🌟 Redefine Possible | International Women’s Day Summit | March 6, 2025 🌟
🌟 Redefine Possible | International Women’s Day Summit | March 6, 2025 🌟
We're excited to celebrate International Women's Day with an event like no other! Join us at Google’s Sunnyvale campus for a powerful afternoon where we Redefine Possible in tech, leadership, and beyond. 🚀
This event is organized by AnitaB.org Silicon Valley in collaboration with Women Techmakers, GDG Silicon Valley, and Ladies That UX SF.
✨ What to Expect:
• Keynote Address: Get ready to be inspired by an industry leader who will challenge us to break barriers and make the impossible possible.
• Panel Discussions:
Panel 1: Topic: Breaking Barriers: Women Driving Innovation and Change
Focus:
Navigating leadership roles in traditionally male-dominated fields.
Building and leading inclusive teams that foster innovation.
Career pivot stories: Embracing change and driving impact.
The importance of resilience in breaking barriers and challenging norms.
Real-life experiences of turning adversity into opportunities for growth.
Panel 2: Topic: The Power of Agentic AI – Shaping the Future
Focus:
What is Agentic AI, and how can it empower businesses and individuals?
Ethical considerations in the development and deployment of AI.
Leveraging AI to create inclusive solutions addressing global challenges.
Women in AI: Building a diverse pipeline of leaders in artificial intelligence.
• Networking: Meet and connect with speakers, tech professionals, and attendees – who knows, you could make the connections that lead to your next opportunity in tech!
🎤 Confirmed Speakers Include:
• Sharon Mandell, CIO, Juniper Networks
• Eleanor Hayes Meritt, SVP, Oracle
• Rathi Murthy, Board Member, PagerDuty & Ex-CTO, Expedia
• Alison Millar, Partner, PwC
• And many more inspiring thought leaders!
This event is a celebration of the women leading, innovating, and paving the way for the future of tech. Whether you're a student, professional, or community ally, this is an afternoon you won't want to miss!
✨ Let’s come together to Redefine Possible. ✨
👉 RSVP Today: Spaces are limited, so register today to secure your spot!
Speaker Bios:
Bo Young Lee, President, AnitaB.org Advisory
Bo Young Lee is a globally recognized executive in human capital, DEI, and ESG, and a widely sought-after public speaker. She currently serves as President of Advisory at AnitaB.org. Most recently, Bo was Uber Technologies’ first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, where she was responsible for leading a complete transformation of the company’s culture, values, and equitable environment. Bo joined Uber in 2018 during an unprecedented internal and public DEI crisis and successfully guided the company to become a leader in the field. Under her leadership, the number of underrepresented people of color in leadership roles nearly tripled, and the number of women in leadership positions doubled during her tenure at Uber.
Bo has assisted hundreds of companies worldwide throughout her 23 years of DEI work. Before joining Uber, Bo became the first Global Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Risk and Insurance Services divisions at Marsh McLennan. She also established and led Aon Hewitt’s Global Emerging Workforce Solutions practice, the first DEI consultancy launched by a major consulting firm. Bo has held diversity leadership positions at Ernst & Young, Working Mother Media, and National Grid. She was a Director of Advisory Services at Catalyst, the leading nonprofit dedicated to advancing women in business. She has guided clients in achieving their diversity and inclusion goals as a consultant and thought leader. Previous clients include award-winning companies such as Marriott International, Northern Trust, John Deere, Allstate, Booz & Co., Discover, Aon, Human Rights Campaign, and McKesson.
Bo’s understanding of global DEI implications stands out among her peers. She has led DEI projects and spoken in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She is a trained practitioner in cross-cultural navigation and communication. Bo has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Business Insider, and she has appeared on-air on MSNBC, Bloomberg News, and CNN. Furthermore, she has served on Catalyst, AESC, and Korea University boards.
