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Breaking Through: The Journey from Within
Rama Akkiraju has 20+ years of leadership experience at IBM as an IBM Fellow and Master Inventor. Formerly CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations, Rama developed AI services such as Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer, Emotion Analysis, and Sentiment Analysis. She holds a master’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA from New York University.
Rama has co-authored 100+ technical papers, holds 50+ issued patents and 25+ pending, and has received multiple awards, including being named one of Forbes ‘Top 20 Women in AI Research’ in 2017. In 2022, Rama was named ‘USA Industry Innovator of the Year 2022’ by Women in AI and ‘AI Industry Leader of the Year 2022’ by Women Leaders in Data & AI (WLDA).
Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives
Jessica Wakefield is the VP of Engineering & Operations at Sony Interactive Entertainment. She leads globally diverse teams who deliver the PlayStation platform facilitating business operations, empowering decision-making, and providing crucial insights for PlayStation products and services. With over 100 million monthly active users, 47 million active subscribers and 15 million daily concurrent users for a $16+ billion-dollar business.
As a site leader and global lead for the Women @ PlayStation eNet/Employee Resource Group (ERG), she is also a notable cultural champion making PlayStation the best place to play and work. Prior to SIE, Jessica was with Intuit where she held key roles in the Consumer Tax Group and TurboTax Online Banking capabilities for Intuit. While at Intuit she went to USC’s Marshall School of Business and obtained her MBA, with an emphasis in Globalization.
In addition, Jessica is an active volunteer at her daughter’s school, Vice President of the San Diego Children’s Museum Board, and CEO of the Loving Amber Foundation, 501 (c)(3) nonprofit that raises funds and awareness for kids impacted by rare bone marrow and blood disorders.
Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech
Stacy Mill is the VP of IT and CISO at Nashville Electric Service, responsible for all IT strategy and execution across corporate systems, including cybersecurity. She has built global teams across several industries and has held leadership roles in the State of Kansas, Spirit AeroSystems, KAR Global, and Yum. Stacy has a background in security and serves on the boards of various organizations. She enjoys spending time with her family and mentoring emerging leaders.
Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech
With 20 years of experience leading product design, development, and strategy in Fortune 500 companies, Surbhi has built and led product and engineering teams at Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Cisco. She has launched successful products that use AI and machine learning. Currently, Surbhi leads Juniper’s Customer Experience charter, focused on creating omnichannel engagements and ML-based support capabilities. Surbhi has degrees from IIT Kanpur, Texas A&M University, and Harvard Business School. She also leads Global Inclusion & Diversity initiatives at Juniper and supports the IIT community.
Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives
Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry
Sudha is an engineer and product VP in the Oracle Cloud Observability and Developer LifeCycle Services organization. She manages teams that run large scale distributed services used by 1000s of engineers every day. Her inclusive leadership has led to her directs being one of the most diverse teams in Oracle.
She is also a founding committee member of the Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL), Seattle chapter and runs several mentoring rings. She has an Masters in Computer Science and has worked at Microsoft. She is a goal-driven leader hoping to attract more women into leadership positions.
Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry
Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry
Yulia Pavlova is the Director of Technology Innovation at Reuters News Agency. With over 10 years of experience in Applied Research and Development, Yulia leads an Applied Innovation lab at Reuters that focuses on AI/ML enhancements and MLOps lifecycle of enterprise products. She develops new technological opportunities to improve the company’s offerings and works cross-functionally with business partners and stakeholders to ensure business and customer impact.
One of her recent achievements is the development of a customer-facing AI tool for Reuters video content that generates automated time-coded transcripts, translation of many languages into English, and identification of public figures. This tool is part of the Reuters Connect service, which offers access to over 600,000 videos, six live streams, and 23 million pictures from Reuters journalists.
Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives
Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry
Jessica Wakefield is the VP of Engineering & Operations at Sony Interactive Entertainment. She leads globally diverse teams who deliver the PlayStation platform facilitating business operations, empowering decision-making, and providing crucial insights for PlayStation products and services. With over 100 million monthly active users, 47 million active subscribers and 15 million daily concurrent users for a $16+ billion-dollar business.
As a site leader and global lead for the Women @ PlayStation eNet/Employee Resource Group (ERG), she is also a notable cultural champion making PlayStation the best place to play and work. Prior to SIE, Jessica was with Intuit where she held key roles in the Consumer Tax Group and TurboTax Online Banking capabilities for Intuit. While at Intuit she went to USC’s Marshall School of Business and obtained her MBA, with an emphasis in Globalization.
In addition, Jessica is an active volunteer at her daughter’s school, Vice President of the San Diego Children’s Museum Board, and CEO of the Loving Amber Foundation, 501 (c)(3) nonprofit that raises funds and awareness for kids impacted by rare bone marrow and blood disorders.
Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech
As Ecommerce Director for PVH, I accelerated platform delivery for a shifting eCommerce business. I led tech innovations, compressed delivery timelines, and ensured platform stability. I pioneered the agile DevOps model for packaged Websphere Commerce Suite. I mobilized platform delivery vendors and collaborated with partners to integrate next-gen machine learning solutions. I consolidated vendors, integrations, and technology platforms across PVH brands like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Speedo. I streamlined technology and platforms across regions to save costs and achieve synergies.
As VP of Application Engineering Services, I built a multi-tenant, scalable, and optimized Application Services Organization. I created efficient support models from complex customized apps to configurable packages like SAP, JDA, Centric, GTNexus, VMS, etc. I shifted from reactive to predictive, flexible, and responsive support, enabling self-correction and auto-healing for repetitive incidents.
Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech
Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives
Head of Digital Transformation at Bison and Bird, a top 15 Canadian professional services start-up, Emily helps companies navigate digital transformation while prioritizing user experience. Emily’s solutions may involve technology, data analysis, process mapping, customer journey maps, and change management tactics. She has won awards for her people-centered solutions and technology adoption rates, including the LinkedIn Talent Award.
Emily is passionate about elevating women in the workplace and helping companies innovate and succeed. She is known for her strategic insights, creative problem-solving, and ability to lighten the mood in any meeting.
Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech
Charmaine Tang is the President of ORCA AG, a Swiss tech company that helps global families, investment companies, corporates, and other complex entities. ORCA was founded six years ago and has clients in 20 countries. Charmaine is also an advisor to Gore Range Capital, a VC firm based in New York and Dallas, and on the Board of Advisors for Klosebuy, a Florida-based marketing technology platform company. She is based in Dallas, Texas, and is passionate about making the world a better place, especially for women and girls.
Charmaine graduated from NYU with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Accounting and has certificates from Harvard Business School and FIT. She has been recognized for her leadership in business and civic organizations, including the Texas Women’s Foundation Board of Directors and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Board of Governors.
Breaking Through: The Journey from Within
After 10 years, I traded in concerts and the maestro for code when I left my life as an opera singer and learned Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Now, I work as a senior leader in technology. Outside of my 9-5, I work on 2 separate things;I am on the professional board of a non-profit in San Francisco that caters to juvenile justice and foster system-involved youth and we provide the tools and support they need in order to get out of the system and stay out of the system. The second is being the COO of an art installation startup, Sonic Sphere. It is a 360-degree spherical concert hall with immersive and spatialized sound technology and a custom lights program leveraging Reaper, LX, javascript, and c#.
Breaking Through: The Journey from Within
Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives
Breaking Through: The Journey from Within
Breaking Through: The Journey from Within
