Saturday, September 19th
Julie Schoenfeld E'79 (Keynote)
Julie is Entrepreneur in Residence at Caltech and a serial entrepreneur who has led four venture-backed startups. Her most recent company, Strobe Inc, was acquired by General Motors Cruise Automation in 2017. Strobe created LiDAR sensor technology for the self- driving car. Julie was also CEO of Perfect Market, Inc., a digital publishing which was acquired by Taboola in July 2104. Julie co-founded OEwaves Inc. a pioneer in optoelectronic oscillators and advanced photonic devices. OEwaves, located in Pasadena, continues to provide breakthrough communication solutions to aerospace and defense customers. Julie was recently elected Chairman of the Board at OEwaves. In 1997 she created Net Effect, Inc., a software as a service solution for e-commerce providers, acquired by Ask (now IAC) for over $300M. Julie is a board member of Startek (SRT:NYSE) and Prodege, Llc. Julie holds a BSME from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. |
Geethanjali Gopal (Machine Learning Usage in Banking)
Geethanjali (Geetha) Gopal is a challenge-driven technology leader, currently leading technology strategy in Capital One's Credit Card Acquisitions and Decisioning space. Over the years, Geetha has led the design and development of several innovative digital products/ technology solutions that have created foundational changes for organizations. She has been instrumental in shaping the technology strategy for Capital One’s digital banking space and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in product development, digital security, application architecture, chaos engineering and building data-driven/ML products. Geetha is passionate about understanding dynamics of complex systems and applying work design techniques to maximize learning, engagement and operational efficiency. She holds a Masters in Computer science from Texas A&M and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. |
Michelle Bornstein (Tech for Non-CS Majors Panel)
Michelle is a Program Manager at Google on the product strategy & operations incentives team. She designs, develops, and leads end-to-end operations for an incentives program for top agency sellers who work with Google's small and medium business advertising customers. Prior to Google, Michelle worked in consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton, with a focus on cybersecurity for commercial clients. Projects ranged from conducting insider risk assessments at top pharmaceutical companies to evolving the fraud investigation process at financial institutions. Michelle graduated from Tufts in 2017 with a degree in Mathematics & Psychology. She enjoys running, cooking, reading, and exploring new cultures through traveling around the globe (when not in a pandemic). |
Rachel Daricek (Tech for Non-CS Majors Panel)
Rachel is a marketing and product strategy executive. Rachel has nearly 20 years of experience in marketing & strategy, customer success & sales, account management & consulting, and operational excellence in top globally recognized organizations within industries such as pharmaceuticals, oil & gas, and more. Most recently, Rachel was Vice President of Marketing at TetraScience, responsible for building the marketing team, brand, and go-to-market approach from scratch. Rachel holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, an MEM in Product Innovation and Design from the Kellogg School of Management/McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University. Outside of work, Rachel enjoys spending time with her family, including 2 small children, trying out the latest fashions, and doing yoga. |
Jennifer Gewant (Tech for Non-CS Majors Panel)
Jennifer Gewant is a Success Architect at Salesforce. She graduated from Tufts University in 2016 with a double major in Economics and FMS (Film & Media Studies). At Salesforce, Jennifer works under the Marketing Cloud, focusing on Datorama, their marketing intelligence platform. Datorama is an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that allows customers to analyze and visualize their marketing data, and take action on their marketing campaigns. Her role in the Customer Success Group includes various tasks such as coaching and advising customers on how to best utilize the platform, identifying new product use cases, and identifying areas of improvement with the platform. Prior to joining Salesforce via the Datorama acquisition, Jennifer worked at marketing agencies on analytics teams. In her spare time, Jennifer enjoys learning more about the intersection of data science and business through her continued education at Dartmouth, crafting, and exploring her home city of Brooklyn, NY. |
Jen Sitiaev (Tech for Non-CS Majors Panel)
