruling the world by 25. When that didn’t happen, it was a little disappointing. Now I would tell myself to ‘allow yourself to be human.’  You don’t have to have all the answers. And that’s ok, because life is really about the journey, and not the destination.” The best way to contact Eboni J. Mack is through her Linked In account. For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Chris Rydzewski, tech veteran, serving as Executive Director for the Michigan Council of Women in Technology (www.mcwt.org). Chris did not originally plan a path in technology: “Ironically, I stumbled into it,” she said. Matriculating at the University of Michigan (http://umich.edu/ ), “I loved math and stats,” she said, “but I wound up with a degree in marketing.” Having lived in Texas for a while, Chris returned to Michigan and joined IT powerhouse Compuware (www.compuware.com) in the early 1990’s . “They had 5 lines of business, and were really big, at that time.” For eight years, Chris sold Compuware solutions, supporting the Rocky Mountain states and then the entire Midwest. Then she became an international product line sales director responsible for coaching direct and channel sales teams in South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Chris then moved to BMC (www.bmc.com) focusing, for 5 years, on sales to large Michigan-based corporations. She subsequently moved back to Compuware as a strategic sales manager for key “named accounts” regionally. The move allowed her to explore other products including product portfolio management and change management offerings. In 2013, Chris moved over to Compuware’s application performance management division, a growth segment for the company. Within a year, private equity investment firm, Thoma Bravo LLC purchased Compuware for $2.4 billion. Under the agreement, Thoma Bravo split Compuware into two separate companies: the mainframe software business (under the Compuware name) and Dynatrace (www.dynatrace.com), real-time software management and maintenance. Chris stayed with Dynatrace, selling for them for the next four years. “It was always about solving problems. And that’s what I love about technology.” In the summer of 2017, changes at Dynatrace spurred Chris to leave the company. She asked herself questions like “what is my gift?” and “what is it that I should be doing, moving forward?” She was “tapped on the shoulder” to consider the opportunity with the Michigan Council of Women in Technology. “For the previous 12 years, I had always been a volunteer,” Chris said, but now assumed the role of Executive Director. In her new role, Chris is responsible for full MCWT P&L management with oversight over the organization’s fiscal health, budget, fundraising, staff, and more. She is laser-focused on “operational improvements and efficiency.” With a mission to “grow and inspire girls and women in the field of technology in Michigan,” MCWT consumes most of Chris’s energies. “This is the ‘give-back’ time for me.” MCWT runs 35+ large and small events each year; has given over $1 million in scholarships to college-bound and post-college women pursuing technology careers; will run 10 summer tech camps for 5 th through 8 th graders this year; has 13 after-school girls’ middle school and high school tech programs; hosts an annual Website design contest for middle school and high school girls; a mentorship program for mid-career women, and more. While still small, compared to other nonprofits, MCWT “has a lot of programs and stakeholders,” Chris said. And she is now responsible to work closely with the Mission Officers, Infrastructure Leads, Staff, Volunteers, and the Boards to help drive success for all the programs and events! Chris has been grateful to observe “many great leaders over the last 12 years” of her volunteerism at MCWT, teaching her key leadership lessons: ● “Be passionate” about whatever you choose to do. ● “Be open to new opportunities.” ● “Believe in yourself. “ ● “Be relevant.” Chris commented: “You are not really going to know what you are good at, until you try different things, and see what bubbles up to the top.” “I think women have different characteristics” than men, Chris said. “ I think we listen better and communicate better.” Some of her former colleagues “would be amazed at how I could pull out information” when she was making joint sales calls with them. She emphasized that “you have to make yourself heard” particularly when you are in the minority in the workplace. A self-admitted “workaholic,” Chris admits to occasionally have a problem balancing family, and work. She has deployed a few practical tactics to address this. “My husband and I have ‘date nights,’” she said and the time between dinner and when her teenage daughter goes to sleep is the time when everyone focuses on family. Driving her daughter anywhere, she turns herphone off. As a family, they also plan big trips that all of them can take, together. “You should not always have your work drive you. Your family is super-important; there is so much more,” said Chris. “Technology makes everything relevant” according to Chris. She can be reached through the new and improved MCWT website (www.mcwt.org). For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Jennifer Charters, Chief Information Officer of Corporate Technology for Ally Bank (www.ally.com), one of the very first online-only financial institutions in the United States.  Jennifer’s technology fascination began in middle school. “My family purchased a VIC 20,” she said. “It basically looked like a keyboard, that you connect into your television.”  At first, Jennifer played with inbuilt pre-programmed applications but then began to create her own programs. In high school, she moved on to use Apple IIe (www.apple.com) computers and recognized “I had a knack for the logical nature of coding. It came easy for me.”  She matriculated to Michigan State University (www.msu.org) as one of “less than a handful of women” in the computer science program and also minored in psychology and business because “technology, just for technology’s sake, doesn’t necessarily make sense.  When you apply technology to a problem,” it does. In college, Jennifer was fortunate to obtain internships at IBM (www.ibm.com) with her first summer in North Carolina, second in Rochester, Minn. and third in Chicago, Illinois. “I got experience trying all these different companies.” Also, as a member of the Society of Women Engineers, she was fortunate to have numerous recruiters swarming. “One of the companies was Accenture (www.accenture.com),” Jennifer said. “That idea of being a jet-setter and traveling all over the world and getting that opportunity to explore different areas really appealed to me. I started off as a programmer,” she said. “It evolved into project and program management; and gave me a lot of exposure to a lot of different companies, and roles within companies.” She began in the telecommunications vertical market, then specialized in the field of Internet service providers. “That gave me the chance to work globally,” with stints at Deutsche Telekom (https://www.telekom.com/en) in Germany and Grupo Telecom (http://www.telecomitalia.com/tit/en.html) in Italy.  Jennifer then focused on other startups including Focal Communications --- later acquired by Broadwing, which was then acquired by Level 3 Communications (http://www.level3.com/en/), in an acquisition flurry.  She then moved to a project at AT&T, in New Jersey, right after the World Trade Center was decimated by the events of 9/11; worked on that for two years; then decided to move back from Chicago to Michigan. “Ultimately, I got pregnant,” and both she and her husband landed jobs in Michigan. Jennifer switched to an insurance industry project Accenture  with The Automotive Club Group (www.aaa.org).  “What I was most interested in was staying local, then” said Jennifer.  This assignment became her entrée into the fascinating world of fintech. “Then I got pregnant with my daughter,” and had an epiphany. Her emphasis shifted to achieving a work/life balance. “I began to look for other opportunities” outside of Accenture. Jennifer obtained a project manager position at GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors (www.gm.com). “It was an interesting change of pace,” she said.  She had her second child after having joined GMAC, and when she returned from maternity leave, GM had sold the financing arm to Cerberus, (http://www.cerberuscapital.com/),  a private equity company. “Fast forward another year and a half, and the worldwide financial crisis hit. I felt like I was in the crosshairs of it all. It was a financial company linked to the automotive industry, and those were the industries most affected. We were in real trouble, on the verge of bankruptcy.” The U.S. government bailed out GMAC reinventing the entity as a bank holding company.  “It meant we had more regulations, but it also gave us the opportunity to start a bank --- an online bank: Ally Financial.” The key lesson for Jennifer? “In crisis, transformation happens.” Jennifer was promoted to program manager and then a director. Eventually, she took her current promotion to Chief Information Officer, Corporate Technology, with responsibility for seven direct reports, and a large organization numbering over 180 colleagues.  “Banks had not always been very friendly.” With pride, Jennifer feels that Ally fundamentally has changed that. “We care about our customers. Our motto is ‘do it right’. Customers are really responding.” “When I try to hire people,” Jennifer said, “one of the things I look for is learning agility: somebody who has curiosity, is continually ‘sharpening the saw,’ and looking for opportunities to stay fresh. In technology, it’s constant change.”  In her volunteer life, she is on the Advisory Board for the Michigan Council of Women in Technology (www.mcwt.org). She also coaches her daughter’s 12-week “GIRLS ON THE RUN” program, where she meets weekly with groups of girls “teaching them to be leaders, to be collaborative with each other, to be kind.  At the same time, they also learn to run.” At the end of the period, they run a 5K race. Jennifer, herself, has recently pushed herself to complete two Iron Man Triathlon Races. Key lessons that Jennifer has learned through her career: “Relationships are key.” Take time to develop them and maintain them. “Having people, you can talk to” is essential. “Understand what your priorities are. Take time for them.” It’s ok to take a step back. (“You actually learn quite a bit,” from taking the occasional break.) “Managing people is a whole different skill-set and experience. You use influence. It requires trust; and that you have a good team around you.” “Recognize that your career is your own, it is what you make of it. Follow your dreams.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Holly Rollo, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of RSA (www.rsa.com ),a Dell Technologies (www.dell.com) company, offering business-driven security solutions for millions of users around the world and more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies.  Holly said: “you never know what’s in store,” since she did not originally set out to be a technology leader. The daughter of a Marine who was taught the value of determination and hard work at a young age, Holly’s journey began with a passion for investigative reporting. With an undergraduate journalism degree from Santa Clara University (https://www.scu.edu): “I had two job offers: one with a paper, and the other as PR person for a semiconductor company.” She chose the PR job and has no regrets. “What is amazing about marketing is that you’re constantly chasing a story. It’s a creative job. It’s a quantitative science job. It’s a technology job since marketing has gotten more technical.” As Holly got started, she “asked the dumb questions like ‘what does this mean for customers?’ and ‘how do they buy it’….” The answers she received helped her ”understand the whole picture” and weave the right stories to strengthen and promote brands, products and services. From National Semiconductor, (purchased by Texas Instruments (http://www.ti.com/)) Holly moved up through a variety of jobs, building a substantial career including stints at Young and Rubicam, IBM (www.ibm.com) Sanrise (www.sanrise.com) Symantec/Veritas (www.symantec.com), Sybase (www.sybase.com), SAP (www.sap.com), Cisco (www.cisco.com) , FireEye (www.fireeye.com) and Fortinet (www.fortinet.com). Her path was forged by “focusing on what I was good at; what I was interested in.“ Rather than working in status quo situations, Holly was motivated by attacking “big, hairy problems.” Some of those included repositioning companies or older brands to take advantage of new markets, effecting full company turnarounds, positioning organizations for hyper-growth, or rationalizing and organizing hodgepodge tech product portfolios.  “I like jumping into the middle of chaos and making order out of it!” According to Holly, life stages affect your career choices.  For instance, starting out, she said, “the brand that you work for, ‘speaks’…” and choosing it wisely can determine your career trajectory.   “After that, there are different things that are important,” she noted. One of her career changes was inspired by a desire to “work with a woman who could mentor me.” Then, “later, as I had children, flexibility was more important, Now, what I have learned is that I want to work with people who are amazing, people to have fun with, every day.”    In making mission choices, Holly thinks that what instinctively drives decisions can be different for women than men. “Sometimes, what’s important is the money. I think women are sometimes uncomfortable with that idea.”  Holly also stated “there are tradeoffs.” She cited the example of choosing a startup with exciting potential, great experience and an impressive title versus working for a larger, more established company at a higher compensation level. Holly also suggested, for personal peace of mind, “there has to be a conversation, at home, about tradeoffs.  You have to know what you can balance, at home, in that workload,” to make informed decisions. To achieve balance, in addition to yoga and hiking, Holly reminds herself “it’s one day at a time, one work week at a time.”   The tech industry is unpredictable so “this can also all change tomorrow. The best I can do is just focus on what’s right in front of me and take it in bite-sized chunks.”  Holly is grateful to be in the security field. “There’s a bigger mission. Particularly in the current environment, you can really understand how what goes on in the digital world impacts us all. It’s about how you detect and respond, managing risk to your mission.”   Holly noted that there is “a massive issue in technology employment,” and “everyone is going to be needed. We need all kinds of talent.  We need more women in engineering; we need more women in leadership; we need more women in storytelling positions.” With the advent of the “Me, Too” movement and other progressive societal influences, she thinks that “a lot of behavioral changes are going to happen” to assist in breaking down diversity barriers. “We have the power to vote with our feet, and choose not to work for a certain company, or a certain manager, leader or CEO.”  The biggest issue in Holly’s mind that needs to be addressed is “the pay equity piece.” She noted that each individual manager can change that. “Every year, we go through reviews. We have the power to address the pay gap” then. Her perspective is that pay equity is solvable, “if we chip away at it, little by little. Everybody can play a role.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Jill Maiorano, Director of Strategic Engagements, Americas Division, at Cisco (www.cisco.com).  Topics ranged from management, strategy, to balancing home/family with a busy career. “I was not a ‘technology tinkerer’” Jill said.  “From a relatively early age, I decided to be in sales.” After graduating Eastern Michigan University, she felt “really blessed that I was able to find tech.” Her first tech sales job was with Allnet Communications, providing long-distance services to business customers. She was there a few years when Frontier Communications acquired the company, and was later acquired by Global Crossing Inc. (www.globalcrossing.com).  At Allnet, Jill progressed from frontline sales, to sales team management, to opening markets throughout Ohio (Toledo and Cincinnati), to management of the Midwest. Jill then joined the startup team at USN Communications, a CLEC, where she opened and managed 13 offices across Michigan and Ohio. “It ended with a phone call from the president saying that we had run out of money, no more VC funding.  I spent the next two months running what felt like ‘resume clinics’ and writing referral letters” for the 150 people who had worked for her. Then Jill moved to Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink, www.centurylink.com) as a director; then migrated to Sprint (www.sprint.com) to “the easiest job I ever had” as a sales manager. Her next decision to plunge into greater technology depths drove Jill’s decision to join Cisco, 12.5 years ago.   Jill is a Cisco enthusiast for a variety of reasons. “We take our investments, our future, very seriously,” she said. “We call it a ‘buy/build partner model’. She also loves the fact that Cisco deploys a “work is something you do, not where you go” philosophy to help team members achieve life balance.  Jill said: “For 11 years, I ran sales organizations. Each year was slightly different. It was a really interesting time.” In 2016, Jill “took on a role that never existed before.”  Reporting to the SVP of Cisco’s $28 billion Americas (Canada, Latin America and the U.S.A), she was asked to “help with the way we engage with our customers, our partners, our employees.”  Jill’s busy team handles internal and external events, speaking engagements, public relations, internal and external communications of all kinds. “My team also captures the ‘stories’ “Jill said, both within and outside of Cisco, and “elevate and share them.” They have created very impactful Advisory Councils and “do a lot of survey” work to really listen to the field employees to hear more about what is happening in the market, with customers and partners.  Ever action-oriented, Jill said: “I’m in the ‘then, what?’ business, and enjoying it!” Jill feels very comfortable in her skin and has learned, along the way. She said that to feel fulfilled, “most people need more than a number” for which to strive. “They need to feel they are making a difference.”  She is also intent on promoting unique treatment for each team member at the company. “While we rally around mutual mission, individual attention, understanding what makes that person tick” is a strength she uses, daily. While comfortable now, Jill harks back to an earlier time when she “felt defensive” as the only female leader in organizations. “Gaining results took some of that away, but part of it was simply deciding not to live in that ‘head space’ – to not allow myself to feel like I wasn’t welcome” among her male peers.   