While women make up nearly half of the United States' workforce, they are greatly underrepresented in the tech field, holding only 26.7% of tech-related jobs. As members of the tech community, it's our responsibility to uplift and amplify the powerful voices of women in this industry.
We have gathered leading movers & shakers who are forging their paths and changing the tech landscape. These women are ready to share their stories, advice, and actionable steps for accelerating your career, advancing into leadership positions, finding community & much more! From providing mentorship to ensuring equitable access to training and resources, seeking diverse talent, and cultivating an empowering work culture, this panel has insights to help make the tech industry more accessible and inclusive.
I'm a technology veteran with over 30 years of experience in the industry. Throughout my career, I have been an enthusiastic advocate for emerging technologies and their potential to transform lives. In addition to my extensive technical knowledge, I am also skilled in project management, product development, and organizational leadership.
My passion for tech has led me down many paths - from software engineering to business management – all with the aim of leveraging technology to create meaningful solutions that make a positive impact on society. Most recently, I founded a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting women in tech by providing them with resources and opportunities for professional advancement. I also host a Podcast where I feature Women in Tech.
10-time award winner in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Open Source, Jigyasa Grover is a powerhouse brimming with passion to make a dent in this world of technology and uplift the weaker strata. Currently working at Twitter as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer in the ads prediction domain, she is spearheading a variety of projects spanning ML model development, feature engineering, user tracking transparency remediations, and monetizing new Twitter products. She is also one of the few ML Google Developer Experts globally. Most recently, she won the Next Generation Leader of the Year and Outstanding Women in AI Award for her contributions to this field and efforts in inspiring and empowering the future generation. Jigyasa co-authored a book titled 'Sculpting Data for ML' that campaigns for a data-centric approach to ML and is a practical guide on curating quality datasets that lay a strong foundation for an ML pipeline. Hinged on this ideology of throwing the limelight on the mindful practices of dataset curation, she has been proactively sharing her views and best practices in the form of technical talks, panels, podcasts, blog posts, and so on. Her latest research titled ‘Do not fake it till you make it!’ is a synopsis of trending fake news detection methodologies on social media using deep learning and has been published in a world-renowned Springer book series. Having graduated from the University of California, San Diego, with a Master’s degree in Computer Science with an Artificial Intelligence specialization, her journey is also highlighted by a myriad of experiences from her brief stints at Facebook, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Institute of Research & Development France involving data science, mathematical modeling, and software engineering.
Red Hat 'Women in Open Source' Academic Award winner and Moxie Women in Tech Award Winner, Jigyasa is an avid proponent of open-source and credits the access to opportunities and her career growth to this sphere of community development. She is an Advisory Board Member of VigiTrust where she collaborates with experts from worldwide to quantify and combat privacy risks in ML and also for the Las Positas College to help build the curriculum for budding computer engineers. She is also the proud recipient of multiple scholarships for her research and travels like Mitacs Globalink, Linux Foundation, Facebook GHC, ESUG, GHC India, etc. She currently leads the open-source and ML track for Anita Borg's IWiC group and co-leads the Women@ML BRG at Twitter, to provide a safe circle for professional growth, collaboration, and advocacy. She is the Program Chair for PyBay, co-chair of the Financial Aid Committee for Python Software Foundation, and has also served as the Director of Women Who Code and Lead of Women Techmakers for a handful of years to help bridge the gender gap in technology. In her spirit to build a powerful community with a strong belief in “we rise by lifting others”, she mentors aspiring developers and ML enthusiasts in various global programs. She has 125+ conference talks, panels, keynotes, technical workshops, and podcasts to her name, with renowned publishers like United Nations, Red Hat, Python Software Foundation, Systers, Lead Dev, Women in Science & Engineering, IEEE, etc. Her love for tinkering has led her to win 5+ hackathons, sponsored by Microsoft, Google, Github, etc. and she now gives back to the community by serving on the judges' panel of hackathons. Apart from her technological ventures, she enjoys exploring hidden gems in her city, hanging out with friends and family, and has been recently having fun with baking.
