Bingjie Bai is a Senior Director at PayPal with over 20 years of professional experience in fraud risk management. She leads a global team of data scientists to build innovative risk solutions that utilize the strengths of PayPal in machine learning in a unique ecosystem of a two-sided global network. Bingjie is also a long-time veteran of eBay, where she has built and led a high-performing team to develop strong data-driven fraud detection capabilities to combat E-Commerce fraud and drive eBay Trust and Safety strategy. Bingjie is passionate about leveraging data driven intelligence and technology to make a difference in the world. She is also a true believer and promoter of growing female leadership, especially in the tech world.

Siri Balaji is a Sr. Product Manager and joined Amazon 6 months ago to build delightful voice forward customer experiences for Alexa. She began her career as a software engineer and graduated from San Jose State University with a Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering in 2011. She worked at SAP Labs for 9.5yrs prior to joining Amazon, creating enterprise grade mobile and cloud applications. During her tenure at SAP she has worked across engineering and product disciplines and has been awarded Best Performer and Catalyst for her achievements several times.
Being a techno optimist, her professional interests focus on research, bridging the gap between raw data and the customer needs, and creating a positive impact in peoples’ lives.

Edith Beigné is the Research Director of AR/VR Silicon at Facebook Reality Labs where she leads research projects driving the future of AR devices. Over the past 20 years, she has been focusing her research on low power and adaptive circuit techniques, exploiting new design techniques and advanced technology nodes for different applications ranging from high performance multi-processors to ultra-low power SoC, and, more recently, AR/VR applications. She is the vice TPC chair of ISSCC 2020 and part of ISSCC TPC since 2014 and was part of VLSI symposium TPC between 2015 and 2020. SSCS Distinguished Lecturer in 2016/2017, Women-in-Circuits Committee chair and JSSC Associate Editor since 2018. She visited Stanford University in 2018 to research emerging technologies and new architectures.

Dr. Malek Ben Salem is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience and the director for Security R&D at Accenture, where she also leads the initiative for Trustworthy AI. She is an accomplished technology leader with proven success in AI and cyber security research and innovation. She advises organizations and boards on building innovative products and offerings and on achieving real risk reduction. She is deeply skilled in Technology Strategy & Leadership, C-Suite Collaboration, Risk Management, Business Development and more.

Dr. Ben Salem holds a PhD and a MSc in Computer Science from Columbia University and a Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hanover, Germany. She has also a certificate in Technology Strategy from the MIT Sloan School of Business.

Maria Bualat became the Group Lead of the Intelligent Robotics Group in 2019, after having served as its deputy since 2005. She joined NASA Ames Research Center in 1987, working in the robotics field since 1995. Ms. Bualat has managed projects for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Office of the Chief Technologist, and Space Technology Mission Directorate including: ARC Rover Testbed, MIDP instrument integrations and demonstrations on the K9 and K10 planetary rovers, Human-Robot Site Survey, Surface Telerobotics, and Astrobee. Ms. Bualat received her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and her Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, emphasis Controls, from Santa Clara University.

Gabriela Bunea creates world-changing technology and believes in combining solar energy generation with sustainable building materials. She brings 20 years of extensive technical experience and leadership in the solar and microelectronics industries to GAF Energy, most recently as Vice President of Research, Development and Deployment at SunPower Corporation. Prior to that, Gabi held multiple roles managing Module Research, Development, Deployment and Product Design at SunPower, and previously worked as a Member of the Technical Staff in the Microelectronics Division at Lucent Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Boston University and is an active member in IEEE Women in Engineering.

Jazlyn Carvajal received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from MIT’s School of Engineering. Ms. Carvajal is a Sr. Project Manager leading the Project and Construction Management Group at Webcor Builders in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has also successfully managed construction projects throughout New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Ms. Carvajal is co-founder of the Latinas in STEM Foundation, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire and empower Latinas to pursue and thrive in STEM fields. In her home state, she served as co-chair to New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy’s Transition Committee on Government, Technology, and Innovation.

Rose Castanares is proud to lead a team of engineers (50% women!!) who are Sales Business Managers and Technical Managers. She joined TSMC in 1998 and is presently responsible for account management and sales for several systems and fabless customers. Before her promotion to TSMC Vice President in 2015, she served as Senior Director in TSMC North America’s San Jose office responsible for an account team and major, mid-size and emerging customers; in Austin as Central Region Director for Texas where she managed regional sales and support; and as Deputy Director in San Diego responsible for several customers in the region.

Prior to TSMC she was in account management with Chartered Semiconductor and National Semiconductor. She began her technology career as a manufacturing engineer with GTE and Siliconix.

Rose holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Dr. Winnie Cheng is a seasoned AI leader with 20+ years of experience in technology. She is currently a director at PwC revolutionizing audit with AI. Prior to this, Dr. Cheng has co-founded an AI startup Flowcast and generated $30 million+ in business impact for Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, JP Morgan and American Express. She has held several Chief Data Scientist roles for public and private companies. Dr. Cheng is an advisor to startups and global VC funds. She is a senior lecturer for the first online course in AI in Finance. Dr. Cheng received her PhD in Computer Science from MIT and MS from Stanford.

