Tech. Strong. Women.

Join Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan for another episode of Tech.Strong.Women, where we dive deep into the world of cybersecurity and beyond with Caroline Wong, Chief Strategy Officer at Cobalt and trailblazer in the field. In this episode, we explore the fundamental principles of cybersecurity, highlighting the critical need for proactive security measures in an era of constant cyber threats. Caroline shares invaluable insights on offensive versus defensive security strategies, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing limited resources towards offensive testing to uncover vulnerabilities. We delve into the transformative potential of AI in cybersecurity, discussing its ability to automate tasks while underscoring the indispensable role of human oversight in setting security goals and processes. Additionally, Caroline shares her inspiring journey in tech, shedding light on the importance of encouraging diversity and creativity in STEM fields to cultivate innovative problem-solving skills essential for the future of technology. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that combines cybersecurity fundamentals with empowering narratives from one of the industry's leading voices.

In this episode, hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan have the privilege of speaking with Ewelina Wilkosz (Velux), a driving force behind the evolution of Jenkins Configuration as Code and a prominent figure in the open-source community. Ewelina shares her journey from consultant to Jenkins board member, recounting her pivotal role in developing early prototypes and collaborating with Jenkins creator Kosuke Kawaguchi to shape the future of the platform. As one of the few women in the predominantly male-dominated Jenkins community, Ewelina reflects on her experience, highlighting the importance of diversity and inclusion in open source and the invaluable confidence gained through her involvement. Moreover, Ewelina underscores the critical need for sustained support and funding for open-source projects, emphasizing the role of community engagement in ensuring their longevity. Offering practical advice for women entering the tech field, Ewelina encourages participation in open source as a pathway to skill development and community building. Tune in for an insightful conversation that celebrates the power of women in tech and the transformative potential of open source.

In this episode, join hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan as they sit down with Shannon Mason, CSO of Tempo Software, to discuss the persistent gender pay gap in the United States, shining a light on the disparities that continue to affect women’s earnings across various states. Shannon underscores the urgency of addressing this inequality and emphasizes the importance of fostering an environment in the tech industry that encourages and rewards women. We also delve into the transformative potential of AI in healthcare, exploring how artificial intelligence and machine learning can revolutionize diagnostic processes, reduce waiting times for patients, and alleviate administrative burdens on medical professionals. Additionally, Shannon shares insights on the role of psychology in organizational planning, highlighting the significance of understanding human biases and tendencies to facilitate better decision-making. Tune in for an engaging conversation that touches on vital issues and offers valuable perspectives for women in tech and beyond.

Join hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan in a captivating conversation with Cristine Gollayan, a trailblazer in cybersecurity and advocate for women in tech, as she shares her inspiring career journey from coding for Y2K to championing diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. Delve into the impactful initiatives of STEM for Her, empowering young girls to envision themselves as future leaders in technology through hands-on programs. Gain valuable insights from a discussion on the importance of representation, finding one’s voice, and tackling future security challenges, including the transformative potential of AI and quantum computing. Watch the interview now for an insightful exploration of the intersection between technology, empowerment, and the future.

In the first Tech.Strong.Women. episode of 2024, Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Alysia Silberg, a seasoned entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a deep-rooted passion for AI and mathematics, shares her journey in the book "Unemployable." From starting her first company at the age of 5 to becoming a VC focused on AI, Alysia explores the transformative impact of AI on her work and life. The book serves as both a memoir and a playbook, offering insights into building successful companies in the AI era. Alysia advocates for AI as a tool to level the playing field, especially for minorities and women, enabling them to develop skills and confidence without judgment. In evaluating AI investments, she seeks founders with obsessive passion, prioritizes ideas that push humanity forward, and values shared principles, the ability to navigate difficult conversations, and self-promotion. Alysia emphasizes the use of AI systems for practicing pitches and building confidence. Overall, her approach reflects a commitment to fostering diversity and innovation in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI entrepreneurship.

Join hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan in a candid conversation with Smitha Murthy, CEO at Beagle Security. The panel delves into the challenges AI startups face when seeking funding, primarily due to a shrinking investment pool. They also highlight the increasing investor interest in AI cybersecurity, specifically within application security. The discussion underscores the importance of AI in fortifying defenses against breaches, notably through API security, while addressing the imperative for secure legacy system architectures. Also discussed is the need for affordable security solutions tailored to small and mid-sized businesses and the pivotal role of automation within the software development pipeline. In addition, they explore the significance of women in the tech industry and share personal experiences of breaking through barriers in male-dominated fields.