Jen Sitiaev is an Account Executive at Twilio based in San Francisco. She graduated from Tufts University in 2018 with degrees in International Relations and Entrepreneurial Leadership. Twilio allows brands to connect with customers everywhere they want to interact with you—from text messages to emails, phone calls to video, intelligent chatbots and back—within a single powerful platform. At Twilio, Jen covers a territory in the USA and works with businesses to optimize their digital engagement strategy in a quota based role. COVID has really accelerated digital transformation across many industries and Twilio has been the platform on the backend of these initiatives (NYC Contact Tracing, remote learning, mass notifications, etc.) Prior to Twilio, Jen interned at BNP Paribas Asset Management in Institutional Marketing. Outside of work, Jen loves yoga, the beach, and vegan food. |
Jen Lee (Diversity Panel)
Jen Lee works both as a Software Engineer and as a Software Consultant at Galatea Associates, a financial consulting company that uses technology as a tool to provide solutions to large Wall Street broker-dealers. Currently, Jen is working on a team of eight to build out a Profit&Loss service that will be used by investment firms, wealth managers, and hedge funds. Jen was born and raised in Taiwan and moved to the US when she was 12 to attend high school in Portland, OR. She graduated from Brandeis University in 2019 with a bachelorʼs degree in Computer Science and Business, and a minor in Legal Studies. Outside of work, Jen enjoys exploring nature and new cities, spending time in the gym, and watching food challenges on Youtube. |
Zariah Cameron (Diversity Panel)
Zariah Cameron is a rising junior in college, at North Carolina A&T State University, studying Graphic Design. However, she has recently transitioned into UX Design, as an independent study. She finds interest in how users connect to technology and the impact that design can have on that connection. She loves creating products that invoke social change or/and impact people’s life’s in a positive way. When she is not designing, she loves to write fictional stories. Currently, she is working on developing an initiative program to foster design skills for black college students. |
Amritha Prasad (Diversity Panel)
Amritha Prasad graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a double major in Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction. While she began her career as a software engineer, within a year she pivoted to UX design and explored the startup world in Silicon Valley. In 2012, she joined Uber as one of its first product designers. Over the past 7.5 years, she's worked on teams like Safety, Driver Experience, and Uber Eats. Currently, she is a Product Design Manager across Uber Eats' Grocery and Courier Design Teams and is very passionate about the service design components of this experience. In her spare time, she enjoys reading fiction, writing short stories, and weightlifting. |
Liz Marsh (Mobility and COVID-19 in NYC: Using Publicly Available Geospatial Data to Understand COVID-19 in New York City)
Liz is entering her final year of a dual-degree masters program at Tufts in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and in Nutritional Epidemiology at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. She is interested in understanding how human mobility interacts with health and disease transmission and more broadly how passive data streams can be used to inform health policy. Prior to graduate school, Liz was a diabetes prevention program manager and became frustrated with how data was poorly collected and unable to offer an accurate picture of the program's success. Take a look at her website! |
Saturday Afternoon Tea Talks
Laurel Bliss: Working with Data in the Government as a Humanities Major
Laurel is currently a research support associate working at the Political Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her interests include local politics, civic engagement, elections, and education. She graduated from Tufts in 2020 with degrees in political science and civic studies, focusing on American politics. Laurel is particularly excited by mixed-methods research and initiatives, particularly those that combine tech, education, and civic engagement. Laurel is originally from Decatur, GA, but has come to call Massachusetts a second home. |
Karen Donoghue: UX Career Paths
Karen Donoghue is an Interaction Designer and Principal at HumanLogic, where she works with clients on the planning and design of software platforms at scale. She is also the developer of Local Haze, a crowdsourced air quality monitoring app for iPhone. Prior to founding HumanLogic, Karen worked as a Principal UX Designer at Microsoft and Motorola and was a senior software engineer in Boston. Karen earned a M.S. from the MIT Media Laboratory and a BS in Computer Science from Tufts University. |
Brinley Macnamara: Transition Between College and Work
Brinley’s formal title is Network Technology and Security Engineer. She works for MITRE, a large defense contractor. She enjoys networking, software engineering, UI design, cyber security, and tinkering with Raspberry Pis. She would like to learn more about penetration testing. In her free time, she enjoys reading about history, running, french fries, and ice cream. |
Hannah Voelker: Becoming Self-Sufficient and Taking Feedback
