Keynotes & Plenary Session
2009 Conference Information:
FRAN BERMAN
Friday, October 2nd at 8:30am in rooms Arizona 1-7
Dr. Francine Berman is Vice President for Research and Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Berman is an international leader in the development of Cyberinfrastructure and has written more than 165 articles, editorials, and reports spanning the areas of high-performance computing, grid computing, scheduling, programming environments and middleware, cyberinfrastructure, and digital data stewardship and preservation. She is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and Senior Member of the IEEE.
From 2001 to 2009, Dr. Berman served as Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), where she led a staff of 250+ interdisciplinary scientists, engineers, and technologists. SDSC is internationally known for its leadership in data-oriented science, technology, and Cyberinfrastructure, and its deep expertise in high performance computing and applications. As Director of SDSC, Dr. Berman led SDSC’s successful organization as a core cyberinfrastructure facility for the University of California while maintaining its leadership position as an international innovator in data cyberinfrastructure. Dr. Berman was also Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UCSD and first holder of the High Performance Computing Chair in UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering.
Dr. Berman is one of the two founding Principal Investigators of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid project, and also directed the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), a consortium of 41 research groups, institutions, and university partners with the goal of building national infrastructure to support research and education in science and engineering. She has served on a broad spectrum of national and international leadership groups and committees including the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Advisory Committee, the National Institutes of Health’s NIGMS Advisory Committee, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Board of Trustees, and others. She is currently serving as co-Chair for the international Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. For her accomplishments, leadership, and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and Newsweek, and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum.
Megan J. Smith
Vice President, New Business Development & General Manager, Google.Org
Thursday, October 1st at 8:30am in rooms Arizona 1-7
Megan Smith was dubbed one of the “women who could change the face of technology” by the New York Times in August, 2003. As a graduate from the MIT Media Lab, Megan has used her engineering experience and enthusiasm for innovation to live up to this prophecy and jump-start Silicon Valley. Megan oversees the team that negotiates early-stage partnerships, explorations and technology licensing deals. She also leads the Google.org team, guiding strategy and developing new partnerships and internal projects with Google’s engineering and product teams. She joined Google in 2003 and has led several of the company’s acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps), and Picasa. She also co-led the company’s early work with publishers for Google Book Search. Previously, Megan was the CEO and, earlier, COO of PlanetOut, the leading gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender online community. Under her leadership, PlanetOut grew tenfold in reach and revenue. Prior to that, Megan was at General Magic for six years working on handheld communications products and partnerships. She also worked in multimedia at Apple Japan in Tokyo.
Over the years, Megan has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects, such as designing an award-winning bicycle lock; working on a space station construction research project that eventually flew on the U.S. space shuttle; and running a field-research study on solar cookstoves in South America. She was also a member of the MIT-Solectria student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car in the first cross-continental solar car race, covering 2000 miles of the Australian outback. She was selected as one of the 100 World Economic Forum technology pioneers for 2001 and 2002. Smith served as a Stanford-Reuters Digital Vision Fellow 2003-2004, a part-time year long visiting scholar position in social entrepreneurship at Stanford University (http://rdvp.org/)
Megan holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, where she now serves on the board. She completed her master’s thesis work at the MIT Media Lab. Smith lives in San Francisco, California with her partner Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal Columnist and co-producer of the WSJ annual “D: All Things Digital” conference, and their two sons Louis and Alexander.
Technical Executive Plenary Panel: What You Need to Know on the Road to Becoming a Technology Executive.
Thursday, October 1st 1:45pm rooms Arizona 1-7
Panelists:
Linda Brisnehan, Vice-President, Military Support Programs, Lockheed Martin
Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer, Amazon.com
Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Payroll, Intuit Corporation
Mike Schroepfer, Vice President, Engineering, Facebook
Sophie Vandebroek, Chief Technology Officer, Xerox
Moderator: Maria Klawe, President, Harvey Mudd College
This plenary panel will provide an executive perspective on what skills are the most important for success in technical careers in industry, the key to successful technology leadership, and the career path for becoming a technology executive. In particular, the panelists will discuss:
• What advice do executives have for women who are considering the industry executive path? What lessons have they learned on their road to becoming an executive?
• What should women consider in their career planning if they wish to become technology executives?
