Elevate 2022

Leadership is hard, join us for a full day of real-talk advice and inspiration

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Join thousands of women sharing, empowering and elevating each other – don’t miss the 5th annual Girl Geek X: Elevate virtual conference for mid-to-senior level women.

Learning

A full day of talks on leadership, engineering, mental health, career paths, social change, inclusion, the future of tech, and more!

Connection

Looking for a way to celebrate #IWD2022 at work? Live captioning is enabled for Elevate conference livestreaming on March 8 – join us for FREE!

SCHEDULE

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9:00 AM (PST) / 12:00 PM (EST)

Welcome to Elevate 2022!

Celebrate International Women’s Day with the team behind Girl Geek X – Angie Chang and Sukrutha Bhadouria. Join us online as we share our motivations for creating  this conference for mid-to-senior career level women – and why it’s so important.

Angie Chang CEO & Co-Founder / Girl Geek X
Sukrutha Bhadouria, CTO & Co-Founder of Girl Geek X
Sukrutha Bhadouria CTO & Co-Founder / Girl Geek X
9:10 AM (PST) / 12:10 PM (EST)

Morning Keynote: Decision-Making at Scale

How do you know what is the “right” decision? Which actions are easily reversible and which cause irreparable harm? In this session, Arquay Harris will discuss techniques that can aid you in making decisions at scale.

Arquay Harris VP of Engineering / Webflow
9:40 AM (PST) / 12:40 PM (EST)

How to Get the Promotion You Deserve

Do you talk about your achievements in a way that comfortably gives recognition to yourself and others while providing communication value to others? Self-promotion provides visibility around your specific impact at the company, which could grant you further opportunities and investment from leadership. Amplify your achievements (to your manager, department/team, and company), methodically share your intentions for growth, and leverage all possible feedback opportunities (from sponsors, executives, management, and peers) so they can advocate for you.

Ali Littman Director of Engineering / Modern Health
10:00 AM (PST) / 1:00 PM (EST)

Let Them Shine: A Different Approach to Hiring

Frustrated with the tech industry status quo when it comes to hiring? Learn from Camille Tate and Elyse Gordon as they discuss how Strava rewrote their engineering hiring playbook to support the company’s antiracism value and build a diverse team. They will cover the process changes that were implemented as well as how they brought their teams along.

Camille Tate Head of Talent / Strava
Elyse Kolker Gordon Senior Director of Engineering / Strava
10:20 AM (PST) / 1:20 PM (EST)

Transitioning From IC to Manager, and How To Lead If Management is Not For You

Are you considering a transition from Individual Contributor (IC) to Manager for yourself or know someone who is? In this panel, Slack engineers and managers discuss both whether it’s the right choice, how to do it successfully and how to do leadership if you don’t transition to manager.

Rukmini Reddy SVP of Engineering, Platform / Slack
Tracy Stampfli Principal Engineer / Slack
Mina Markham Staff Software Engineer / Slack
Brook Shelley Engineering Manager, Infrastructure / Slack
Leena Mansour Engineering Manager, Product Engineering / Slack
10:40 AM (PST) / 1:40 PM (EST)

From Culture to Products: Why Diversity in Technology Matters

Artificial intelligence, 5G, edge, and cloud computing are four superpowers that will change the way everyone lives and works. That’s why diverse representation is so important. Studies have shown that companies with diverse workforce are more innovative and have an edge in recruiting and retaining talent. Intel and its partners have invested in diversity from grassroots educational initiatives through career development. Executives from Intel will share their first-hand experience about the value of diversity and inclusion in technology from ensuring more bias-free AI to designing consumer and business products and services that consider the broadest possible set of perspectives.

Caroline Chan VP, Network & Edge Group / Intel
Huma Abidi Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence Software Products / Intel
Hema Chamraj Director, Technology Advocacy, Ai4Good / Intel
11:00 AM (PST) / 2:00 PM (EST)

Riding the Highs and Lows: Navigating Bad Mental Health Days in the Workspace

Have you ever had a day with a big presentation or deliverable at work, but your mental health was just not cooperating? With a mental health condition like bipolar disorder, you tend to have a lot of these bad days and often at inopportune times. There is hope! In this session, Ashu Ravichander will share how to mindfully build a scaffolding with five techniques to hold you up through your highs and lows so you can bring your best to work, every day that you need to.

