We all have unconscious and implicit biases. In this session, Boomie Odumade (Senior Director of Engineering, Movement Infrastructure Group) will teach you to recognize bias in self and others. She will share real examples.

Attendees will leave with takeaways about reducing bias in all aspects of employment, from interviewing to the day to day.

Congratulations on your promotion to a Staff Engineer or welcome aboard if you just joined a new company in this pivotal role! Being a technical leader is a key milestone, but it comes with elevated expectations. Even if you’ve been the reliable go-to person for years, the staff role demands something more. What sets a Staff role apart from others? How can you get there, and once you’ve made it, what’s next? Swathi Sundar (Head of Scientific Modalities Engineering, Benchlin) will share her vantage point as an engineering leader who has seen and coached numerous senior/staff engineers reach their peak. She will share five pragmatic tips that can set you on the path to success!

Sowmya Subramanian (Product Manager, Development Seed) will be speaking about empowerment through strategy. She believes in the power of building community and connection, and will share pathways to success. Attendees will learn about using AI for good, from values alignment, to different ways to use it AI for good, with real examples.

Dr. Shelby Heinecke (Senior AI Research Manager, Salesforce) will review how large language models (LLMs) work and what they can do. Then she will share a breakdown of LLM-powered agent, from the role of LLMs, memory, tools. Finally, she will share how to build agents and the latest research.

We’ve heard of career ladders and jungle gyms. Now, imagine your career challenges as a series of experiments.

Margaret Wang Johnston (Engineering Group Director, Cadence Design Systems) will share her story and career takeaways as she transformed her career while learning to view unknown as experiments. She will share how to fail forward and tackle new challenges at work.

Drawing parallels from the famous saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together”, we believe that it is imperative to empower our customers to be active contributors rather than passive recipients, as it is through the collective efforts of more people learning how to identify, raise and address concerns that we can resolve and develop ethical and responsible AI for everyone.

Daniela Steinsapir (Senior Manager, Experience Architecture, Autodesk) will share insights and learnings about customer trust and concerns regarding enterprise data sharing, intellectual infringement, and future of creativity. She highlights the positive impact of customer participation and our experience of collaboration with an AI ethicist and their key role in fostering a thought-provoking experience. Attendees will learn her tips and tricks for designing and executing this hands-on research exercise, which creates conditions for designing with customers instead of for customers.

Find your tribe, you are not alone!

Eirini Syka Lerioti (Senior Developer Relations Program Manager, ASML) believes you should always have a plan. She will share how to think outside of the box (e.g. who is in your current network? what’s the value you get from your connections?) and how to be part of something bigger (e.g. communities, networks, associations).

Manali Rane (Product Manager, Nokia) will share why security is important, from remote workers to security failure examples. She will discuss what SDWAN/SASE companies do, and the problem we are trying to solve. She will share cybersecurity / network security trends, and talk about the future of cybersecurity. Don’t miss her speaking about quantum computing with algorithms that we so far considered secure facing challenge from Post Quantum Computer (PQC algorithms in process of approval0. She will also talk about why network security and cybersecurity is a great area to build your career with tremendous opportunity.

How do you implement a data strategy or data trends? For companies specializing in products and services, success is no longer about gaining one-time momentum, but rather on creating a deeply customized interactions with their customers.

Chanuttita Chitmanasak (Regional Head of CRM & Marketing Automation, Michelin) believes that consumer data is pivotal in the dynamic digitization landscape. She will share how data is a key success to drive long-term business growths, revealing how her data-oriented mindset results in innovations that shape the customer experience. Attendees will learn how marketing automation / Martech tool help enhance messaging and personalization.

Data privacy is a human right. When Privacy data is mishandled it creates a ripple effect where the harms are not obvious or immediate on those impacted.

Christina Liu (Senior Security Engineer, Cisco) believes that we as software engineers and members of the tech industry should be doing our utmost to protect data privacy. In her talk, she will cover the current challenges to securing personally identifiable information, including challenges from AI, and provide practical tips on how to protect it.

How to define a data strategy for measurable impact with key steps, and cultivate a data-driven culture within your organization to empower employees across all levels to leverage data for informed decision-making and innovation?

