GALs - Channel 9

Join Olivia Nelson, a (relatively) new marketing hire at Microsoft who works on Surface product launches. She discusses Microsoft's ACE Rotation program, music, and how she realized her passion for marketing.

In this episode of GALs, Christina Warren interviews Paige Bailey, a Senior Cloud Developer Advocate working on machine learning and artificial intelligence for Azure. Paige discusses the magic of Apple IIs; growing up on a farm in Texas; falling in love with Python and R via mapmaking and NASA internships; and going from geophysics in the oil and gas industry to machine learning at Microsoft.Follow Paige on Twitter here!Create a Free Account (Azure): https://aka.ms/azft-ai

Golnaz sits down with Product Marketing Manager of Azure Security, Kelly Anderson.She talks about her experiences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her time in the field, and how her mother was an inspiration for her to pursue a career in technology.Follow Kelly on Twitter here.Create a Free Account (Azure): https://aka.ms/c9-azurefree

Golnaz sits down with Urja Gandhi, Software Engineer at Expedia. Urja started off her career at AT&T working in India then moved to the U.S and started working at Microsoft and has since transitioned to Expedia. Follow her career journey in this episode of GALs.Founding partner & Mentor at University of Washington Husky Tech Founder of Seattle Tech Mentors LeanIn Circle Urja's LinkedIn profile

In this episode of GALs, filmed at the Microsoft Reactor space in San Francisco, Christina interviews Rita Zhang, a principal software engineer in CSE at Microsoft. Rita had just come off a technical presentation about using TensorFlow, Kubernetes, and Azure together, which led to an interesting conversation about open source at Microsoft and what surprised her about the company."Everytime I show up at a hack fest or a meetup with my MacBook, it helps build credibility to show that we're in this just as much as our customers,"Rita also shares what got her interested in technology and her progression as an engineer and the importance of having good mentors.You can (and should!) follow Rita on Twitter @ritazzhang

In this episode of GALs, we visit the Microsoft Reactor Space in San Francisco to interview Lauren Tran, a machine learning and artificial intelligence-focused software engineer in Microsoft Commercial Enigineering (CSE) team.Lauren didn't necessarily plan on being a software engineer. She dual-degreed in marketing and CS and then went to work at Saks Fifth Avenue as a marketer. It was while working as a marketer that she saw that her passion for computer science could help her in marketing. As Lauren tells it, she got her masters in computer science in order to become a better marketer, but while there, found out machine learning was her true passion.You can follow Lauren on Twitter @ltktran

As the Product Marketing Manager for the .NET Platform Beth is responsible for growing .NET, attracting new users, and helping our customers understand & use .NET so they can build amazing solutions. As a former Microsoft MVP and .NET customer her passion for the platform and the community helps guide her every day. Watch this episode to learn more about her journey through the tech industry and Microsoft and how she owes it all to her mom.

Christina interviews Ruth Yakubu, a CDA focused on Java, AI, and cloud analytics. In this one-on-one interview, Ruth shares how she became interested in tech, and the career path that led her to Microsoft.In addition to her technical work, Ruth is also a fashion and beauty obsessed entrepreneur. She shares the journey with her bootstrapped startup, Poshbeauty.com. Ruth discusses some of the challenges with launching a startup, while also working a day job as an engineer.Ruth also shares her thoughts on how we can encourage younger women to enter tech and entreprenurship.You can (and should!) follow Ruth on Twitter @ruthieyakubu

Get to know Beatris Mendez Gandica ("Bea") during this one-on-one interview where she shares her path to Microsoft, current role, and passion for diversity and inclusion!Bea has had an interest in computers since Microsoft Encarta, which led her to spend countless hours learning different topics. She now spends most of her time on static analysis tools and learning about security assurance with her team, mentors, and internal customers.She is also very passionate about diversity and inclusion and inspiring the next generation of girls to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers. Bea firmly believes that the STEM spark can be ignited at an early age in students and make an everlasting difference in their lives.You can learn more about Bea's TechnoloChicas campaign, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter @beagandica

As executive vice president of business development, Peggy Johnson is responsible for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to accelerate growth for Microsoft and its customers. Johnson works with external partners around the world, ranging from start-ups to large-scale enterprises, to identify areas of collaboration, drive innovation and unlock shared value. In this capacity, she also manages Microsoft's relationship with the venture capital community and oversees strategic investments through the company's corporate venture fund, Microsoft Ventures. Prior to this role, Johnson spent 24 years at Qualcomm, where she served as a member of Qualcomm's Executive Committee. During her time at Qualcomm, Johnson held various leadership positions across engineering, sales, marketing and business development, and ran the Qualcomm Internet Services business unit. Most recently, Johnson was executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and president of global market development, where she was responsible for commercializing new business opportunities and developing strategic relationships for the company. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Johnson worked as an engineer for General Electric's Military Electronics Division.

