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“The Hardest Job I’ve Ever Loved“: Julie Meloni on Building Solutions with the US Digital Service (Video + Transcript)

Speakers:
Julie Meloni / Engineer / United States Digital Service
Gretchen DeKnikker / COO / Girl Geek X

Transcript:

Gretchen DeKnikker: I’m super excited to introduce Julie Meloni. She works with US Digital Service, yes, the government. She is going to tell you about the hardest job she has ever loved, working with USDS. Welcome, Julie.

Julie Meloni: Thank you so much. I hope you can all hear me. I am really excited to be here. I love talking about USDS. Every time I do, I am confused because I never thought I’d work in the government, who would love working in the government, certainly not me. But it’s the hardest job I’ve ever loved, and it’s hard for a lot of reasons that don’t have anything to do with technology. It has everything to do with people.

The technology is the easy part. Complex systems are hard. I’m going to talk a little bit about the types of work that we do, who we do it for, and how we do it. The funny thing is — spoiler alert — the things that we do and the way that we’re successful isn’t really unique to USDS.

You can all do it in your own organizations. While I would love for you all to come work at USDS and do it, as a takeaway, I’d like you to think about how you too can use all of your knowledge and expertise and your entire whole selves and bring it to your own work because sometimes it’s all we have.

If you’re looking behind me, this is the fancy digs we have here at Jackson Place for the US Digital Service. I am indeed in a basement. I am in the fancy room in the basement. That just gives a little bit the sense of just how we work. Scrappy is how we work at the US Digital Service. What are we? We’re about three and a half years old. That means that we were started in the Obama Administration. We’re still here in the current administration.

We’re a bunch of very passionate nerds, who use designing technology to help the government deliver better services to the public.

Very specifically, we don’t say the American people because we also serve people who want to become American citizens, and we still do that work today. We’ll talk a little bit about that as well.

What are our objectives at the US Digital Service? One is to transform critical public-facing services. That means anytime that a citizen, or a person wanting to become a citizen, interfaces with the government, it’s probably digital or should be digital. Those are two very different things. If it is digital, we try to transform those services into circa 2010 technology would be really awesome. 2017, 2018 technology is an amazing achievement and sometimes we get good partners in agencies who are amenable to that. That is amazing. But really, we’re trying to bring interfaces from the ’80s, ’90s, and sometimes the ’70s into the 2000s, 2010s. That is hard. It’s hard for a lot of reasons, and we’ll talk through that in a little bit.

We also want to help agencies figure out how to buy better services. That means really digging into what people are trying to do because they’re usually trying to do the right thing and helping them weed through bad contracts, bad requirements, bad everything, and trying to get them to a better place where they can buy better services that are maybe modern and don’t lock them in, maybe, sometimes uses open source, and maybe, sometimes uses new things like agile. We help them buy better services and save money, and that’s a big deal. If we can keep someone from spending $500 million on something that should have been $5 million, we’re going to take that win for us and for you any day of the week.

Another thing that we do is making sure that we’re expanding the use of common platform services and tools, and that could be tools that we help build such as login.gov, which is a joint effort between the US Digital Service and our partners in the technology transformation organization, 18F. That is meant to be a government single sign-on solution at a very high level of authentication.

We would love to be able to roll that out across agencies. Wouldn’t it be nice to sign in to do your taxes with the same user information that you used to fill out your FAFSA at the Department of Education?

What path can that bring? Even if it’s not a specific tool that we build, it might be a common platform. It might be the use of the Cloud. It might be the use of, I don’t know, some sort of, any sort of continuous integration and build system. It could be a lot of things.

We try to make sure that what we use can be used in other places as well because, if we don’t, we’re just as bad as the contractors who lock agencies into one thing.

Finally, we want to bring hot technical talent into public service, and that’s all of you and your friends who are probably too busy working to be here today, get them too. If you are super experienced, especially in complex organizations, if you have a very high EQ, and if you want to give back in some way, *especially if you never thought you would work in government*.

Take a look at US Digital Service or 18F and see what might fit for you.Not knowing all 2,000 of you or whatever it is watching this today, I can guarantee that we need all of you. I’d be happy for five. We need the help.

Who are we helping? That’s the fun part, right? We help as many people as we possibly can and this is why it gets hard because we can’t help everyone. We have an agency team at the Department of Homeland Security.

