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Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Easy to consume Interviews with women in technology to share insights into leadership, innovation and breaking down the big issues women face in a tech-savvy world. We interview women leaders all around the world from CIOs and Founders, to creators and nonprofit executives, covering generations of innovation. Everyone with whom we've crossed paths has a story of success. Don’t get tangled along the way in your journey; listen in and learn from dynamic divas who share everything from balancing life duties, to negotiating, forging their way in their fast-changing industry, to (most of all) finding themselves. Follow along with us here at www.divatechtalk.com. Divas (Co-Founders/Hosts): Nicole Johnson Scheffler (@tech_nicole), Kathleen Norton-Schock (@katensch), and Amanda Lewan (@Amanda_Jenn)
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Now displaying: 2020
May 11, 2020

Diva Tech Talk interviewed cybersecurity expert, author, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and entrepreneur, Sandra Estok.  Creator of the international book series, Happily Ever Cyber, Sandra founded her own company:  Way2Protect LLC, after an extensive corporate career.  

Originally from  Venezuela,  at age 11, Sandra and family were evicted from her childhood home. They found refuge in a shack.  “It had one window, one door, and no water or  bathroom inside,” she recalled.  She felt ostracized from other children in the neighborhood, who lived in more conventional conditions.  When she tried to join their neighborhood volleyball game, “one of the kids said ‘you’re never going to make it; you’re a loser.’“  Bruised, emotionally and physically, Sandra was grateful for a teacher’s inspiration: “Happiness is a choice.  No matter what, you can choose happiness.” She went on to master volleyball and life by choosing to become highly proficient at whatever she tackled, knowing that “whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve.”

“Technology was, somehow, in my veins,” said Sandra.  When she graduated from high school at 16, with no money for college, she enrolled in a government secretarial training program that led to an internship at the Heinz Company.  There she rotated through departments including information technology.  She enrolled in night school, in a tech certification program, that led to full completion of college, and graduating as a systems’ engineer.  “Throughout my journey, I moved from company to company” (Kraft Foods, the Coca Cola Company,  PepsiCo and SC Johnson), “in tech-related roles, building all kinds of things.” SC Johnson, where she worked for a total of 19 years, transferred her to Wisconsin.  “It was my dream,” to live in the United States.  

Sandra’s success secrets? “I was able to apply what I was learning at school to my jobs” and built a “connected” fabric between her academic and work lives. She also accepted new challenges readily.  Her hard work, focus, appetite for new technology created exciting opportunities along the way. Sandra advises ambitious tech women to anticipate the newest trends and evaluate them in terms of skills you must acquire. Then acquire those skills and “success will find you.”  

Her final role, before leaving SC Johnson, was reporting to it’s Chief Information Security Officer, as Director, Global Information Security Business Operations.  Sandra developed and coordinated overall worldwide security business functions for SC Johnson on every continent. Her leadership advice is: “Always walk the talk. Don’t try to evangelize with words. Do it with your actions.”  

In her transition to the U.S. with her working visa, Sandra underwent a watershed experience. Returning from Colombia, she was detained. Her passport was temporarily revoked.  A smuggler from China had appropriated personal information and had been smuggling women into the USA using her identity! Two weeks later, returning from a European trip, she was detained again.  Each time she traveled internationally, before she became a full-fledged U.S. citizen, Sandra had to prove her identity incessantly. “That negative experience ‘connected the dots’ and is driving me today.  Identity theft and cybercrime can happen to anyone!” Sandra’s gift for making complex tech concepts comprehensible to non-technical people, coupled with passion to make a much greater impact, outside of a single corporation, led her to become a startup founder.  “Leaving the corporate world is a big decision,” Sandra acknowledged. “But I say…just go for it!”  Like her 11-year old self, longing to play volleyball with kids who were rejecting her, she relied on internal fortitude, focus, faith, and fearlessness to make the leap. To transition, Sandra became a consultant in the first year of founding her company, which helped her evolve to the “entrepreneurship mindset” while maintaining cash flow. 