Sharon Mandell, Chief Information Officer, Juniper Networks
Sharon Mandell is an experienced executive with over two decades of expertise managing software development and technology operations within high-technology and media companies. Most recently, she has held CIO roles at Juniper Networks, Tibco Software, and Harmonic, as well as CTO roles in the Tribune Company and Knight Ridder digital divisions, demonstrating her extensive leadership capabilities.
Her background includes co-founding a software company, leading teams of up to 700 people, and managing budgets of over $500 million. Her broad range of skills encompasses product development and engineering in consumer-focused software and websites, business systems implementation and integration, program/project management, and substantial experience in mergers and acquisitions, including due diligence and operational integration.
With a significant history in outsourcing and international roles in Europe, Sharon specializes in revitalizing global teams to maximize their capabilities and enabling organizations through technology. She enjoys implementing and driving the adoption of emerging technology while ensuring efficient resource use. In addition, she’s proud to develop the next generation of technical talent, whether at the office or through teaching at the university level. Currently, she’s an adjunct professor in the MSIS program at the University of San Francisco.
Rathi Murthy, Board Member - PagerDuty, Ex-CTO Expedia, Verizon Media, Gap
Rathi Murthy is a seasoned technology executive with a stellar track record of developing innovative solutions to improve customer experience. Most recently, as CTO and President of Expedia Services, she spearheaded the company's technical strategy and platform infrastructure evolution. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at PagerDuty.
Previously, Rathi served as CTO for Verizon Media, where she was responsible for 5G innovation and managed the platform technology and infrastructure. Before that, she was appointed CTO at Gap Inc. for over three years.
While serving as VP of Technology and SVP at American Express, Rathi was named the Top Woman in Cloud Innovation in 2014 and the Most Influential Woman in Payments in 2015.
Rathi has held senior technology leadership roles at some of the world's best companies, including eBay Inc., Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and WebMD.
In addition, she recently joined the University of San Francisco's Board of Trustees Committee on Information Technology Strategy as an External Expert Advisor.
Alison Millar, Partner PwC
Alison (“Ally”) Millar is a Partner in PwC's Advisory Services practice. Her IT background spans ERP to cloud applications and encompasses waterfall and agile methodologies. She possesses extensive experience in leading and managing large-scale business transformations. Additionally, Ally co-leads PwC's SaaS practice, overseeing the development of business and technology accelerators, pre-configured solutions, and architectures to assist clients in introducing new business models, accelerating time to value, and driving results from their business transformation programs. She began her career with PwC over 10 years ago when she joined as a Director. Previously, she served as a project manager for NetApp and worked with Warner Brothers as a Vice President. Ally earned a bachelor’s degree from The Robert Gordon University.
Vanessa Smith, President, ServiceNow.org , Board Member - Fastly, Teach for America
Vanessa Smith is a digital technology executive with over 25 years of experience in sales and go-to-market functions. As President of ServiceNow.org, she leads the organization’s efforts to serve the global nonprofit sector and leverage technology to solve the world’s most significant challenges. This role combines her deep digital transformation experience and passion for social impact.
Joining ServiceNow in September 2020 as the SVP of the Strategic Go-to-Market organization, she has led teams across Business Value, Industries, and Top Accounts, later expanding to include Solution Sales. Her roles underscore ServiceNow’s commitment to customer centricity and scaling over $20 billion in annual revenue.
Before ServiceNow, Vanessa spent 16 years at SAP, where she most recently served as the Managing Director of SAP’s SuccessFactors business in North America. In this role, she drove Human Capital Management sales and go-to-market strategy while overseeing core operations, including pipeline development, demand management, and revenue growth.
Vanessa has been recognized as a Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive by Empower and the Financial Times. She holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia. Vanessa also serves on the Board of Fastly, Inc. and Teach for America in the Greater Philadelphia region.
Devika Chawla, SVP of Engagement Experiences and Platforms at Disney
Devika Chawla is an accomplished engineering leader who has built, scaled, and transformed engineering organizations across various domains to create innovative products and platforms. She currently serves as the SVP of Engagement Experiences and Platforms at Disney, where she leads engineering teams that design experiences to delight, engage, and retain customers across Disney+, Hulu, ABC News, and ESPN Fantasy. Additionally, she develops personalization, machine learning, messaging, content management, experimentation, and user foundation platforms at scale.
