Change Wave

Reema Poddar is a highly successful executive with 26 years of experience in the software Industry. Poddar is a respected thought leader in Technology and authority on Digital and Organizational Transformation. Her successes include accelerating Digital & Organizational transformations enhancing customer experiences, enabling companies to improve automation, developer productivity, and operational excellence. She recently served Teradata Inc, as the Executive Vice President and “Chief Product and Development officer” of the company and was responsible for leading worldwide product, technology, innovation, corporate security, and analytics strategy. Here she was instrumental in helping the company through its ambitious cloud transformation and the transition of multibillion-dollar product line from a perpetual to a subscription-based offering. In 2018 & 2019 under her leadership, Teradata delivered the world’s first Data and Analytics Platform – “Vantage”, and the first SaaS application- “Vantage CX”. These multi-cloud offerings led to acquiring net new enterprise logos & doubling the cloud revenue for the company. Prior to joining Teradata, Poddar held a variety of senior executive positions within General Electric Company, Emerson Electric and Software Start Up - Intellution Inc. She is a passionate leader who empowers teams to take risk, fail fast and learn. She is focused on helping women in all areas of technology to reach their next level of success in life and work and is actively involved in a variety of STEM programs, Women in Technology initiatives and other nonprofits. She holds several business, technology, and CEO leadership awards at GE and the companies she has served. In 2019, Poddar was named one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology by the National Diversity. In 2018, Poddar was honored by the San Diego Business Chambers for her business impact and technology leadership, as well as San Diego Magazine recognized her in the top 5 of the city’s powerful female leaders. Poddar is also an honored recipient of the 2015 Edison Awards for New Product Innovation for healthcare industrial internet of things. In 2014, she was honored with the Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology award for the most innovative new product solution. Poddar holds a Master’s in computer science and a Master’s in Physics.

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Matthew Joyal is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Pillar Technologies, a risk management platform for construction site developers and general contractors to monitor for destructive environmental conditions through the deployment of on-site sensor for real-time notifications. Matt started Pillar back in 2015 shortly after developing sensor technology applications in college. Since then, Matt and his cofounder were listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list of 2019.

Monica Caldas is the Chief Information Officer for Liberty’s Global Retail Markets (GRM). In this role, Monica is driving the digital transformation within GRM’s global IT organization by delivering innovative solutions for customers and employees. Monica brings IT industry expertise from both the financial services and industrial sectors to deliver business model innovation through a robust digital strategy. Monica joined Liberty after a 17-year career at General Electric where she held senior executive CIO roles across several GE businesses covering multiple lines of business including Capital Rail Services, Capital Fleet Services and Transportation. In those roles, she focused on areas such as IT Operations, Software Development, ERP management and global roll outs, systems integrations, and organizational effectiveness. Monica was recognized by Hispanic Executive magazine as a Top 2016 Leader, was a 2017 Chicago CIO Orbie Awards finalist and was recognized as Digital Leader of the Year 2018 by Information Age Magazine. Monica holds a Bachelor of Science in business and management information systems from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Business degree from Pennsylvania State University. Outside of Liberty Mutual, Monica enjoys working in the community to encourage and inspire more girls to pursue STEM roles, is an active member in Hispanic Affinity networks and is a student of mindfulness and meditation. She recently relocated from Chicago to Boston with her husband, two young children and their very curious rescue dog.

Nicole Neumarker is currently working as Vice President of R&D for Cotiviti, a leading solutions and analytics company that leverages unparalleled clinical and financial datasets to deliver deep insight into the performance of the healthcare system. At Cotiviti she is responsible for delivering value through the software engineering and innovation teams globally. Nicole is the former VP Technology of Helix Education, and originally began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley. Currently at Cotiviti, Nicole’s initiative portfolio under management, includes all development for new product introduction as well as innovation across the existing install base. She does this by driving lean portfolio and agile practices for scale and entrepreneurial teams for research and innovation. As a member of the Operations senior leadership team, her COE serves product, operations, and go to market functions. Nicole began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley where she worked on everything from branding and the corporate website development to enterprise data and security initiatives. In her time at Cisco, she learned the criticality of weighing the business value of a project prior to applying scarce and costly technical resources. Nicole is kept endlessly busy outside of work with her family and kids and is in constant pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee by roasting her own coffee beans in her garage. She has served on the board of a local nonprofit organization focused on high school STEM education, as well as a mentor with the Utah Valley University women’s basketball team.

My name is William Feng (or Will). I am a proud father of a four-year-old son Zachary. I’m also an Organizational Psychologist, Coach, and currently the Director of Learning & Organizational Development at FabFitFun. I lead my team to develop amazing people and a culture that best supported our growing business across five pillars: Onboarding, Learning, Leadership Development, Performance Management, and Culture & Engagement. While my team and I had some amazing accomplishments here in the first 8 months… I’m just as proud of the 1:1 relationships I have built with our executives through coaching conversation– helping them feel less anxious about company changes by exploring their strengths, beliefs, and values to lead organizational and culture change.

