KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Lakecia Gunter
Chief of Staff & Technical Assistant to CEO
Intel

Lakecia Gunter is the Chief of Staff & Technical assistant to Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel. Prior to her current role, she was the General Manager of Consumer Desktop Segment Marketing team, in the Client Computing Group, where she was responsible for maximizing desktop profitability through form factor innovation and first time buyer programs, driving growth in new market segments, and driving disruption in adjacent markets to grow the desktop P&L.

Lakecia earned a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from University of South Florida. Lakecia also earned her Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification.

Maggie Johnson
VP of Education and University Programs
Google

Maggie Johnson is Director of Education and University Relations for Google. She manages all technical training and content development, and information management programs for Google engineers and operations staff, as well as Google’s K12 educational programs in STEM and computer science. She also manages the University Relations area, building strategic research partnerships with faculty and labs globally.

Prior to Google, Maggie was a faculty member and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University.

Darlene Solomon
Chief Technology Officer
Agilent Technologies

Darlene Solomon is SVP and Chief Technology Officer for Agilent Technologies. She received her BS from Stanford University, her PhD in chemistry from MIT, and she completed Stanford University’s Executive Development Program. In recognition of her career accomplishments, Solomon was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017. She was also inducted into the Women in Technology International's Hall of Fame in 2001, received the YWCA Tribute to Women and Industry Award in 2004, and was named to Diversity Journal’s Women Worth Watching in 2007 and Corporate Board Member’s 50 Top Women in Technology in 2008. Solomon serves on the Board of Directors for Materion Corporation, in addition to roles on multiple academic and government advisory and review boards.

SPEAKERS

Donya Q. Amiri
Associate Transportation/Civil Engineer
City of Fremont

Her dream is to break through the barriers and misconceptions of Afghan women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to use her education to make a difference in her community. Donya Amiri attended SJSU where she earned two degrees in Civil Engineering and one degree in Business. She holds two engineering licenses from the State of California Board for Professional Engineers. As an Associate Engineer for the City of Fremont, the city she has called home for over 25 years, Ms. Amiri has been in charge of the traffic signal infrastructure and operations. She's leading signal communication and modernization projects. She is also a busy mom of three children--Monisa (3), Imran (5), and Arsalan (7). She and her husband Waheed love to travel and play with their kids.

Divya Ashok
Director of Product Management
Salesforce

Divya is Director, Product Management for Salesforce's global strategic customers. She manages product readiness for key accounts resulting in product enhancements and new functionality for all customers. Her team works on scaling existing features for enterprise customers.

Divya's is also the Global President for Salesforce Women's Network (SWN), a resource group that focuses on empowering and supporting women across the organization. She actively participates in diversity initiatives to help move the needle across the industry.

She has lived in 5 countries and traveled to 35+ countries. In her spare time, she loves hosting friends and family.

You can reach out to her on Twitter @diviAshok

Shubhi Asthana
Research Software Engineer
IBM

Shubhi Asthana is a Research Software Engineer working at IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California. She leads research and development of end-to-end solutions and analytical tools in the areas of Cloud Services, Machine Learning, Energy Management & IoT, for which she has been also awarded 8+ patents. Her work has appeared at top-tier venues including SCC 2017, AI & MS 2017, ICSOC, and NIPS ML4HC 2016 among others. She has completed her Masters in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, USA.

Kristen L. Beck
Technical Lead & Research Staff Member
IBM

Dr. Beck is a research staff member in the Industrial and Applied Genomics group at IBM Research. As a bioinformatician, she contributes to the development of a web application for exploration and analysis of microbiomes of food ingredient. This research is part of the Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain which aims to detect pathogenic bacteria, identify food fraud, and detect antimicrobial resistance. Terabytes of sequencing and derived data must be processed into enhanced reports for a non-scientist user allowing them to interpret the results that have broader implications for food safety. Dr. Beck received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology from the University of California, Davis.

Lily Blair
Investigative Computational Biologist
Karius

I’m a computational biologist interested in the microbiome, infectious disease, and the immune system. I did my PhD at Stanford, where I studied the dynamics of the human antibody repertoire in response to flu vaccine, and I currently work at Karius, where I do research and development of our infectious disease diagnostic.

Michelle Bockman
Global Head of 3D Printing
HP

Michelle Bockman is the Global Head of 3D Printing Commercial Expansion & Development at HP Inc. In this role she focuses on growing the market through key customer engagements, global alliances, materials partner programs, applications development, creating new software solutions, and ensuring the best customer experience and outcomes.

Previously, Michelle had a long career at GE, most recently as executive vice president at GE Digital where she led the company’s ambitious strategy to build a software-driven digital future for large industrial customers and establish GE Digital as a $15 billion stand-alone P&L.

With more than 20 years of digital industrial experience she has led a variety of functions in the healthcare, industrial cybersecurity, pharmaceutical, and automotive sectors spanning commercial, engineering, service, and supply chain roles.

Michelle holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Missouri University of Science & Technology and is based in Palo Alto, California.