Ashu Ravichander Principal Product Manager / Workday
11:20 AM (PST) / 2:20 PM (EST)

Slack Coffee Break ☕ Launching and Leading Cross-Functional Initiatives as an Engineer

You’ve got a great idea for a large impactful project you’d like to lead, but you don’t know how to make it happen. Izzy Clemenson and Tracy Stampfli, both lead engineers at Slack, will talk about what they have learned from their experiences heading cross-functional projects and initiatives. We’ll discuss how to get buy-in and resources from engineering leadership, techniques for managing the project while it’s running, and how to ensure its success.

Izzy Clemenson Senior Staff Engineer / Slack
Tracy Stampfli Principal Engineer / Slack
11:35 AM (PST) / 2:35 PM (PST)

Unique Paths to Machine Learning Careers

Women at MosaicML will talk about the decisions that led them to where they are now. You’ll hear the unique journeys of Julie Choi (Chief Growth Officer) and Laura Florescu (AI Researcher) through several tech companies (8 total), including a few unicorns and bluechips, and their reason for joining forces at a new startup focused on making ML training better, for everyone.

julie choi
Julie Shin Choi Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer / Cerebras Systems
Laura Florescu AI/ML Researcher / MosaicML
11:55 AM (PST) / 2:55 PM (EST)

Tech is a Team Sport

Come hear from two awesome White House tech leaders about the gnarly challenges of government tech, and how they are building a team that is transforming government services for millions by putting people at the center of everything they do.

Clare Martorana Federal Chief Information Officer / Office of Management & Budget, Executive Office of the President
Mina Hsiang Administrator / United States Digital Service
12:15 PM (PST) / 3:15 PM (EST)

Become the Role Model You Wish You Had

Often the only woman in the room for many years, Reeny Sondhi and Susanna Holt will talk about what it takes to forge your unique path to leadership with consistent and focused work. How do you tackle the subtle constraints? How do navigate the important yet challenging role of allies? How do you recognize your worth and learn to own it? How do you do keep honing your voice? We’ll hear from them on these topics and more – their stories will inspire you to become your own guiding star.

Reeny Sondhi Chief Security Officer / Autodesk
Susanna Holt VP of Strategic Technologies / Autodesk
12:35 PM (PST) / 3:35 PM (EST)

AWS, GraphQL with Apollo-VueJS: Simple Technologies that Help Deliver Enterprise-Grade Applications

GraphQL allows consumers to get exactly what they need, with a significant performance boost. In this session, Maria Lucena and Divya Mahajan will cover some GraphQL fundamentals and AppSync, AWS’s implementation of GraphQL. Next, we’ll explore a Vue.js SPA that leverages the Apollo-Client to connect to AppSync with Cognito. Finally, we will examine how a mixture of AWS services, including S3, Route53, CloudFront, can be leveraged to serve the application safely and reliably.

Divya Mahajan Director of Architecture / Fidelity Investments
Maria Lucena Director of Architecture / Fidelity Investments
12:55 PM (PST) / 3:55 PM (EST)

Atlassian Coffee Break ☕ Career Growth for Humans

Work is central to our lived experience (for better or worse). On our best days we can feel fulfilled and productive, but other days we may feel triggered or insecure. It’s time we had a different discussion about what work offers us so that we can maximize the meaning in our day-to-day. Let’s look at how we can create human-first experiences at work; redefine what it means to be successful; and, as a result, open the door to (tech) careers that celebrate and affirm our humanity.

Kristen Warms Senior Program Manager, R&D Learning Enablement / Atlassian
1:10 PM (PST) / 4:10 PM (EST)

Afternoon Keynote: Break the Bias: From Work to Mission

The 2022 International Women’s Day campaign theme is #BreakTheBias; what does that mean to you?  Tune into this rare interview, with Jiahan Ericsson, to hear from Leyla Seka, a leader who evolved her work into a mission to break the bias. Whether it’s raising awareness, smashing stereotypes, challenging prejudice, effecting change, or championing equality, in this session, Leyla Seka will highlight her extraordinary professional journey and inspire you.

Leyla Seka COO / Ironclad
Jiahan Ericsson Senior Director of Engineering / Ironclad
1:40 PM (PST) / 4:40 PM (EST)

Redefining Failure

When senior women leaders are interviewed, they often note that new roles and opportunities can have a disproportionate impact on their careers. On balance, women are less likely than men to make these career moves. Is this pursuit of perfection preventing women from taking on tasks they won’t nail 100%? Despite launching over a dozen products in her career and building several new multi-billion dollar categories, Tiffany To has learned more from her failures than her successes. In this talk, she’ll explore ways to embrace failure in small and big ways in our current roles, how to be open to new “failure” opportunities, and how to identify the best environments for professional growth and career progression.

