Episode 13: Reena Gupta, Entrepreneur, Founder

Reena is an Entrepreneur with five tech companies under belt.  Her latest venture is called MomRelaunch and is focused on helping stay at home mothers re-enter the workforce in technical and HR fields.

She is focused on her companies’ culture which is very simple = results.  As long as you have results, that is what matters.  And as we know, moms can be the most productive and efficient employees out there.  They don’t have time to mess around and wander the halls holding coffee cups and chatting.

Everything is measurable. And gender doesn’t have to be a factor as long as you are able to communicate confidently.

Episode 11: Navya Rehani Gupta, VP of Product

Navya is the Vice President of Products at a company called Peek – which is basically the Open Table of activities.  Prior to Peek, she ran product at StyleSeat, the world’s largest marketplace for beauty services that has fueled over $3 billion in beauty services. She has also built large-scale products at Uber, Disney and Goldman Sachs. 

Navya has all the degrees, three of them in fact, from University of Sheffield in the UK, Stanford and from NYU Stern School of business. (Go Violets!) She is a big advocate of women in tech and is in the process of figuring out how to do it all and be successful.

She is expecting a baby soon and hopes her experience will encourage other women in tech to follow their dreams and know that integrating a family is in fact possible. After all, don’t men also have toddlers at home?

Episode 7: Carmen Palafox, Partner/Investor/Community Builder

Carmen is a Partner at Make in LA, a hardware startup accelerator and venture capital firm that aims to make hardware less hard.  She started her career working in finance at Dimensional Fund Advisors and holds several degrees, including one in Sports Management.  She is an avid runner, a fearless entrepreneur and we share the unfulfilled dream of being a professional singer.  It’s probably not going to happen for either of us.

It’s important to find the intersection between passion, interest and ability. 

And “raspberry pie” is apparently a tech term – not necessarily dessert – but it does have something to do with a napkin.  I like how tech has so much to do with food.

Episode 6: Sean Hughes, Customer Experience Leader, Writer, Founder

Sean works at a big consumer software company in California, as the Head of the emerging services group, surrounded by women. Prior to that, he was a naval officer who completed multiple deployments with the SEAL teams of the Naval Special Warfare community, where he was surrounded by men. 

In addition, he writes and runs the politics and society blog Chartwell West. If you want a break from the current hysteria that is our national discourse, Sean is your guy. 

And if all that weren't enough, he and his wife Annette founded a non-profit organization called Care for Us, which provides outreach and support for special needs families, such as theirs.

We talked all things equality and workplace culture. And as for families and work – don’t ever make them choose.

Episode 4: Linda Tadic, Founder and CEO

Linda Tadic is the Founder and CEO of Digital Bedrock. Digital Bedrock is a digital preservation company with proprietary methods of ensuring assets will be accessible in the future. Linda came up through filmmaking and cataloging and is now a thought leader in media and digital preservation and metadata.  To be honest, I was on the fence about which podcast to publish this one under – Hollywood or Tech – but Tech won out, as her company does much more than digital assets for film. In reality, this episode is where tech and Hollywood intersect and are related. 

Linda tells us about her history making experimental film, studying Baroque music, attending women’s marches, and becoming an expert in digital preservation – sometimes while partially paralyzed due to Guillain-Barre syndrome.

And she explains about her DOOD. The DOOD is really important.

Episode 2: Pooja Malpani, Senior Staff Engineer

Pooja is a Senior Staff Engineer at HBO.  She grew up in India where she was one of few women in her engineering program.  She had to get special permission from her father in order to access the lab at her college. Wait, what?  Yes.  She proved herself, winning awards and coding challenges, and paved the way for the women behind her.

She worked at Microsoft in India and in the United States. Upon arriving at HBO, she couldn’t find a women’s group and so she started one.  That’s how you do it.

Episode 1: Rebecca Sadwick, Director of Marketing

Rebecca is the Director of Marketing at GoGuardian, an educational tech company.  Before joining GoGuardian, she worked on research at UCLA that opened her eyes wide open about gender issues in tech industries.  Despite seeing all the data, she plunged in anyway, and is fully invested in consciously creating inclusive and diverse corporate cultures that move toward gender parity.

I learned a tremendous amount during this interview.  Rebecca is a rising star and is poised to be a leader in her industry.

And, she explained “brogrammer” culture.  That’s a real thing.

Introducing The Other 50% - a herstory of tech

This is the podcast where we talk to women in tech and hear their stories.