With 25 years of experience in drug development and biomanufacturing, Dr. Judy Chou currently is the President, CEO, and Board member of AltruBio, Inc. Before joining the company, she headed the global Pharmaceutical Biotech organization at Bayer Pharmaceuticals overseeing the manufacturing and distribution of Bayer’s $3+ billion per year biotechnology product portfolio & 2000+ employees and leading the drug development activities for Biologics pipeline. In addition, she serves as the site head for Bayer’s facility in Berkeley, CA, USA. She is well recognized by the biomedical industry for her leadership and has received the Most Influential Women in Business Award in 2018.

Before joining the industry, Dr. Chou was 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.

Kirsti Chou is a mission-driven operator turned angel investor. She invests in and advises early stage tech companies working on climate protection and stabilization from mobility to resilient infrastructure and from food to carbon removal. She has 15+ years of operating and leadership experience working in sales, growth, product strategy and supply chain management from digital startups to world’s leading corporations.

Angela DiCiccio is a Product Design Engineer at Verily Life Sciences with a specialty focus in biocompatible materials. She works on the development of novel materials, wholistic device integration and evaluation, as well as regulatory testing strategies for final products. She thrives in the challenge of integrating complex systems whether they involve compatibilizing complicated interfaces, enabling smooth communication, or constructing new materials and organization. Outside of the lab, Angela finds mindfulness and creativity in endurance running and biking as well as vinyasa yoga.

Hello, I am a manager at FRL Assistant team at FB. When I joined the company, I started at the AI Integrity team, where I was focusing on improving data quality through unsupervised label noise detection and semi-supervised learning to reduce prevalence of bad content. I later moved to FRL to manage a team working on language generation and modeling. Prior to FB, I was working at Microsoft to build contextualized and personalized language models for Cortana. Throughout my career, I have worked on a breadth of domains ranging from query rewriting to risk modeling first using large-scale ML and later shifting to deep learning. Outside of work, I like traveling, watching movies and playing with my joyful 5 year old daughter.

Received my BSChE from SJSU, and a JD from University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Was president of the AIChE chapter at SJSU. Began my career as a patent attorney, transitioned into litigation partnerships in private practice at three major law firms, representing tech, medtech and venture capital clients. Have had three in-house roles as a legal and business executive: first, as the VP of Intellectual Property at Illumina, a biotech company; VP of Legal Operations and Assistant General Counsel at Intuitive Surgical, the maker of da Vinci Surgical robots; and now as General Counsel, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of HeartFlow, Inc., a medical device company which delivers an AI-powered personalized cardiac tests as a SaaS product.

Dr. Favarò is part of Waymo’s safety team, where she works on engagement with external standardization bodies (such as SAE and IEEE) and on internal safety research. She also holds a position as Associate Professor in the College of Engineering at San Jose State University and as research associate with the Mineta Transportation Institute. Her research tackles risk and safety assessment methodologies for autonomous systems. In the past, she worked on user-studies to analyze human drivers engagement with driver assistance systems as well as on deployment policy implications. Dr. Favaro earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. and B.S. in Space Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

Dr. Raissa Douglas Ferron’s passion and love for the field of concrete materials began when she was an undergraduate student at Howard University.This love for concrete materials led her to pursue her MS and PhD degrees at Northwestern University.Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT).Her research expertise is in the area of materials science and engineering of infrastructure materials with focus on concrete materials processing, durability and sustainability. She has worked on projects ranging from stimuli-responsive composites to 3D printing. She holds one patent, and she was inducted as a Fellow of American Concrete Institute in 2017.She is also heavily active in mentoring initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion work at UT.

Manisha Gambhir is a Senior Principal Engineer (Technical Director) and a technology leader at Marvell Semiconductors. At Marvell, she leads cross functional projects and teams spanning geographies delivering high performance, mass production ready, complex mixed-signal IPs in advanced nanometric technologies. Her expertise in design of myriad analog circuits with special focus on architectural innovations spurred direct performance gains for Marvell customers. She is currently focused on design and development of Marvell’s 100G+ ADC based receivers and leading the development for Marvell’s Automotive Grade SerDes portfolio.

She has a PhD and MS degree from Texas A&M University in Electrical Engineering and holds several US patents and publications in the field of circuit design and architectures. She is also passionate about mentoring and coaching budding engineers and serves as a liaison for key university collaborations incubated through Marvell.

SJSU 1986 graduate and currently IBM General Manager, Cisco and Apple Global Alliance Partnership and IBM Senior State Executive for California. Her responsibility covers all business unit interactions between IBM – Cisco and Apple.

Laura has held many different executive roles across IBM over her 30+ year career with IBM including VP, Global Technical Services, VP Storage Business Line Executive, SW engineering, as well as roles overseas as VP of Storage Sales based in Shanghai, China. Ms.Guio is a recognized leader in the San Jose community serving as the Senior State Executive for California, Board of Directors for Silicon Valley Leadership Group and co-chairs for the SVLG Racial Justice & Equity Task Force. In 2004, Ms. Guio received the YWCA Tribute to Women in Industry Award.