Tiffany To VP of Product, DevOps, and Agile Products / Atlassian
2:00 PM (PST) / 5:00 PM (EST)

You're a Sales What? Life as a Sales Engineer

For women looking to make a mid-career change into tech, even fewer know that sales engineering is a great way to make that move. In this session, Melissa Andrews will introduce you to the sales engineering career and provide tips for those thinking about entering the field.

Melissa Andrews Sales Engineering Manager / Splunk
2:20 PM (PST) / 5:20 PM (EST)

Striving to Build a Happier Workplace

Front is on a mission to make work happier by meaningfully connecting teams and customers. One place it gets truly reflected is in the way Engineering, Product and Design operate as one team. Jill Schweitzer, Kaitlin Fink, and Vrushali Patil will talk about how they use Front’s company values around collaboration, low-ego and transparency in their day-to-day interactions, hiring process, driving decision-making and collectively owning outcomes.

Jill Schweitzer Product Lead / Front
Kaitlin Fink Product Design Manager / Front
Vrushali Patil Head of Platform / Front
2:40 PM (PST) / 5:40 PM (EST)

Your Ableism is Showing: How You’re Missing the Mark By Not Including Accessible Practices

Creating inclusive spaces for people of all abilities will ensure accessibility is not the reason why they have trouble retaining employees or customers while showing all stakeholders that accessibility is vital for all. Erin Perkins, a deafblind woman, will share personal experiences, challenging us to think about how we can step outside of our own comfort zone, and make small, easy changes to improve accessibility across the board. We will have live caption enabled for Elevate conference livestreaming on March 8, 2022.

Erin Perkins CEO & Founder / Mabely Q
3:00 PM (PST) / 6:00 PM (EST)

Engineering Leadership

This is a panel of engineering leaders sharing insights on how they set and execute engineering leadership strategy, plan their careers, and effectively manage their teams to deliver high quality products on time. Don’t miss Jenn Clevenger (Etsy Senior Director of Engineering), Kamilah Taylor (Gusto Head of Financial Products Engineering), Sukrutha Bhadouria (Salesforce Director of Engineering) and Willie Hooykaas-Baldwin (Salesforce VP of Engineering) as they discuss all things engineering leadership!

Jenn Clevenger Senior Director of Data Engineering / Etsy
Kamilah Taylor Head of Financial Products Engineering / Gusto
Sukrutha Bhadouria, CTO & Co-Founder of Girl Geek X
Sukrutha Bhadouria CTO & Co-Founder / Girl Geek X
Willie Hooykaas-Baldwin VP of Engineering / Salesforce
3:30 PM (PST) / 6:30 PM (EST)

It’s A Hot Job Market. Do You Stay or Do You Leave?

Hear from women technologists who decided to make the big move from their tech company to forge a new beginning with a bigger role. In this session, learn the elements to consider when planning your next move, the importance of applying the principle of running to something (versus away from something), and panelists will share thoughtful techniques in searching.

Aliza Carpio Director, Tech Evangelist / Autodesk
Rocio Montes Senior Engineering Manager / GitHub
Sharon Hunt Head of Product / Clovers
3:50 PM (PST) / 6:50 PM (EST)

Strava Coffee Break ☕ How To #HumbleBrag Effectively

Many women are shy of accepting praise, or highlighting their professional achievements to the detriment of their own career success. In this talk, Shailvi Wakhlu will highlight specific ways you can reframe negative perceptions of advocating for yourself, and become comfortable sharing wins effectively and authentically. Everyone deserves to be rewarded equitably for their amazing achievements!

Shailvi Wakhlu Senior Director of Data / Strava
4:05 PM (PST) / 7:05 PM (EST)

Moving Up: How To Fast Forward Your Career by Shifting Out of Auto-Pilot and Rising to the Top

Are your goals accelerating your career or holding you back? While intelligence, creativity, and hard work are key components of success, they will only get you so far. In order to make the most out of your career and serve your organization well, you need to set savvy goals – for what you can learn and what you can do. It will make all the difference in your career. In this fireside chat, Heather Natour will sit down with Raji Subramanian to discuss ways to set the right goals for yourself, deconstruct common career roadblocks, and share approaches to deliver measurable impact that will get you noticed as you rise toward the top.