Hannah is a Senior Software Engineer at GRAIL, a biotech startup developing a blood test to screen for cancer in its earliest possible stage. She works on the infrastructure team, developing pipelines to deliver datasets for machine learning analysis that merge a patient's clinical and sequencing information. She also is the co-technical lead for her team, helping formulate requirements and build systems as the team prepares for launch. Hannah graduated from Tufts in 2018 with a major in Biomedical Engineering and minor in Computer Science, and previously interned at Illumina and the Broad Institute. In her free time, she enjoys running, hiking, skiing, and hanging out with her two dogs Zero and Lucy. |
Yennie Jun: Looking for Mentors
Yennie is an incoming MsC student at the Oxford Internet Institute in the Social Data Science program. Previously she worked as a software engineer at Microsoft across several teams, first doing backend work on a business SaaS platform, then later doing full-stack development on the education team. After Microsoft, she spent some time traveling around Korea and working with the Big Data Studies Lab at Seoul National University, where she is researching the future of big data archives and long-term preservation of data centers. Yennie graduated from Tufts in 2017, with a double major in computer science and history. In her spare time, she loves hiking, playing various instruments, and writing fiction. |
Sunday, September 20th
Bela Labovitch (Keynote)
Bela Labovitch is a passionate technologist and engineering leader whose career in software spans many decades. She is currently a Vice President of Engineering at athenahealth, a healthcare technology company that aspires to create a thriving ecosystem that provides accessible, high-quality and sustainable healthcare for all. She has held a variety of positions – CTO, VP, Architect and developer at companies that range from start-ups to larger enterprises. Bela has a Masters in Computer Science from Northeastern University and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Brandeis University. Bela is particularly interested in attracting and keeping women in the technology field and raising women leaders. She is on the steering committee of the Women’s Leadership forum at athenahealth and founded the company’s Women in Technology initiative. She is a STEM mentor and speaks at organizations such as Girls Who Code. In 2019 and 2020 the Healthcare Technology Report named her as one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare Software. Bela serves on the Board of the non-profit Parents Helping Parents and is a long-time parental stress counselor. She is a mother, runner, yoga practitioner, reader and avid traveler. |
Kathleen Cachel (Intro to Product Management)
Kathleen Cachel is a PhD student in Data Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She found her way into graduate studies through her love of analytics and data informed decision making as a Program Manager at Microsoft. Kathleen received her B.S. in Computer Science from Tufts in 2016 and then started working on the Office collaboration product team at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (NERD). As a Program Manager Kathleen has worked with enterprise and education customers world-wide helping them collaborate seamlessly and transition to the cloud. |
Lior Koren (Intro to Product Management)
Lior is a Product Manager at Square working on building solutions for Restaurants. She started her Square career working on the Catalog platform, building functionality for businesses of all types to manage their Items and Inventory and transitioned over to the Restaurants team, focusing on the Point of Sale and Kitchen Display products. Lior moved from Israel to Boston, Massachusetts when she was 9 years old. She graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Computer Science specializing in Artificial Intelligence. Post graduation, she completed a 2 year rotational 'Engineering in Leadership' program at Emerson Electric where she lived in Singapore, Austin Texas, and Dayton Ohio and focused on product management, marketing and supply chain planning. In her time off from work, Lior loves traveling to see untouched places around the world. Her last trip was to Antarctica. |
Dr. Lisa Michaud (Conversational Artificial Intelligence)
Dr. Lisa Michaud was told by a classmate in her first CS course in high school that girls can’t program computers. She went on to do a double major in Computer Science and English Literature at Williams College. When she found out that the field of Computational Linguistics combined her passions for coding and human language, she knew she had found the topic of her PhD. She has been a Computer Science professor, a software architect, and an engineering manager. She is now a Senior Product Manager for the Intelligent Virtual Assistant Platform at Interactions. Her work focuses on the challenge of enabling humans to interact conversationally with technology, from a chatbot on a website to Amazon Alexa or Siri. In her free time, Dr. Michaud plays clarinet in a concert band, starts science fiction writing projects that she never finishes, and is a voice actor in audio drama podcasts. |