Carol Carpenter
VP of Product Marketing
Google

Carol is a geek with a passion for technology and solving customer problems. She's been in tech marketing for most of her career, starting as a product marketing manager at Apple. She loves building and scaling new products and has done that at both small and large companies in varying roles as CMO, GM and most recently as CEO before joining Google Cloud.

She is particularly proud of the high-performance teams she's developed and the fact that many of her prior marketing mavens are all doing impactful work across tech companies.

Margaret Cederoth
Sustainability Director
WSP

Margaret Cederoth, AICP LEED AP ENV SP, is the sustainability director for WSPs US infrastructure sector. She has over 17 years of experience in the areas of transportation and sustainability. Ms Cederoth has developed sustainability strategies and managed the implementation process for major infrastructure projects in the US and Middle East. She led sustainability efforts for the Masdar Institute project in Abu Dhabi from 2007 to 2009. She has also worked on complex carbon neutral projects and high-performance facilities in the U.S. and currently manages the sustainability program for the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Willa Chen
Software Engineer
Google

Willa Chen is a software engineer who's passionate about elegant, robust, and maintainable code. She currently manages an infrastructure team at Google Daydream, which builds virtual and augmented reality technology. Previously at Google, she has worked on online ads and the Debug Project (mosquito elimination). In her free time, Willa runs a weekly puzzle competition called Mission Street Puzzles, and also enjoys rock climbing, board games, and ice cream.

Soniya Chopada
Engineering Manager
Therma

Soniya, P. E., LEED (AP) is a HVAC enthusiast, who enjoys the diverse variety of facilities this High-Tech capitol of the world offers. In her 20-year career, she’s worked on- Educational, Semi-conductor, Bio-Tech, Data-Center, and Mixed-Use Commercial- projects, to meet its unique goals driven by- budget/ schedule/ energy efficiency/ or sustainability. She is Alumni of College of Engineering Pune and University of Iowa from where she received Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, and currently is the Engineering Manager at Therma.

On the personal note, her message to you- “If you enjoy problem solving and teamwork, give the careers in construction a thought. Good luck and may the force be with you!”

Judy Chou
Global Head of Biotech
Bayer

With more than 20 years of industry experience in biomanufacturing and drug development, Dr. Judy Chou currently heads the Global Pharmaceutical Product Supply Biotech organization overseeing the manufacturing and distribution of Bayer’s $3 billion biotechnology product portfolio. In addition, she serves as the site head for Bayer’s facility in Berkeley, CA, USA.

Before Bayer, she held the role of Vice President of Pharmaceutical/Technical Operations at Pfizer, Inc., formerly Medivation, where she led the Development and Manufacturing organizations for both biologics and small molecule products. She was also Vice President of R&D at Tanvex Biopharma, Inc., where Dr. Chou led the development of rich pipeline projects and provided leadership in R&D, manufacturing, preclinical and clinical functions to enable the success of the company’s IPO. Throughout Dr. Chou’s career, she has achieved significant milestones in protein therapeutic development and multiple filings of BLAs and INDs of novel products. She is recognized for her work at Genentech, Wyeth Biopharma/Pfizer and Abbott Bioresearch/AbbVie, and has contributed to the development of breakthrough technologies in analytical characterization and the accelerated process and formulation development.

Before joining the industry, Dr. Chou was also a research faculty member at Harvard University Medical School, focused on cell biology and neuroscience research. Dr. Chou obtained her Ph.D. from Yale University and completed her post-doctoral training at Max-Planck Institute in Germany.

Renee Chu
Aerospace/Additive R&D Engineer
Facebook

Renee is an aerospace engineer at Facebook. She works on airplanes, satellites, and additive manufacturing projects hope, one day, to deliver internet to the parts of the world that don’t have it yet. She believes that giving people access to the internet will help them have a better quality of life. Prior to aerospace, she designed enclosures and patented server architecture for Facebook’s data centers. She’s also had stints of analysis work on civil and automotive crashworthiness applications.

If not at work you can usually find Renee at the gym, a hipster coffee shop, or alone in a dance floor figuring out choreography from YouTube videos. Renee lives in San Francisco with her three succulents, Trevor, Toby, and Evelyn as well as her beloved Pomeranian stuffed animal, Biggs.

Diana Chung
Senior Director of Clinical Operations
Gilead Sciences

Diana Chung is a Senior Director of Clinical Operations at Gilead Sciences. She received her BS in Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University and a MS in Molecular & Cellular Biology at the University of Maryland. She provides leadership in the Inflammation/Respiratory therapeutic area to execute global clinical trials in areas including rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and other autoimmune diseases. Previously, she led the Early Development team that manages Phase 1 studies across all therapeutic areas. She has supported NDA/MAA submissions for several of the currently marketed therapeutics including Stribild®, Sovaldi® Zydelig®, Harvoni®, Genvoya®, Odefsey® and Descovy®. She is an active member of Women@Gilead and the Running community.