I am currently leading a language research team focused on advancing conversational AI/ML technology for AR/VR. Our focus is to develop best NLP/ML models that can understand and answer questions in a conversational setting. Before that, I worked at a startup working on developing an Assistant and its ML platform (bought by Samsung). I have a PhD in NLP from Stanford University and a Master’s from UT Austin in NLP and Computer Vision. I love the outdoors and the Bay area for the fun it provides. I am also a mother to an adorable 15 months old.

Nina Hawk has 20 years exp. with 15+ yrs in government leadership roles in operations, program/project & executive management. She currently serves as Bay-Delta Initiatives Policy Manager at Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, an agency delivering water to 19 million Californians. At MWD, she provides strategic oversight on key projects including the State’s Delta Conveyance Project, Sites Reservoir, state-wide water policy, and strategic water partnerships. She’s led numerous projects/programs related to recycled/potable water, even a NFL stadium. Nina has served as a COO, Public Works Director, a published writer, Chi Ep Honor Society lifetime member, recipient of “Rising Star Award” (MMANC), holds a BS Civil/ Environmental Engineering and Master of Public Administration (SJSU).

Ms.Ibrahim, is a General Partner of Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm, where she has worked since March 2000. From 1998 to 2000, she served as VP of E-business and Business Development at Qwest Communications. From 2012 through 2020, Ms. Ibrahim served as a member of the board of directors of The RealReal (REAL) through its 2019 initial public offering. Ms. Ibrahim currently serves on the boards of directors of a number of for-profit enterprise and consumer companies, as well as Deckers (DECK) and Major League Baseball Players, Inc. She serves as a trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ms. Ibrahim holds a B.A. in Economics and a M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, and a PhD in Economics from MIT.

Cristina is a Biomedical Engineer with over 17 years of experience in the fields of medical device development, neuroscience research and consumer health and wellness products. She is currently the Senior Manager of Research & Development at Sleep Number Labs in San Jose, CA. She leads a team of engineers and data scientists that are working to transform sensor data into meaningful insights about the quality of a person’s sleep and overall health.

Kimberly Jung is an engineer, founder, team leader, and former Army officer. She is currently the CFO for Solar Service, a solar panel operations & maintenance startup, where she was formerly the Director of R&D and Robotics. In 2020-2021, Kim served as COO of Pickle Robot and XO of the MIT E-Vent Ventilator Project. From 2014-2018, Kim served as CEO of Rumi Spice, a saffron startup connecting Afghan farmers to the market and hiring thousands of Afghan women. From 2008-2013, Kim served in the Army as an Engineer officer. Kim graduated from MIT, HBS, and West Point.

Caitlin Kalinowski heads up the VR Hardware team for Facebook Reality Labs, the division responsible for the Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift S and Touch controller projects. Before working at Oculus, Caitlin was a technical lead at Apple on the Mac Pro and MacBook Air products and was part of the original unibody Macbook Pro team.

Caitlin is passionate about increasing the number of women and other underrepresented minorities in the fields of technology and design. She believes the next generation of products must be designed and engineered by people with different backgrounds and experiences in order to output the best possible product. Caitlin is on the Board of Axon and
the strategic board of Lesbians Who Tech.

Archana Kashikar is a Robotics Engineer currently working at Arevo Inc, a bay area startup which is pushing the boundaries of composite 3D printing using robotics and ultra-strong, lightweight materials. She is the main developer for robotic software solutions involving Robot motion planning and complex kinematics for true 3D printing, an area in which she holds several patents. She graduated from Santa Clara University in 2017 with a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Mechatronics and Robotics, where she published papers on multi-robot navigation systems and energy harvesting composites. She also holds an undergrad degree in Mechanical Engineering and Physics. She enjoys hiking and cooking with her family.

Dr. Maryam Kazerooni is an associate in Citadel LLC since August 2018 focused on building financial analytics for US energy markets. Prior to that, she worked at Appian Way Energy Partners from Feb 17 to July 2018 as financial analyst. She received her B.S. (2010), M.S. (2012) and Ph.D. (2016) degrees, all in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, University of Windsor, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively.

Pat Keady is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Aerosol Devices Inc, a small women-owned manufacturing corporation in Fort Collins, Colorado. The company offers advanced aerosol sampling technology using condensation growth capture. Pat serves as the President/CEO. Aerosol Devices was recently recognized by BizWest magazine as the #1 fastest growing private company in Northern Colorado in its size class.