Saloni has almost two decades of experience working with early- and mid-stage, high growth startups, building and running key foundational teams from the ground up. As the Vice President of People at Sentry, she is passionate about organizational design & strategy, transformation and change management, while fostering intellectual honesty and empowering others to develop autonomy and unleash their talents.

As head of GoDaddy’s people and culture, Monica is responsible for talent and performance management, total rewards, learning and development, hiring, inclusion and partnership with our people and leaders worldwide. Since joining GoDaddy in 2013, Monica has implemented several initiatives including an updated performance review process in partnership with Stanford to reduce unconscious bias, while reinforcing great performance and a distinct culture. Additionally, she’s been instrumental in leveling and career structure, pay parity and an employee feedback engine to improve both GoDaddy’s culture and company. Prior to GoDaddy, Monica worked at Microsoft for 17 years where she worked as a trusted business partner, helped create the HR Mergers and Acquisitions practice and ran the top of the house internal assessment and development program aimed at growing top talent for future challenges, including President and CEO successors for the company. She also ran her own HR coaching and consulting firm. Monica holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Psychology and Communications, with a focus on Women’s Studies from Washington State University.

Donna is an energetic software executive passionate about making customers successful. She is an executive sponsor of the Coupa Executive Advisory Board and an inventor with multiple software patents. Donna started at Coupa in 2011 and leads product strategy and innovation; identifying innovative solutions that solve global business spend management challenges elegantly. Her leadership has helped propel Coupa from early startup days to a public company. In her time at Coupa, she has worked with cross-functional teams from product to sales, led customer success teams to success in hundreds of customer projects, and was a member of the Coupa pre-IPO team, culminating in the highly successful Coupa IPO. Prior to Coupa, Donna held leadership roles at TriNet, Ketera, and IBM. She began her career with Accenture where she led PeopleSoft projects in the first iterations of “as a service.” Donna earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Management Information Systems from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Kevin Hunter is a pioneering product visionary with 20+ years of entrepreneurial leadership in global strategy, business development and product leadership. As Catalina’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin leads innovation and is responsible for driving global product strategy from concept to commercialization to solve customer challenges and transform the in-store experience for buyers. Kevin’s team also builds strategic partnerships that add dimension and scale to Catalina’s personalization capabilities and fortify its buyer intelligence data. Kevin also serves on the Board of Directors for NCSolutions. Adept at sensing early market and consumer trends, Kevin is part of an experienced team of thought leaders playing a critical role in Catalina’s omni transformation through strategic investments in technology, advanced analytics and data science. His broad, global experience spans IoT, sensor fusion, mobile, digital, marketing, and advertising products in growth and established markets. Before joining Catalina in 2017 as VP of Digital and Consumer Products, Kevin served as President, Head of Americas, Corporate Development and Product Strategy for retail IOT analytics company, Walkbase; and President of inMarket, an ad network focused on location and mobile-based inventory. Previously, Kevin held a variety of senior roles with Qualcomm, including head of strategy and product for the Retail Solutions division focused on commercializing products, solutions, and technologies in mobile payments, location, and proximity marketing for retailers, brands and venues. He also led Qualcomm Labs, where he was responsible for global market development and product management governance for contextual awareness, location, proximity, beacons, Bluetooth Low Energy, LTE-Direct and Retail IoT initiatives. Later, Kevin co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of Gimbal, a mobile engagement and location intelligence solution technology firm carved out of Qualcomm. Kevin is the co-inventor of 28 US granted patents with over 15 more pending. He received an Emmy Engineering Award for Sprint TV, a groundbreaking mobile television product which he led.

Ameesh Paleja is the Chief Technology Officer for OfferUp. He oversees the company’s engineering and data science teams and is responsible for all strategic aspects of the technology organization, including infrastructure, security, product engineering, and architecture. Before joining OfferUp, Ameesh was the CTO of Starz and oversaw the modernization of Starz’s technology platform, enabling an international expansion and managing the overhaul of the company’s digital media publishing pipeline. Prior, he spent more than 10 years at Amazon, where he was the founding employee of Amazon’s digital research and development facility in Southern California, managing a team of over 550 employees for products including Amazon Prime Instant Video, Amazon’s Appstore, Cloud Drive, and Kindle. As co-founder of Atom Tickets, Paleja continues to serve on its board as a strategic advisor. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, and holds 24 patents in digital video and related fields.