Denise Reed Lamoreaux (Communicating with Power)
Based in Rochester, New York, Denise has been involved in diversity and learning-related endeavors for 30 + years. Her career has encompassed Secondary Education, Professional Leadership Coaching, Leadership, and Instructing at both the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School and Monroe Community College’s Corporate College program. In April, Denise was named to the Top 50 Diversity Stars List by the National Diversity Council. Publications featuring Denise's work: 2020 Diversity in the Workplace Report, How Atos uses succession planning to improve gender balance, Dialogue Q2 2020 ‘s publication, The Inclusion Imperative, SUNY Geneseo’s Scene Spring 2020 Magazine, If unconcious bias training, doesn't work, what's the alternative? |
Tina Chen (Careers in Biotech Panel)
Tina Chen is the Associate Director of Data at Activ Surgical, where she works on the development of computer vision and machine learning applications for surgical systems. Prior to joining Activ, she worked on radar and satellite imagery applications at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. She has an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. |
Alina Ferdman (Careers in Biotech Panel)
Alina Ferdman is a software engineer at Asimov, a biotech startup whose mission is to build tools to help program living cells. Alina has been leading research that aims to automate genetic circuit design through the use of neural networks and genetic algorithms, supported by the DARPA Automating Scientific Knowledge Extraction (ASKE) program. Additionally, she organizes cultural company-wide events including offsites, hackathons, team lunches, and now virtual games. Before Asimov, Alina worked at KAYAK for six years as a software engineer and data scientist on a variety of projects related to hotel search, trip planning, and inline ads. Alina holds B.S. degrees in mathematics and computer science and a M.Eng degree in computer science from MIT. In her free time, Alina enjoys traveling, hiking, climbing, drawing, and solving all kinds of puzzles. |
Sumaiya Iqbal (Careers in Biotech Panel)
Sumaiya Iqbal is a Research Scientist in the Computer-Aided Drug Discovery team of the Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. By training, she is a Computer Scientist; she received her Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Applied Sciences from the University of New Orleans focusing on the application of Machine Learning for improved extraction of knowledge from biological data, with an emphasis on Protein and Structural Biology. Driven by strong determination to contribute to Human Health, she did her postdoc jointly at Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she led the development of large-scale web portal integrating Genetics and Structural Biology data to help interpret Genetic Mutations. In the current role, she brings her cross-disciplinary experience to inform Drug Development. Prior to coming to USA, Sumaiya served as a faculty in the Bangladesh University of Eng. and Tech. from where she received her BS and MS in Computer Science. |
Ruchi Munshi (Careers in Biotech Panel)
Ruchi is a Product Manager at the Data Sciences Platform within the Broad Institute. This role involves learning about the pain points of scientists in the biomedical research field and to design software solutions that will accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries and insights. Originally, she studied biochemistry and started off doing some research on diagnostic cancer markers and then moved over to the Broad for developing lab processes for sequencing clinical data. Over time she transitioned into a software engineering role with the Data Sciences that focused on building analysis tools for bioinformaticians. She uses her experience both as a researcher and software developer to drive software product development for data management and processing of large-scale genomics workflows. |
Zoe Howard (Data Driven Decision Making in Politics)
Zoe Chase Howard is a Data Analyst with the progressive tech nonprofit ActBlue which works to democratize American politics by lifting up the voices of small dollar donors and helping them take political power back from billionaires and corporate interests. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Tufts University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies. Ms. Howard is passionate about voting rights, environmentalism, and using data driven analysis to fight for these issues. She also enjoys running, hiking, and backpacking, and recently completed a solo cross-country adventure. |
Rachel Gregorio (Importance of Usability: UI Design Thinking)
Rachel Gregorio is a Lead Human-Centered Systems Engineer and Group Lead in the Software Engineering Technology Center. Rachel is one of the founding members of MITRE’s Innovation Toolkit and facilitated, planned, and compiled the results from all of the ECIS workshops in this presentation. She has a background in visual design and communication and specializes in User Experience Design. She holds a B.A. from Boston College in Communication and Studio Art and a M.S. in Interactive Media from Quinnipiac University. |
