Career Transitions in Tech
Looking to make your next big career move?
Transition Tales, in partnership with SVAcademy, is thrilled to announce “Career Transitions in Tech,” an intimate event dedicated to helping you strategize your career in this crazy industry.
Hear from the folks who have Been There, Done That on how they conquered impostor syndrome, “lack of experience,” frustration, and anxiety to land their dream jobs in tech sales, marketing, and product.
Agenda
5:30-6:00 Networking/Activities (introverts, we got you!) and Dinner (Chipotle🌶️)
6:00-6:30 Opening Remarks
6:30-7:45 Panel Discussions + Q&A
7:45-8:30 Closing Remarks, Breakouts, & Networking
The Speakers
About Michael Colonese
Michael Colonese is the CEO of SV Academy, an award-winning training program. SV Academy works with Coursera and the Milken Institute, along with some of the biggest names in tech including Meta, Google, IBM, and Intuit, to empower thousands of people with 0 tech experience break into tech.
He has dedicated his career to education reform, career advancement, and the future-of-work. Prior to SV Academy, Michael was the COO of AlwaysHired Sales Bootcamp and Founder of WorkAmerica.
About Stephen Cognetta
Stephen Cognetta is the CEO and Co-Founder of Exponent, a leading online platform dedicated to helping individuals land roles in tech through interview preparation and career coaching. Exponent has empowered thousands of aspiring tech professionals to achieve their career goals. Stephen has been named Forbes 30 under 30 for education.
Before founding Exponent, Stephen was a Product Manager at Google.
Outside of work, Stephen enjoys philosophy, minimalism, hosting quirky parties - check out his blog for some fun reads like ‘how I live with only 115 things”. Stephen is also passionate about mental health and founded the world’s largest mental health hackathon!
About Imran Kabir
Imran is a Product Manager at 6sense, a revenue technology company that reimagines the way revenue teams create, manage and convert pipeline into revenue. Prior to 6sense, Imran was one of the youngest economic advisors to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
When Imran decided to make an abrupt career transition from Finance and Diplomacy to Technology, he had no direct technology experience. Not only did he successfully change industries, he successfully navigated the transition from Sales Development to Customer Success to Product Management to do what he loved: creating things that people use day to day!
About Allison Santos
Allison is an Account Executive at iorad, a startup building innovative e-learning solutions to empower organizations to capture, share, and learn application knowledge at scale.
Prior to iorad, Allison was a Visitor Services Manager at the State of California Parks and Recreation.
During her time at Parks & Rec, Allison realized that she wanted to work in a more tech-forward, fast-paced environment like tech. She leveraged SV Academy to break into tech sales as a Sales Development Representative and was promoted to Account Executive in record speed (6 months).
About Ansu George
Ansu is the Lead Product Manager at NextRoll, a mid-sized marketing tech startup.
Not only did Ansu make the career transition from engineering to PM, she did it across borders from India to the US. After a successful engineering career at tech giants like SAP and Yahoo, Ansu was able to transition directly into Product Management without going back to school for an MBA like many of her peers.
About Meng Fei Shen
Meng Fei is a Sr. Product Manager at Walmart Data Ventures, a data platform that delivers first party consumer data to support Walmart’s 100,000+ vendors worldwide. Prior to Walmart, Meng Fei worked at Uber and helped lead the global expansion of the Uber One membership program to over 13M+ members.
After graduating from Yale, Meng Fei planned to join a consulting firm out of Boston, but instead came across an opportunity to join a strategy role at a British fintech company. With the help of Exponent and networking in the Bay Area, Meng Fei successfully broke into Product.
About Stella Woo
Stella manages Sales Development Content and Onboarding at Okta, an industry-leading identity management company. Prior to Okta, She worked her way up from the entry-level Sales Development role to manage strategy and content.
Stella had originally planned to work in education or food industry and had no intention of working in tech. She stumbled into tech with 0 corporate experience and 0 tech experience with the help of SV Academy and is loving every minute of it.
*About the sponsors
Transition Tales - media platform for career transition stories and resources. Celebrating its launch @ “career transitions in tech”!
SVAcademy - tech sales bootcamp helping folks break into tech through sales