She gives back to the Cisco community by trying to help through an internal affinity group called Cisco Connected Women, a community for all women at Cisco, all over the globe. The Americas chapter has grown to 4000 members with a 14-member managing board, and a 30-member Advisory Board. “Connected Women’s role is to help attract, retain, develop, and celebrate women as part of Cisco’s competitive and diverse workforce,” Jill said. She decried the fact that while science, math and engineering are part of middle school and high school curricula, technology in many regions and school systems is noticeably absent. Jill’s rallying cry is “where’s the T????”.  Cisco’s Connected Women, 7000 strong globally, implements outreach among adult women and encourages girls to pursue STEM curriculum and vocations. Jill’s children are teenagers, so she is now “at an interesting place where I am trying to get back to things I enjoy” which includes tennis, working out and socializing with friends. “Ultimately what makes me happy is having a blend. When things get out of whack, I really feel the  stress. There is no perfect. You have to look at balance, long-term.” Jill also admits that she has an “unnatural fear of failure,” but has become more comfortable taking risks, and learning from them. “At today’s pace, you must be willing to be out on the edge, and then retreat, regroup and relearn.” Key leadership and life lessons that Jill shared were: Be yourself. “Go for it; be a pioneer.”   “Embrace change.” The pace of change is intense, so keep up with it. “Be real with who you are.  Know your strengths and your weaknesses. Match your skills with your career.” “Create a woman friend network. If you have the right ones in your life, they will ‘high five’ you better than anybody. They will hug you when you need a hug.  They will nudge you when you need a nudge. And they will ‘call you on it’ when you need that!” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed K. Melissa Kennedy, best-selling author, and Managing Partner/Global Innovation Facilitator at 48 Innovate (http://www.48innovate.com/) a platform for generating employee-driven problem-solving through nimble entrepreneurial practices in 48 hours.   Clearly a “change-maker,” Melissa owes her technology orientation to “good old Dad,”a network administrator, who “really exposed me and my brother to technology at an early age.” In high school, she “dabbled” in tech; but went on to graduate from the University of North Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications.  She worked for North Carolina State University as the campaign co-leader for an education bond referendum, winning $3.1 billion in higher education bonds --- “the largest higher education bond in U.S. history!”  NC State “serendipitously launched my career in more STEM-oriented” directions. She obtained her NC State master’s degree in marketing, with a focus on technology companies.  For Melissa, this “opened the door, and gave validation” so she could move from higher education and government to work for what was then a startup provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions – Channel Advisor (https://www.channeladvisor.com/ ). After that, Melissa joined Cisco Systems, (www.cisco.com). “That’s when my career exploded.”  Melissa felt like “I had a real impact on the business because I applied some of my skills from a startup I worked with, in ecommerce, to this big networking giant. I worked with 3000-4000 channel partners, helping them scale their marketing efforts.” She credits her ability to work cross-functionally across many organizations as being key to her 5-year Cisco success; and is grateful for this period allowing her to experiment with a variety of marketing techniques. From Cisco, Melissa jumped headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship. “I just went all in,” she said. “I got introduced to StartUp Weekend” (https://startupweekend.org/) a nonprofit 54-hour event convening North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham Triangle designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and experts from all domains to do amazing things. Melissa facilitated over a dozen StartUp Weekends around the world (“from Rio de Janeiro to Cedar Rapids, Iowa”). Learning through her own career, Melissa’s current company was born from insightful observations.  “Big companies have a problem moving fast,” she said. “The startup world taught me that there are tools and skills you can apply within big businesses to help them innovate.  And more importantly, you can help them enable and empower their employees to do cool stuff!”  She views her central mission as “making work meaningful, fun and productive, again.”  48 Innovate offers a methodology to help companies move from idea to concrete ‘executive proof’ plan in 48 hours or less.  “It uses pitch skills.  It uses design thinking.” She also deploys some “traditional” strategic management tools and planning, all wrapped into one fast-track program.  “Organizations can bring cross-functional teams to solve their greatest challenge or address their opportunity in 48 hours.” “I’m passionate about helping other people do things they didn’t think they could do. I use technology in all of my work.” So, Melissa has three tips for would-be entrepreneurs: “You don’t have to know everything.” For things at which you are not naturally talented nor proficient, contract it to someone else, or consider partnering. “You have to develop a ‘good enough scale.’ ”  Prioritize the high value tasks; concentrate on them. “The pursuit of innovation is all about practice.  Start small. Build the “strength muscle of being comfortable in the uncomfortable.” Then start applying for innovation opportunities. Melissa has written a book, that is now an Amazon (www.amazon.com) best-seller: The Innovation Revolution: Discover the Genius Hiding in Plain Sight,  to “share the things I learned.”  She said: “We’re in a new era. We have crossed from the Industrial Age, and its linear thinking, to the Information Age.  The tools, the processes, from the old age are not going to apply.  I have figured out to help leaders and individuals to make the simple change(s) that make a difference!”  She firmly believes “everyone has innovation within them. It’s up to us to go from idea to action.” Melissa can be reached at her 48Innovate website and on Twitter at @kmelissakennedy. For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk hosted Mamatha Chamarthi, SVP, and Chief Digital Officer for ZF Group Inc. (www.zf.com) a worldwide automotive leader, employing 137,000 people in 40 countries, with annual revenue of $43 billion.  Mamatha drives ZF’s digitalization strategy and emergent technologies to transform business models.  Her robust career spans more than two decades beginning in India, where she received her degree in Psychology, Sociology and English, and a masters’ degree in English. “I got married to my childhood best friend,” she said, moving to Bangalore, where she taught English to undergraduate Indian students.   She needed “a more dynamic mission,” and entered Sri Venkateswara University for a second master’s in marketing, with a minor in information systems. Mamatha moved to Michigan where her husband landed his “dream job” at Ford Motor Company (www.ford.com). “I enrolled at Wayne State University for a master’s in computer science” and accepted a job as a consultant at Chrysler, now Fiat Chrysler (www.fcagroup.com).  “That first interview was a phone interview. My 3-month-old baby started crying 10 minutes into the interview! The woman interviewer said: ‘I totally understand; just go take care of the baby first.’  That was my first lesson: being a woman, you should be empathetic to other women.” Mamatha began her Chrysler career as a consultant and “what started as a small client/server application for tracking tax incentive turned into a paperless office for government affairs.”  Mamatha’s insistence on understanding the full breadth of business, not just tech requirements, has been a hallmark of her career, ever since.  She went on to support public relations, and rolled out a global employee Intranet as well as media sites for PR releases and press kits.   Joining as a fulltime employee, as Daimler and Chrysler merged, Mamatha was part of the post-merger integration team.  “No one was looking at a standardized approach to Web technologies,” so she decided to lead the charge. She put together a business plan to streamline efforts, while inaugurating a major internal tech evolution. “I went around the world, selling the business plan” to Daimler Chrysler leaders, and “from scratch, I created a $10 million department supporting global Web technologies.”  From there, Mamatha worked on reinvigorating a project to develop an optimal production planning system which saved approximately $28 million annually. Then she “came to the attention of Sue Unger,” (then the CIO for Daimler Chrysler). Meeting initial resistance to getting sponsorship for another masters’ degree, Mamatha boldly wrote a white paper describing what she had done for Daimler Chrysler and why the company should further invest in her.  Receiving Sue’s blessing, and full corporate support, Mamatha enrolled for her MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/), emphasizing global business.  