Antonella Corno
Senior Manager of Product Strategy
Cisco

Antonella Corno is the Senior Manager of Product Strategy at Learning@Cisco. She actively manages the development of the learning portfolio, overseeing a team that translates information from hardware and software developers to architects of technology training and certification. After spending more than two decades across two continents working in technology research and development for leading Information Technology (IT) firms, Antonella understands the challenges that individuals face when entering, training and updating skills in the IT industry. Antonella works tirelessly to build frameworks for these individuals to enable the learning process.

Antonella is a CCIE Emeritus, has spoken at several international conferences, and holds multiple international patents.

Jimma Cortes-Smith
Educational Counseling Coordinator
Counseling and Psychological Services, SJSU

Jimma Cortes-Smith, MA, is an alumna of the SJSU Counselor Education program. She is in her 13th year of teaching EDCO 004 Personal, Academic and Career Development. In 2013, she began as a temp with SJSU Counseling and Psychological Services as an Educational Counselor; she is presently the full-time coordinator of the educational program. Ms. Cortes-Smith’s passion is helping students develop their career pathways. As an introvert, she formerly struggled with weak networking skills and reserved interviewing skills, which was hampering her career growth. In recognizing this, Ms. Cortes-Smith has developed and facilitated workshops in assertive communication, in the hopes that the students will be able to build confidence, become empowered and be heard!!

Jessica Decker
Visualization Specialist
Fulcrum Community

Jessica Decker is a visualization specialist with a wide background in public interface design. Her previous clients include MIT, Cornell University, and the California Academy of Sciences. Jessica is a self-taught developer, and is active in many civic data projects such as Code for America, EmpowerSF, and Google's Geo for Good program. In September 2017, Jessica initiated a crowdsourced relief platform during Hurricane Harvey that provided aid to over 28,000 people, and was the 2017 recipient of the Churchill Club Community Benefactor award. Jessica is currently a project consultant for a select list of clients in the humanitarian and infrastructure sectors, with a focus on resilience equity and community-based platform development.

Gini Deshpande
CEO
NuMedii

Gini is founder & CEO of NuMedii, an AI driven biopharma company focused on discovery of new precision therapeutics. As CEO, she structured critical partnerships with several large pharma companies and raised Series A from VCs. Previously, she helped Affymetrix and other companies with market development strategies for their ground breaking technologies. She led innovation at Children's Hospital Boston for the creation of new devices for the tiniest of patients. Gini helped commercialize early stage technologies in research tools, diagnostics & therapeutics and has closed licensing deals worth several million. Gini received her MS from the University of Pune (India), her PhD in Biological Sciences from Purdue University, and did post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Regina Freed
Managing Director of Patterning Technology
Applied Materials

Regina Freed is Managing Director of Patterning Technology of Applied Materials. She has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, managing lithography, metrology, and defect inspection development for both logic and memory processes. Before joining Applied in 2015, she worked at KLA-Tencor and several semiconductor start-up companies, focusing on marketing and product development.

Isaura S. Gaeta
VP and General Manager
Intel

Isaura S. Gaeta is vice president and general manager of systems engineering in the Platform Engineering Group (PEG) at Intel Corporation. She leads the team responsible for optimizing overall workflow to improve engineering efficiency and effectiveness, with a focus on improvements in execution capacity, quality management systems, and operational excellence for a global engineering organization of 18k people. Gaeta also manages PEG’s people systems and serves as chief of staff for the group’s senior vice president of engineering.

A 30-year veteran of Intel, Gaeta has managed engineering and operations teams in PEG since 2013. Gaeta spent the first two decades of her Intel career managing the development of various semiconductor processing technologies. Her work during that period led to two patents and five Intel Achievement Awards, the company’s highest recognition.

Gaeta holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She founded Intel’s Network of Executive Women for the Latin America region and was the chair of Intel’s Hispanic Leadership Council. Outside of Intel, she serves on the board of the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley and previously served on the board of Women in Engineering Proactive Network and the advisory board for El Centro Chicano at Stanford. The Hispanic IT Executive Council has recognized her four times on its annual list of the top 100 Hispanic professionals in the IT industry.

Aga M. Goodsell
Deputy Director of Exploration Technology
NASA Ames Research Center

Dr. Aga Goodsell is the Deputy Director of Exploration Technology at NASA Ames Research Center. She has held this Senior Executive Service position since September 2016. She joined NASA in 1987 as an aerospace engineer, moved into line management as Chief of the Aerothermodynamics Branch in 2008, and became Associate Director for Exploration Technology in 2012. She served as Acting Deputy Director for Exploration Technology in August 2015 until her permanent appointment. Dr. Goodsell received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame; her M.S. in Aeronautics/Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and her Ph.D. in Aeronautics/Astronautics from Stanford University. She holds a private pilot certificate with an instrument rating.

Helen Grays-Jones
Community Relations Manager
Meriwest Credit Union

Helen Grays-Jones is the Community Relations Manager for Meriwest Credit Union, headquartered in San Jose. Prior to joining Meriwest, she was a Market Manager for a large credit union and a Senior Vice President for a smaller financial institution, primarily overseeing the retail branch network and growth initiatives. She has over 30 years of experience as a leader in Banking and Financial Services.