Urvashi Jaitley (Senior Product Manager, Subscriber Retention, Arlo Technologies) will speak about shifting from Data Silos to a Data Ecosystem.

She will discuss how to break down data silos, integrate diverse sources, and foster collaboration to unlock the full potential of your data.

You won’t want to miss this hands-on engineering manager’s talk on successfully leading the Data Engineering team through multiple technology migrations and deliverables. She is passionate about building productivity tools to aid her team with mundane work.

Nataliya Nadtoka (Manager, Data Operations, Basis Technologies) shares her takeaways for mastering the unknown and shares her strategies for planning excellence. She also will talk about the balancing act of guiding multi-year migrations and CI/CD transformations. She believes in the acronym “NAP”, which stands for Navigate, Adapt, Progress – sharing her tips for overcoming technical challenges, conflicts, and building strategic partnerships.

Learn about their job opportunities! Meet recruiters, staff & more at the discussion tables in the virtual Employer Booths (12pm-1pm Pacific Time).

ELEVATE’s partner companies are actively hiring for many roles. Let them know you’re interested!

This former civil engineer pivoted to become a senior product manager in just 3 years.

Shannon Cassidy will share her four approaches to breaking into product management from an unrelated field. She will teach attendees how to leverage your experience to gain credibility with a new network, and share her tips to get your resume through the application portal and in the hands of a hiring manager.

Explore the endless possibilities that come with having your own custom Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model, from enhancing productivity to fostering creativity and innovation within your organization.

Dimitra Charalampopoulou (Machine Learning Engineer, Intel) will share how to familiarize yourself with GPT technology. Attendees will discover how to customize your GPT model to suit specific use cases and domains, such as generating content for marketing, customer service, or educational purposes.

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

Ashleigh Lee (Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cerby) will share her unique journey in cybersecurity. she challenges three assumptions she had entering the industry:

• the only way to be a “real” practitioner in cyber is to be a hacker in a hoodie
• the only way to make progress is to become super technical
• technology can solve everything

Pratibha Rathore (Tech Lead, Applied Research Scientist, Meta) will speak about generative AI, natural language understanding, computer vision, optimization, and simulation to develop innovative AI systems for various sectors, including legal, trust and safety, and adversarial detection. She works closely with diverse teams to ensure AI solutions meet quality standards, perform well, and align with business goals and user requirements. Her contributions include detecting platform threats, enhancing content moderation accuracy and efficiency, and optimizing enterprise operation workflows.

Starting her career in technical support, transitioning into marketing roles and then finally to technical customer facing activities, Rosie has worn many hats in the Technical Sales Organization over the last decade

Rosie Sennett (Staff Solutions Engineer, Splunk) has made the transition from back office to front and back… and has lots to share. She will teach attendees how to learn what is expected of you, learn what is expected of your customer, and learn what your customer will of you.

Vidhya Arvind (Staff Software Engineer, Netflix) will speak about key-value store data model for building abstraction, and adapting to the changing data shape. She will teach attendees how to modify the strategies when access pattern changes.

Jessie Heng (Senior Engineering Manager, Snowflake) will speak about performance reviews. She will cover what happens in performance calibration, what can you do to stand out during calibration, what can you to do prepare your manager.

Shubhi Asthana (Senior Research Software Engineer, IBM) will speak about identifying personal identifiable information in large language models.

Lade Tawak (UX Researcher, Lobster Ink) will share why self promotion is important and introduce her 3-part framework for how to promote your work in a way that feels authentic to you. Attendees will receive practical tips for building visibility in the workplace.

Chisom Nwokwu (Software Engineer & Author, Microsoft) will speak about what DataOps is – and why it is important. She will dive into DataOps principles (e.g. collaboration, automation, continuous integration) and how solving data management challenges (e.g. slow deployment, inconsistent data quality) can lead to automating workflows and ensuring continuous improvement. She believes we can achieving cross-functional collaboration with DataOps, illustrating the importance of fostering collaboration between data teams.

Sweta Sinha (Executive Director, Data Products Platform, JP Morgan Chase) will be speaking about her journey from software engineer to executive director of data products platform at JP Morgan Chase.