Mamatha migrated briefly to Daimler Financial Services (the finance arm of the automotive conglomerate), and then was asked to “be the program manager for the separation of Daimler and Chrysler” --- a very sensitive role at a highly disruptive time.  Mamatha considered this a valuable formative period for her.  “It goes back to empathy,” she said.  “There were so many of my colleagues that I was leaving behind in Chrysler. I felt guilty.  But it was an exciting opportunity, too. As Charles Dickens would say: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’…”.   Mamatha worked directly for Daimler until 2010 and then chose to become the first CIO for Consumers Energy (https://www.consumersenergy.com/), a Michigan publicly traded energy company.  Her first step was to work with leadership, and ensure that “They understand the world is changing.” Mamatha took the senior management team to Silicon Valley to visit with tech companies and then debrief at IDEO (www.ideo.com), a leading global design company creating positive change. “It was a huge ‘ah ha’ moment for the executive team.”  Mamatha considers one of her greatest accomplishments the transformation of the company to a consumer-oriented entity. “Every element of the company was subsequently focused on the customer experience,” she said. Mamata then moved to CIO at TRW Automotive. Within 5 months of her joining, the company was acquired by ZF.  The acquisition completed in January of 2015. In April 2015, she assumed her new role as Chief Digital Officer. Mamatha is passionate about this “because we have a very strong purpose:  Vision Zero --- moving to a world of zero accidents and zero emissions.”  The ZF mission to save lives is accomplished by providing the best in intelligent mechanical systems. “Most ZF processes are from the industrial age.  We need to transform them to the digital age.  Also, we need to start opening up to innovation. That’s the challenge.” In her career, Mamatha’s success-engendering qualities include:  a love of continuous learning; bringing integrated strengths to any challenge; courage; the ability to drive change; empathy; and a clear vision.  She created and maintains her own personal Board of Directors --- mentors who have guided her, and strong sponsors along the way. Mamatha’s key advice for other women aspiring to lead include: be bold, grasp opportunities, don’t think you need to meet every facet of a position in which you are interested, and ensure you have a healthy network.  She also says: “Give back.  Give back as much as you can.”  When meeting challenges: “Believe in yourself. Be comfortable in your shoes.  If I set expectations of how I should be treated, then people will automatically treat me that way.”  And her final note to our audience?  “Never have lunch alone.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

In our last podcast of 2017, Diva Tech Talk co-founders and hosts (Kathleen Norton-Schock and Nicole Scheffler) provided an interesting discussion of: Why Diva Tech exists, and the demographics of women in tech, now and in the future What, as technology leaders and tech industry veterans, they see as key tech trends in 2018 Which divas interviewed in 2017 might be most influential and expert in terms of those trends and Assorted other topics including major vertical markets to be affected by tech, giving back, and entrepreneurship. The key tech trends that Diva Tech Talks foresees as being most important in the coming year include: Artificial intelligence and machine learning Intelligent analytics and data science in general Cloud-based applications, and general cloud-propelled infrastructure Adaptive risk and enhanced security Event driven/event detection technology Virtual reality and even full immersion “Code-free” application development And the vertical markets that the divas have either recorded experts in, or plan to, include healthcare, fintech, automotive/mobility tech,  retail tech and the whole world of technology as it applies to making nonprofits more efficient and effective. What are the key themes that the Divas are most concerned with? GIVING BACK Strategic planning for enterprise, and technology in general Technology marketing Entrepreneurship, venture capital,  women-owned businesses and Bridging the gender gap in tech, to address issues of enterprise viability/profitability, innovation and most especially the upcoming chasm that looms between jobs that need to be filled and the talent to fill them. Most of all the divas are grateful for our growing, engaged audience, and for all the wonderful women we have interviewed to date, and intend to interview in the coming years. For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Elena Lipson, Founder of Mosaic Growth Partners (http://www.mosaicgrowth.com/).  Elena is also the host of THE BOOST Podcast, a podcast highlighting accomplished entrepreneurs, athletes and healthcare professionals.  Elena has experimented with multiple paths in the creation of her mission. “I started off in a corporate job in HR and marketing,” after her college graduation. “But I realized, quickly, that I wanted to do work that was more mission-focused. So, I went back to school to get my master’s in public policy.”   Elena moved into the world of public sector consulting working at BearingPoint, a small firm and then t Deloitte Consulting for 7 years ( https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en.html). “There, I really fell into the health tech space.” Elena said “I was really not that technical person. I was more interested in how technology could help enable better healthcare.” She worked in consulting for 8 years, but “I got to the point where I felt that being a partner in a big consulting firm was not the path I wanted to be on.” So, Elena moved over to a business development role at AARP (www.aarp.org).  But the pace of that organization was “a lot slower than what I was used to,” she said.  “I had this ‘aha’ moment where I realized that I was tired and burned out from working for other people.”   So, Elena decided to start her own consulting firm. “I quit my job at AARP, started Mosaic Growth Partners. I spent the first year testing out a lot of things. From that I developed a couple of core offerings,” she said. “My firm is helping entrepreneurs, and  organizations, in the digital health space. I focus on helping them with growth strategy consulting, and business development. We do a lot of market intelligence work; go-to-market and innovation strategy work; as well as outsourced business development functions and workshops around new business models.”   Elena also launched her podcast and is launching a coaching program for professional women “to help them get the promotions, raises and respect they are looking for in the workplace.” Two major lessons are “staying attuned to the market to see what’s working, and keeping your eyes on the ‘bottom line’ all the time.”  She foresees great developments in the healthcare industry. “I am seeing a lot of user-designed research and that’s really exciting.” Elena recently published an article to supplement her newly-minted coaching practice. Entitled “7 Things Badass Professional Women Don’t Do”, her tips included: Don’t put your head down, take time to build relationships; don’t always say “yes,” protect your time; and don’t be a “tough guy.”  In saying “no,” you can accomplish this with “grace and finesse. You don’t have to steamroll people.” Self-care is essential in Elena’s opinion to professional success and happiness. She ensures that she gets eight hours of sleep, blocks out time to exercise, and has good nutritional habits. “If you’re an entrepreneur, you deal with a lot of rejection,” she said.  So being in top physical shape is a protection and enables her to “handle some of that, and deal with the stresses.”   Elena also values mentoring and noted that she has had both formal and informal mentoring relationships but benefitted most from those that are organic, “relationships with people that really feel natural, and you are just the right fit, from a chemistry perspective.” Elena’s final words of wisdom are “you need to be confident in yourself; no one else is going to be able to give you that.”  Additionally, she emphasized “Just be open to where experience will take you.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed multifaceted, tenacious Janette Phillips. In her childhood, Janette was “studious” and “took all the science classes I could,” including Accelerated Chemistry, Physics and Science Seminar (an independent science-oriented curriculum) in high school.  Her intellectual interests took a turn in college, when she matriculated to the business school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (https://www.umich.edu/). Post-college, Janette felt lucky to land a job at Michigan Bell Telephone, which later morphed into Ameritech and then to AT&T (https://www.att.com/).  “I was hired as a market administrator,” she said, “which is the implementation portion of networks, and phone systems.” Janette was convinced that Michigan Bell had put her in the wrong role. On the first day of training, she thought: “I am in the wrong room.  I should be over there with the account executives.” But she said. “It took me about three years to switch to sales. I had to prove to them that I was good.  Within two weeks of entering my training class, I sold a phone system to an advertising company on the 10th floor of where we were!” This underpinned Janette’s belief in herself, and her ability to successfully sell.  “If you want to get somewhere, even if you are not officially ‘trained’ in it, just go!”   After three years as a market administrator, Janette moved into Ameritech sales for 14 years. “At the peak of my sales role, I handled the General Motors (www.gm.com) account,” responsible for the telephony segment of their large computerization efforts. “They had 200,000 voice ports, across the country.”  Daily, Janette managed a team that concentrated on the $25 million, annually, in recurring revenue that GM represented to Ameritech.  “It was very complicated,” she said, acknowledging that her biggest sale to GM had a 2-year sales cycle.  To accomplish that, Janette worked with EDS and Deloitte (www.deloitte.com) who “helped us do the financial modeling” for a new 7-year, fixed rate, $270 million-dollar GM contract. Janette was proud that “it was the largest single sale Ameritech had ever made. It was a team, but at the beginning, it was me; nobody believed in it.” Her lesson from this was: “It doesn’t matter what level you are in a company; how low you are on a totem pole. You can accomplish a lot!”  And her second lesson was to consistently deliver.  “Over at EDS, they could see, that if I said something would happen, I could get it done. My word was my word.”  Finally, for sales professionals, Janette’s advice is “to be a good salesperson, you have to know how to execute.” After the GM sale, Janette was promoted to direct the Managed Services Department for Ameritech, regionally. “We did a big deal with IBM (www.ibm.com), which was huge.”  Then Janette became pregnant with her first daughter. “And this job was really grueling. I was traveling to Chicago every week.  I chose to walk away.”  Janette had two daughters in a 2-year timeframe.  But, “When Michelle (her daughter) was about 1.5 years old, I went to work for Nortel (www.nortel.com).” She took on a Nortel support role, working on automotive accounts including Chrysler (www.fca.com), General Motors, and Ford Motor Company (www.ford.com). “I did that for about a year, but my heart wasn’t in it, because I had young children.”  Janette acknowledged that, for her, “it’s difficult to juggle young children, with a big job.”  Children, like “big jobs” are “24 x 7, too!”  Additionally, she saw that “Nortel started slipping down a slippery slope.” So, she took a Nortel buy-out.   Janette and her husband then created a regional pulmonary rehabilitation clinic business. For 5 years, she actively built and managed Valley Hill Therapy Centers, a two-clinic business, employing 20-plus people. “We were very good at what we did,” she said.  But “there wasn’t enough margin in it. We were very successful, but not profitable.” With her data background, as Janette was building the business, “we created our own ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. It handled patient care, employee records, charting, electronic medical records. I sold the business to Botsford Hospital, now part of the Beaumont (www.beaumont.com) and they still use my system for medical records.” Janette then became Executive Director for The Michigan Council of Women in Technology Foundation (www.mcwt.com), a Michigan nonprofit whose mission is to make Michigan the #1 state for women, and girls, in technology. After doing that for 3 years, Janette moved to her current role:  Vice President of Business Development, for Chrysalis Global Business Consulting (www.chrysalisglobal.com) --- a certified Woman-Owned Business (WBE), Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) and a Small Business Enterprise (SBE), headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. “I find clients who need help. We take them by the arm, and walk them through the process” of adopting ERP, and “we stay on the project side, and advocating…” for her clients. In addition, Chrysalis does a lot of things: “business process optimization and everything around ‘how does your business run’ and how can we help you make it more efficient, and automated.”  Janette was hired to assist Chrysalis in diversification into vertical markets beyond airlines and airports.  “My role is to find business in Detroit. So, we have clients in automotive, and healthcare.”  The size of the Chrysalis prospective client varies; “whoever needs our support,” according to Janette is a prospect. While Janette experienced some issues, as a woman at Ameritech, the challenges did not set her back in her career. “I just didn’t care.  I wanted to do what’s right for the client, for my own company, for friends, for organizations. The rub is that people don’t give you enough credit for what you know or what you can accomplish. I think it’s a more natural assumption for women.  But, I focus on the work.”  An acknowledged “workaholic”, Janette’s driving force is “making a difference in an organization, whether that’s informal or formal.”  A life lesson for her is “you have to stay true to yourself, and do what you like. Recognize who you are; figure out where you want to get to; get out of your own head, and go! Just go.”   In her community life, Janette gave back and continues to give back by participation, as her girls were growing up, in school PTO, and the Rotary Club;  and now as a member of the Tech Committee for Southeast Michigan’s Automation Alley (www.automationalley.org), and the newly-minted NEW Tech Group which Janette hopes will serve DPS (the Detroit Public School System) “to help them with technology, mentoring and as the liaison to outside organizations” and also strengthen “the soft skills:  things like public speaking.” She is also involved with Detroit’s Mercy Education pilot program assisting women who have obtained their GED to get to the next level. Janette’s advice for girls and women in the tech field is: “You need to enjoy what you do.  And make sure that whatever you are doing gives you energy. Pay attention and think. And work first, play second.”  Janette Phillips can be reached at jphillips@chrysalisglobal.com. For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk hosted engineer, tech expert, author and leadership coach, Farnoosh Brock, who shared lessons in personal development and career pivots. Having completed her master’s degree in electrical engineering at Clemson University (www.clemson.edu) , Farnoosh first worked as a design engineer at Atmel Corporation (http://www.atmel.com/), before joining Cisco (www.cisco.com), where she worked for 11 years. In addition to engineering, “I had the opportunity to move around, in other roles, such as sales operations, project management, program management. I got a lot of experience and am really grateful for that.” Eight years into building her Cisco career, Farnoosh began to feel restless.  “I stumbled on my passion for writing,” she said.  That led to blogging and to podcasting. The light bulb went off when she attended a blogging conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2010.  “That changed everything.”  Coming home, she decided “to take my hobby seriously, and turn it into a ‘side hustle’ with no impact to my career.”  She started her first newsletter; and she immersed herself into studying how to run a business, which was “something I absolutely fell in love with.” After that, “there was no looking back. Eventually she consolidated her writing and coaching under Prolific Living.  Much of the material is meant to inspire entrepreneurship, empower startups, and stretch human potential. Farnoosh emphasized that “if you feel you have an itch to do something, that has nothing to do with your career, and it is a strong urge, I recommend you follow that.”  She said that a key to being successful in starting a new endeavor is to “have one person in your life who believes in you, unconditionally, other than yourself.”  To select a coach, Farnoosh said ask yourself “how do I learn best” and ascertain what you need in terms of your strategy, your current weaknesses/strengths and the style that will help you grow, and reach your next level. Farnoosh centers much of her coaching around “positioning yourself powerfully” with some simple tips: “You are not selling; you are serving.”   “Connect the dots from your work to the bottom line effect.” “Create a circle of influence around you.” Ensure that you begin with a positive picture of yourself and your strong contributions to your work and mission. “Know your ‘blind spots.’ When necessary, make the right adjustments.” Above all: “Cultivate trust, every day. The more trust you have the more powerful your position will be as a colleague, as a leader.” The universal conundrum is that “Most of us already do a good job,” Farnoosh said. “But, how do we tell our boss, and others, where we want to go?” By being able to position ourselves powerfully, she asserted, we smooth our own journeys, and accrue the strength to forge our own unique paths. Discussing gender inequality in the technical field, Farnoosh also shared that sometimes “you see it where it may not exist.”  Her counsel, for women, is “be curious, not defensive.”  She firmly believes that “trust is one of the main foundations” of successful careers, and women can be agents of change if they can learn to simply keep open, curious attitudes when encountering perceived discrimination. Farnoosh recommends the audio version of widely-acclaimed Dr. Stephen Covey’s timeless Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as highly useful for our audience. In closing her last words of wisdom included “slow down; take care of your body; don’t sacrifice family or personal relationships for career.”  