An outgrowth of consulting is Sandra’s first book: HAPPILY EVER CYBER: Protecting Yourself Against Hackers, Scammers and CyberMonsters.   Through the stories she tells, it is clear cybercrime can affect anyone, at any age or walk of life. But if you understand cybersecurity basics, on a non-tech level, you will be galvanized to take action to protect what matters most to you. Her book encapsulates a very timely, scary subject and transforms it to be both non-threatening and empowering. “It helps you pinpoint what is most important to you, that you most want to protect. You can take measures to protect it.” An extension of the book is a foundation she envisions to help orphaned and foster children.  “There are 153 million orphans in the world.  And we have a global shortage of cybersecurity talent. So many kids can find their way through technology.” 

Sandra exhorts listeners to always remember you are the architect of your own life. And you can build anything. She advises you to find a mentor, in the space in which you want to operate. Then cultivate coaches who can guide you to become better in any area you want to tackle.  Above all, marry the clarity in your mind with the feelings in your heart. “Don’t worry about the 'how.' Just get clear on the ‘why’ and act on it.”  Her final advice? “Practice gratitude in everything you do in your life.” 

Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Mar 27, 2020

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Amelia Ransom, Senior Director, Diversity and Engagement at Avalara, a tech company that ensures global tax compliance is done right.  Amelia is dedicated to “trying to solve a problem that the world has not solved.  It is not for the faint of heart.” 

“I didn’t plan to be in diversity and inclusion,” Amelia said. She started in sales, moved to management and eventually was tapped to be the regional Diversity Director. “That role was pivotal for me. I felt like I was using my skills, knowledge and background to help make the company better.” After seven years in that role she moved into store management and later lead all the diversity initiatives for the company.   Amelia emphasized that it takes the full gamut of business proficiencies to tackle employee engagement, diversity and inclusion. Her diversity and inclusion skills have been self-taught, through reading, face-to-face management challenges, and trial and error. “You have to learn when to use your own voice, and when to pull back and amplify everyone else’s.” The role demands that she be “constantly willing to learn, shift and change as the community needs shift and change.”

Amelia believes a key component of successful programs depend on noticing repetitive patterns coupled with “knowing what’s going on outside of the walls, in the world,” according to Amelia. “You have to be part of society.  You have to be asking constant questions.” To gain top-level support, Amelia critiques her own proposals and then goes to her “naysayers” to shoot holes in an idea. By the time she gets to ultimate decision-makers, she has bullet-proofed any concept. 

Amelia joined Avalara in 2018, where she supports ERG’s (Employee Resource Groups) who she sees as “a conduit to deeper engagement, a tool to drive more community,”  beginning with a prototype woman-oriented global ERG, to “show everyone what could be.” . This was quickly followed by three other groups:  Ujima (for African Americans), Veterans of Avalara, and the Prism Group, geared toward LGBTQIA individuals. “They have been very instrumental in driving more inclusion, more voices, and more ‘safe space’ for those voices,” said Amelia.  

Avalara measures the success of its inclusion programs through raw data, anecdotal feedback, the level of engagement of various populations, as well as metrics around recruiting pools and populations.  Amelia’s goal is that diversity and inclusion are “deep and rooted in the DNA” of Avalara, connected to “Avalara’s goal -- to be involved in every tax transaction in the world.” That implies reaching and engaging every possible permutation of population in the world, too. 

Amelia’s personal practices for developing as a leader include 30 minutes each day to read about something she knows nothing about, and retaining mentors “who will tell me the absolute truth.” For her last birthday, she asked people to give her the link to a book that changed their life, so that she could “drive deeper relationships.” She loves to travel and bring those experiences back to others.  In her community life, she serves on the boards of Seattle’s Goodwill Foundation, Seattle’s Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, homeless advocacy nonprofit Building Changes,  the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and the advisory board of the Seattle chapter of ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals For America). “My job is to amplify the voices of the marginalized, and underrepresented.”

In Amelia’s view, “the biggest threat to the planet, and business, is the untapped potential in people’s minds.”  She believes in plumbing that potential deeply. “I don’t have time to make people comfortable,” Amelia said. Instead she wants to inspire everyone to think, engage, evolve into their greatest potential, and “have seats at the table, which makes all of us better.”  Amelia noted that diversity and inclusion leadership can feel lonely, at times. When Amelia feels that, this quote of Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, famed poet Maya Angelou,  gives her strength: “I go forth alone.  I stand as ten thousand.”

Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher and provide an online review.