We work to create tools that help asylum officers adjudicate their cases quicker, which means they can help more refugees come into the country, more asylees come into the country.

We are trying desperately to make the immigration form process better. Generally, in all the situations that I explained, what we really do is we try to unfuck the government that is really fucked, from a technology perspective.

We have a team at DHS working hard for immigrants and refugees and working a little bit now with FEMA to try to make the grant system not suck quite as much as it does especially for people who have just lost everything in fires and floods. They shouldn’t have to go through as much paper as they do.

We also help veterans. This is one of our favorite stories because there is so much that we owe to our veterans and so little that we do well for them from a technology perspective. There are 598 distinct websites where veterans go to get information about how to get the services they’ve already earned like healthcare and education — 598 different websites is like 597 too many.

We have been working with the VA to make all these websites at least flow through one kind of interface like a portal, very cutting edge portal technology at vets.gov, and trying to make the paper forms not paper anymore, so incrementally taking bad things and making them better in terms of interfaces. You’ll notice a common theme as we go through here.

Military service members — We work for them. One of our teams at the Pentagon, the Defense Digital Service, they’re working on a better platform that helps active duty service members and their families move. The moving process which hundreds of thousands of families do every year, all at the same time, is a very antiquated computer system that usually goes down and results in people not being able to move and so we’re making a better one because that sort of cognitive load. You don’t want to think about how you’re going to move your family from one end of the country to the other while you’re sitting in Afghanistan getting shot at. That’s the last thing that you should be thinking of, so we try to make sure that you don’t have to think of that.

We also help students — In 2015, USDS and 18F worked together to create the new version of the college scorecard which focused on actually listening to students and their families, really figuring out what it is that they wanted to see, and then making that so.

Medicare/Medicaid recipients — We work with the team at Health and Human Services at the centers for Medicaid and Medicare services and we’re working on opening data basically providing APIs for third parties to access Medicare clean data so that doctors and other third parties can work with that data and present it to patients in a better way, make sure that they’re sort of looking at their trends and how can that help provide better service for seniors and anyone, actually.

Farmers — this is my personal favorite. There is a process that we went and discovered. We do discovery sprints here at USDS. We get a bunch of people together like four, five, and we go out for a couple weeks and we learn everything we can about a topic. We interview people, we ask the question, “You know if you had a magic wand, what would you change?” Then, we come up with a report that says, “Here are some things that we think we should change,” and then, if we’re lucky, we get to work on enacting better legislation or even building a better technology system.

With farmers, we found that farmers have a really hard time getting guest workers to pick the crops. This is a food security issue for all of us. If you can’t pick the crops, the crops die, and then you have to plow them under and we have no food. Farmers often have to single handedly manage hundreds of pounds of paper in order to get their guest workers into the country because there’s nobody domestically that wants to do the work. There are five different government agencies that they have to work through to get the workers. Farmers need to farm and not do paperwork for five different agencies, so trying to help people figure out how maybe not make that what farmers have to do. Also, that’s a lot of paper.

Finally, small business owners — I say finally only because that’s the last icon on the screen, not because that’s the end of the people that we help or that we are working for. We have worked with the Small Business Administration to make the application process for certification smoother, much easier, less burdensome, also for the analysts inside the SBA who are adjudicating cases.

Again, we’re using paper and working through nice, clean, modern technology with a UI that makes sense to just to do their job so that small business owners can do their jobs and their families can survive. That’s a lot of stuff right through there. One of the reasons that I worked really hard there to do that quickly was because if I pause, I cry because this is really hard work. There is literally nobody that we could walk past in the street who isn’t served by some of the work that we’re trying to help our agency partners do. That can be really emotional, and that is hard to do sometimes.

Actually, the number one reason that we choose projects, is this project the one that has got the greatest impact for the greatest number of people? If it doesn’t, then we have to prioritize it a little lower. Is the likelihood of success high? If so, awesome, so far so good. Can we scale it across government?

If it’s some really great project that has a high likelihood of success, in time, and we can take something from it and teach others across the government or implement technology somewhere else, even better. That’s when we will choose that project to do. That was a lot.