And finally, “trust yourself more.  You do have the answers. You know the right decisions. Use both your heart and mind. Trust that it will all work out.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed former investment banker and social entrepreneur, Laura Bilazarian, CEO and Founder of Teamable (https://teamable.com), accelerating any company’s ability to hire top talent by “smarter recruiting through social networks.”  A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/ ), with a degree in economics, Laura wanted to work at Google. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the guts to go there without affirmation from my classmates.”  Instead, her first job was at Miller Buckfire  (http://www.millerbuckfire.com) an internationally recognized investment bank. “I traveled the world, and ended up doing private equity in Vietnam,” she said. In the early throes of her career, Laura also played professional rugby, on the #1 award-winning national U.S. women’s team, strengthening her ability to work in teams, problem-solve, and stay calm under pressure. She observed that “What stops you from coming in first is your own mental state.”  She quickly moved to the declarative sentence. “Instead of saying we could win a national championship, I started saying we WILL win.” As she got deeper into investment banking, Laura said “at some point, I just felt that the work was meaningless. I read Mother Teresa’s letters to God and I had a period of introspection.  What is another way I can impact the world?”  She traveled to Armenia, and observed that “tech is a place where you can all win together. We could all use data to connect people to the right work.” She conceived the concept, that became Teamable, and launched a Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com ) campaign around it. She continued to pursue investment banking, co-founding a fund devoted to Armenian companies; and Teamable’s development and data science activities also all take place in Armenia. While raising money for her own company, Laura’s investment banking background afforded insight into what investors were looking for. “I think that’s something that every CEO should learn,” she said. “Do something, like financial modeling, to really understand ‘where are the levers’ in your business. Not all levers are created equal.”   Laura’s three co-founders are technical whizzes – Armenian data scientists and crackerjack programmers.  “The hardest math we did on Wall Street, they were doing in 5th grade.” Laura moved operations to San Francisco; met with Silicon Valley denizens including the top analytics team at Google; and continuously began to validate the approach and build the Teamable company and customer base. She pitched her first successful financing round at well-known Greylock Partners (www.greylock.com/), where they found an angel investor willing to take a chance on Teamable. Highly egalitarian, Laura said that it simply became obvious that, when pitching, she should initially take the title of CEO. “I really don’t know when I earned it,” she said. “Maybe it was with the first money raised, or the first customer signed.” (NOTE:  40-person Teamable has raised over $5 million in its A round of investment, and has over 90 customers, to date.  The company has quadrupled in size since February, 2017). Laura stresses that “really being honest” in terms of feedback is crucial in the Teamable culture. “I want it to be radically transparent,” she said. She also prizes a hard work ethic.  “Where you make the margin is work ethic.  It’s discipline. It’s going above and beyond.”  Finally, she is creating an environment focused on hyper-growth. “Never feeling comfortable; continuing to challenge ourselves.”  Laura admits that her past two years were unbalanced and “a little dark.”  But she thinks it is the direct cause of Teamable’s success. “If you maniacally commit to anything, for two years, you will succeed.” Ever an ambitious learner, Laura is spurred by her technology colleagues and her access to Silicon Valley brain trusts. “I took the whole machine-learning course on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) at 2x speed, over a weekend.”  Lean Startup is a book that Laura would recommend any would-be startup founder reading. “I can’t stand anything that seems like a problem,” Laura summed herself up and affirmed that “It’s super-scary to leave what you’ve done. But you can do it!” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed musician-turned-technologist, Theresa Ancick, Manager, Enterprise Business Intelligence at Beaumont Health Systems (https://www.beaumont.org), the largest health system in Michigan.  Theresa’s predilection for technology is genetic. Her father was a second-level executive at Michigan Bell (later acquired by AT&T: www.att.com) in the troubleshooting department. After high school, Theresa sang in a band, and traveled around the Midwest. “I had a lot of fun.  But my friends were graduating from colleges and getting married.  I went ‘oh my gosh, I think I might be a loser’ and decided to get off the couch and try and get a life of some sort.”  That new career life began with a brief stint as a waitress, “while I tried to figure things out.”  Then Theresa selected a job “specifically in computers” at Electronic Laser Forms, in Fraser, Michigan, who focused on producing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage forms “because I felt it was going to get me farther in life, ultimately.” Next, Theresa was hired by Gentry Machinery Builders, in Troy, Michigan to automate that small company’s accounting system.   Theresa learned everything she could about Gentry’s accounting system (payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger) as well as how to quickly computerize all the functions and reports. “Tony Robbins (https://www.tonyrobbins.com)  talks about discovering what your passions are; when you get involved with something and lose track of time.  I loved it.  It was like putting puzzles together.” This quickly blossomed into Theresa’s first entrepreneurial venture, when the vendor who sold Gentry their computers (Michigan Computer Solutions: http://michcomp.com/)  recognized her talents; suggested she provide the same services to other companies in the machine industry; and referred her to her first new customer. That customer “was so thankful that he sent me to every one of his friends! Within two weeks, I had to quit my ‘day job.’ “ Naming her consulting company, Accura Business Services Corporation, Theresa did not look back, (“it was a wave that took over me”).  “I was very popular in the tooling industry but I also served landscape companies, libraries, restaurants, over 200 companies, with their CPAs.  It was an education I would not have gotten at Harvard.”  Theresa gave up her company after the birth of her daughter, who suffered from the very rare “Caffey disease:” infantile cortical hyperostosis.   No insurance company would cover her daughter, so to qualify for family health benefits, she took a job at the Help Desk at Macomb-Oakland Regional Center (https://www.morcinc.org). Theresa dove into their billing system, based on her recent experiences and her penchant for “just figuring things out.”  In 9 months, they stabilized the MORC processes; moved from their antiquated tape-to-tape system; and became the one of the first mental health non-profits in Michigan to fully automate their billing system. Theresa worked at MORC for 10 years, eventually becoming the Director, Applications and Data Management. Along the way, she became aware of data warehousing and its intrinsic benefits to any business or non-profit operation.  “It was this intriguing thing on the horizon,” she said. To further explore that technology, Theresa moved to Oakland County Community Mental Health (https://www.occmha.org/ ), where new data warehouse initiatives were starting. She saw this as her “perfect job,” because “we had fun, and worked hard.  There was a lot of respect; we became aware that the more we built each other up, the better we all were.  We were all successful.”  Eventually Theresa led an 11-person team responsible for state-of-the art business intelligence and billing systems for OCCMH.  After her daughter made it to her healthier teenage years, Theresa also went back to school at Baker College for her degree. After OCCMH, she worked for Blue Care Network, an arm of Blue Care/Blue Shield of Michigan (https://www.bcbsm.com/ )  and then for Sun Communities (www.suncommunities.com ) , concentrating on business intelligence projects.  She then migrated to Credit Acceptance Corporation (www.creditacceptance.com) as Manager, Data Warehouse. From Credit Acceptance, she just recently moved to Beaumont Health System: “I feel like I am moving to an opportunity that was meant for me --- the impact for data analytics to have a positive effect on human lives.” Theresa’s entrepreneurial advice to others considering starting businesses is:  learn to delegate, “think bigger,” stay in learning mode, when you need to know something ask for help, and “when you hire somebody to do something, get out of their way.” Along the way, she saw companies falter because “they tended to micro-manage and they couldn’t get into the next thing.”  In addition, for any career, she strongly recommends that everyone get a variety of mentors to assist and guide them; and “learn how to speak with dignity and respect at all times. You can put exactly what you want out in the Universe fearlessly, and the possibilities present themselves.” A consistent giver, Theresa does food drives for the Gleaners Community Food Bank (www.gcfb.org/ ).  