WTM Ambassadors North America Summit 2020

Welcome Remarks

Welcome to Day 1 of the WTM Ambassadors North America Summit!  Please join us via the link shared in the calendar invite for the opening remarks. 

Keynote | Women Techmakers Program Vision

Natalia Villalobos  •  Head of Global Programs for Women Techmakers, Google

Natalia is the Head of Global Programs for Women Techmakers, Google’s outreach program for women in technology. She scaled Women Techmakers from a once-per-year event for 300 women in 2012 into a sustained program that now engages and provides community for 200,000 women annually in 190 countries. Her team is focused on outcomes that empower women to thrive: job training, building role models, and transforming ecosystems to increase inclusion. She has two patents with Google. In addition to leading Women Techmakers, Natalia also leads DEI for Developer Relations, Google’s outreach organization for developers, where she oversees hiring, retention, progression, and culture initiatives for 600+ Googlers. 

Melissa Muñoz  •  Global Program Manager, Women Techmakers, Google

Melissa Muñoz is a Global Program Manager for the Women Techmakers program, leading community programs like Ambassadors and Membership. Through her work she aims to create visibility, community, and resources for women in tech throughout all phases of their career. Melissa began her career in education, teaching in Malaysia as part of the Fulbright Program. Upon returning to the Bay Area, she entered the tech world, at companies both big and small working in learning and development. Today, she considers her sweet spot at the intersection of technology, education, and DEI. Melissa is a graduate of Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she majored in American Studies, and minored in Media and Hispanic Studies. She is a resident of Oakland, and serves on the board of Reel Stories, a local non-profit youth media organization that combats the significant gender imbalance in film production. In her free time she loves to go on long runs, and cheer on the A's and Warriors.

Lift As You Climb

In this talk, hear from Elise about how Google approaches empowering and uplifting women at the company, and lessons learned from managing internal communities. By tuning into your purpose, values and motivation for doing what you do, you can make a greater impact. If we all lift as we climb, the world will be better off for it.

Elise Birkhofer  •  Global Head of Women's Community & Programs, Google

As the Global Head of Women’s Community & Programs at Google, Elise oversees the strategy to ensure women have thriving careers and feel like they belong at the company. She manages the Women@ Employee Resource Group with 20,000 members with 120 chapters around the world. She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Communication, and held prior roles in Marketing. She is also an executive coach and frequent speaker on diversity and inclusion, mindfulness and emotional intelligence.

Mindfulness for Changemakers

This talk will be centered around the positive benefits of Mindfulness for people who are: from under-represented groups / investing in community work / engaged in social justice activism / changing the world!

Laura Hugill  •  Program Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), Google

Laura is a Mindfulness Teacher, a trained Facilitator, a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Program Manager and a Professional Coach. Laura has been at Google for over 6 years, starting her career in London, UK, before transfering to the US Bay Area where she deepened her relationship with the practice of Mindfulness and realised a desire to share her passion for mindful living with others. Today, she facilitates guided meditations and mindfulness workshops for thousands of people around the world. Laura is passionate about the importance of cultivating diverse and inclusive environments where everyone can thrive. Her interests include racial & gender equity, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, self-development, compassionate leadership, mental health awareness and holistic wellness. 

Break

Product Talk | Using the Latest Hardware with Google Cloud

Google Cloud Platform offers a variety of options to run your application, and keeps adding new generations of hardware. In this talk, we will learn about the latest hardware on GCP and how they change the way we run our software.  

Emma Haruka Iwao  •  Developer Advocate, Google Cloud Platform, Google

Emma is a developer advocate for Google Cloud Platform based in Seattle, focusing on computing products, performance optimization, and high performance computing. She has been a C++ developer for more than 15 years and worked on embedded systems and the Chromium Project. Besides software engineering, she likes games, traveling, and eating delicious food.

Product Talk | Flutter 

Nilay Yener  •  Program Manager, Flutter and Dart DevRel, Google

Nilay is a Program Manager in the Flutter DevRel team. She used be a GDG organizer and WTM Lead in Istanbul, her passion on the communities became her full time job. 

Break

Online Safety Training Workshop 

The Women's Safety Training is a series of community trainings bringing together women and allies across the globe to be trained in ways to secure themselves online. We will cover: 

• Awareness: Understanding the Challenge
• Tactics: How to Protect Yourself
• Pass It Along: Keeping Other Women Safe

Rana Abdelhamid  •  Global Marketing and Partnerships Lead, Women Techmakers, Google

Rana is an internationally acclaimed human rights organizer, martial artist and social entrepreneur focused on the empowerment of marginalized communities. She is the founder and CEO of MALIKAH, a global self-defense and empowerment training organization that trains young Muslim women to confront gender based and anti-Muslim violence. Rana is an anti-hate crime martial artist and self defense instructor with a 1st Degree Black Belt in Shotokan Karate certified under the New York State Black Belt Association. Abdelhamid is also a longtime activist with Amnesty International USA and currently serves as the youngest member of their National Executive Board of Directors. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Elle.com, Mic.com, Aljazeera, BBC, CBS and PBS.  She is a recent graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she received a Masters in Public Policy with a focus on social and urban policy.

