We all know by now that you don’t have to look a certain way to be a great computer scientist, or work in tech; but with seemingly few women to look up to, many young women self-select out of a technical career path before they even give it a chance. Join us to hear from women changing up the stereotype on International Women's Day.
Alice is the president at Code.org which makes the most popular computer science courses in America for students from kindergarten through high school. They run workshops and professional learning programs that have prepared tens of thousands of teachers across the United States to begin teaching computer science. With a student base that is 45% female and 48% underrepresented minorities, Code.org has already enrolled millions of girls in their Computer Science classes. In addition, her team partners with education and software companies across the industry to run Hour of Code - a global movement reaching millions of students in over 180 countries.
Magdalena is a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at UW, the Associate Vice Provost for Data Science and the Director of the UW eScience Institute. She's also the director of the IGERT PhD Program in Big Data and Data Science and the director of the associated Advanced Data Science PhD Option. Her research interests are focused in data management for data science, big data systems, cloud computing, and image and video analytics (including data management for VR/AR). Magdalena holds a Ph.D. from MIT.
Ambika has worked across diverse organizations small and large, in a variety of verticals including marketing, business development, product management, SEO, and social media. She played a key role in the creation of internet startups Rover.com and TravelPost.com, and was a part of two major Microsoft product launches. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School, Ambika makes women’s lives a bit easier with her high-tech, high-touch company, Armoire, which offers a true “wardrobe as a service” experience.
Lilian is a graduating computer science PhD student at UW with an NSF fellowship and Microsoft Research PhD fellowship, advised by Shwetak Patel in the Ubiquitous Computing Lab. Her interests include computer vision, embedded systems, machine learning, HCI, and mHealth. Her research focuses on integrating HCI, ML, and computer vision to improve access to medical care with low-cost commodity hardware and mobile phones. Outcomes of her work are under active commercial development with the potential to change medical standards of care.
Preet is the Founder and Chief Empowerment Officer for employHER Inc. employHER focuses on women and non-binary people because they believe that by hiring more women and non-binary talent improves productivity and innovation, strengthens team dynamics and creates a better work environment. employHER's beta 1.0 will be launching summer of 2019.
Krista is the Chief Architect at Shadow where she works on backend systems for progressive organizations and political campaigns. Most of her career was spent at Google. She left Google for the glamour of mission-driven work including Girls Who Code and Hillary for America. Outside of work, Krista is the Seattle affiliate lead for NCWIT and teaches self defense.