How do we do it? This is where the takeaways come in for you guys because the values that guide our work, you can use these in your jobs too because they’re very simple and they’re not prescriptive. Hire and empower great people. It’s as easy as that, right? Super easy. No. It’s very hard. Our talent team works tremendously hard to recruit and find the right type of people. Type doesn’t mean the most super senior person in the world. It doesn’t tend to be senior, but it also means someone with a really, amazing upside and high EQ and a high ability to get shit done in a mission driven and complex environment.

If we hire you, you are automatically empowered to go do whatever needs to get done and we’re going to do our level best to support you in that process. Find the truth and tell the truth, this is my favorite value.

We don’t pull any punches. If something is messed up in the government, we will tell the cabinet secretary in charge of it that your thing is messed up. We’ll probably use fancier words and be a lot more technically detailed than that, but generally, we need to find the truth and tell the truth because we don’t have time not to.

Similarly, optimize for results, not optics. We don’t have shareholders except for everybody that pays taxes. We don’t even make fancy presentations to the Board of Directors or whatever. We just need to show our results. If we’re showing results, that is the biggest optic that could possibly be. Let the results speak for themselves.

The minute we do something because someone on the Hill wants us to, it would look good, whatever the case may be, the President thinks it’s cool, then we’ve lost our reason to be here. We are here for results, whatever that means. Sometimes the results are not good ones, sometimes we fail. We learn from them and move on. Sometimes, we succeed, and sometimes, we learn about a lot more stuff that needs fixing.

Sometimes, we have to go where the work is because sometimes that stuff that needs fixing is in Afghanistan and sometimes it’s in Southern Illinois and sometimes it’s in Lord knows where. Especially when we work with military families, those military families are stationed at bases in remote places. The people that are doing the work supporting our deployed troops are in Afghanistan or other remote areas. We have to go there to work with them to figure out what it is we’re designing because we’re designing it for them and we’re not going to make it up just because it’s scary to go to Afghanistan.

We do everything with passion. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” so says Ralph Waldo Emerson and so say we all. If we’re not making momentum in our projects, if we’re not helping our agency partners move forward, we’re not doing a good job.

Finally, designing with users and not for them. Users are at the core of everything that we do. We have to work with them and not make things up. The minute we stop designing for our users, just like the minute you stop designing for your users, the minute you’ve lost the reason for making your product. All of that having been said, join us, please. Any questions, I’m happy to take them here offline, online, on the Internets, wherever you want… I’m here for you.

Gretchen: Great, Julie. People are so inspired and a lot of thank you’s for doing this work and an empathy for how hard it is. Most of the questions that we got, we just have a few minutes, so I want to kind of paraphrase.

Julie: Sorry, I went long, my fault.

Gretchen: No. Just listening to you is so awesome. If you click this, thanks to our sponsors, you can learn more about jobs at US Digital Service. On that page, you’ll find a list of the types of roles that they’re looking for.

I did want to ask you, Julie, there was a question around, “What special skills? Are there part time things available?” Maybe if we could do that one.

Julie: Sure. We’ll do part time, first. The answer is “No.” Also, we don’t even do remote because it is very difficult to work on the ground with users who are in DC when you’re not in DC. If you really want to work in a modern digital services type of environment and give back to the government and you cannot move, do look into our friends at 18F. They allow remote work.

In terms of skills, if you’re an Engineer of any flavor, please join us. If you’re a Backend Engineer, a Security Engineer, an SRE, a Front End Engineer, we work a lot with React, join us. If you are a Product Manager with technical chops, you’ve led and deployed technical products with a team, join us. If you are a UX Designer or Researcher of any flavor of UX because UX contains multitudes, join us. That should cover all of you.

Gretchen: [laughs] You probably inspired a lot of people to think about this in a way that they never would have. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Julie: Sure. Also, remember, you can do all those things in your own company. You don’t just have to join USDS, but again, we’d love for that.

Gretchen: They’ll all want to come and work with you [laughs] .

Julie: You could all come work with us. There’s only 175 of us. Like 175 is not enough to do all the work that we have to do.

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4 Tips For Self-Care From 8 Women Working in Silicon Valley!

Nobody starts a job with the goal of burning out from it. With the start of a new year is time for self-care and drawing boundaries. Here are the best practices from 8 Silicon Valley women in tech – productivity hacks for success!

Girl Geek X talked to eight Silicon Valley women in tech who have been working for a decade or two, and a therapist for the tech set, to discuss productivity hacks and wellness trends – the future of work.