Pat has an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Univ. of Minnesota, and MBA coursework from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. She is a Past-President of the American Association for Aerosol Research, has two issued and three pending patents for aerosol measurement and over 20 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Maryam Khoshlahjeh is Propeller Integrity Lead at Joby Aviation, an eVTOL venture-backed startup in Santa Cruz, CA. Prior to joining Joby Aviation, Maryam worked at Sikorsky Aircraft as a Deputy Program Manager and Dynamics Lead. Maryam was the recipient of the 2016 Marshall-Tan Engineering Leadership Award and President’s Award in 2015 at Sikorsky . Maryam started her undergraduate education in Iran. She moved to the US and received her Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from San José State University. She started working as an Aerospace Engineer at Advanced Rotorcraft Technology Inc, in Sunnyvale, CA. She went on to receive a MS degree in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University and PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State University.

Sarah Kurtz obtained her PhD in 1985 from Harvard University and now works at the University of California Merced after more than 30 years working at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. She is known for her contributions to developing multijunction, GaInP/GaAs solar cells and leading efforts on PV performance and reliability. Her work has been recognized with a jointly received Dan David Prize in 2007, the Cherry Award in 2012, C3E Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020. At the University of California Merced she is working both to help the university grow and to support the Energy Transition through a variety of studies, including a current study on long-duration storage.

Jenna Lee is Head of Asia Technical Sales in Internet of Things and Mixed Reality business at Microsoft. In this role, Lee works with partners and customers to drive digital transformation and build intelligent solutions, from edge to cloud and AI. Previously, as a chief of staff, Lee governed business management and managed the strategy analytics and business intelligence team.

Her past positions have been in areas such as IT, consulting, engineering, sales, marketing, business development and strategy. Jenna has over two decades of a proven track record across multiple sectors to build and grow cross-continent businesses.

Jenna holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington. Jenna currently serves as an executive board, advisor, investor and mentor to technology and education startups, women in tech, and STEM for youth.

Ribi Leung is the Senior Manager of Application Engineering and Product Marketing of Laser Scanning and SWIFT products at KLA. She is responsible for developing and deploying application support for worldwide customers to maximize product value for semiconductor device fabrication process control. She is a proven leader of global teams (example: US, Asia, Europe) and is specialized in team integration and product positioning strategy. Prior to joining KLA, she held a R&D position for High Energy Experimental Physics in Academia Sinica Taiwan. She holds M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from U.C. Davis, and M.S. Physics from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.

Dr. Yanbing Li is a global business and technology leader with extensive leadership experience building market leading products and hyper-growth businesses of $1B+ in the US and China. Yanbing is currently a Vice President of Engineering and Product at Google, leading the Enterprise Services Platform (ESP) organization in Google Cloud, with the mission of building a planet scale commerce platform for cloud, and planet scale operations and service infrastructure powering both Google Cloud and Google.

Prior to Google, Yanbing was the Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Storage and Availability Business Unit (SABU) at VMware and led the BU to become one of the fastest growing businesses at VMware. Yanbing is a member of the Board of Directors at Neophotonics (NYSE: NPTN).

Yanbing holds a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University, a Master’s degree from Cornell University, and a BS degree from Tsinghua University (Beijing), in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. She was inducted to the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2018.

Dr. Yujun Li currently leads TSMC’s High Performance Computing Platform. Yujun joined TSMC 5 years ago to grow the newly established business division. HPC business has grown significantly to become a key growth driver for the company.

Prior to TSMC, Yujun worked for IBM for ~20 years, in various engineering and management roles in its Semiconductor R&D Center. After serving as technical assistant to business head/SVP of mainframe group, Yujun became the program manager for IBM microelectronics’ Microsoft account. She then moved onto a Corporate Strategy role in forming strategies to meet future technology and system needs.

Yujun received her Ph.D. degree from Yale University. Yujun is an IBM Master Inventor, has more than 20+ issued patents and 30+ publications.

Yunyao Li is a Principal Research Staff Member and Senior Research Manager at IBM Almaden Research Center where she manages the Scalable Knowledge Intelligence department. She is an ACM Distinguished Member and a member of the inaugural New Voices program of the American National Academies. She is also a Master Inventor and a member of IBM Academy of Technology. Her expertise is in the interdisciplinary areas of natural language processing, databases, human-computer interaction, and information retrieval. She is a founding member of SystemT, a state-of-the-art NLP system currently powering 20+ IBM products, and numerous research projects. She received her PhD and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and undergraduate degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Erica Lockheimer is Vice President of Engineering at LinkedIn. During her more than 10 years at the company, she built the Growth Engineering team into a high performing 120-person team, focused on increasing membership, and deepening member engagement. In January 2018, she was promoted to Head of Engineering for the LinkedIn Learning team, formerly known as Lynda.com. She is also responsible for LinkedIn’s Women In Tech (WIT) initiative, which 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 e-mail and calendar data between Exchange and mobile devices.

Erica 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 recognized as one of the top 22 women engineers in the world by Business Insider.

Erica is a San Francisco Bay Area native, has 2 kids, loves to run and is a proud San José State University alumna with a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering.

