Author: Juliana Oswald

Internal Communications Lead at Avenue Code

4 Free Harvard and Stanford Courses For You!

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” – Leonardo Da Vinci As the famous quote suggests, it is always a good time to learn new things, whether it is for your profession, hobbies, or even topics that you love. To help you in your pursuit of knowledge, we […]

5 Must-Reads for Women in Tech

Cultivating healthy habits can be key to a successful routine, and reading is no exception. In addition to improving critical thinking, fighting stress, and increasing imagination, reading is a wonderful way to get carried away by stories, get inspired, and learn in a unique and pleasurable way. Why not make the most of this habit […]

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Grace Song

Data Operations & Governance Director
Allstate

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.

Panel # 4

Topic

Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech

Description

The panel discussion showcased the pivotal role of passion, purpose, and leadership in the tech industry. The panelists’ insights provided valuable lessons on fostering innovation, empowerment, diversity, and inclusion, adapting to change, overcoming challenges, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, making it an informative and inspiring discussion for both aspiring and seasoned tech leaders.
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Yulia Pavlova

Director Technology Innovation
Thomson Reuters

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.

Panel # 2

Topic

Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives

Description

The panel discussion is expected to provide a comprehensive view of leadership in the modern corporate landscape, touching upon personal growth, resilience, empowerment, diversity, innovation, and the challenges of digital transformation. The diverse experiences and strategies shared by the panelists will offer valuable insights for both aspiring and current leaders in various industries.
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Rama Akkiraju

VP, Enterprise AI & Automation
NVIDIA

Rama Akkiraju has 20+ years of leadership experience at IBM as an IBM Fellow and Master Inventor. Formerly CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations, Rama developed AI services such as Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer, Emotion Analysis, and Sentiment Analysis. She holds a master’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA from New York University.

Rama has co-authored 100+ technical papers, holds 50+ issued patents and 25+ pending, and has received multiple awards, including being named one of Forbes ‘Top 20 Women in AI Research’ in 2017. In 2022, Rama was named ‘USA Industry Innovator of the Year 2022’ by Women in AI and ‘AI Industry Leader of the Year 2022’ by Women Leaders in Data & AI (WLDA).

Panel # 2

Topic

Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives

Description

The panel discussion is expected to provide a comprehensive view of leadership in the modern corporate landscape, touching upon personal growth, resilience, empowerment, diversity, innovation, and the challenges of digital transformation. The diverse experiences and strategies shared by the panelists will offer valuable insights for both aspiring and current leaders in various industries.
Close
Linkedin

Jessica Wakefield

VP of Engineering and Operations
PlayStation

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.

Panel # 4

Topic

Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech

Description

The panel discussion showcased the pivotal role of passion, purpose, and leadership in the tech industry. The panelists’ insights provided valuable lessons on fostering innovation, empowerment, diversity, and inclusion, adapting to change, overcoming challenges, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, making it an informative and inspiring discussion for both aspiring and seasoned tech leaders.
Close
Linkedin

Stacy Mill

VP of IT and CISO - Run the entire IT Dept and Cybersecurity for Corporate systems
Nashville Electric Service

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.

Panel # 4

Topic

Igniting Passion: Unleashing Your Potential and a New Era in Tech

Description

The panel discussion showcased the pivotal role of passion, purpose, and leadership in the tech industry. The panelists’ insights provided valuable lessons on fostering innovation, empowerment, diversity, and inclusion, adapting to change, overcoming challenges, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, making it an informative and inspiring discussion for both aspiring and seasoned tech leaders.
Close
Linkedin

Surbhi Kaul

VP, Global CX
Juniper Networks

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.

Panel # 2

Topic

Empowering Journeys: The Path to Tech Executives

Description

The panel discussion is expected to provide a comprehensive view of leadership in the modern corporate landscape, touching upon personal growth, resilience, empowerment, diversity, innovation, and the challenges of digital transformation. The diverse experiences and strategies shared by the panelists will offer valuable insights for both aspiring and current leaders in various industries.
Close
Linkedin

Christine Sarros

SVP, Product Development
Oracle

Christine has been with Oracle and previously SUN Microsystems for more than 25 years. As Senior Vice President of Oracle’s Enterprise Engineering organization, she is responsible for Oracle’s internal cloud transformation and delivery of multiple cloud services. Her team partners with enterprise and development organizations across the company to evolve on-premises services into native cloud solutions and leads our global migration program. In addition, Christine delivers traditional IT services for our more than 170,000 global employees.

Panel # 3

Topic

Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry

Description

Diverse companies excel, boasting better performance, a knack for attracting top-notch talent, highly engaged employees, and impressive retention rates. Yet, in the tech realm, women still find themselves in the minority. Change, the driving force behind progress, calls for transformation and innovation, which, in turn, rely heavily on diversity. This dynamic forms a continuous cycle, one that particularly highlights the crucial role of women leaders in tech. Women, with their unique perspectives and experiences, have a distinctive lens through which they view and approach challenges, making them trailblazers and innovators.
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Sudha Raghavan

SVP, Developer Platform
Oracle

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.

Panel # 3

Topic

Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry

Description

Diverse companies excel, boasting better performance, a knack for attracting top-notch talent, highly engaged employees, and impressive retention rates. Yet, in the tech realm, women still find themselves in the minority. Change, the driving force behind progress, calls for transformation and innovation, which, in turn, rely heavily on diversity. This dynamic forms a continuous cycle, one that particularly highlights the crucial role of women leaders in tech. Women, with their unique perspectives and experiences, have a distinctive lens through which they view and approach challenges, making them trailblazers and innovators.
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Petek Utku

Vice President - OCI Technical Operations
Oracle

Petek Utku is the Vice President of OCI Technical Operations at Oracle. In this role, Petek drives the pursuit of operational excellence within Enterprise Engineering and OCI cloud classic, ensuring unparalleled support and world-class operations for internal and external customers. Petek is a technology executive with 25+ years of experience who has developed high-growth IT strategies and led global teams in finance, investment, technology, and cloud companies. Prior to joining Oracle, Petek was the Vice President of Global Infrastructure Services at Riverbed Technology, where she headed Enterprise Architecture and Corporate Hybrid Infrastructure. Petek also held senior positions at Barclays Global Investors-BlackRock and Dow Jones.

Panel # 3

Topic

Women in Leadership: Career Evolution in the Tech Industry

Description

Diverse companies excel, boasting better performance, a knack for attracting top-notch talent, highly engaged employees, and impressive retention rates. Yet, in the tech realm, women still find themselves in the minority. Change, the driving force behind progress, calls for transformation and innovation, which, in turn, rely heavily on diversity. This dynamic forms a continuous cycle, one that particularly highlights the crucial role of women leaders in tech. Women, with their unique perspectives and experiences, have a distinctive lens through which they view and approach challenges, making them trailblazers and innovators.
Close
Linkedin

Hepsi Premkumar

Vice President of Strategy and Operations
Cisco

Hepsi Premkumar is the Vice President of Strategy and Operations and Chief of Staff to the General Manager of Cisco AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability. In her role, she is responsible for navigating and driving transformative and business-critical initiatives for the organization. Hepsi manages strategy, technical program management, data insights, business operations, university hiring and talent training, and internal and executive communications teams. Hepsi has been with Cisco for 15 years and was most recently the Senior Director of Cisco Cloud Networking Technical Program Management and Operations. She also serves as the Chair of Howard University’s Computer Science and Engineering Industry Advisory Board, representing Cisco.

Panel # 1