Episode 12: Kristin Williams, Executive

Kristin is the Vice President of the Enterprise Services Group for Ultra Mobile. After many years in tech advertising sales, she is now deep in organizational development where she has a hand a little bit of everything.  She is very intuitive and smart about people and you are going to want her to be your personal mentor. 

Luckily, she is writing a book, so soon we will all have her wisdom in our hands.

Think of your personal brand at work.  Everything you do either adds to your brand or takes away from it.  Everything.  Always be influencing your brand for the better.

Authenticity is the secret sauce.

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 10: Karen Forchione, Project Manager, Controller

Karen is the Controller and in charge of Business Management for Dirty Robber. Previously, she has also been a Project Manager for tech companies since the beginning of Project Management as a discipline. 

She was not only the only woman in the room, she was the only woman at the entire conference at IBM headquarters. She not only figured out the job, she figured out how to hold her boundaries, hold respect, and hold her own.

From the Irish tenements in Bristol, England to the Oscars with her sons, she has had an amazing journey.

The only thing between you and your dreams, is yourself.  We hear that all the time, but it is true and bears repeating.

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 5: Eileen Scully, Founder and Consultant

Eileen is the Founder of The Rising Tides, a consulting firm that works with companies to help women support each other.  In her own words, “The mission of The Rising Tides is to drive a work culture that supports women regardless of life stage and allows each of our boats to rise together, never at the expense of one another.”  She learned a lot coming up through tech companies, and she is now at a point where she shares this knowledge with others and supports building an inclusive and supportive corporate culture.

She also runs a website called 52 Feminists that highlights the story of a different feminist every week.  Look to see me there soon, because I am a feminist.  But, not in an angry, scary, hairy way.   

She gave us several little nuggets on what we can do today to make things better - like what to do when you are inaudible in a meeting.

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.