Closing Remarks

Welcome Remarks

Welcome back to Day 2 of the WTM Ambassadors North America  Summit! Please join us via the link shared in the calendar invite. 

Building for Billions

In this talk, Sydney will share how Google designs and builds products for inclusion. 

Sydney Coleman  •  Product Marketer and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Evangelist, Google

Sydney works on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at Google in San Francisco. She also serves as the Vice President on the Board of UN Women USA San Francisco. Sydney is incredibly passionate about making the workplace, and tech industry in particular, more accessible, inclusive, and equitable for underrepresented populations. She has facilitated workshops for Women 2.0, a diversity and inclusion consulting company with a focus on closing the gap for female-founded early-stage companies in the tech space and designed employee inclusion surveys and held intergroup dialogues on social justice issues and microaggressions in teh workplace. 

Panel | Social and Racial Justice Initatives 

In this panel discussion,  we will cover the personal narratives and experiences of each of the panelists, recommended trainings, initiatives/programs they are doing in their own areas at Google to support social and racial injustice as well as share their learnings.                   

Lindiwe (Lin) Davis
Program Manager Lead, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), Google 

Lindiwe Davis is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Program Manager lead at Google, launching and overseeing DEI programs and events while building inclusive communities. She is currently focused on driving awareness and education for an Engineering organization, boldly moving conversations from uncomfortable silence to data driven face to face insights, utilizing personal narratives to impact people and promote action. Lindiwe’s professional foundation is rooted in community development, DEI advocacy, branding/strategy and project management. And she happens to be a media host and public speaker. Throughout her professional career she's served as a senior leader and at times a cultural change manager. She holds an M.S. degree in Publishing (Digital Media), a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in English and considers herself to be a nerd with a biscuit fetish. Lindiwe lives in the NY/ NJ area- loves to travel and wherever there is good food, you will find her. She also enjoys spinning, kickboxing and hanging with her "fambam" aka friends and family. And she recently launched a new podcast called A Stranger Down The Hall™, available on Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts. 

Jason Scott
Head of Startup Developer Ecosystem - USA, Google

Jason Scott is the Head of Googler’s Startup Developer Ecosystem in the United States. In this role, he serves as Google's cross-functional ecosystem lead - managing Google's U.S.-based Accelerator programs and startup developer engagement strategy. Finishing an undergraduate degree at MIT, Jason got his professional start in management consulting at Arthur D. Little. After ADL, Jason moved from Boston to San Francisco to join the YC-backed startup - Homejoy - and subsequently went on to pursue an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. During and after GSB, Jason worked independently with a number of startups, eventually joining the investment team at Highland Capital Partners. In addition, he also remains an active seed investor, startup advisor, and the founder of FactionSF - a community for creatives, entrepreneurs, and early-stage investors. 

Andrea Russell
Global Product Lead, Google

Andrea Russell is a global product lead at Google, driving development of product solutions for retailers. She’s currently focused on creating a vision for Large and XL customer solutions and developing the next evolution of Google’s Shopping formats. Andrea started her career in online advertising and believes in the power of the internet to create connections and bring people together (with and without ads). She’s worked in a number of roles at Google, most recently a strategy lead with Google Cloud, helping customers create intelligence from their data. Prior to Google she was a product manager at Xaxis, focused on building out their DMP and data analytics offerings. Andrea is a graduate of the Columbia University where she received her B.A. in Sociology. Aside from technology and the internet, Andrea is passionate about racial equity and self care. She teaches yoga and mindfulness at Sky Ting in New York City and online. 

Break

Community Talk | My Lockdown Journey to Joining Accenture

Join this talk as Linda will walk you through her action plan and the happy ending that we always love to hear! When the lockdown hit, she knew that uncertainty brings opportunity, and unlike most of us that fear uncertainty because it's a promise of change, she continued to focus on the outcome. We don't know what change will bring to our lives, how we will be impacted or how do we have to deal with it. She had to ask herself questions, make decisions and craft her action plan. With so much change occurring, she knew that there'll be countless opportunities and she needed to have the right mindset in order to take advantage of it. Her action plan leveraged her past experiences with the change to help her take advantage of all the opportunities around her and that’s where her focus was all this time.