As an open mic host, she also organizes two major fundraising events per year for multiple sclerosis.  Additionally, she works with the St. Vincent and Sara Fisher Center (https://www.svsfcenter.org/ ) to provide GED testing for people who cannot afford it (“a cause very dear to my heart”). For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Dr. Rita Barrios, Chair for the Department of CyberSecurity and Information Systems, and Associate Professor, at the University of Detroit, Mercy (http://www.udmercy.edu/) graduating approximately 150 trained technology professionals each year. Rita said: “My Dad was always my biggest supporter.” The 7th child of 8 siblings in her “very strict” family, Rita admitted that she was “a little on the geeky side” in her high school years.  She entered the Detroit College of Business, specializing in accounting, but dropped it in favor of a technology major. She got married, and gave birth to a daughter during her senior year of college.   Rita’s several internships during that senior year (when her daughter was 6 months old) were at the Grand Trunk Western Railroad (gtw.railfan.net/), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway (https://www.cn.ca/).  After graduation, she became a full-time employee as a junior programmer.   Grand Trunk’s IT department was eventually bought by Compuware (www.compuware.com).  Rita was promoted from junior programmer to project manager (“a huge leap”).  Her first large challenge was a two-year international EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) project among three cross-border entities, automating the manifest for U.S. Customs to enable trains to cross borders without stopping. She credited her immediate management for empowering this next career phase. “Anything we needed, they made sure we had.”  The secret to the success of that project was digging into the details rather than becoming overwhelmed by the totality of the undertaking. “I took it a bite (byte) at a time!” Rita’s next step was as a Compuware contractor to Ford Credit (https://www.ford.com/finance) to maintain their legacy information systems, going from programmer to senior DBA.  Rita also obtained her Masters of Science in Information Systems, Software Assurance at the University of Detroit, Mercy; then later completed her PhD in information science, with a focus on security assurance and cybersecurity at Nova Southeastern University (http://www.nova.edu/).  “An opportunity came where I could move to academia,” Rita said.  “ That’s how I landed at Detroit, Mercy.” Additionally, she received certifications from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg University, School of Public Health in data specialization, and a certificate in criminal justice and law enforcement from the FBI Detroit Citizens Academy. A single mom for 14 years, Rita is justifiably proud of her two children. “I have a daughter, now working on her PhD in Material Engineering. And I have a son, going into digital media and graphics arts.”   Rita is also excited about her own cybersecurity field. “We teach is how to do investigations, how to do digital forensics/hacking. We partner with the Criminal Justice Program because you cannot have a crime without some digital piece to it, these days, and look at it from the criminal point of view. We also partner with the law school, talking about cyberlaw. “ Rita’s specialty has spun off into a side business. She runs an IT training and education consultancy, RitaBarr LLC (www.ritabarr.com) specializing in corporate IT training, and also partners with Mackinac Investigators on digital forensics investigations.   “At some point, I would like to grow the business.”  Ever-ambitious, Rita is also looking forward to moving to the “business side” of academia, at some point.   Along the way, Rita said that “I have always been the only female in the room.” As an example, “I presented research at the Department of Defense to a bunch of military people, who were all guys. Coming up through IT, I was the only female, but I have never felt like the only female. I was never discriminated against.”  This feeling changed though “when I went to the University.”  There she experienced “over-talking, interruption, all of it. I have been told by my colleagues that I better ‘know my place, young lady, ’ ” she lamented.  Rita recommended her approach to deal with this negative phenomenon. “I am very professional. I go into a very robotic mode, very stoic. I lay out the facts with no emotion. I plan to say.“ Rita’s focused leadership lessons/advice currently include: “Spend time to get to know people. Find out their strengths, and where they belong.” “Bring the best people around you; then get out of their way.” “If you think about it --- that the project’s too big --- you will not achieve what you want to achieve. So, whatever comes, just take it in.” “Stay flexible. There is nothing you can’t overcome; nothing is impossible.” And summing up: “There are no shortcuts.”  For Rita, success is always about hard work. For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk hosted creative entrepreneur, Natalia Petraszczuk, founder/CEO of new venture, VizBe (www.vizbe.com).  Natalia calls herself “a product of the Ukrainian community” in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan. Her undergraduate degree, from Michigan State University, was in International Relations.  Along the way, she worked with lobbying groups, on behalf of nonprofit organizations. Then “the political arena shifted a lot for me. I became less and less interested in that line of work,”  Natalia said.  In college, she took some basic computer skills courses, “because I wanted to stay competent” but “in a million years did not foresee myself in technology.”   Natalia fed her own entrepreneurial urge through observation: “As I got older, I began to see more and more examples of people taking the plunge,” she said. “My father always said: ‘When it comes to capitalism, you have to find a need and fill it’.  So, I kept my eyes open for opportunities.”    From her mid-twenties to mid-thirties, Natalia realized that “there was a big gap with technology as it related to self-development.” She learned three progressive lessons: “The answer is always within you.”   “You (your mind) are your biggest obstacle. Create a habit of focusing on the positive.” Then “Take time to truly connect with the best version of yourself.”   Practically, Natalia endorses meditation, envisioning a future ideal, journaling, and creating a vision board, to focus on long-time goals. Taking it further, Natalia founded VizBe, which “has pivoted a few times,” she said, “totally normal in the startup space.”    VizBe’s first product concepts were Web-based and mobile applications for the individual, to facilitate vision board creation and an eCommerce extension “where you could print the vision board to a whole host of products --- like your coffee mug, or your journal cover.” Then she determined her best audience for these products was companies and organizations, who could use VizBe solutions to enhance the lives of their employees. So VizBe launched as a “software and services company that helps engage employees through a goal setting program.”     As the non-technical founder of a technology-centered company, Natalia had some revelations. “All technology’s not the same, all coding and development is not the same” and “the biggest challenge with technology is that it is always changing.” VizBe eventually outsourced development to bigger firms to scale solutions to meet the needs of the B-to-B market and engaged in constant competitive analysis. “We work with employers to have their employees set goals for the next 10 years of their lives --- not just professional goals, but goals for their ‘whole selves’.  The platform helps draw out their answers, and helps create action plans and accountability within the workplace. It creates relationship-building; it creates loyalty to the company, and it results in tremendous loyalty, and retention, as well as higher productivity.”  In summing up VizBe’s value proposition, “ultimately what it comes down to is truly adding value to people’s lives,” she said.  Moving forward, Natalia’s goal is for VizBe to be acquired by a bigger entity, in the future. She commented on being a woman in the startup world. “It’s clear that there’s a ‘gender gap’,” in the entrepreneurial community,” according to Natalia.  “I end up working with mostly men. I try not to take it, personally. I choose to focus on what’s important to me and just persevere”.  To nourish women-led startups, Natalia recommended regional programs for budding women entrepreneurs, including those offered by Inforum (https://inforummichigan.org/), and The Michigan Women’s Foundation (www.miwf.org). Natalia’s advice for other women leaders is “keeping focused and simplifying is a key part of success.”  And remember to persist. “There are days you are not going to want to get out of bed, but there will be other days when it will be the best day of your life.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Meredith Harper, Chief Privacy and Security Officer for Henry Ford Health Systems (www.hfhs.org) With strong science and math aptitudes, Meredith began her tech journey in 2nd/3rd grades and then “I ended up being bussed, with kids all over the city of Detroit, to a middle school for gifted children.”  