Movers and Shakers: Justine Chen, Senior Manager, SunGard Consulting Services

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

Justine Chen, senior manager at SunGard Consulting Services is deeply committed to getting more women interested in technology careers. Through her current role, Chen participates in a lot of community outreach and as a result, she took a particular interest in the organization, Girl Develop It, which offers courses for women who want to learn technical skills.

“I made a connection at GDI who introduced me to the film, Girl Rising, a documentary about the education of girls in several developing countries,” explained Chen, who organized screenings of the film at many SunGard offices in honor of International Women’s Day.

“This collaboration has been so rewarding and it is an empowering feeling to be involved with spreading a positive message about technology to young women and girls across the globe,” Chen said.

Career Path

Chen grew up in Taiwan and moved to Canada after high school. She explained that in Taiwan the education system requires students entering senior high school to declare an area of study. Chen had always been drawn to logic and problem solving, so naturally these interests pointed her in the direction of engineering. “This was the first step toward my career in technology,” said Chen, who continued to study engineering when she was at university in Canada.

After graduating from college, Chen accepted a position at a traditional engineering consulting firm working on a system that would commission commuter ferries in Washington. While Chen enjoyed this experience, she sought a role that would give her the opportunity to interact more with the public as opposed to focusing so much on back end developing.

“This put me at a crossroads early on in my career where I had to decide to pursue opportunities on the East coast or stay on the West coast. Ultimately, I was drawn to the East coast and started working as a java developer for a search company right as the internet was becoming extremely popular,” Chen explained.

As a result of the increasing popularity of the web, companies were looking to design more interactive and dynamic websites. Chen, who found herself in the right place at the right time, was asked if she wanted to learn the programming languages that were emerging at the time. “I entered that field and I have been working on web technologies ever since,” Chen noted.

According to Chen, the changes within the web technologies field that have taken place over the last few years have created such a dynamic environment offering opportunities for people from all walks of life. In the past, she explained, web technologies primarily attracted computer science majors. Now, more and more people entering the field are self-taught programmers and developers who are bringing an entirely different skill set to the table.

Selected as SunGard’s rising star for the Women’s Bond Club in2013, Chen continues to make significant contributions in her current role as a senior manager at SunGard Consulting Services. “In addition to my daily responsibilities, I am working on a new business solution through SunGard Consulting Services solution proposal competition held each year that encourages us to think outside the box,” said Chen.

Read more

/by

Movers and Shakers: Adda Birnir, Founder and CEO, Skillcrush

Women SpeakingAdda Birnir is the founder and CEO of Skillcrush, an online technical skills platform designed specifically for women. According to Birnir, her career path has been unconventional, but as she looks back at all of her experiences she is certain that each role she had in the past served as a building block and learning opportunity to help her create the company of her dreams.

Navigating a Career in Technology
When Adda Birnir first had the idea for Skillcrush, she identified a hole in the marketplace and created a platform to fill the gap in an area she felt very strongly about: inspiring women to discover technical skills by developing an accessible online resource.

Before this, Birnir was working as a technical producer at MTV while running her own web development and design consulting business. “This was a great business, but I found that I wasn’t professionally fulfilled by the client work I was doing. Instead, I was craving a more hands-on experience where I could take a project through the entire life-cycle,” she explained.

Birnir graduated from college and moved to New York in order to pursue a career as a professional photographer. “I quickly learned that the reality of the profession was nothing like I had imagined,” explained Birnir, who shortly thereafter found a job working for an online publishing company. “I was lucky because my position straddled editorial and production, which gave me the opportunity to gain exposure to the technical side of the process of creating and delivering online magazines,” she said.

Here, Birnir realized that she not only had genuine interest in technology but also a natural talent that began to emerge as she spent a lot of time working closely with the web developers. “This was my first real introduction to the world of technology,” said Birnir, who started to take on small coding projects in addition to her regular tasks.

According to Birnir, sponsorship has played a critical role in her career development in technology. “I have been fortunate to have several people in the workplace take me under their wing and guide me as I developed my skills,” she noted. This is why, Birnir added, she has made mentorship such a key component of her company, Skillcrush.

“There are a lot of excellent resources out there for anyone who is interested in learning about programming and web development,” Birnir said, “but it can be confusing to navigate. This is where it is important to have someone who can interject and give you guidance along the way.”

She continued, “Through Skillcrush, we recognized a great opportunity to serve women in the technical space and offer something different than any other technical skills platform that was available at the time.”