Helen has been recognized for her overall leadership 9 times during her career.

Helen served as President for the Santa Clara Chapter of the California/Nevada Credit Union League for three years. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for two agencies; the Bill Wilson Center and SEMI Foundation and Advisory Boards of several other agencies.

Helen has received numerous community service awards for her volunteerism and impact in facilitation of financial literacy and life skills workshops within high schools and at non-profits.

She studied Business Administration at Cañada College and graduated with honors from the American Bankers Academy Retail Banking Management Program.

Her passions include: volunteering, facilitating financial literacy and soft skills workshops, reading, traveling and spending quality time with her family and friends.

Ellen Greenberg
Deputy Director for Sustainability
Caltrans

Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ellen Greenberg in 2016 as the Caltrans Deputy Director for Sustainability, a position created to lead the department's efforts in developing and implementing initiatives to align with California's goals on sustainability. Prior to joining Caltrans, Ellen was a Principal at Arup, working in San Francisco and London on major planning and infrastructure projects. Her career includes over three decades of work in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Ellen holds degrees in Geography, City and Regional Planning, and Transportation Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Joanna Guerrero
Customer Success Engineer
ClearStory Data

Joanna Guerrero was born in the small town of Dinuba, CA, located in the Central Valley, an agricultural valley that dominates the geographical center of California. She has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from California State University, Chico, and a Master’s degree in Software Engineering from San José State University. As a software engineer for IBM, she was with the company nearly 16 years and was responsible for the build and release processes of multiple database management products. She recently transition to VMWare, company that provides cloud and virtualization software and services. Joanna currently serves as Chair of the SJSU MEP Industry Advisory Board and Industry Advisor to the Society of Women Engineers.

Katherine Han
Reliability Engineer
SunPower

Katherine is currently a solar module reliability engineer at SunPower corporation. In this position she designs the tests and pass/fail requirements to ensure and demonstrate 40+ year reliability of SunPower solar modules. Previously Katherine attended Oregon State University, where she, along with her partner, founded a solar-electric racing team, which has competed multiple times in the American Solar Challenge and the Abu Dhabi Solar Challenge. SunPower has always been dear to her heart; after making their first SunPower modules for the car in 2013, the team was able to win first place in the next Formula Sun Grand Prix. In her spare time, she enjoys house construction and competitive gymnastics.

Mahvash Harms
Structural Engineer / Principal
Biggs Cardosa Assoc.

I was born in Tehran, Iran and was the only female student accepted to the Civil Engineering School of Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. After about 3.5 years at Pahlavi University, we migrated to the Bay Area. I continued my education at SJSU where I finished my BS and MS in Structural Engineering.

I am a principal at Biggs Cardosa Assoc. and am PIC of our SF and Oakland offices, and also manage a design team in our SJ office.

I have over 35 years of experience including many multi-disciplinary bridge and building projects such as 152 /156 and structures along Hwy 101 and 680 as well as a unique single arch pedestrian bridge over railroad tracks at Bay Street in Emeryville.

On a personal note; I am an avid walker and Hiker and try to walk at least 20 miles a week!

Nina Hawk
Chief Operating Officer
Santa Clara Valley Water District

Nina Hawk is the Chief Operating Officer for the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s Water Utility Enterprise. She is responsible for leading Santa Clara County’s water supply program consisting of: water importation, surface reservoir operations and storage, groundwater management, raw and treated water delivery, drinking water treatment, water recycling and purification, and water conservation programs. She holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Master of Public Administration both from San Jose State University, and is a recipient of the “Rising Star Award” by Municipal Management Association of Northern California.

Helen Holder
Distinguished Technologist
HP

Distinguished Technologist and leader of the Nanolab in HP Labs, responsible for printed electronics, IOT tracking, display technologies, voice interfaces, and materials research.

Kaijen Hsiao
Chief Technology Officer
Mayfield Robotics

As the CTO of a game-changing, consumer robotics company, I strive to open-up the new capabilities of robotics technology, with particular attention on shared autonomous teleoperation, imitation learning, tactile grasp adjustment, human-aware navigation, and robot mapping and localization.

Across my career at MIT, Bosch, and Willow Garage, I have assembled, accelerated, and led robotics teams producing marketable breakthroughs that have sparked startup businesses in the US and Europe.

A few more accolades: Robohub honored me as one of the “25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know about,” and I've also been honored as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal's "Women of Influence."

Songeeta Jammalamadaka
Senior Research Bioengineer
SRI International

Songeeta Jammalamadaka is a Senior Research Bioengineer in the Sensing and Diagnostics Laboratory at SRI. She has 15 years of experience in biosensors, assay development and medical devices. Her work has led to the development of several in-vitro diagnostic medical devices and diagnostic tools for analyzing environmental samples. Prior to SRI International, she was at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the MITRE Corporation. She has an M.S in Bioengineering from Tufts University, B. S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and is a certified project management professional (PMP).

Lin Li
Machine Learning Manager
Apple

Lin Li is a manager in Apple Siri team where she is leading the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) modeling and machine learning effort. Prior to Apple Inc, she was with Baidu USA and Philips Research North America leading various innovation projects using machine learning techniques. Lin Li received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Florida majoring in kernel-based neural networks and their real world applications such as brain machine interface.