Meredith graduated high school in the top 3% of the Detroit Public School System, and started college at Hampton University, in Virginia. At the end of her freshman year, she lost her father. “So, I moved back home to Michigan,” where she was awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Detroit, Mercy (https://www.udmercy.edu/). In junior year, she switched from architecture to a computer science program. Meredith’s first industry job was on the Help Desk for Budco (https://www.dialog-direct.com ) supporting Ford Motor Co. (www.ford.com) dealerships. She then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan as a data analyst for The Medstat Group (www.medstatonline.com), and “even in the early ‘90’s, we were collecting millions of rolls of data,” Meredith said.  She widely traveled to support and install paid health claims systems at many client sites, nationwide. “That’s when I realized I wasn’t just a technical person. I liked to talk to people; I liked to sell things.” “I knew absolutely nothing about healthcare,” Meredith said. “So, I ended up going back to school, because I wanted to get insight into the industry.” While working full-time, Meredith received a master's’ degree in health care administration at the University of Detroit, Mercy, and credits the person she calls her personal “angel investor,” Sister Mary Kelly there, for pragmatically supporting her early journey. Referring to Sister Mary, Meredith says: “We need to understand, we don’t get where we are, by ourselves.” She moved on as an analysts and junior consultant at Johnson and Johnson (https://www.jnj.com) offering software to support operating room cost-savings. She worked as a project manager/team leader at the Central Georgia Medical System (https://www.navicenthealth.org/).  There, Meredith benefited from being mentored by director of IT, Kyle Johnson, now a CIO. “She taught me a whole lot about leading teams --- how you traverse this environment primarily made up of men.”   As a project manager at Children’s Medical Center, in Dayton Ohio, (https://www.childrensdayton.org), “we moved to the next regulatory ‘thing’ which was HIPAA (the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act).”  She led the HIPAA gap analysis for all health systems IT and operational areas. “I had to sit down and read the entire 1100-page document to understand exactly what the implications were going to be.” Moving back to Michigan, she joined Health Alliance Plan (www.hap.org) to establish their HIPAA plan.  “From that point forward, 2002, I haven’t been able to get away from HIPAA since,” she laughed. Henry Ford Health Systems, who owns HAP, asked Meredith, in 2003, to become their first Chief Privacy Officer. Originally embedded in the compliance department, separate from IT, “I became the first Privacy and Security Officer because we felt that those two areas needed to be married. We needed to be governed by the same rules. We needed to have the same leader.”  One of the personal benefits to Meredith is that she began to report directly to Henry Ford’s first female CIO: MaryAlice Annecharico (Diva Tech Talk Episode 24).  “We have been able to build a team of 53 amazing people, who are very passionate about the work that we do. Data is king around here.  The more we can control access to data, the more we can control our risk.”  Meredith also acknowledged “I’m having a ball because I am one of the few women in the country who do it, at this level!” Meredith’s personal strengths are math/science aptitude combined with strong communication skills; propensity to take calculated risks; flexibility; intellectual curiosity; emotional intelligence; and coalition-building. Ever the eager student, Meredith is enrolled in a post-university masters of jurisprudence in health law at Loyola University Chicago School of law, a prerequisite for her doctorate level degree that she plans on entering, next.  This doctoral program offers students the same mass of knowledge as offered to a would-be attorney.  She intends to take her doctorate and teach on the university level. “So, I get that legal spin without having to take the bar exam.”    As an African-American woman, in a male-dominated field, Meredith said “I think it’s more challenging for other folks than it has been for me.  They have to get used to the idea of women being at the table. I have chosen to take those opportunities as learning experiences for the other individual ---- maybe they have just not had an experience with a woman leader, in the way they need to.  And maybe it’s my job to teach them that.” Meredith recommends that women aspiring to achieve tech leadership role “Recognize that you will fail. Spin that failure into a ‘life lesson’ you can use, moving forward. Learn from it; move on to the next thing.”  Above all, she says: “Know that you can do this.” Giving back to her community, Meredith is active in MCWT (www.mcwt.org) and with both her former high school and grade school, working with individual girls to “show them they can begin to be what they want to be.”  In addition to her busy agenda at HFHS, she also chairs the Michigan Healthcare Cybersecurity Council; is active in HIMSS (the Health Information Management & Systems Society); and is a faculty member for the security boot camp fielded all over the country by Clearwater Compliance LLC. She credits her husband and family for helping her achieve balance, and retain energy. “I lean on them a lot.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Microsoft (www.microsoft.com)’s Senior Director, Industry Product Marketing, Cloud & Enterprise, Kirsten Edmondson Wolfe. Passionate about politics, Kirsten graduated from the University of California, Davis in International Relations and Asian History, and then moved to D.C to work for an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) “whose job it was to help build democratic institutions in newly non-communist, countries.”  Kirsten’s watershed moment was in 1997. She was “standing at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Aryaduta in Jakarta, Indonesia while the Suharto government fell.”  She “watched students use technologies to film what was going on in the streets. These students brought down a totalitarian government, using cell phones.”  She said to herself: “Wow, I need to get into technology because if I’m going to truly change the world, it’s going to be through tech, not through politics.”   Kirsten resigned her job; went back to Thunderbird International Business School, obtaining an MBA in business marketing; got a job, at the height of the “dot.com implosion” at a large Massachusetts-based consulting company, SETA; and subsequently joined Computer Associates, now CA Technologies (www.ca.com). Kirsten’s initial role at CA was technology consulting focused on “how do we have the U.S. government invest in technology in developing countries so that we can bridge the gap.”  She recruited “a fantastic team” who took what CA was already selling to the U.S. government and “made it more impactful to their mission.”  In one year, Kirsten is proud that CA “went from not being in the Top 20 vendors in security for the U.S. government to #3, behind Symantec and IBM.” As a leader, Kirsten said “I learn every day.”   At CA, “the first thing I learned was that ‘all boats rise together’. It is about collaboration. I succeed as a leader when my team succeeds.”  In 2009, she moved to Deltek (www.deltek.com).  What attracted her was the newly-minted CEO “recruiting folks from other software companies to make Deltek more of a ‘player’ in ERP.”   But, Kirsten learned what she called “a really good life lesson: don’t jump too quick.”   She said: “I realized, about a year in, that I needed to find a company that I could be happy at.” So, Kirsten moved to Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/dynamics)  and concentrated on business applications.   Her Microsoft team works with engineering to “infuse industry requirements into the Microsoft platform.  I can fundamentally change where we go, as a company.  It’s opened a whole new set of opportunities.   This is the one company that if we can stitch all of our stuff together, we can do fantastic things in society.”   Kirsten’s advice to leaders: “Surround yourself with great people.” “Listen.  Learn from other people.  Acknowledge that you don’t know everything.” “Admit when you are wrong, and that you screwed up.” In her philanthropic life, Kirsten works on children’s issues through Donors Choose (https://www.donorschoose.org/). “It is an online network of educators,” she explained. Through it, “I help fund some innovative education programs in less successful school districts. My son and I just picked one, yesterday.” Speaking of her family, Kirsten acknowledged the difficulty of achieving life balance. “There’s a lot of non-traditional communication,” and use of innovative technology to make it all work.  She also commented, “at the end of the day, you have to be willing to shut off the laptop, and go for a bike ride!” She is “learning to walk away. I think gender roles, over the last 20 years, is allowing us to put the laptop down, and do things with your family.”  Kirsten strong parting words of inspiration are: “Keep the faith, keep driving. There has never been a better time to be a woman in tech.  We can actually, fundamentally change all of it.” For the full blog write up, make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. Follow our show and tell us what you like with an online review.