Kaitlin talks with Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie. They discuss her journey from Birmingham, England working at Energis to relocating to the United States and helping create a culture of change at one of Seattle's most mammoth tech companies. On top of being the CAO, Jenny created and leads the DisAbility Employee Resource Group at Microsoft and also helped start the company's Ability Summit.Read more about Jenny here.Note from Kaitlin: Over ten years ago, I heard Jenny Lay-Flurrie talk at Microsoft's YouthSpark program, DigiGirlz. As a teenager at the time, I was inspired to pursue a career in the technology industry. Despite usually being behind the camera, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down with Jenny and interview her--full circle. :)

Jasmine Greenaway is a Cloud Developer Advocate in the Microsoft Azure Organization. She spends her days presenting at conferences and helping our product teams make .NET the best developer platform for building all your apps. Jasmine has had Software Engineer roles at Sears, Rockstar Games and GitHub. Watch this episode to learn more about her journey to Microsoft.GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Golnaz89Follow @Paladique

In this episode of GALs, Soumouw interviews Harini Gupta, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. Harini has been working at Microsoft for 11 years with plenty of experience in developing and shipping software that is used by billions of people. She has spent most of her career as a software developer/engineer. Switched roles in the last 2 years and is currently a Program Manager within the Database Systems organization. Her team is responsible for building tools & services that enable Enterprises to modernize their data platform. She has been invited as a speaker at the STARWEST/STARCANADA software quality engineering conferences to talk about various software agility topics.In addition to Harini's day job as a software person, she is actively engaged in many hobbies and interests. Harini is very passionate about having an impact for a humane cause and giving back to the community that we live in. Since 2015, she has been involved in helping out with Making Connections at the University of Washington Women's Center. This program is aimed at increasing college enrollment and career interests in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields for underprivileged children. Some of her responsibilities include mentoring students, MS campus tour guide for middle/high school students, and attending annual fundraising events.Harini also has an immense love for animals since she was a little girl. She has expressed her caring and tenderness for animals in many ways over the years – whether it was growing up with a dog/pet, nurturing and feeding lost kittens, returning a lost dog to its family, dog sitting for friends, or volunteering at animal shelters. She was also fortunate to have several volunteer opportunities at animal shelters, where her responsibilities included dog walking, and cleaning up. Currently Harini serves as a Board Member on one of the local non-profit animal shelter (Homeward Pet Adoption Center).On the personal front, Harini lives in Redmond with her husband who is also in software industry; two children who are 9 and 5 years old; a furry child Golden Retriever puppy and 2 fishes. When She is not working at Microsoft or volunteering in my activities, her time and energy is spent with my family. They love biking, reading, gardening & grilling (love Seattle summers!). Harini also enjoys any and all cardio activities such as Zumba, Yoga, Running, and other exercises. Follow Soumow and Harini on twitter:@gupta_harini@soumow

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz sits down with the amazing Cierra Mcdonald to discuss her career at Microsoft. Cierra has been within the Xbox organization for 9 years. She has worked in every aspect of gaming from billing, achievements to documentation. Cierra's love of gaming started at a young age. Her first introduction to technology was when she purchased a floppy disc of Monkey Island and learned to navigate DOS through the installation process. Watch this episode to learn more about Cierra's career path, passions and goals.GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.

Soumow sits with Rachel Nabors, Program Manager at Microsoft.Rachel Nabors (rachelnabors.com) began telling stories online as a teenager with her award-winning web comics (rachelthegreat.com). Her love of web technologies transformed into a career in front end development, where she has worked with Mozilla, the W3C, and Microsoft to build the web forward. She recently launched a book on the science of using animation in web and app design Animation at Work: (bkaprt.com/animationatwork). Be sure to follow Rachel and Soumow on twitter!Follow @CH9Follow @rachelnaborsFollow @Soumow

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz sits down with Kris Nova to learn more about the girl behind the code.Kris Nova has been involved with free and open source software since hacking her parents computer as a child. She spends a lot of time contributing in the Go, Kubernetes, and Container open source spaces, and has a deep passion for building communities. She recently joined Microsoft as a Cloud Developer Advocate focusing on Linux and Containers. Watch the video to learn more about her journey to Microsoft.You can learn more about her Open Source work on her GitHub page, her blog nivenly.com or via twitter Follow @Kris__Nova.

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz chats with Ashley McNamara, a Principal Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Ashley has been in the tech industry for almost 20 years. But not in the traditional sense. She spent a lot of her time teaching photoshop workshops, doing business mentoring and building websites. But in 2011, she decided to go all in with front-end development. She found herself working with OpenStack, learning Python, joining Rackspace, then becoming a huge contributor in the Linux and Go communities. She finally landed at Microsoft, weird right? Watch this video to learn more about how this Open Source Gopher joined one of the biggest enterprise companies in the world!Here are some ways to connect with Ashley!Follow @CH9Follow @Golnaz89Follow @Ashleymcnamara