Loretta Li-Sevilla
Sr. Director of Strategy and Innovation
HP

Loretta is currently the Sr. Director of Strategy and Innovation for the Commercial PC business, with Worldwide responsibility for the Office of the Future initiative.

She has 25 years of experience in HP and has held numerous executive and management positions across functions and businesses. Previously, she was the Director of Go-to- Market Strategy and Analytics, as well as Emerging Markets Strategy for PPS in the WW Sales Strategy organization. Prior to this role, Loretta was the Americas PSG Business Strategy and Customer Intelligence Director.

Loretta joined HP as an R&D Engineer and has held a number of management positions throughout HP in R&D, Marketing, Strategy and Ops, Supply chain, and Sales both at the group and business unit level. She spent much of her time in the Enterprise Business, including building the ISS Hyperscale business unit.

She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Davis, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Loretta is based in Palo Alto, CA.

Richard Liu
Co-Founder & CEO
Leap.ai

As a long time tech exec at Google, Richard was a key leader of a number of Google businesses, including Enterprise Search, Shopping, Offers and Project Fi. It was here that he became deeply aware of how hard it is to both attract and develop talented young people. As an investing partner with TEEC Angel Fund, he regularly puts his money where his heart is - supporting early stage companies solving the world’s most intractable problems.

Richard holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida, a master’s in automation from Tsinghua University in Beijing and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Erica Lockheimer
Senior Director of Engineering
LinkedIn/Microsoft

Erica Lockheimer has been at LinkedIn for over 8 years and is a Senior Director of Engineering where she leads the Engineering team focused on increasing growth in new members and deepening engagement with members across LinkedIn's products. She is also responsible for LinkedIn's Women in Tech (WIT) initiative that is focused on empowering women in technical roles at the company. Prior to LinkedIn, she worked at Good Technology as Director of Server Engineering to securely manage and synchronize email and calendar data between Exchange and mobile devices. She loves the challenge of starting with something nascent and carving out the right strategy, hiring the best people, and plotting a course to drive results in 2014 and 2015, Erica was also voted the top 22 women engineers in the world by Business Insider. Erica is a San Francisco Bay Area native and is a graduate from San Jose State University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering.

Daphne Luong
Engineering Director, Research & Machine Intelligence
Google

At Google, Daphne Luong leads efforts in natural language understanding and human computation. Her expertise is in building technologies from the ground up, with experience across a range of startups and established companies. Prior to Google, Daphne worked at Alphabet/Nest where she was responsible for non-device software functions, including IoT device and camera cloud platforms, data services, Work with Nest developer program, security, eCommerce platform and enterprise energy services. At Microsoft, she led the spin-out of the Tellme IVR business into [24]7 where she managed a global team responsible for building and delivering enterprise-grade predictive consumer experience platforms and products.

Daphne is an active community volunteer who advises social entrepreneurs across the globe through Santa Clara University’s GSBI program and mentors local high school students. She is the recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award, the Microsoft Silicon Valley Women's Inspiration Award and currently a board member of World Pulse.

Shellane Maher
ASIC & FPGA Design Engineering Manager
Lockheed Martin SSC

Shellane Chan Maher is an ASIC & FPGA Design Engineering Manager at Lockheed Martin Space Company within the SSC Electronics Engineering organization with 16 direct reports. Shellane is responsible for establishing and providing common processes, tools and engineering personnel across LOBs specifically for ASICs and FPGAs for flight and ground systems as well as customer demonstrations. Shellane has worked in the aerospace industry for the last 16 years. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin SSC in 2002, Shellane was an ASIC Physical Design Engineer at IBM – Microelectronics.

Shellane earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles and a Master of Science degree in Digital Logic Design/VLSI Design from Santa Clara University at Santa Clara.

Kelly Masegian
Career Counselor and Liaison to College of Engineering
Career Center

Kelly Masegian is the SJSU Career Counselor for STEM careers and Liaison to College of Engineering, and former Internship Coordinator with the Foothill/DeAnza Internship Program at NASA Ames. She received her MS in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Career Counseling from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX. She also received a Career Development Facilitator certification from the National Career Development Association as a supplement to her degree. She is passionate about helping students with career development and is a proponent of lifelong learning.

Sara McBride
Mendenhall Fellow - Social Scientist
U.S. Geological Survey

Dr. Sara McBride is a Mendenhall Fellow at the USGS - Menlo Park. Sara is a social scientist, specializing in hazard and risk communication. She also has experience as a communication practitioner, working in the Canterbury (Christchurch) earthquake sequence, Kaikoura M7.8 (2016) earthquake, Samoa Tsunami (2009), and other disasters during her career.

Nikunj Mehta
Founder & CEO
Falkonry

Nikunj founded Falkonry after realizing that very valuable operational data produced in industrial infrastructure goes mostly unutilized in the energy, manufacturing and transportation sectors. Nikunj believes hard business problems can be solved by combining machine learning, user-oriented design and partnerships.