Debra McCowan is SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) for NetApp, responsible for developing the global HR strategy and leading the entirety of the function including talent acquisition, talent development and learning, business partnerships, organizational development and effectiveness, total rewards, diversity, inclusion and belonging and operations. Debra is a change and transformational HR leader with 20+ years of global experience focused on integrating the people strategy with the business strategy to effectively drive performance and growth and promote organizational health. Her success comes from her proven ability to build high performing teams and develop business aligned HR strategies and initiatives while providing strategic and operational leadership, typically in a context of rapid growth, change and maturation. In her last role as CHRO at Equinix, Debra built a robust global HR function in a fast-paced environment. During her five years with the company, the global HR organization was instrumental in evolving Equinix’s culture, building the company brand and designing and implementing leading-edge value driven programs and initiatives in support of business objectives and to ensure the attraction, retention and cultivation of critical talent enabling growth and helping position Equinix as a market leader. Prior to Equinix, Debra co-founded the Accelerance Group where as a partner, she provided organizational and systems design consulting services and helped clients lead strategic change more effectively. Debra has also held global executive leadership roles at Avago Technologies (now Broadcom Inc.), Hitachi Data Systems (now Hitachi Vantara), and Telstra Corporation Debra serves on the Board of Directors for HealthEquity, Inc., the largest health savings account non-bank custodian in the US. She holds a post-graduate diploma in Industrial Relations and HR Management from the University of Melbourne and a B.A. from La Trobe University.

Nolan Church is the Chief People Officer at Carta, a Series E fintech company headquartered in SF. As the CPO, Nolan oversees all employee touchpoints including HR, Recruiting, Total Rewards, Internal Communications and Real Estate. Prior to Carta, Nolan was the Head of Talent at DoorDash as its first hire in HR and scaled the company from 50 to >800 employees in three years. Nolan has also worked at Google in recruiting as the company doubled in size to 60k employees. He studied Political Science and was captain of the baseball team at the University of New Orleans.

As the Head of Global HR, Shawna leads the company’s efforts to attract, develop and retain the best talent. Prior to her current role, she led global People Operations to streamline and scale processes, systems, benefits and immigration at Rubicon Project. Shawna has a unique career path that has contributed to her being a highly respected people leader. She was previously at Concur Technologies leading the Diversity and Inclusion efforts globally across more than 20 offices. Prior to that, she was the Senior Director of International Accounting where she set up European accounting operations in the Netherlands and in addition spent time in Prague as the Country Manager leading the growth of the European service center. Shawna started her career at Microsoft, and has a Masters in Accounting from Notre Dame and a BS in International Business from George Fox University in addition to having her CPA.

Brandon Krieg is the CEO and co-founder of Stash - the financial platform revolutionizing the way millions of Americans save and invest for their future. Brandon has been recognized by Goldman Sachs as one of 2018’s “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs,” and Stash was highlighted by Forbes’ “Fintech 50 2018” as well as the Wall Street Journal as one of the "Top Tech Companies to Watch in 2018." Prior to Stash, Brandon spent +15 years in financial services, most recently at Macquarie Securities Group.

Matt is a leading thinker and practitioner in the application of new technologies to media. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at theSkimm, a membership company that makes it easier for millennial women to live smarter. He most recently worked as the Chief Technology Officer and part of the founding team for Axios, the news and information start-up. Prior to that he was the Director of the New York Times’ Research and Development Lab, where he had extensive experience in researching and implementing new technologies. Matt has 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry, solving problems of content management, distribution, and market positioning.

Evan Green-Lowe is VP, Engineering Talent Supply at Andela, an organization which believes talent is equally distributed around the world, and leverages that belief to help companies build distributed engineering teams. Evan believes in investing in communities of talent, and creating value for people as a way to bring the best out of them. During his time at Andela Evan has helped grow the engineering workforce from less than 40 engineers in Nigeria to over 1,200 across Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Prior to working at Andela, Evan founded LakeHub Technologies, a technology, design, and entrepreneurship hub based out of Kisumu Kenya, and led the data and analytics team at Evidence Action, raising the bar for quality and analytical rigor in researched-backed development economics interventions.

Miriam Warren is the Senior Vice President of Engagement, Diversity and Belonging at Yelp and Board Chair of the Yelp Foundation. Miriam joined Yelp in 2007, serving in a variety of marketing and operational roles, including leading the company’s expansion efforts internationally as Vice President of New Markets. Presently, she heads a team working at the intersection of culture, engagement, corporate philanthropy and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Charles is the Global People and Culture Leader at Zendrive, where he leads the global people organization. Charles has been instrumental in Hacking HR’s SF Chapter, bringing thought leadership to the discussion of emerging technologies. With 25 years of significant experience in key leadership roles at high-growth organizations, Charles has successfully reorganized entire company cultures and visions to adopt a “one team,” collaborative approach time and time again. He is active in the transformation of the human resources role in business, publishing and speaking on the changing landscape of the profession.

Candice Morgan is the Head of Inclusion and Diversity at Pinterest, where she leads strategies to build a more inclusive and diverse global company. Previously, Candice spent nearly 10 years at Catalyst, where she designed strategic talent initiatives for global companies and firms across a range of industries. Candice holds an MS in cross-cultural psychology from Brunel University and a BS in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. She is a frequent speaker and advisor at global conferences and events, a contributor to Harvard Business Review, and was recently honored on Fast Company's list of Most Creative People in Business & The Root 100 Most Influential African-Americans of 2017.