Growing Pains: The Ups and Downs of Startups
When Birnir was initially developing Skillcrush, she decided to take a “test and learn” approach to her business. This, she explained, meant treating the company like a science experiment by creating a series of hypotheses and testing them one at a time, beginning with the riskiest.

“The riskiest part of this business model was not creating an online technical skills platform,” Birnir explained, “It was building this type of business that would attract women.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Patricia Florissi, EMC Vice President and Global Chief Technology Officer, Sales

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

Patricia Florissi Picture Image (2)

Patricia Florissi, EMC Vice President and Global Chief Technology Officer, Sales, knew from a very young age that she had an affinity and a talent for math problems and logic puzzles. What she did not realize at the time is how this skill set and passion for more technical subjects would lead her toward a rewarding career in information technology.

This is because at the time, computer science had not fully been developed as a curriculum. Perhaps it was fate –or a stroke of luck –that Florissi encountered when the first computer science course was created at her university in Brazil, giving her the opportunity to enroll in the class and take the first step toward her bright future in the field.

Read more

/by

Intrepid Woman: Lucy Sanders: CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)

By Cathie Ericson

Lucy SandersLucy Sanders’, founder of NCWIT, interest in STEM fields started early. Her father was an early adopter, and her high school math teacher encouraged her by teaching her computer programming skills. Then she saw that her sister, who had earned one of the early computer science degrees, was enjoying enormous success and decided that was the path for her.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Doris Daif, Head of Digital Customer Experience, American Express

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

Doris Daif, Head of Digital Customer Experience at American Express, offers one important piece of advice for women. “Confidence and poise are two of your greatest assets,” she said. “When you possess these qualities, you will be able to articulate your point of view and make your voice heard.”

“You have to go through your own journeys in life to see what lies on the other side,” added Daif, “but if there is one thing I wish I knew earlier in my career, it would be how confidence is such a valuable career tool.”

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Katrina Roberts, Vice President, Acting Head of Global Network and International Consumer Technology, American Express

Katrina Roberts never envisioned herself having a career in IT, but now, after joining American Express over twenty years ago, she could never imagine herself anywhere else. Originally, Roberts planned on entering the hospitality business as a hotel manager, but after gaining some hands on experience in the industry while she was still a student, Roberts determined that was not the perfect career fit for her.

Although Roberts was still unsure of her exact career trajectory leaving college, she knew that she had a strong interest in travel and tourism. With some encouragement from her father, a Kodak employee, Roberts applied to work at American Express.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Emmanuelle Rivet, Partner, PwC US

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

“Embrace the fact that you might be different and have a different way of approaching things,” said Emmanuelle Rivet, Partner at PwC US. “Focus instead on what drives you and find your internal purpose,” she continued.

This is just one key piece of advice that Rivet offered to young women starting out in their career, and it is something that helped her immensely when she was making an important transition in her own career; transferring from PwC France to pursue opportunities within the US firm’s Silicon Valley office.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Elizabeth Nieto, Global Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, MetLife

The Glass Hammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by featuring profiles of Hispanic Women Business Leaders all week long!

“Women who have power can continue to push the envelope on women’s interests,” Elizabeth Nieto says. “We can complain about where we are or focus on what we’re achieving. Things may not be perfect in the corporate world, but we’ve accomplished a lot and we have to build from here. Our daughters are watching us and making decisions about their lives based on how we make decisions about our own lives.”

This perspective is what drives Nieto as she implements programs focused on building a diverse and inclusive workplace at MetLife.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Sandra Aresti, Partner, PwC

The Glass Hammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by featuring profiles of Hispanic Women Business Leaders all week long!

Sandra Aresti, PwC partner, advises young professionals to enjoy the moment because time goes by so fast. “Don’t get caught up in the minute details,” she said. “Work hard, but also take the time to breathe, relax, and trust that your career is about the journey and not the destination.”

Career at PwC

“Despite an early interest in medicine, I knew in college that I wanted to pursue a career related to finance,” said Aresti.

Read more

/by

Voice of Experience: Maria Hackley, Managing Director, Global Financial Institution Group, Citi

The Glass Hammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by featuring profiles of Hispanic Women Business Leaders all week long!

Maria Hackley believes that women need to ensure they are as well prepared as their male counterparts to rise in the corporate world. Women and men are hired in almost equal amounts as undergraduates, but as they climb the ladder, the numbers change. “Be assertive in a respectful manner, but make sure your voice is heard,” she says.

Read more

/by