Sumit heads up the engineering for Microsoft's flagship Office products: Word and PowerPoint across all platforms. She is also responsible for new and upcoming investments in the authoring and storytelling space with Sway as well as reimaging the authoring experience in Word and PowerPoint powered by Intelligent services and investments in Inking and 3D. Prior to this, Sumit lead the Office Engineering team. Her multi-disciplinary team was responsible for driving radical improvements in engineering workflow. Under her leadership, significant progress was made revolutionizing the Office team engineering methodology, moving from three year cycles to continuous engineering with monthly "evergreen" releases. Sumit has a strong track record of engineering leadership and execution over many years. Before her current role, she was most known for her technical acumen and leadership in Excel and Access Business Unit and led development of the Access product through several releases. Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Soumow sits with Ross Smith, Director Skype for Good.Ross is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and blogger. Author of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention and holds seven patents.He has worked at Microsoft for over 25 years and is a Principal Group Engineering Manager. He is a member of the Leadership Council for the Anita Borg Institute, co-chair for Grace Hopper Organizational Transformation track. He is a member of ABI Local in Seattle, and part of the gender partner LT and "male ally" panel discussions at the IEEE Women in Technology and National Center for Women in ​Technology (NCWIT) Summit and TechCrunch. Work with iUrbanTeen and Native Americans at Microsoft. Developed 42projects to promote cultural change, develop organizational trust and improve the lives of the managed. To help develop the next generation's interest in STEAM, he works with the Skype in the Classroom program and events like this recent day at Microsoft .He was invited to the White House for discussion on women in STEM. Keynote speaker for the ARTBA's Transovation 2014-2016.The work of his teams have been mentioned in Forbes, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, PSFK, the American Journal of Play, Harvard Business Review, and the London School of Business. He is a blogger for SHRM has worked on Skype TranslatorCheck out the local Grace Hopper event, here is a linkhttps://community.anitab.org/event/abi-seattle-presents-ghc1-seattle/ GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Beth Pan is a Software Engineer and Content Producer for Microsoft Learning. She was a software engineer at Nationwide Insurance before her life at Microsoft started and graduated from Ohio State University. Learn more about her humble beginnings growing up in rural China and moving to America to follow her dreams of working in tech in the west coast. Follow @CH9Follow @Golnaz89Follow @beth_panx

Vidya Srinivasan is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on SharePoint and Office 365- the most popular content collaboration and productivity suite in the world. She holds a Bachelors and Master's degree in Computer Science and loves to tinker with tech to hack-for-good. Vidya is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech, and has been a part of the Grace Hopper Conference Leadership since 2014 chairing technical and career tracks. She has spoken about many technical and career topics in varied settings including panels, presentations, podcasts, keynotes and guest lectures.Vidya holds a professional degree in Indian classical music and performs with local bands in Seattle to raise funds for nonprofit organizations. Three years into her career in tech, Vidya was profiled by Microsoft for pursuing a multidimensional career by combining her love for engineering, singing, hacking, and speaking. She is a new mom and was featured by Forbes twice for defying stereotypes as a pregnant woman in tech. More recently, she was inducted in the alumni Hall of Fame by North Carolina State University as a CSC Young Alumni Award winner. Get in touch with Vidya at www.vidyasrinivasan.infoFollow Vidya on Twitter: Follow @vidsrinivasan GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Lili Cheng is responsible for Microsoft's AI Developer services such as Bot Framework and Cognitive ServicesWithin Microsoft, Cheng has diverse talent. She founded the Social Computing Group in Microsoft Research & Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs, was the Director of User Experience for Microsoft Windows, and innovated on technical infrastructure in the areas of real time data and search, including: real-time ingestion of Facebook and Twitter firehose data on Microsoft Azure; desktop search which unified the Windows and Office search indexes for Windows, and core search technologies for Office 365.Prior to joining Microsoft, Cheng worked in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group on the User Interface research team, where she focused on QuickTime Conferencing and QuickTime VR. Her first career was as an architect in Tokyo and Los Angeles for Nihon Sekkei, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on commercial urban design and large-scale building projects. She continues to maintain her architect's license with an eye towards inventing new ways for people to interact online. She has also taught design at NYU and Harvard University.Follow Lili on Twitter: Follow @lilich GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Irina has been with Microsoft for over 14 years working on a wide gamut of products including MSN Mobile, Photography, Social experiences, Xbox Live services, Bing and Windows. Irina has developed large scale Social Gaming services platform based on Azure, authored an application model for distributed systems, implemented a large scale real-time monitoring and diagnostic solution for Xbox Live Services and lead a team in Bing to develop a large scale rich data visualization and exploration platform for optimize Ads business, shuffling terabytes of data. Irina is currently leading a Real Time Monitoring and Solutions team at Microsoft that is responsible for providing real time data-driven solutions and foundational services that allows teams at Microsoft to build right devices, apps and services and run them more efficiently and reliably. Irina currently resides in Seattle with her husband, two sons and a very energetic lab named Rocky 2. GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Maira Wenzel is a senior content developer on the .NET team. She is the content lead for .NET Core and .NET Framework documentation and she runs one of Microsoft's open source projects at https://github.com/dotnet/docs. Learn how she joined Microsoft and how she kept things interesting by trying new career paths.GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Golnaz89Follow @Mairacw or Instagram @mairaw

Ginger is into anything and everything. By day, she works as a UX Designer in the emerald city of Seattle, but when night rolls around she lets her creativity loose on the world and frolics in the lands of 3D printing, embroidery, watercolor, children's book writing and needle felting. You can find her noodling around on her interweb home. GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.Follow @CH9Follow @Golnaz89