Despite all the focus on backend technological advancements, success or failure in tech can often come down to how the user can (or can't) interact with your product. In other words, technology lives or dies by user experience (UX). In the latest episode of Tech.Strong.Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Nicole Sundin (Axio) to explore the topic of user experience design. Gain invaluable insights into the expansive scope of user experience design, transcending digital interfaces to encompass all products and physical spaces. Learn how mental models significantly shape user interactions and discover the importance of diverse teams in ensuring a comprehensive and inclusive design approach so your user experience is stellar.

In this episode, hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Chris McHale, co-founder and CEO of SPK and Associates. Instead of diversity, equity and inclusion being an afterthought, McHale and SPK and Associates make it a top priority - actively striving to bring in individuals from various backgrounds to enhance their team's capabilities and perspectives. With over 20 years of experience in the IT operations space, Chris and her team have primarily focused on software development and product development. They specialize in providing DevOps services to various clients, ranging from startups to established enterprises. In addition to her professional endeavors, Chris is deeply invested in philanthropy. She has been actively involved in projects aimed at improving the lives of women and girls in Ethiopia. This initiative includes addressing critical issues such as menstrual hygiene and access to education, making a meaningful impact by providing solutions that empower and uplift communities. Chris's dedication to both her professional work and social causes showcases her well-rounded commitment to making a positive difference in the world.

In this episode, join us as we delve into an important discussion on gender, equity and diversity in the AI industry with Paula R. Bratcher Ratliff. Paula emphasizes the imperative of incorporating diverse thought leadership, particularly from women, to combat gender bias in AI. Highlighting the potential of AI in fostering gender neutrality and balance, she sheds light on industry examples and the essential role of strong female leadership. Joined by hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan, they tackle the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women in the workforce and offer insightful strategies for career transitions and reentry. Gain valuable insights into creating a more inclusive and supportive tech landscape. Tune in now!

The cybersecurity conversation has recently shifted from reactive to proactive, focusing on software supply chains and risk management rather than playing whack-a-mole with ever-evolving threats. Today, it's important to take a holistic and proactive approach to cybersecurity, emphasizing open communication and collaboration to mitigate risks effectively. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Karen Worstell, senior cybersecurity strategist at VMware, to discuss the evolving landscape of cybersecurity. Worstell emphasizes the shift in cybersecurity discussions toward supply chain concerns, which she views as a security issue rather than purely a supply chain matter. Karen underscores the importance of addressing technical debt as a significant security problem and quantifying risk in cybersecurity. She introduces the concept of a "technical debt tax" as a means of allocating resources to tackle technical debt before initiating new projects and why it's important for organizations to translate risk appetite into actionable strategies, engage various business units to comprehensively address risk and prioritize cybersecurity practices such as change control and configuration management.

Born and raised in Kenya, Christine Abernathy's journey to the U.S. tech industry underscores the dynamic nature of the field and the importance of collaboration, innovation and adaptability in the rapidly changing tech landscape. Now a senior director for open source evangelism at F5, Abernathy joins this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, with hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan, to share her insights into open source, technology, mentoring and AI's impact on the tech industry.

In the tech industry, despite the propaganda to the contrary, no one achieves success on their own. For Lynne Doherty, she was cheered on every step of the way by friends, colleagues, mentors and supporters in her "Front Row." In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., Lynne Doherty, president of go-to-market and worldwide field operations at Sumo Logic, joins Jodi and Tracy for an insightful conversation on the significance of combining a culture of continuous improvement and technological advancements to drive progress and better outcomes. They also discuss the challenges of managing application development at scale and the importance of observability and security in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape and how the use of AI and automation is seen as a potential solution to improve security practices and combat sophisticated threats while having to navigate the challenges AI presents. Lynne also describes how her success is attributed to having a strong support system, including mentors and role models, who encouraged and guided her throughout her career. This support network, often referred to as a "front row," has been crucial in her personal and professional development.