1. Boundaries

Entrepreneur Rachel Thomas has a valuable piece of self-care advice: “Quit if you are in a toxic work environment.” She recounts “expending a ton of energy trying to take care of myself (at various points focusing on yoga, better sleep hygiene, weight-lifting, therapy, acupuncture, or mindfulness – which are all good things), when the fundamental problem was my work environment and I needed to quit my toxic job to actually be able to take care of myself”.

Rachel Thomas earned her PhD in math so you don’t have to! The author of the viral blog post “If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention”is now teaching deep learning in an accessible way — welcoming bootcamp graduates to learn.

Rachel has watched many friends have similar experiences “pouring energy into trying to change themselves when in a dysfunctional workplace – and it’s like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble.”

She argues for treating the root problem of a toxic work environment by getting a new job. Vote with your feet!

Kamilah Taylor contributed to LinkedIn Engineering team as a Senior iOS Engineer for over 5 years before starting her own startup. She worked on the LinkedIn learning app, contributing technical solutions and making the app more accessible.

Engineer-turned-entrepreneur Kamilah Taylortalks about load balancing her life. She recommends “being drastically honest about what you can take on.”

She acknowledges that balancing a busy load of 3–4 projects requires figuring out what can be negotiated: “Something will suffer if not health and well-being, then a project. Think about how you are balancing projects over time, whether this month or another month,  and how things like classes, projects, contracts can often be moved around, whereas things like conferences cannot.”

Negotiate your time and energy wisely quarter over quarter and you can do it all over time – just not at the same time!

Nicole Chung, PsyD is a practicing psychotherapist works with many clients struggling with feelings of guilt and self-criticism in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Depending on the person and their work situation, she encourages her clients to take time off for a break and declare a “mental health day” and see what that feels and looks like.

Taking a few days off over a year and making time to explore is not just for rest and rehabilitation. Executives and entrepreneurs also create time in their calendar for planning for a long and fulfilling career.

Tech executive Sophia Xiao spoke at a Girl Geek X event hosted at GitHub.

She explains her master plan: “I learned to be the master of my own time and calendar, and prioritize ‘thinking time’ over the years. I protect ‘thinking time’ in the mornings each day, and start ‘thinking time’ with yoga and meditation. Then, I take the time to think about my day, prioritize my to-do list before I start my ‘working’ day. Equally important is ending my days with a 3-minute calming breathing exercise.”

In addition, Sophia’s plan is to take a day every quarter to reconnect with friends, seeking their advice on challenges she’s facing, and finding opportunities to continue learning from them.

2. Optimize Your Sleep Algorithm / Habits!

Keep displays of non-stop status updates out of the bedroom! A mirrored OLED display in the bathroom is OK.

Many people answer work-related emails before bed, draining them of positive energy for restful sleep. Nicole the therapist recommends setting a boundary for not checking email after a certain hour (e.g. 10pm).Some folks have even banned devices like phones in the bedroom to ease the winding down process in the evening, and use smart alarm clocks to ensure a productive waking experience in the morning.

“Because sleep impacts mood, you can feel like you are depressed and anxious when you don’t have sleep, and can begin neglecting normal tasks like laundry, showering, and getting out of bed in the morning…” – Nicole Chung, PsyD.

One way to ensure sleepfulness occurs is to make time for regular exercise! Whether your style is Soulcycleor Barry’s Bootcamp, rigorous exercise with a group can pay off. Or if you need solo exercise on the go, try Gixo.

Sukrutha Bhadouria dutifully keeps her Instagram updated of her workouts.

Salesforce senior engineering manager Sukrutha Bhadouria learned to train toward and complete a race.

“I found out there’s an option in triathlons that lets me do just the swim and run!” she exclaimed excitedly.

Then she joined some local organizations that help you get started with training toward a goal, like SF Tri Club.

Serial startup COO Gretchen DeKnikker has found taking classes for hip hop a great reprieve from the everyday tech bubble. In her Mission in the Mix hip hop workshop, Gretchen enjoys not having to make decisions and or being asked for her opinion. “[Instructor] Micaya is my hero. In class, I’m only responsible for myself. These were hours I cherished,” said Gretchen about the weekly practice of hip hop.

She reminisces: “Hip hop has been my happy place since I was 12 years old. Hip hop welcomes people young and old (ages 11–72), different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. Given how I grew up, that feels a lot more like home than the office.”