Christina is an accomplished informatics leader with more than 20 years of experience in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical Industry. She has experience working from Research to Development environments, leading the strategy and implementation of informatics solutions and data platforms. Prior to joining Genentech, she was at Roche Palo Alto, Exelixis and most recently Novartis, where she was the Director and Site Head leading the informatics and engineering team based in Emeryville.
Christina received her M.S. in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford University. She also has a M.S. in Immunology and B.S. in Biochemistry/Cell Biology from UC San Diego.

Kelly Masegian is the career counselor liaison to the College of Engineering serving over 5000 undergraduate students. Previously, she worked with the Foothill/DeAnza Internship program at NASA Ames serving as an internship coordinator for 5 years providing career guidance and supervision to up to 125 interns each session. As the mother of four, she is used to a fast-paced environment, and deeply believes in helping students learn to navigate and be proactive in their career planning.

Dr. Kris May is an engineer and scientist who has focused her career on climate change resilience and adaptation strategy development, with an emphasis on coastal environments, sea level rise, and extreme hazard analysis. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Silvestrum Climate Associates, a small research-based consulting firm focused on climate mitigation and adaptation. In addition to her scientific and technical expertise, Kris has a solid understanding of the policies and guidance in place nationally and locally that are driving climate change adaptation planning.

Shannon McGraw-Manza has served as a Research Bioengineer for the Food Protection & Innovative Packaging Team, Combat Feeding Division, at the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center in Natick, MA since 2013. Dr. McGraw-Manza’s research interests include food and water safety, biosensors, biointegrated nanomaterials, and novel methods / materials for water generation. She received her Ph.D. in Biosystems Engineering from Michigan State University in 2013. During her Ph.D. program, Dr. McGraw-Manza was selected as a Department of Defense / American Society of Engineering Education SMART (Science, Mathematics, And Research for Transformation) scholar.

I am an AI Solutions Architect at Intel. I have about a decade of experience in the fields of Machine Learning and Computer Vision, and have worked on a variety of projects including detection and labeling of disks and vertebrae in spine MRI images, brain MRI image processing for detection and segmentation of different lesions (tumor, stroke and blood trauma), creating a drug target ontology in cancer study, and face recognition and facial expression recognition.
I received my Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Miami in 2015. My research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, and Data Mining.

Rajani is a licensed civil engineer with over 23 years of experience focusing on design and construction. She has a BS and MS in civil engineering from Texas A&M University and Columbia University respectively. Rajani worked in the private sector for 10 years prior to joining the City of San Jose in 2007. Overall, she has gained diverse skills working on large scale infrastructure projects that encompassed transportation, sanitary, storm, and/or electrical fields. In addition, Rajani oversaw the Smart City program that delivered citywide smart city initiatives. Now, as Deputy Director, Rajani oversees the Watershed Protection Division and will focus on protecting the City of San Jose’s waterways while enabling innovative uses of technology to help protect the environment.

Dr. Radha Nayak is Vice President in CSBG Spares, where she is responsible for Business Development and Marketing. She leads market share defense activities and development of positioning and pricing strategies for Spares. Prior to joining Lam in January 2018, she was VP of Product Management at Soraa, an LED-lighting startup, where she managed the roadmap, lifecycle, and portfolio of the company’s core revenue-generating professional lighting product line. As VP of Engineering at Soraa, she directed mechanical/thermal, electrical, compliance, integration, and reliability groups. Dr. Nayak was Director of Strategic Business Development at Novellus Systems, forecasting market size and share, and developing market analysis products to enable Novellus to target growing markets. Prior to that she was a Process Team Leader in Electroplating and Copper Integration at Applied Materials. Dr. Nayak earned a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; and both an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Shelby Neaville is a Senior Manufacturing Process Engineer at Sila Nanotechnologies, an engineered materials company focused on dramatically improving energy storage. Prior to joining Sila in 2019, Shelby worked for Dow Chemical as a Production Engineer. She graduated in 2015 from Virginia Tech with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. Shelby has always been fascinated by how things are made and enjoys working in manufacturing environments. She is passionate about operations efficiency, industrial safety, and problem solving. Shelby is currently involved in the commissioning of a new production line for Sila Nanotechnologies.

Tyler Ngo has lived most of her professional life in the aerospace industry. She has helped build satellites for the US Air Force as well as commercial satellites. She is currently a systems engineering manager for the Universities Space Research Association, doing research on air traffic management technologies. Recently, her primary interest has been toward data science concepts and applications for aviation.

Tyler received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. She received a Master of Engineering degree in Engineering Management from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Alison Nordt is the Sr Manager for Astrophysics at Lockheed Martin Space Advanced Technology Center. She is responsible for developing and maturing technology to support current and future space-based telescopes and instruments. She spent a large portion of her career leading the development of NIRCam, the primary camera on the James Webb Space Telescope. She has an extensive background in structures, opto-mechanical systems and instrument development which includes engineering experience with design and analysis and hands-on hardware experience through build and test. Alison earned her MS and PhD from Stanford and her BS from Cornell. She has two teenage children and enjoys soccer, skiing, sailing, windsurfing, flying and SCUBA diving.