Prior to Falkonry, Nikunj was Architect and VP Customer Success at C3 IoT. Earlier, he led innovation teams at Oracle focused on database technology and led the creation of the IndexedDB database standard for HTML5.

He holds both Masters and Ph. D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai. He has contributed to standards at both W3C and IETF, and is a member of the ACM.

Beth Miller
Postdoctoral Researcher
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Beth Miller is a postdoc at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource where she uses X-rays to look inside batteries. Beth grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA and received a B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from Penn State. She earned her Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from Northwestern University researching solid oxide fuel cells. Beth values scientific collaboration and has worked at institutions from Sandia National Laboratories to University College London to further research partnerships. At SLAC, she shares her enthusiasm for materials science by mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. In her free time, Beth enjoys baking and exploring California’s landscapes.

Jessie Mooberry
Head of Deployment
Airbus A^3

Jessie Mooberry is Head of Deployment at Altiscope, an A^3 by Airbus project dedicated to bringing policymakers, technologists, and NGOs together to modernize air traffic management. She is a technologist at the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford, and started her UAV career with Uplift Aeronautics, building fixed-wing aircraft out of a garage in Stanford with the world’s first humanitarian drone cargo nonprofit. Jessie was one of the first to obtain a commercial drone license in the U.S. She sits on the Board of People’s Light in Malvern, PA and is a Social Enterprise Fellow and Mentor for the Ariane de Rothschild Foundation.

Wendy Mueller
Joint Utility Manager
ExteNet Systems

Wendy Mueller has worked in the wireless telecom industry for 13 years. She started her career with Nextel as a sales office manager and trainer. Recognizing Wendy’s desire to learn more about wireless telecommunications, Nextel sent her to Schaumburg, Ill to attend Motorola Systems School in 2001 which lead to a job in technical operations troubleshooting network failures. Over the years, Wendy’s interest in the burgeoning technology industry grew and she took every opportunity to learn more and work in every aspect of the wireless telecom industry, including site acquisition and permitting, FCC environmental compliance, FAA compliance, site design and construction.

Wendy is currently a Joint Utility Manager at ExteNet Systems, and her area of responsibilities encompasses joint use for California and acts in an advisory role for Safety and Compliance on a National level. As a testament to her utility industry knowledge and expertise, Wendy was unanimously voted 2018 President of the Northern California Joint Pole Association [NCJPA]. Wendy’s tireless work and dedication in the wireless industry and has enabled her to introduce more women to this fast-growing field.

Aaraadhya Narra
Solutions Architect
NVIDIA

Aaraadhya Narra is a solutions architect in the Automotive team at NVIDIA, supporting customers working on self-driving cars. Aaraadhya has a master of science degree from Santa Clara University, focusing in machine learning and data science. Prior to NVIDIA, she worked as a software engineer at Cisco Systems.

Chris Newman
Security Engineering Manager
VMware

Chris spent a few years writing defense software meant to keep computer systems safe. From there, he branched into writing offense software meant to slip by defenders for a few years. After that, he started getting challenged to reverse engineer more interesting systems with the goal of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities. A big switch came when he moved to VMware and became responsible for finding issues and then getting them fixed. He now manages a team of like-minded security engineers.

Jesmin Ngo
Co-Founder
Tadschool

Jesmin is on a mission to transform STEM learning both inside and outside of the classroom. Before co-founding Tadschool, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Computer Science in May 2016. She worked as a software engineer at Dell EMC on cloud-native data protection, where she had a unique opportunity to hone not only her technical skills, but also UI design and product management. Then, her VR career changed when she was selected to participate in the Oculus Launch Pad Program – where she went through an intensive few months of developing a complete augmented conversation and storytelling virtual reality experience. Jesmin is currently continuing to contribute to the VR space through her work in Tadschool. https://tadschool.com/

Lena Nicolaides
VP & General Manager
KLA-Tencor

Dr. Lena Nicolaides, is the Vice President and General Manager of Laser Scanning and Swift products at KLA-Tencor. She is responsible for product profitability, product development, customer relationships and international collaborations on semi-conductor equipment.

Lena has held various technology and business leadership positions at KLA-Tencor, including general manager of the Implant Metrology Division and chief technology supply executive where she was responsible for supplier business development. Prior to assuming her current role, Lena was vice president and general manager for macro inspection and SensArray products where she led high-performing teams to achieve profitable growth. Before joining KLA-Tencor, Lena held senior marketing and engineering roles at Therma-Wave Inc and PTD Inc.

Lena is the author of more than 50 technical articles and holds 30 US patents. She is an active mentor for young professionals. She received her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Jill North
Program Manager
City of San Jose

Although Jill is new to the public sector in her role as the Innovation Program Manager for the Department of Transportation in San Jose, she is no stranger to how emerging technology can change the way people experience the world around them. After 5 years as a Program Manager for Streetview at Google Maps, Jill is looking to bring her expertise leveraging technology to make San Jose the most innovative city in America.