3. Practice Recognizing When You Are Slipping – And Acknowledge Micro-Progressions!

The ability for a person to realize that these small areas of neglect are warning signals means that a person can take the opportunity to change something in their life. For example, a person can begin exercising more for endorphins — or make a new rule that when your laundry basket is full, you will do it instead of letting piles form.

Break out of a loop by starting a new pattern in your lifestyle. A time management coach encourages workers to consider “at least one weeknight, you won’t take any work home” in a series of mindset changes to reduce stress and try drawing small work/life boundaries.

Self-criticism and imposter syndrome are especially common in people seeking therapy as a tool to change their lives. Many people do not practice self compassion in self-talk.

Self-care stickers by Gemma Correll — (buy them on Olympia)

One way to remedy this is to recognize small victories in the day — whether it’s that you got up in the morning even though you didn’t want to, or that you brushed your teeth, or celebrate the small deal or win that you had at work.

“I like to focus on micro-progressions. People beat themselves up as they come in and want to make change, and they want to change faster than they are. The 25-year habit they want to change needs more time, self-compassion and self-realization of micro-progression. Let’s say, you are a big spender – celebrate that moment of hesitation when shopping online, and reflect back that, hey, you did think about making a different decision and didn’t, but that didn’t used to happen before, acknowledge that growing self-awareness,” said Nicole Chung, PsyD.

4. Mindfulness and Meditation — Yes, Startuppers and Entrepreneurs Do It Too!

Product manager Christina Pan shares that her workplace has been “doing a 5-minute meditation each day at 3pm, or if we have meetings, we move the meditation time slot a bit. We have a Slack channel with a bot reminder 5-minutes beforehand – Slack is where we chat to coordinate meeting for meditation.Some of coworkers already had meditated before so that helped. The Simple Habit meditation app has really wonderful 5-minute meditations with all types of meditation teachers (offering 1-minute, 3-minute, 10-minute, 20-minute meditations). It’s hard to start with unguided meditations as a newbie so this is much more accessible – it’s also fun with other people! In addition, Calm and Headspace have 3-minute and 5-minute meditations. It sounds small but it makes a difference! Small things daily add up,” she said.

Jennifer Arguello giving back & speaking at UC San Diego school of engineering.

Product manager and diversity advocate Jennifer Arguello enjoys a simple mid-day walk around the block. “If it’s not raining, get some fresh air in the middle of the day if anything else,” she advises. This simple midday hack has helped her sustain her impactful work at GitHub and Kapor Center. In fact, science has shown that getting out in nature doubles your attention span. So take a breather and stretch your legs by walking around the block already!

Share with us your tips for maintaining balance in your life by tweeting at @GirlGeekX your experiences and stories! We hope to continue to amplify the stories of women in tech doing great things.

Additional Resources:

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Happy 10 Year Anniversary, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners! Meet The NEW Girl Geek X

This month, we reached our first decade of Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, rebranding as Girl Geek X to celebrate our decade of growth! Careers span decades as top women have held a variety of roles within a company, tried new ventures, some failed, some kept going — whether at the same company or different ones. Since launching in 2008, our community has grown to over 15K women in tech, and hosted over 150 dinners. In 2017, our events were attended by 2,800 girl geeks! A snapshot of the 2017 attendees:

Girl Geek X is partnering with companies looking to connect with our high-caliber network of women in tech by sponsoring Girl Geek X programs/events with the content girl geeks want (eg. podcasts, videos, webinars, workshops).

From left: Co-organizers Sukrutha Bhadouria and Angie Chang give opening remarks at a Girl Geek Dinner hosted at GitHub in 2015.

What we are excited for in 2018 . . .

MORE GIRL GEEK EVENTS! Girl Geek X Dinners will be held WEEKLY in the SF Bay Area starting in 2018. These are unique learning & networking events where women share leadership in STEM & career expertise in a fast-paced industry. Retention and recruitment of mid-level/senior women in tech is a critical lever for increasing the ratio of female CEOs, executives, engineers and entrepreneurs. We are hosting non-stop, weekly events in 2018.

MORE SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES! Also, Girl Geek X offerings are EXPANDING with sponsorship opportunities for more events, content & partnerships! We are determined to create lasting impact beyond events — amplifying women’s sustained voices with multi-channel distribution (eg. video, podcast, blog posts, social media). Please get in touch with me at angie@girlgeek.io to learn more.