Lyndsi Parker leads a team of over 30 engineers as the Director of Marvell’s design services team in Austin, Texas. Lyndsi started at IBM 15 years ago and has successfully taken her team through two acquisitions: GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2015, who created the Avera subsidiary, and Marvell in 2019. She has successfully led worldwide teams that taped out custom designs supporting key customers in big data, artificial intelligence, and communication markets. With a technical background in functional verification, Lyndsi works closely with sales and customers to define solutions to complex chips across multiple technologies, with the latest designs in 7nm and 5nm. She has a MSEE and BSEE from The University of Texas at Austin.

Sarah is a recruiter and program specialist at Google. She supports a diverse pool of candidates to and through the SWE and Engineering Residency hiring processes. She also co-manages Google’s Tech Exchange, a domestic study abroad program for Black and Latinx students interested in technical careers. During the summers, Sarah leads Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Sarah became a Physics teacher in an under resourced high school through Teach For America. The intersection of technology and education, and the power of technological access in closing the opportunity gap, became the focus of Sarah’s career.

Outside of work, Sarah enjoys practicing yoga, finding new restaurants, and hiking with her partner and her pup.

Dr. Elizabeth Pham holds a Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto and performed post-doctoral research at Sunnybrook Research Institute prior to joining Amgen Inc. As a Senior Scientist in Immuno-Oncology, she currently heads a research group at Amgen focused on target discovery and BiTE molecule development for solid tumors.

Joni Podolsky joined KLA in 2018 to develop and lead its inclusion and diversity (I&D) program. In this role she is responsible for helping the company benefit from the diversity of all individual and collective ideas, backgrounds and experiences. Joni has over 30 years of experience in engaging employees in corporate social responsibility, including 10+ years leading I&D. Joni is author of the book “Wired for Good: Strategic Technology Planning for Nonprofits” (Jossey-Bass 2003) and is recipient of the 2014 Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Top 100 Silicon Valley Women of Influence award. She holds a BA in Communications, and Minor in Music from Lewis and Clark College.

Sachi Rahman is a scientist and manager at IGM Biosciences, Inc. in Mountain View, CA. She currently works on novel approaches in cancer and Covid-19 therapeutics. A chemical engineer by training, she has been a researcher in the field of cancer for 15 years and is a key inventor for the U.S. patent on glyco-engineered IgMs. In the past, she has worked for biotechnology companies like Abbott, Abbvie, and Merck. Her expertise includes in-vitro glycoengineering and antibody production to support the development of innovative biologics.

Sachi is a founder of the PTPS (Peers Teaching Peers Science) program at the FAME Charter School in Fremont, CA, focused on helping children gain confidence and interest in science and engineering. Sachi is also a huge advocate for women empowerment and is actively involved in Women in Bio, TechWomen and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. She obtained her Chemical Engineering degree from University of Toronto with a specialization in Biomedical Engineering. She later studied and pursued a career in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.

Michal is a senior program manager at LTA Research and Exploration, a CA based aviation start-up focused on combining airship science with 21st century technology. Over the past 10 years, she has gained experience in a variety of roles, ranging from mechanical design, numerical analysis based research, experimental design and project management. Michal is passionate about improving communication, bridging gaps and promoting collaboration. She has a bachelors and masters degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion institute of technology in Israel. She’s a parent to 4 year old twin girls who are already showing interest in engineering.

Tina Revels is the University Relations and Recruiting Coordinator Manager at KLA. Prior to this role, she held multiple positions within KLA’s Talent Acquisition group, as Recruiter, Onboarding Specialist, and Recruiting Coordinator. Tina is also responsible for ramping university hiring to build KLA’s second headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and for creating KLA’s virtual internship program.

Tina began her career at KLA as a new college graduate in 2011 and holds a Bachelors degree in Business from San José State University.

Aida Rivas is a community builder, strategic thinker, and innovator. She is currently a Sr Program Manager in the Open Source Program Office within the Chief Technology Office at VMware.

With over 25 years experience in Tech, working as a software engineer, people manager and program manager in various industries such as oil, finance, and retail, Aida understands the need to continuously transform and quickly adapt to change. She believes we can change the trajectory of our personal and career journey based on what we decide to do with new knowledge and experience.

Aida is passionate about community service, providing coaching and enjoys camping with her daughter and cooking international cuisines.

Aarti Sankrithi’s career spans biofuel research, sustainable packaging design & engineering, supply chain operations and finance at several Fortune 500 companies. Her broad career choices are a testament to the powerful habits of mind one cultivates as an engineer to solve the world’s most complex challenges. She is a partner at RIC Enterprises, a small WA-based non-profit focused on innovation and commercialization of novel green technologies such as inflatable heliostats and revolving iceboat power systems.

Aarti is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a proud mom of two boys and loves nurturing their curiosity and exploring the world with her family.

Charla Serbent joined Cisco in April 2020 and leads the Security and Applications teams in Product Operations. Her teams are responsible for supporting an $8.7B product and offer portfolio, that spans across hardware, software and cloud businesses. Collectively the team drives product launch and lifecycle management activities, across Cisco’s Webex and Collaboration Video & Phone endpoints, Network Security, Firewall and Appliance products.