Sunday Afternoon Tea Talks
Ming Chow: How to Interact with Professors
Ming Chow is an Associate Teaching Professor at the Tufts University Department of Computer Science. His areas of interest are web and mobile security, and Computer Science education. Ming has spoken at numerous organizations and conferences including the HTCIA, OWASP, InfoSec World, Design Automation Conference (DAC), DEF CON, Intel, SOURCE, HOPE, BSides, and ACM SIGCSE. He has served as a mentor to a BSides Las Vegas Proving Ground track speaker since 2014, a track focused on helping new speakers in the information security and hacker communities acclimate to public speaking. Ming was named the 2016 Henry and Madeline Fischer Award recipient at Tufts, awarded annually to a faculty member of the School of Engineering judged by graduating seniors of the School of Engineering to be “Engineering’s Teacher of the Year.” He was named the 2017 Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising recipient at Tufts, awarded annually to a faculty member who has had a profound intellectual impact on his or her students, both inside and outside the classroom. |
Iris Oliver: Moving to a New City After Grad
Iris is a Program Manager at Microsoft based in Seattle, WA. She graduated from Tufts in 2019 and holds a BS in Computer Science. At Microsoft, Iris works on the Edge browser team, focusing on accessibility standards. Iris is passionate about STEM education and making tech accessible to all. She volunteers with Microsoft TEALS to teach computer science to high school students, and recently served as Student Experience Lead for InternHacks, a virtual internship program to support students who lost internships due to Covid-19. Iris is also involved in Seattle's Covid-19 Mutual Aid network to organize community food pantries to combat food insecurity. In her free time, Iris enjoys Bollywood dancing and experimenting in the kitchen. Fun fact: she co-chaired WiT 2018 with Supriya Sanjay! |
Anne Oursler: How to Find a Work/Life Balance
Anne is a founder of WIT (2017) and a Software Development Engineer at Amazon Robotics where she focuses on Space Allocation for Fulfillment and Sort Center robots on the Movement Coordination and Control team. She is an active member of Amazon Women Engineers and helps to organize Amazon Robotics’ Coffee Shuffle to create community among the many types of engineers. Anne Graduated from Tufts in 2018 with a degree in Computer Science. She loves meeting new people, wrestling with new ideas, woodworking, rock climbing, and running. |
Sloane Phillips: Transition from College to Work Life
Sloane is a founding member of and VP of Clinical Operations at Iterative Scopes, a Cambridge based startup developing computer vision tools for gastroenterologists. While she doesn't have a technical background, the majority of her time is spent bridging the gap between the machine learning team at Iterative and the clinicians for whom they are developing products. In her role she oversees data partnerships, annotation and clinical evaluation of algorithms. She has a B.S. in Public Health and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. She was a Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship Fellow during her time at MIT and is a former Peace Corps Volunteer. |
Gabby Raymond: Looking for Mentors/Diverse Support System
Gabby Raymond is a Group Lead and Lead Cyber Security Engineer at the MITRE Corporation. Gabby’s research has spanned topics in cyber operations, intrusion detection, and machine learning applications for security. In addition to her technical work, she is also a manager for a group of staff in the Cyber New Professionals Department, a rotational program intended to help early career develop expertise across a broad spectrum of MITRE's cybersecurity capabilities. Gabby holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science and a M.S. in Computer Science, both from Tufts University. |
Supriya Sanjay: Imposter Syndrome + Advocating for Yourself in the Workplace
Supriya Sanjay is a proud recent graduate of Tufts, where she earned a double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Brain Science. In September of 2018, she co-chaired the Tufts Second Annual Women in Tech Conference, which boasted over 250 attendees, renowned speakers, and $20,000+ in corporate sponsorships. Supriya was also a Teaching Fellow for Data Structures and Algorithms, a core class in the computer science department. In her senior year, Supriya pursued an honors thesis that investigated gender bias in STEM on an international scale. Supriya is also a proud alumna of her A cappella group, Tufts sQ! Since graduating, Supriya has held a role as a software engineer at Amazon Robotics and served as the inaugural director of InternHacks, an intern program for students who lost jobs and internships because of COVID-19 cancellations. |
Check out our sessions for the schedule!