Raji Subramanian CTO / Opendoor
Heather Natour Head of Engineering, Seller & Consumer Growth / Opendoor
4:25 PM (PST) / 7:25PM (EST)

Why Knowledge is the Future of Data

In the ‘data first’ era, many invest significantly to collect data, and many struggle to realize its value (the resulting data silos and messy tech stacks). Data scientists and developers spend up to 80% of their time finding data, cleaning data, and collecting business domain knowledge rather than modeling and gaining insights. Harnessing knowledge and data together leads teams to faster modeling and insights, enabling teams to ask questions – and get answers – data alone can’t provide. In this session, Michelle Yi will show relational knowledge graphs in action.

Michelle Yi Senior Director, Applied Artificial Intelligence / RelationalAI
4:45 PM (PST) / 7:45 PM (EST)

Economic Justice and Cryptocurrencies / Web3

Cryptocurrencies have the potential to facilitate a massive redistribution of wealth. What opportunities are there to leverage this change for economic justice? We’ll be talking about how motivated justice-minded artists, engineers, and strategists can make a huge difference.

Jen-Mei Wu Community Organizer /
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SPEAKERS

Arquay Harris
VP of Engineering
Webflow
Tracy Stampfli
Principal Engineer
Slack
Reeny Sondhi
Chief Security Officer
Autodesk
Clare Martorana
Federal Chief Information Officer
Office of Management & Budget, Executive Office of the President
Leyla Seka
COO
Ironclad
Mina Hsiang
Administrator
United States Digital Service
Susanna Holt
VP of Strategic Technologies
Autodesk
Rukmini Reddy
SVP of Engineering, Platform
Slack
Elyse Kolker Gordon
Senior Director of Engineering
Strava
Tiffany To
VP of Product, DevOps, and Agile Products
Atlassian
Raji Subramanian
CTO
Opendoor
julie choi
Julie Shin Choi
Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Cerebras Systems
Maria Lucena
Director of Architecture
Fidelity Investments
Camille Tate
Head of Talent
Strava
Shailvi Wakhlu
Senior Director of Data
Strava
Melissa Andrews
Sales Engineering Manager
Splunk
Jiahan Ericsson
Senior Director of Engineering
Ironclad
Heather Natour
Head of Engineering, Seller & Consumer Growth
Opendoor
Vrushali Patil
Head of Platform
Front
Izzy Clemenson
Senior Staff Engineer
Slack
Mina Markham
Staff Software Engineer
Slack
Laura Florescu
AI/ML Researcher
MosaicML
Sukrutha Bhadouria, CTO & Co-Founder of Girl Geek X
Sukrutha Bhadouria
CTO & Co-Founder
Girl Geek X
Jenn Clevenger
Senior Director of Data Engineering
Etsy
Caroline Chan
VP, Network & Edge Group
Intel
Ali Littman
Director of Engineering
Modern Health
Divya Mahajan
Director of Architecture
Fidelity Investments
Ashu Ravichander
Principal Product Manager
Workday
Michelle Yi
Senior Director, Applied Artificial Intelligence
RelationalAI
Kamilah Taylor
Head of Financial Products Engineering
Gusto
Kristen Warms
Senior Program Manager, R&D Learning Enablement
Atlassian
Erin Perkins
CEO & Founder
Mabely Q
Aliza Carpio
Director, Tech Evangelist
Autodesk
Sharon Hunt
Head of Product
Clovers
Hema Chamraj
Director, Technology Advocacy, Ai4Good
Intel
Huma Abidi
Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence Software Products
Intel
Jill Schweitzer
Product Lead
Front
Brook Shelley
Engineering Manager, Infrastructure
Slack
Rocio Montes
Senior Engineering Manager
GitHub
Willie Hooykaas-Baldwin
VP of Engineering
Salesforce
Angie Chang
CEO & Co-Founder
Girl Geek X
Leena Mansour
Engineering Manager, Product Engineering
Slack
Kaitlin Fink
Product Design Manager
Front
Jen-Mei Wu
Community Organizer
Coming Soon
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THANK YOU SPONSORS & GOVERNMENT PARTICIPANTS!

Want to join our list of mission-aligned sponsors? Email sponsors@girlgeek.io

Celebrate International Women's Day with THOUSANDS from the Girl Geek X commmunity!

We will have live caption enabled for Elevate conference livestreaming on March 8, 2022 - join us for FREE!

WATCH VIDEO REPLAYS