As a corporate lawyer with 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Tricia Montalvo Timm has been part of small startups, large public companies and everything in between. Tricia is a leader, speaker and author of “Embrace the Power of You, Owning Your Identity at Work.” As a first-generation Latina whose first language was Spanish, Montalvo Timm has overcome multiple challenges to achieve the success she enjoys today. In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women, hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Montalvo Timm about her career journey, how to ignore all the 'shoulds' that are often thrown women's way, recognize your superpowers and use them to drive your own success.

Kathy Park's interest in tech began in a computer science class while she was studying business and finance. That initial interest never waned, and has continued through Park's career to becoming an advisor and partner at Silicon Valley VC firm Andre Capital, where she oversees investments in later-stage tech companies. In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Park about the opportunities and challenges she faced on her career journey and the progression of other young women, the education and career choices available to women in the past and now. Kathy discusses her firm's investment strategies in companies focused on cybersecurity, AI, big data, SaaS, cloud computing and other business enablement technologies and how women can make an impact in the male-dominated VC space.

In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Ana Margarita Medina, Lightstep staff developer advocate, and Adriana Villela, Lightstep developer advocate, two powerhouse technologists who've focused their careers on SRE and observability. With experiences in leading observability and SRE adoption, Adriana and Ana work with developers, open-source projects like OpenTelemetry and technology creators to continue the advancement of observability and share the best practices of SRE. Ana and Adriana host the On-Call Me Maybe podcast, speaking with diverse guests from someone getting started as an SRE to highly experienced, sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Technology isn't immune to external geopolitical factors--from investments in AI to the dependency on Asian chip manufacturing, IT is front and center on the global political stage. Even seemingly unrelated events can have a direct impact on the software and hardware products we develop and consume. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, Jamie Thomas, IBM general manager of strategy, development and CISO, talks with Techstrong Group's Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan about the very real concerns businesses face in both hardware manufacturing and software development. Jamie shares her insights into what the future looks like in an interdependent world, IBM's unique response to dealing with COVID-19 and critical areas that every business should consider in a turbulent geopolitical landscape. Jamie also talks about her work as the chairperson of the OpenSSF, her work with the Biden administration and how Log4j started an entirely new conversation around securing the open source software supply chain.

Business leaders tend to underestimate the one factor that could make or break digital transformation: the human factor. But underneath all the talk about new and emerging technologies like blockchain, ChatGPT, the Metaverse and other is people. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., Kamales Lardi, author of the book “The Human Side of Digital Business Transformation,” talks with hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy about the need for technology leadership to embrace qualities that were traditionally seen as “weaknesses” like empathy, vulnerability, authenticity and open communications skills and how those translate to empowering leadership and drive more successful digital transformation. Lardi also talks about how the focus on the “digital” piece of digital transformation is not sufficient without equal focus on “transformation,” and why the younger generation of tech and business professionals are better equipped to tackle these challenges.

In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Liz Rice, chief open source officer at Isovalent, about extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) and its impact on the open source ecosystem and observability, the challenges open source developers face with the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act legislation and the significant impact AI has on open source. Rice will discuss how AI opens up numerous opportunities for further automation and optimization of open source development, integration and delivery all along the SDLC. Finally, Rice explores how the modern remote, work-from-anywhere technology landscape will empower more women and underrepresented groups to pursue tech careers.

In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Sofia Palamarchuk, co-founder & CEO at Apptim, to talk about her own journey in the tech industry, how she grew her company despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and how important it is to stay lean and sustainable as a startup. This candid discussion will also cover the struggles women, BIPOC and those with lower educational attainment experience in getting funding, the importance of research when searching for funding and the current lack of diversity among both funders and investors.

In this episode, our hosts Jodi Ashley (Techstrong) and Tracy Ragan (Deployhub) are joined by Heidi Gilmore, Office of the CMO at Stackstate. The panel talks candidly about marketing in the tech industry, how important marketing professionals are to delivering education and value and dispels the myth that Marketing is “fluffy.” They’ll discuss the importance of avoiding hype and being open about your offerings and explain why companies without a solid marketing function are dead in the water. Finally, the panel talks about solid messaging as the cornerstone of the marketing process, and why it should be clear, simple and convey to the audience what is important for them to hear.