Prior to Cisco, Charla was at Dell Technologies, where she was Vice President of Global Operations Engineering and Quality, responsible for ensuring end-to-end Supply Chain readiness to deliver Dell products, supply chain quality, and Supply Chain Enablement and Digital Fulfillment. During her 10-year career at Dell, Charla held multiple operations, procurement, and quality executive positions. She was also an Executive Sponsor for the Asia Pacific Women in Action ERG.

Charla holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin and an MBA from Wharton.

Nanci Solomon has been active in VR (mixed reality) and virtual world development for more than 25 years. As co-founder of Xulu Entertainment in 1995, she helped develop an intergalactic resort experienced in a luxury spaceship and other craft with departure from an Earthstation in San Francisco.

Technologies she researched and acquired to build a functional prototype for this fully immersive experience included projection systems, haptic devices, motion platforms, pods, and touch displays, all driven from an internally built high-performance real-time physics-based virtual world engine.

Since 2016, Nanci has been active at SJSU serving as an Advisory Board Member for Computer Engineering, co-teaching a Masters’ AR/VR Class (CMPE297), launching the AR/VR Club at SJSU, and various projects.

I manage the Robotics and Automation category in Agilent which collaborates between diverse legacy cross-functional teams to change and understand total cost of ownership when selecting new technologies. I navigate teams in complex situations as procurement, marketing, sourcing and selection to drive Total Cost of Ownership, mitigate risks and bring value as a trusted interface between internal stakeholders and the vendor ecosystem. Prior, I was an engineer for 10 years in Hewlett Packard determined to find real root causes through factual evidences and qualitative probability hypothesis. I have a mechanical engineering degree from National Technology University, NTU Singapore and I love to hike, jog, sing and play 8-ball pool whenever I have time away from my kids.

Sarah Tariq is the Senior Director of Perception at Zoox, a self-driving startup owned by Amazon.com Inc, focused on developing and deploying a ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet for dense urban mobility. Her team at Zoox focuses on perception, using sensors including cameras, lidar and radar to interpret the world around the vehicle in order to allow the vehicle to navigate safely and smoothly. Sarah has been at Zoox for 5+ years and prior to that she worked at NVIDIA, where she contributed to the implementation of several novel real-time simulation and rendering of algorithms, led a team working on profiling and optimizing code for high performance computing and super computers, and served as a technical lead for the computer vision team focusing on self-driving technology.

As the VP of Operations for VMware’s global R&D organization, Sonar spearheads strategy planning, business analytics and governance, and business transformation initiatives. Her team plays a critical role in defining and driving strategic, operational, and organizational excellence to scale the business with speed and deliver aggressive growth. What gets Sonar excited every day is sharing personal stories, pushing and stretching herself and her team to question the status quo and find new ways to solve problems.

Prior to her current role, Sonar spent almost 19 years at Cisco in various Engineering and Operations roles for multiple multi-billion dollar businesses including Data Center, IoT, and Networking.

Sonar is passionate about mentoring and sponsoring women in tech. She actively engages in various mentoring activities across VMware and her broader community. Sonar was recognized by Silicon Valley Business Journal as a Woman of Influence in 2020, awarded the YWCA Silicon Valley’s TWIN award in 2019, and was a fellow with the International Women’s Forum leadership foundation in 2018-2019.

Sonar holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Engineering from San José State University.

Bernie Valencia is the Vice President and General Manager for Matson in Guam and Micronesia and is responsible for overseeing the operations and sales activity of Matson’s Western Pacific including Okinawa, Japan. Bernie was recognized as an inaugural award winner of the 2020 Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine’s Women in Supply Chain Award that recognizes top female professionals in the shipping and supply chain industries worldwide.

Bernie plays an active role in improving her community. She is co-founder of iCAN Resources, a nonprofit organization that employs and provides life skills to Guam’s disabled community. Bernie also serves on the University of Guam’s School of Business Advisory Council to support future business leaders; vice president of the Guam Women’s Chamber of Commerce to elevate women-owned businesses; The Employer’s Council to protect workers’ rights; the Guam Area Maritime Security Committee to strengthen the safety in the region; the USO Advisory Council to support servicewomen and men; and on the iRecycle board of directors to promote environmental responsibility. Bernie graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Aviation Maintenance.

Dámaris was born and raised in Tijuana, Baja California, México. She completed her undergraduate studies in Environmental Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and graduate studies in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. She has over 9 years of experience in the field of water resources working in both public and private sectors. She is currently an Associate Civil Engineer at Valley Water working in the long-term planning of flood risk reduction projects. Her current professional interests include understanding the impacts that current land use policies and land development activities have had on increasing flood risk in urban settings as well as the disproportionate impacts of flooding in underserved communities.

Since joining Lam Research in 2011, Andrea has been responsible for a wide range of embedded system designs, PCB designs, and firmware development for industrial controls systems. Her current work involves enabling data collection and tool critical communications on semiconductor manufacturing equipment. She received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, and her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University.

