SPEAKER

Jen Cohen

Jen Cohen is the Vice President of Operations at Toyota Research Institute (TRI), responsible for Information Technology, Internal Communications, Facilities, and Data & Information Policy as well as helping support Human Resources. She joined TRI in December 2017, formerly serving as the Senior Director of Information Technology, and expanded her role into operational management in August 2018. Prior to joining TRI, she spent the last 20+ years in operational, IT, and development roles, leading major operational and IT projects and teams at Cisco, Birkenstock, Convention Management Resources, and Line2. Her most notable achievements span from increasing uptime, reducing fraud, improving CSAT scores, onboarding tools to advance remote- and field-work capabilities, and rebooting and modernizing platforms. Jen is a major advocate for staff development through coaching and mentoring practices. Having a solid track record of optimizing and empowering Operations and IT departments, including building full technology platforms, Jennifer carries a strong DevOps background to operations management with a focus on emergent technologies and best practices.


VIDEOS

VIDEO

Girl Geek X Toyota Research Institute

Learn how TRI is working to build an uncrashable car, use robotics to amplify people’s capabilities as they age and leverage artificial intelligence to enable discovery of new materials for batteries and fuel cells.
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VIDEO

“I *am* the IT Guy” by Jen Cohen, VP of Operations, Toyota Research Institute

For the first decade of her career, Jen offered the familiar phrase over and over again: “I *am* the IT guy.” Today, she leads the IT, Facilities, Internal Communications, Project Management and Operations functions at TRI. She’ll share the challenges of instituting best practices and operational rigor in a highly innovative and constantly changing environment. Jen will also discuss her best hacks for developing a high-performance culture in technology organizations.
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