• What are the specific skills that women who want to become successful industry technologists should develop? What are the most important characteristics of successful technology executives?
• What is the state of industry jobs in the current economic climate, and what skills are most in demand in high-tech companies at the moment?
• What is the role of technology companies and executives in creating social good? What are examples of what companies are doing in positive social impact?
• How do they see the technical workforce evolving in the future? What should young women know about the biggest technology trends?
Bios:
Linda Brisnehan is the Vice President of the Military Support Programs within the Special Programs line of business for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. Brisnehan joined Lockheed Martin in 1986 as a communication software engineer. Her previous assignment was Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. Brisnehan earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Information Systems and a master’s degree in Business Administration, both from the University of Colorado at Denver. Brisnehan is on the boards of the Women’s Vision Foundation, the Women’s Leadership Council for Mile High United Way, and Girls Inc. She was named 2006 Outstanding Business Woman of the Year in High Tech and Telecom by the Denver Business Journal. She received the 2007 Woman of Vision Award from the Women’s Vision Foundation and the 2007 Women in Aerospace Leadership Award from the Society of Women Engineers.
Nora Denzel is senior vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Payroll Business. In this role, she leads one of the software company’s fastest-growing business units, focusing on delivering easy-to-use payroll services for small businesses. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, Intuit is a leading provider of business and financial management solutions. Its traditional flagship products include Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax. Intuit has 8,000 employees, $2.6 billion in annual revenue, and has been recognized as America’s most-admired software company and one of the country’s best places to work. Before joining Intuit, Denzel held engineering, marketing and executive positions at Hewlett-Packard, Legato Systems (now a division of EMC) and IBM. Denzel earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from State University of New York and her MBA from Santa Clara University. She serves on the board of directors for Overland Storage Inc., the Support Network and the Anita Borg Institute.
Maria Klawe is the president of Harvey Mudd College. Prior to joining HMC, she served as dean of engineering and professor of computer science at Princeton University. Maria joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia where she served as dean of science, VP of student and academic services, and head of the Department of Computer Science. She received her Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Alberta. Maria has made significant research contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, human-computer interaction, gender issues in information technology, and interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. Maria is one of the 10 members of the board of Microsoft Corporation, a board member of Math for America, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and past chair of the board for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook. Mike is responsible for harnessing the engineering organization’s culture of speed, creativity and exploration to build products, services and infrastructure that support the company’s users, developers and partners around the world. Before coming to Facebook, Mike was the Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where he led the global, collaborative, open and participatory product development process behind Mozilla’s popular software, such as the Firefox web browser. Mike was formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems where he was the Chief Technology Officer for the data center automation division (”N1″). He was also the founder, Chief Architect and Director of Engineering at CenterRun, which was acquired by Sun. Mike worked with several startups at the outset of his career, including a digital effects software startup where he built software that has been used in several major motion pictures. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford University and has filed two U.S. patents.
Dr. Sophie Vandebroek is Xerox’s Chief Technology Officer and the President of the Xerox Innovation Group, leading Xerox’s research centers around the globe. Previously, she was Chief Engineer of Xerox Corporation, responsible for coordinating engineering efficiency and effectiveness. She served as CTO at Carrier Corp. From 1991 until 2000, she held significant roles at Xerox including technical advisor to the chief operating officer and director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada. Vandebroek is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fulbright Fellow, and a Fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. She holds 12 US patents. Vandebroek is a member of the Board of Directors of Analogic Corporation and a trustee of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Vandebroek earned a master’s degree in electro-mechanical engineering from Katholieke Universiteit, Belgium, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University. Vandebroek lives in MA with her husband and their six teenage children.
Dr. Vogels is Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company’s technology vision, which is to continuously enhance the innovation on behalf of Amazon’s customers at a global scale. Prior to joining Amazon, he worked as a researcher at Cornell University where he was a principal investigator in several research projects that target the scalability and robustness of mission-critical enterprise computing systems. He has held positions of VP of Technology and CTO in companies that handled the transition of academic technology into industry. Vogels holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has authored many articles for journals and conferences, most of them on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing. He was named the 2008 CTO of the Year by Information Week for his contributions to making Cloud Computing a reality.