Speaker Place: Ambassador

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.