What happened in the last decade to the leading women in tech — and their careers — since the first Girl Geek Dinners in 2008?

Where are our Girl Geek Dinner speakers of January 2008, today?

From left: Serial entrepreneur Sumaya Kazi ran social intelligence startup Sumazi for 7 years. Venture capitalist Katherine Barr founded her own early-stage venture capital firm Wildcat Venture Partners after a decade at Mohr Davidow Ventures as Partner. Google Director of UX Irene Au is now a Design Partner at Khosla Ventures. SlideShare founder Rashmi Sinha accepted the acquisition offer from LinkedIn in 2012 for $118.75 million in cash and stock. Missing from the photograph because she had an acute case of food poisoning that day: Pownce founder Leah Culver is still working on building early-stage startups! Pownce was acquired by Six Apart in 2008, and Leah is now CTO and co-founder at Breaker, a social podcast startup out of Y Combinator. {Watch the 2008 Girl Geek Dinner panel discussion on YouTube here.}

Update from Facebook Girl Geek Dinner speakers of June 2008 —

From left: LOLapps founder Annie Chang worked at Homejoy, where she led product. Facebook’s first female engineer Ruchi Sanghvi left the company to start Cove (acquired by Dropbox in 2012). She left Dropbox, and now invests in startups. Angie Chang is running Girl Geek X a decade later. Zivity founder Cyan Banister joined Founders Fund as the firm’s first female Partner and is also an angel investor. Holly Liu co-founded Watercooler in 2006, pivoting the company several times to become the billion-dollar gaming company Kabam, which sold in 2016 for $800 million. Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo is now the VP of Product Design at Facebook, and has shared thought leadership on Medium. Facebook app developer Alina Libova’s company was acquired by Facebook, and today Alina works as a venture capitalist at Initialized Capital, where she is a General Partner.

{Find our upcoming calendar of Girl Geek X events here!}

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12 Inspiring Female Architects in Software and Data!

Hollywood’s Silicon Valley TV show continues the long-established narrative the Silicon Valley, technology and startups is synymous with guys in hoodies and jeans. That’s not always the case; leading ladies who code in Halt and Catch Fire (“West Wing with computers”) and Mr Robot are worth watching. 

Here are 12 female architects in software, data and more to inspire the next generation of girl geeks and women leading tech companies:

Aruna Susarla, Senior Architect, PayPal

Aruna is a Senior Architect at PayPal, with over 15 years of industry experience. She was responsible for building scalable, high performance innovative solutions that PayPal can deploy on mobile as well as traditional Point of Sale systems for retailers. Aruna cares deeply about performance and reliability and redefines the payment experience to delight customers and also make sense for the bottom line. Follow her on Twitter at @aruna_susarla.

Avery Wong Hagleitner, Software Architect, IBM

Avery is a Software Architect for IBM, working on Cognos Dynamic Cubes at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory. Her interests range from high-performance Java server applications to engaging graphical user interfaces; her areas of expertise include BI, data warehousing and analytical processing. Avery has over 16 years of software development experience at IBM. She earned her graduate degree in software engineering from San Jose State and a undergraduate degree in computer science with a minor in psychology from UC San Diego. She shares fun pictures of her view from IBM as well as her travels on Instagram. Follow her on Instagram at @flav0rave.

Denise McInerney, Data Architect, Intuit

Denise is as a Data Architect at Intuit, where she designs and implements BI and analytics solutions with a focus on enabling the work of analysts and business users. She advocates for the advancement of women in technology, as illustrated in Vinay Pai’s blueprint “how to be a male ally for women in tech”. Denise began her career as a database administrator, managing and developing databases for online transactional systems. She frequently speaks at conferences and serves as VP Marketing for PASS, an international organization of data professionals. Follow Denise on Twitter at @denisemc06.

Gwen Chen Shapira, System Architect, Confluent

Gwen is System Architect at Confluent, and currently specializes in building real-time reliable data processing pipelines using Apache Kafka. She is an Oracle Ace Director, an author of “Hadoop Application Architectures”, and a frequent presenter at data driven conferences. Gwen is a committer on Apache Kafka and Sqoop. Gwen has over 15 years experience working with code and customers to build scalable data architectures, integrating relational and big data technologies. Her first job was as a web developer during her studies at Tel Aviv University, and she dreamed of writing kernel drivers and network algorithms instead of web applications. Follow Gwen on Twitter at @gwensnap.