As the Founder of merKata.io, Christine Puccio plays the dual role of technology entrepreneur and thought leader. She is a seasoned leader in the technology industry and a champion for diversity and inclusion. Over the past 25 years, Ms. Puccio has led high-performing sales teams and has built strategic partnerships for Fortune 500 and SaaS companies such as JFrog, F5, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, AT&T and Lockheed Martin. Her recent focus was serving as JFrog's Global Vice President, Cloud Alliances, Marketplace Strategy & Go-To-Market (GTM) Programs. In this role Ms. Puccio was responsible for partnership expansions with global cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google. Prior to her work with JFrog, she led negotiations with AWS to close the first ISV strategic collaboration agreement, a custom "first party like" offer for F5 NGINX on Azure with Microsoft and led the cloud marketplace strategy that resulted >65% growth Y/Y and received Commercial Marketplace Partner of the year from Microsoft. Ms. Puccio also served with distinction and recognition as the Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at Red Hat. In her work with SAP, she negotiated, managed and led the team at Red Hat to close the largest software agreement for the company and received the Chairman’s Award, Red Hat's highest award, given annually to 12 employees who have made outstanding contributions. In 2017, she successfully launched neurodiversity at Red Hat — the first diversity and inclusion program in the company’s history. Currently, Ms. Puccio is a strategic advisor to Women in Cloud, a Seattle-based organization dedicated to bringing $1 billion in economic access to women-led STEM businesses by 2030.
She has been featured in the media by Bloomberg, NBC15, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the US Chamber of Commerce, to name a few. She has successfully completed multiple marathons including the elite Escape from Alcatraz triathlon in San Francisco. In 2020 Ms. Puccio was named a Top 10 Most Influential Women In Cloud, The 5 most innovative leaders revamping the future in cloud computing 2021, CIO View and The top 20 female cloud leaders in cloud 2021, The Sociable. She and her daughter live in Oakland, California.
Lonye Nicole Ford is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arlo Solutions, a minority/veteran/8a/HUBZone owned and operated business headquartered in Washington, DC. Arlo offers Intelligence, Cybersecurity and a full range of cutting-edge Program Management and Strategic Communication solutions to the United States Government. The combination of these service offerings allows Lonye to lead Arlo into new frontiers capturing significant market share as a small business.
With over 10 years of duty in the United States Air Force, Lonye acquired a love for, and ultimately the expertise in, Cybersecurity and Information Assurance. Through her expansive involvement in these disciplines, she gained an in-depth knowledge of information technology, and began her career as an Information Technology Specialist. At the age of 21, as a young professional exuding exemplary leadership quality, Lonye was hand selected to lead a 24/7 helpdesk operations servicing 7,000 customers.
As a government contractor for 20+ years, Lonye led large teams and managed projects and portfolios ranging from $2M to $1.5B. She developed a myriad of innovative solutions and policy that were implemented at the highest level in the government, including co-authoring the Air Force Fast Track process, and assessing, developing and streamlining the United States Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Framework process. Lonye’s strong work ethic afforded her numerous outstanding performance and leadership awards. Her quick wit to identify and solve complex problems, and her positive and astute business acumen, deems her a highly sought-after tech executive and teaming partner.
Lonye is a Hampton University graduate. She holds a master’s degree in Business Administration and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Known for being honest and forthright, Lonye is well respected in the business community. She has an amiable and genuine persona, and a passion for mentoring youth in underserved communities. As part of her outreach, she partners with UrbanPromise, a nonprofit youth organization in Camden, NJ, to equip children and young adults with the skills necessary for academic achievement, life management, spiritual growth, and Christian leadership. She gives unselfishly of her time and resources to underprivileged communities also in the Washington, DC and Chicago metropolitan areas. Lonye’s desire to one day organize a legacy nonprofit of her own is beyond a mere thought, but rather a life goal she undoubtedly will achieve.
Lonye’s commitment to Arlo, family, and community is none other than paramount!