Linda Kovacs • WTM Ambassador & GDG Capital Region Lead

Community Talk | How 7 GDG and WTM Members Came Together Remotely and Launched an NGO in the Middle of a Pandemic

This is an inspiring story how GDG NYC and WTM volunteers launched Positive Planet in the US - a charity helping the underprivileged start a business and be financially independent. Ralph, Tina, Anna, Miki, Dev, Kirsten, and Swathi used Google Cloud technologies to launch a website, setup payments for donations, and a newsletter service. A Google Ads Grant for non profits for $10,000 was used and we participate in a Google Online Challenge with 5 students from the University of South Carolina. We work with MBAs Fighting Covid to launch fundraising. Our team is women led and super diverse! Our first project in the US will be Positive Planet Training for Women Founders - where 3 businesses will receive vocational training with consultants from our first partner Capgemini. Hear our story, join us and help others!"

Anna Nerezova • WTM Ambassador & GDG NYC Lead

Anna Nerezova has a decade of experience in analytics and optimization. She is on the 100 Women in Analytics list by Google Analytics and is a Google Cloud Engineer Scholar. She is passionate about applying the latest technologies to provide solutions that bring growth and better experience for all users. 

Kirsten Böhme • Social Media & Content, Positive Planet US 

Kirsten Böhme is a New York-based Visual Merchandiser for HBC/Saks, executing visual marketing and branding strategies. Prior to HBC/Saks, Kirsten was responsible for the digital marketing and design components at a D2C women’s apparel startup. Kirsten got her start in fashion at Diane von Furstenberg and credits those amazing four years as her foundation in all things marketing, business, and the digital industry. An avid supporter of women’s initiatives, Kirsten divides her time between the Positive Planet US NGO, and United Women In Business NYC. When she is not attempting to master the basics of yoga and her first 5K, Kirsten can be found nibbling her way through New York’s outdoor restaurant scene (socially distanced of course)! 

Panel | Community Organizers Tell-All

This distinguished panel has over 35 years of combined technical expertise -- and has helped over 10K people of all ages, backgrounds and experience get more comfortable with Python, R, robotics, data science, and technology in general. They’re here to share their lessons learned.

Amy Tzu-Yu Chen
WTM Ambassador

Amy is a Data Scientist at System1. She is the organizer of West Los Angeles R Users Group (since 2019). 

Annie Flippo

Annie is the Head of Data Science & Insights at inMarket, and a data science expert in the areas of marketing, media and consumer behavior. In her spare time, she teaches robotics programming to high school students (started in 2020) and volunteers as a mentor in the data science field (since 2015). 

Michelle Brenner
WTM Ambassador

Michelle (she/her) is a Senior Software Engineer, with 10 years of experience. She runs an interview tech podcast called From the Source and works to promote diversity and inclusion in tech through events, mentoring, and board membership. 

Valerie Phoenix
WTM Ambassador

Valerie is a Senior Software Engineer at Mastery Logistics Systems. She’s also the founder of Tech By Choice (since 2018).

Break

Fantastic Boundaries and How To Set Them

Many women often feel like they are caught in a trap where they have to do everything and not fail at a single thing. It feels like impossible standards, often self-imposed. We try so hard to please everyone else that we often miss the fact that we’re constantly choosing others over ourselves. We’re going to talk through the ways we cross our own boundaries and then learn how to create values-based boundaries to protect who we are and who we want to be.

Neem Serra  •  WTM Ambassadors North America Mentor | GDG St. Louis 

Neem Serra is the lead iOS developer at Stitch Fix and is based in the St. Louis area. She is the Google Developer Group Lead for St. Louis and Women Techmakers Mentor for North America. She loves to do conference talks on unconscious bias or Swift and has recently been making all of her technical talks have examples related to her two loves: her baby Logan and cupcakes. Neem loves to bake, read comics, and host craft nights.

Get Happy, Get Known, Get Paid

Build yourself, build your brand, and capitalize on your success to get the quality of life that you deserve. Success is relative, but there are things that the top developers, innovators, managers and leaders do that make them successful. It's not what you think it is, like "Oh, they just work really hard all the time." or "Oh, they are just so much smarter." or "Oh, they are just charismatic" or "Oh, they are just really good negotiators". It isn't even all about the title(s). In this talk, we are going to go through self analysis and prep, then how to establish your personal brand based off of that analysis and finally how best to capitalize on that personal brand with the help of appropriate professionals and information. 

Stacy Devino  •  WTM Ambassadors North America Mentor | GDG Dallas

Stacy recently joined Stitch Fix as a leader in their mobile division. As far as current accolades and involvement, she is a Women Techmakers North America Mentor, GDG Organizer, Intel Innovator, and WWC Evangelist. She is noted for her work in diversity advocacy, tech democracy, "real-talk" personal and technical development, and an international keynote speaker. Stacy has been developing for Android for over 10 years and worked on nearly every aspect, currently specializing in rich app user experiences.

Break

Closing Remarks