Jianghao Wang is the AI Academic Liaison at MathWorks. In her role, Jianghao supports machine learning and deep learning research and teaching in academia. Before joining MathWorks, Jianghao obtained her Ph.D. in Statistical Climatology from the University of Southern California and B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Nankai University.

Julie Willey enjoys shipping products that delight and inspire. She has close to 20 years of engineering experience; ranging from designing ASICs and systems design at Leapfrog toys and Neato Robotics, heading up the HW team at Tile, an internet of things, BLE key finder, and now a Sr Systems Engineer in Meta’s ARVR team. Having developed the love of great startups, Julie continues to provide technical and process mentor-ship for startups through their product definition, execution and team growth phases.

I am an alumna of San Jose State University’s Civil Engineering Undergraduate program. After graduating from SJSU, I entered the construction industry working for Swinerton Builders. Swinerton is a national general contractor, headquartered in San Francisco. I have been with Swinerton for five years, with experience in school, retail & high-rise construction. My favorite part of construction is achieving milestones alongside my coworkers. We see our daily work culminate into a physical structure by the end of the project, which is a tremendously gratifying experience. Within my career I have engaged in related organizations such as; San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal, Women in Construction Operations & Design Build Institute of America.

Dr. Qian Xiong is a Machine Learning Engineer working at the intersection of Cybersecurity and AI/ML at Google. She focuses on the research and development of industry-leading intelligent security applications boosted by AI/ML techniques. The goal is to build global-scale frameworks that identify potential cybersecurity threats and proactively prevent cyber-attacks. Before Google, she worked for Expedia Group where she contributed to the conversational AI Chatbot for intelligent and personalized customer service. She holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Colorado State University, with papers published in leading journals in the area of extreme/abnormal value analysis.

Ming Tze leads the Global Supply Chain Strategy and Transformation Program Office at Agilent Technologies. She began her career as an Accountant and had moved through several roles over 18 years in Agilent. As the Order Fulfillment and Supply Chain organization moved towards digital and coupled by her own interests in new technologies, she has taken on additional responsibility in helping to drive digital technology incubation efforts within the organization. This included leading a data analytics team in Global Supply Chain and most recently leading the planning and execution of the Artificial Intelligence Incubation. She aspires to advance her involvement in technology in every role that she takes on.

Ming Tze also leads the Women@Agilent Singapore Employee Network Group.

Ms. Yerrapotu is the Deputy Operating Officer at Valley Water and is responsible for Treated Water Operations which delivers drinking water to Santa Clara county. She has over 25 years of experience which includes engineering, operations & maintenance, infrastructure rebuilds, recycled water, regulatory compliance, and environmental programs. Prior to Valley Water she worked for 20 plus years in the water sector both in private consulting (in Miami, FL) as well for the City of San Jose and the City of Sunnyvale.

Ms. Yerrapotu is a registered professional engineer in the State of California as well as a Board Certified Environmental Engineer. She is an active member and presenter at California Water Environment Association and Water Environment Federation.

Tracy Young co-founded PlanGrid, construction productivity software, in 2011 with Ralph Gootee, Antoine Hersen, Kenny Stone and Ryan Sutton-Gee. PlanGrid grew from 5 co-founders to 450 people, and helped build over 1m construction projects around the globe before it was acquired by Autodesk in 2018 for $875m. Prior to PlanGrid, Tracy helped build hospitals in the Bay Area.

Daisy is a mechanical engineer at Intuitive Surgical, where she works on Ion, a robotic-assisted platform for minimally invasive peripheral lung biopsy. Prior to Intuitive, she worked at Verily Life Sciences on a smart lens. She received her PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and BS from MIT. During her PhD, she worked in a Materials Science lab where she researched materials used in renewable energy technologies, such as batteries, photovoltaics and fuel cells. After graduation, she decided to pursue a career in the medical device industry. Leveraging her interdisciplinary background in materials science and mechanical engineering, she continues to follow her passion to develop technologies to improve people’s lives.

Kristine is a professional civil engineer who has focused her career on the treatment of municipal water, wastewater and recycled water. As an Associate Engineer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, Kristine works to optimize processes for both wastewater and recycled water treatment. Kristine also spent time as a consultant working on designs for municipal treatment facilities. Kristine has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Zhan Yu is the Senior Director of Engineering at Marvell Semiconductor. At Marvell, she built and led cross-functional cross-geographic R&D organizations to design, develop high-performance, mixed-signal IPs. Before that, Zhan was the Director of Digital Power at Monolithic Power Systems. She set up global design centers and led the team to prototyped MPS’ 1st digitally controlled DC-DC converters into products.

Zhan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, UCLA, and MBA degrees from INSEAD and Tsinghua University in Tsinghua-INSEAD EMBA program. She founded the Coaching Center at Tsinghua x-lab and has been an avid mentor for women’s leadership development and coaching young entrepreneurs.