Before this role, she built and managed the teams responsible for all of Netflix’s product experiences and platforms, communicating with hundreds of millions of customers globally, driving growth, engagement, and retention. Her teams also created the applications and systems to assist customers in the Netflix App, Help Center, and voice and chat contact channels supported by a global network of live agents.
Devika pioneered the first web search monetization product at Inktomi from the ground up. At Yahoo, she played a crucial role in integrating engineering teams from Overture following its acquisition by Yahoo. She led a diverse, geographically distributed team to innovate the sponsored search advertising product that generated significant revenue for the company.
Devika is a public speaker and panelist. Her past experiences include participating in the CTO Panel at Disney’s event during the Grace Hopper Conference, delivering a keynote at the Twilio Signal conference alongside CEO Jeff Lawson, making presentations at AWS re:Invent and ElastiCON, and engaging in various panels and Women in Tech events that focus on engineering, leadership, organization, and culture.
Eleanor Hayes Meritt - SVP Identity and Access Management, Oracle
Eleanor Hayes Meritt is the Senior Vice President of Development for Oracle’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) Suite, leading both IAM development and Oracle Fusion Middleware Support. With over 30 years at Oracle, she has played a pivotal role in shaping product strategy, driving innovation, and transforming customer experiences.
Since taking over Oracle’s On-Premises IAM business in 2019, a hundreds of millions of dollars business, Eleanor has focused on protecting and growing the existing base. She initially worked on stabilizing the product, then introduced usability improvements, followed by major feature enhancements architected to run on both Cloud and On-Premises. Under her leadership, customer sentiment dramatically improved, leading to top Gartner Peer Insights scores for IAM and Identity Governance & Administration (IGA). She also designed and launched a new Cloud service for Identity & Access Governance, incorporating a modernized user experience, AI-assisted decision-making, and a shift from role-based access to policy-based access control. This new Cloud service is now rapidly growing and starting to unseat competitive solutions.
Beyond product innovation, Eleanor has transformed Oracle’s support strategy, increasing efficiency through AI and automation, leading to a 10% annual reduction in ticket inflows for four consecutive years while maintaining steady support license revenue. She also redefined the support model to focus on proactive customer engagement, enabling support engineers to work closely with customers on replatforming, migrations, and project planning, ultimately boosting customer loyalty and revenue.
Throughout her career, Eleanor has driven product strategies impacting $3.5 billion in support revenue, led a global team of 1,500, and pioneered Oracle’s DevOps transformation. Under her leadership, Oracle reduced quality assurance cycles from two weeks to a single day, scaled client load from 500 to 20,000 users, and automated database and middleware patching at cloud scale with zero downtime, cutting failure rates from 20% to an industry-leading 0.01%.
As a trusted leader and innovator, Eleanor continues to push the boundaries of enterprise identity solutions, ensuring security, efficiency, and an unparalleled customer experience.
Lauren Kolodrubetz, Executive Director, Technology Enablement, TEKSystems
Lauren Kolodrubetz is an accomplished leader with a proven track record of helping teams and customers achieve maximum growth and success through service, discipline, and innovative thinking, with inclusion embedded in everything she does. As the Executive Director of the Technology Enablement Vertical at TEKsystems, she builds go-to-market strategies to support technology customers in scaling and innovating. With almost 13 years at TEKsystems, Lauren has held various recruiting, sales, and leadership roles. Recognized by Women We Admire as a Top Female Leader in Colorado in 2022 and 2023, Lauren enjoys live music, hiking, skiing, and spending time outdoors with her husband, two children, and dogs in Colorado.