A native of Illinois, Jill earned her Bachelor of Business Administration at Illinois State University in 2007. In 2014, she was granted the National CEO Award of Excellence for her Streetview collaboration with Parks Canada. Beyond her professional life, Jill enjoys footgolf and the Oakland A's.

Nevran Ozguven Jain
VP of Operation
Lumo Bodytech

Nevran Ozguven Jain has a wide breadth of experience in early-stage technology startups, spanning engineering, operations, product and marketing. She enjoys leading cross-functional teams working on difficult challenges in fast-paced environments. She is passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems and make an impact in people’s lives.

She is currently the VP of Operations at Lumo Bodytech, a motion science company that combines sensor data and advanced algorithms to optimize movement for better health, performance, and injury prevention. At Lumo, she runs operations, marketing, customer support, finance, and people operations.

Nevran received her M.S. and Ph.D in Materials Science & Engineering from Stanford University.

Julie Parrish
Chief Marketing Officer
RedSeal

Julie Parrish has over 30 years of experience across sales, channel management and marketing in Fortune 500 companies. Julie has held CMO roles at RedSeal, Check Point and NetApp and ran worldwide channel sales at both NetApp and Symantec. A Silicon Valley veteran, Julie is passionate about cyber security and has held leadership positions at four different cyber security companies! including her present role at RedSeal.

Meagan Pi
Vice President
Google

Identifying as a “modern geek,” Meagan Pi leads gTech Velocity, an organization that is working to transform the mobile web experience and bring Search and the Assistant to more surfaces. Meagan started her career at Google in 2002 as an engineer before becoming a manager and leader in Google’s technical account management teams. As a strong advocate for her team and their customers, Meagan believes investing in trust-based relationships and diverse team leads to the greatest success. Outside of Google, Meagan enjoys running, skiing, and spending time with her two kids. Fun fact: Prior to University, Meagan had a childish and fun stint as a flight attendant!

Patti Robb
Head of Silicon Valley Innovation Center
Intel

Patti Robb is the Head of Intel’s Silicon Valley Innovation Center leading and advancing the industry in autonomous driving. She works on amazing projects and uses technology to improve people's lives every day. She is a visionary, high energy executive passionate about developing and shipping innovative products while understanding the technology trends that will shape the future.

Previously, Patti was a Product Development Executive with Intel’s Internet of Things Group. She was part of the team creating Intel’s market leading 5G Strategy, and was also responsible for Intel’s IOT Connectivity Strategy and Platform development across business verticals.

Patti is leading to close the Technology Industry gender gap and a champion of the Pay it Forward program at Intel to help develop and advance more women at the company.

Patti has 8 patents issued or pending.

Tina Simms
Consultant
Tina Simms Consulting

Tina Simms is a retired Senior Network Process & Quality Manager for AT&T’s Network Operation Construction and Engineering West Region. Currently, she is an independent consultant for the Northern California Joint Pole Association. Tina’s AT&T background also includes Outside Plant Design Engineering (Project Pronto‐DSL, Project Lightspeed‐Uverse) as well as AT&T’s Fiber to the Building Project VIP.

Tina holds a Masters in Telecommunications Management from Golden Gate University. She is a highly sought‐after part‐time instructor for the University of Phoenix’s Bay Campus and is also a 2013 Distinguished Faculty of the Year Awardee, as voted by the students. Tina has been a California MESA AT&T industry volunteer since 1997. She has supported and guided MESA statewide and local funding efforts toward specific AT&T funding and hiring resources (AT&T Aspire, AT&T Technology Development Program). Tina is a sought after Leadership and Diversity presenter for Northern California and Bay Area STEM college and high school events. She is also the recipient of President Obama’s Service Award. Tina Simms truly lives for the opportunity to assist others with tapping into their full individual potential.

Vibha Sinha
Senior Technical Staff Member
IBM

Vibha Sinha is a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM Watson leading the AI Operations team, where she's driving the mission to enable Watson's NLP and Speech technologies for various languages and domains. Prior to this she worked on Watson's PeopleInsights portfolio, developing technology to infer an individual's personality, emotions and skills from their digital contributions. Vibha's research interests include machine learning, human-computer interaction and software analytics. Before moving to IBM Watson in 2015, Vibha worked at IBM Research, India for 12 years. She obtained the M.S degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2002 and B.E degree in Electronics and Communications from Delhi University, in 1999.

Marina Sirota
Assistant Professor
UCSF

Marina is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at UCSF. Prior to that she has worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Pfizer. She completed her PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University. Dr. Sirota’s research experience in translational bioinformatics spans over 10 years during which she has co-authored over 40 scientific publications. Her research interests lie in developing computational integrative methods and applying these approaches in the context of disease diagnostics and therapeutics with a special focus on studying the role of the immune system in disease. As a young leader in the field, she has been awarded the AMIA Young Investigator Award in 2017.

Nanci Solomon
Co-founder
Xulu Entertainment

Nanci Solomon has worked in VR and related projects for more than 20 years. As co-founder of Xulu Entertainment, she championed the development of an intergalactic resort offering space and planetary adventures built on top of a physics-centric virtual world engine driving surround visuals and audio, motion platforms and haptic devices.