Feb 12, 2020

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Dr. Nicki Washington,  author, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Winthrop University, founder at Washington Consulting LLC and passionate advocate for women of color, in technology. Winthrop University featured her work.

“I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina,” site of world-class universities and home to Research Triangle Park. Her mother was a 32-year IBM programmer, and father was a K through 12 educator and administrator. “I was surrounded by black men and women who were educators, engineers, college professors, business leaders, attorneys, doctors and more: a network doing inspiring things in science and math.” Her mother purchased a new computer every few years and Dr. Washington assembled each one.  Her mother “introduced me to programming opportunities,” Pascal and Basic, then more advanced languages.  At Johnson C. Smith University, Dr. Washington’s path changed when an influential professor convinced her to concentrate on computer science. Dr. Dorothy Cawser Yancy, University President, nominated her for the David and Lucille Packard fellowship, a $100,000 5-year grant for students to pursue STEM doctorates, including annual week-long symposiums, with professional workshops and “honest safe spaces” for sharing.  Dr. Washington graduated as undergraduate valedictorian and won the award. “My trajectory changed from there.” 

Dr. Washington became “a black woman in a program where only one other person looked like me” pursuing masters/doctoral degrees at North Carolina State University.  “I suffered from ‘impostor syndrome;’ and would lean on my community,” since her campus was 20 minutes from her childhood home. She often had to “armor up” every day and was fortunate to gain an empathetic advisor, Dr. Harry Perros, with whom she had “real talks” about struggles as a black woman in a post-graduate computer science program.  She won another fellowship in her graduate school: NASA’s Harriet G. Jenkins award, giving monetary support and other unique experiences tailored to graduates from historically black colleges/universities.

Dr. Washington shared advice for programmers, technologists, application developers.  “When you reach a roadblock, take a break and step away. Sometimes you are so engrossed, you cannot see high levels.” She decried students’ misconceptions that they must “know everything” and advised “be unafraid to ask for help.”  When faced with bias, she said: “It is not you. You are not the first. You will not be the last. Take up space without losing yourself in the process. Maintain a level of self-care.” Dr. Washington’s message is “until there is a major shift in the narrative, we are going to see major challenges. Find the tribe who can get you through.”  

Dr. Washington is now doing appreciable research in cultural competence in computing citing insufficiencies on the university level.  Approximately 85% of university computing faculty are Caucasian or Asian, not serving as full role models.  “We lose students in the middle ground, between K through 12 and careers.” She noted that while undergraduate curriculum emphasizes technology skills, it does not emphasize cultural competence. “We see, every day, technology announcements that are biased,” as a result. She cited self-driving car and healthcare database applications as two examples where “people developing them are not recognizing biases.” Dr. Washington proposes a long-overdue revolution: required assessment for cultural competence in computing. “I am trying to force a conversation around cultural competence for all computer science students before graduation,” beginning with a required 3-credit course called Race, Gender, Class and Computing.  Her aspiration is a country-wide movement on computing cultural competency, using the right role models, “people who live, eat and breathe this for a living.”

During nine years at Howard University, Dr. Washington partnered with Google to bring a middle school course to 300 Howard University’s Middle School students; then co-championed an Exploring Computer Science program to bring computer science to Washington DC public high schools.  She helped establish the first Google In Residence program at Howard which “expanded to other historically black universities including Fisk, Morehouse College, Spellman and Hampton.”  Since relocating to Winthrop, Dr. Washington is working with Code.org to develop the nationwide framework for K through  12 computer science curriculum “as a blueprint in every state, so every student has access to computer science at every step.” She served as lead writer on South Carolina state’s K through 12 computer science and digital literacy standards and through Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., leads college prep workshops for students and parents. 

Dr. Washington’s book: UNAPOLOGETICALLY DOPE,  “speaks to every black woman and girl who needs to know there was someone just like them who went through the same things.” She speaks to computer science departments across the country on her research.  Dr. Washington’s key advice for women tech leaders, especially women of color, is: “Be unafraid to ‘take up space’ and own your narrative. Be intentional with everything you do. Recognize it’s always bigger than you. It’s not just happening to you. Make sure your intention is the best possible.”

Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

Jan 16, 2020

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Sunitha Vinnakota,  tech/IT security leader for General Motors Company, a trailblazer in automotive solutions for almost a century.  Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, global GM employs over 180,000 people; serves customers on 6 continents across 23 time zones in 70 languages; and focuses on pushing the limits of automotive engineering, while maintaining stewardship of the world’s environmental resources. Currently #10 on the Fortune 500 list, GM is the largest U.S. automotive manufacturer, and is led by Mary Barra, the first female CEO of a major automotive company.  Sunitha brought 25-plus years of evolving technology skills, intellectual curiosity coupled with drive, and broad business acumen.  

Sunitha was always interested in technology, encouraged by her mechanical engineer father who urged her to “look at the science all around you.” One of two siblings, growing up near Hyderabad, India, she was fascinated by the logic underlying every invention, tool, process, in her life. All her close male relatives were engineers.  Sunitha said, “from childhood, I wanted to do something different from everyone else.” That fascination led her to concentrate on math, physics and computer science. She completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science and master’s degree in computer applications at Osmania University.  During university days, Sunitha instructed high school students in math and physics.  She moved to teaching Unix at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science; and was offered a professorship at Osmania.  However, Sunitha turned down university life in favor of working on the development of SAT and ACT tests, for 11th/12th graders, at Indotronix International.

Following her 2000 marriage, Sunitha migrated to Michigan.  During that first year, she worked part-time, teaching Java and C# programming, on the weekends.  After receiving her H1B visa, she became a Java consultant and developer at Chrysler Corporation, now FCA Group Intl.  She then moved to GM as a consultant and systems analyst, deployed by TAC Automotive Group.  After the birth of her first daughter, Sunitha took a leave of absence.  Then she chose Ford Motor Company, the fifth largest automotive company in the world, where she was a systems analyst and then a business analyst over the next six years. In 2013, Sunitha moved back to General Motors full-time, as a senior business analyst in vehicle ordering and management systems. She mastered that before moving over to learn ecommerce, in-depth. “It was completely new. We were developing an e-commerce application.” After that achievement, she became a “quality evangelist” maintaining the integrity of IT applications in global sales and marketing working with 1100 people across the globe.  Then, in 2018, she began to work on cybersecurity for GM, worldwide. She now leads security compliance for 230-plus applications, globally. One of Sunitha’s mantras is that everyone must “stay abreast of the latest technologies today” since data is rapidly exploding. Her job encompasses the breadth of GM technology from the “C suite to application owners to the grassroots” and focuses on ensuring that “GM customers know their information is safe with us.” 

Sunitha characterized her major strengths as intellectual curiosity, ambition, learning agility, and passion.  “Whatever I do, I dive in deep,” she said.  She wants her stakeholders to say: “I have given this job to Sunitha.  It gets done. I can sleep!” Sunitha was honored by a 2019 IT All Stars Women of Color Award for her work in improving GM application quality by 49% in less than 8 months, achieving 95% in standard compliance in record time.

Sunitha’s method of tackling subtle sexism in work situations has always been to “double down.” She increased her skill sets and made a case for traveling, performing at levels above and beyond what is required. Her greatest fear is “not staying abreast of technology. I want to be indispensable.” Sunitha’s words of wisdom for women leaders in technology are: “Don’t be hesitant to explore and learn.  It’s ok to fear, and fail, but don’t let it stop you. Don’t be afraid to ask someone” for help or guidance and “don’t be in your comfort zone for long.” Sunitha has benefited from family mentors: her mother, her father and her mother-in-law, who she admires for having overcome many significant obstacles. Since she loves to teach, Sunitha often works with college “mentees” who she urges to explore every opportunity.  She also is a big believer in developing strong self-respect, and in pragmatically rewarding yourself for achievements. “Don’t just buy a tech gadget;” ensure that you fully understand the gadget’s use/application and then “feel proud” of yourself.  

In her community life, Sunitha kicked off the internship program for the Michigan Council of Women In Technology Foundation, and is on the technology advisory board for Canton Michigan high schools.  Additionally, on weekends, she teaches business analysis skills online for women. Through that,  “I have changed 16 women’s lives, so far,” she stated, because “life is too short; let’s take advantage of it. Don’t give the remote control” away. 

Make sure to check us out on online at www.divatechtalk.com, on Twitter @divatechtalks, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/divatechtalk. And please listen to us on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting channel and provide an online review.

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