Jeanine Walters, Software Architect, Salesforce

Jeanine is a Software Architect at Salesforce. Her biggest success was architecting a solution and building a team for a feature that no one else thought was possible. In addition to architecting and writing code, her work includes mentoring and guiding other engineers, and working with product management on direction. Prior to Salesforce.com, Jeanine held multiple technical positions for companies great and small, including an internet company that she founded. She first learned how to program when she was in the 1st grade and strongly believes in the saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” In her spare time, Jeanine enjoys dancing and playing Capoeira. Follow Jeanine on Twitter at @jeaninesw.

Jen-Mei Wu, Software Architect, Indiegogo

Jen-Mei is a Software Architect at Indiegogo, where she works on engineering guidelines and architecture for the engineering team. Her current focus at Indiegogo is on infrastructure (e.g. cloud hosting), performance, and front-end architecture. Her previous roles include engineer, founder, CEO, product manager and more. Jen-Mei is a founder and organizer of Liberating Ourselves Locally, a social-justice-oriented, people of color-led, and gender diverse maker/hacker space in Oakland. She is also one of the organizers of Indiegogo’s Diversity and Inclusion group, and has volunteered for RailsBridge to teach women Ruby programming. Follow Jen-Mei on Twitter at @jenmeiwu.

Kristen Robbins, IT Architect, VMware

Kristen is an IT Architect at VMware in Palo Alto, where she created Storage-as-a-Service and Backup solutions for OneCloud. She designed the platform for wired & wireless network monitoring and optimized the company WAN design. Prior to VMware, she was Datacenter Architect at Cisco and Director of Systems Engineering at DataRunway. Kristen’s career began at Cisco as a software engineer and engineering manager, where she architected interface management software for Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System. Kristen has authored 10 patents since graduating from Caltech with a degree in computer science.

Linda Liu, Big Data Architect, IBM

Linda is a Big Data Architect at IBM in Silicon Valley. She contributes to the IBM developerWorks and keeps a blog on big data, analysis and case studies at Big Data Farm. She is a guest speaker and panelist for UC Berkeley Data Analytics Bootcamp, and presents at IBM conferences. Linda started her career with a degree in marketing, followed by graduate studies in computing. At IBM, she works with customers on big data use case implementation, focus primarily on Hadoop, Spark, open source and machine learning technologies.

Senda Gopalakrishnan, Senior Staff Architect, Tesla

Senda is currently a Senior Staff Architect at Tesla. She is an expert in data architecture and analytics product development. Prior to Tesla, she was Senior Data Analytics Architect at GE Healthcare for hospital operations products, Data Warehouse Architect at MobiTV, and Senior BI Architect at Qualcomm. Senda has over 18 years of experience in data architecture, design, analysis, development, implementation and management of analytics and BI applications in telecom, hi-tech, consumer products, and healthcare verticals. Follow her on Twitter at @senda_g.

Smita Wadhwa, Architect, InMobi

Smita is an Architect at InMobi. Prior to InMobi, she was a Tech Lead at Yahoo! and began her career as a research intern at Yahoo! on video advertising. Smita earned her M.S. in computer science from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in India. Follow her on Twitter at @smitaw.

Snezana Sahter, Principal Software Architect, eBay

As a Principal Software Architect at eBay, Snezana has led and been a major contributor to complex business critical initiatives. She has led and been major contributor to complex business critical initiatives, including the feedback system re-design, seller standards, identity verification and entity resolution. Snezana joined eBay in 2004 as an engineer. Over the span of decade, she has grown into an architect role, and has authored several patents.

Ümit Yalçınalp, Architect, Oracle

Ümit is an Architect at Oracle in Identity Management. Her technical leadership and people management experience spans over 20 years. Prior to Oracle, she taught computer science at Mills College and worked as a Lead Architect at Adobe and Evangelist at Salesforce and Architect at SAP. Ümit co-founded a Turkish Women in Computing group in 2011. She authored a SOA book; edited and contributed to well-known WS-*, Java, SOA specs and contributed to the development and delivery of standards from 1998 to 2006. Follow her on Twitter at @umityalcinalp.

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