She was also co-founder of Smart Machines, a robotics company, and founded ASIC Technology & News, a technology magazine for custom chip development. Prior to that she was as an industry analyst for Dataquest covering implications and applications for new technologies, and worked in Fairchild's ASIC division.

Nanci serves on SJSU's Computer Engineering advisory board and is active in AR/VR activities on campus.

Rekha Thakur
Manager of Data Engineering & Infrastructure
Netflix

As Manager of Data Engineering and Infrastructure, Rekha's work is mostly focused around data engineering to build data products at really big data scale. The data she produces is consumed for AI, machine learning etc., thus she is able to view AI from the data perspective.

Joan K. Vrtis
Chief Technology Officer
Multek/Flex

Dr. Joan K. Vrtis is the CTO at Multek, a subsidiary of Flex, Ltd. Multek is a global manufacturer of interconnect and circuit technology. Dr. Vrtis’ core focus is interconnect advancements in IoT, 5G, Automotive & Medical and enabling Smart Factory principles into existing and future Multek factories. Prior to Multek, Dr. Vrtis was COO of Shocking Technologies, an embedded ESD product company, COO of Kemeta, a medical device company. In the mid-2000s, she was a principal owner and CTO of FlipChip International, an advanced packaging provider with operations in Arizona and China. Dr. Vrtis began her microelectronics career at Intel Corporation developing Pentium technology. She has several patents and holds an MS & Ph.D. Polymer Engineering, Masters Metallurgy, BS Chemistry and an MBA.

Amanda Walters
Counselor Faculty
Counseling and Psychological Services, SJSU

Amanda Walters, Psy.D. earned her doctorate in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco in 2015. She completed her post-doctoral residency at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at San Jose State University and was then hired as a full-time counselor faculty. Dr. Walters truly enjoys working with the students at SJSU and she is passionate about providing women with the skills to succeed!

Anne Wein
Operations Research Analyst
U.S. Geological Survey

Dr. Anne Wein cares about using scientific information to reduce earthquake risks. She coordinates research at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Menlo Park, California. Anne works at the interfaces of disciplines (e.g., between engineering and economics), between theory and practice, using quantitative and qualitative methods. She conducts collaborative research activities to transform natural hazard information and data into societal consequences and to investigate the communication of scientific information.

She received a 2010 Success Story award for advancing the goals of the USGS Science Strategy through the development and execution of the ShakeOut Scenario and Exercise. She holds a PhD in Decision Science from Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 1988.

Stacey Wu
Senior Vice President
Fortinet

Stacey brings more than two decades of enterprise, networking, and security marketing expertise to Fortinet, with a strong track record in global demand generation, customer-centric digital marketing, and strategic sales enablement programs. Stacey is responsible for creating brand preference, generating demand, and accelerating customer acquisition and sales productivity for Fortinet's global market opportunity.

Prior to Fortinet, Stacey was vice president, marketing and demand generation at Avaya, and prior to that, she held a variety of marketing leadership roles at Symantec, most recently VP of strategic marketing and planning. Prior to Symantec, she led various product marketing teams at Check Point Software, NEC, and HP.

Stacey holds an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. in Computer Science from San Francisco State University. For more information on Fortinet, please visit our website: www.fortinet.com

Meiling Yang
VP of Product and Engineering Operation
Upwork

Versatile technology executive with strong track record building large scale platforms in eCommerce, payment, data management and analytics. https://www.linkedin.com/in/meilingyang/

Tihana Zaplata
Firmware Manager
NETGEAR

Tihana Zaplata is a Firmware Manager with a degree in Computer Science from UCSD. In her 18 year career, Tihana has worked mostly in the wireless telecommunications industry, developing cellular devices, embedded modules, and mobile hotspots. Currently working in the IoT space at NETGEAR, Tihana leads the Arlo base station firmware team to engineer highly secure solutions as part of the Arlo Smart Home Security ecosystem.

Rosie Zepeda
Founder & CEO
Compelling Conversation, LLC & Latina Success Network

Rosie “the Closer” Zepeda is a Professional Speaker and CEO of Compelling Conversations, an organizational development training and diversity marketing consulting company (www.compelling‐conversations.com). Using a signature “leadership through effective communication” system, the company fosters human potential and inclusion strategy in: STEM Education, Tech and with Conscious Organizations.

Rosie is also the Founder of Latina Success Network, the premier community for culturally relevant professional and self-development (www.latinasuccessnetwork.com). LSN has two signature annual academies: Communication and Start Up.

Rosie is currently running for San Jose City Council District 9.

She is a graduate of Santa Clara University where she received a BA in Theater Arts/Spanish Literature and Communication. She was a Reader’s Digest Fellow at Herbert Lehman College for her Master’s in Education and a Teach for America/AmeriCorps Alumni. In 2016, Rosie was recognized with a Silicon Valley Business Journal “Woman of Influence Award.”

Rosie has been singing mariachi since the age of 4. She is a huge documentary movie buff, staunch environmentalist and animal lover.