Krista Bowman - Managing Director, Further
Krista Bowman is the Managing Director and Head of Healthcare + Life Sciences at Further, where she applies relentless curiosity and a strategic vision to transform the healthcare landscape. With a dynamic career that spans healthcare payers, women’s health startups, and M&A, she has played a pivotal role in shaping innovative, data-driven solutions across the U.S. healthcare market. Her expertise is in navigating complex business and technology transformations, helping life sciences and healthcare organizations confidently embrace the future.
In addition to her work with clients, Krista is a passionate advocate for women’s health and for vulnerable populations living with chronic conditions. She firmly believes that healthcare is at a critical juncture where data and AI are essential to addressing some of the industry’s most pressing challenges, creating meaningful and lasting impact.
Her adventurous spirit matches Krista’s intellectual curiosity. A proud Purdue alumna with an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business, she thrives on pushing boundaries—whether in boardrooms or midair. As a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie, she draws inspiration from skydiving, hang gliding, and swimming with sharks, consistently seeking new perspectives and challenges to conquer.
Miku Jha, Director, AI/ML & Generative AI at Google
Miku Jha is a visionary technology leader at Google Cloud, spearheading the adoption of transformative Generative AI solutions like Vertex AI and the groundbreaking Gemini model. Before joining Google, Miku led the Applied AI Innovation unit at Meta. Her leadership was crucial in orchestrating the development, launch, and expansion of innovative AI solutions for Meta’s products and platforms. She successfully unlocked a new multi-billion-dollar revenue stream by launching and expanding Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API, revolutionizing business messaging. Miku also contributed to industry-wide advancements by releasing the open-source cross-media ads measurement framework, ‘Halo’.
Miku’s entrepreneurial spirit has resulted in three successful startup exits, highlighting her exceptional talent for transforming innovative ideas into commercially viable ventures. As the founder and CEO of AgShift, a globally recognized AI-powered platform for autonomous food quality assessment, Miku achieved an impressive 33% reduction in food waste across the supply chain within leading food organizations. She secured a patent for a versatile IoT platform and pioneered the industry’s most advanced AI-enabled food quality analyzer, Hydra. This product has dramatically enhanced operational efficiencies and decreased food waste, positively impacting the environment.
Beyond her professional accomplishments, Miku is passionate about mentorship, especially in empowering young women in technology. She has served as a technical advisor and member of the advisory board for multiple startups, guiding and nurturing their development. Miku’s exceptional contributions and leadership have garnered her prestigious accolades, including recognition as a Forbes Next 1000 Honoree in 2021 and being named one of the top 10 Women Business Leaders by Mirror Review.
Samrah Khan, Head of System Integrator Partnerships, Google
Samrah is currently the Head of Solution Services Providers for Google Cloud and is responsible for driving a multi-billion dollar business. She leads a team that fosters key partnerships with System Integrators in North America to solve customer challenges. Previously, Samrah served as the Global Head of non-regulated Industry ISV partnerships at Google, where she developed next-generation cloud-first partners and facilitated complex, high-impact deals tied to co-innovation and go-to-market strategies for Google Cloud and the ISVs. Earlier in her career, she worked with startups and scale-ups that achieved successful IPOs, including MuleSoft. A champion for women in tech, she is a board member of ‘Women Of MENA in Tech’ and participates in several other organizations. Additionally, she is a mentor and a frequent speaker at industry events related to channels, SaaS, AI, and industry-specific topics.
Monalisa Chati, Platform & GenAI Strategy Leader, ServiceNow
Monalisa Chati is a Strategy and Business Operations Leader known for bringing communities together and driving organizational success by delivering market-leading products. She navigates ambiguity, influences key decisions, solves complex challenges, and creates scalable solutions.
As a data enthusiast and social media advocate, Monalisa has previously worked with Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and Fujitsu. She is passionate about encouraging and promoting women and youth to pursue STEM education and careers.
As the Silicon Valley Chapter Chair for AnitaB.org, she leads initiatives like Speed Mentoring and programs at the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists.
In recognition of her exceptional contributions to empowering women and positively influencing the broader San Francisco Bay Area community, Monalisa was honored as a Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence in 2020.
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