Carolyn Leighton
Founder/Chairwoman, WITI
Acting Advisory Board Chair
Carolyn Leighton founded WITI in 1989 as a worldwide e-mail network for women in all technology sectors. At the time WITI was established, Ms. Leighton was President of Criterion Research, a research consulting firm for the high tech industry which she founded in 1984, as well as chair of the Core Competency Database Project at Stanford University.
Due to Ms. Leighton's leadership and vision, WITI has grown to be the premiere brand and worldwide organization dedicated to empowering women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership and economic prosperity.
Ms. Leighton has 35 years of experience as an educator and entrepreneur. In addition to WITI, she founded four start-ups in the high-tech, legal sectors and, most recently, the pet industry. She attended the University of Michigan and has a bachelor's degree in human development from Pacific Oaks College. Ms. Leighton was named one of the "Top 100 Women in Computing" in 1997 and 2000.
In addition to her continuing work with WITI, Ms. Leighton now runs a dog camp on the central coast of California.
Dr. Cheemin Bo-Linn
CEO, Peritus Partners
Dr. Cheemin Bo-Linn is the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Revenue Officer at NetLine Corporation, responsible for corporate and product marketing, strategic sales, and revenue. NetLine, the premier B2B online demand generation leader serves over 88% of the Top Fortune B2B Tech companies and BtoB Top Advertisers and 7 of the top 10 US Media Agencies.
Prior to joining NetLine, Cheemin held senior level executive positions at mid-size and Top Fortune companies including Vice President of IBM. Previously, she was venture advisor and President of Peritus Partners Inc., a global business and marketing group recognized for delivering sustainable profit growth and achieving the highest market valuations.
Her leadership in delivering robust, accelerated growth has earned her industry recognition. She was recently invited to speak at the United Nations. Cheemin received the AACI Award for her contribution to Technology, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal "Women of Influence" award, and the YWCA "Tribute to Women in Industry" award. She also serves on the American Marketing Association (AMA) Leaders Council.
Cheemin holds a Doctorate Degree (Ed.D) specializing in "Implementation of Computer-Based Management Information Systems and Organizational Change" from the University of Houston. She completed Stanford University's Graduate School of Business Executive Certificate Program in Strategy.
She is a Board of Director at NetLine Corporation and prior, Board of Director for the Association of Corporate Growth (ACG) and the American Electronics Association (AeA). Also, she currently serves on the Advisory Board of WITI, CTSI (Clean Tech Sustainable Industries), and the Technology Commercialization Advisory Board of NIREC (Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization).
Kelly Carnes
President & CEO, TechVision21
Kelly Carnes is a nationally recognized technology policy expert and thought leader, holding numerous leadership positions in technology business, government and law during her 18 year career in the technology industry. Currently, she is President and CEO of TechVision21, a global technology strategy firm whose clients include global companies, prestigious U.S. research universities, foreign governments and science and technology non-profit organizations.
Previously, Ms. Carnes served eight years at the highest levels of the federal government, first in the White House, and later, as a trusted technology policy advisor to four Secretaries of Commerce. Most recently, Ms. Carnes served as a top national advocate for technology business. As a presidential appointee, confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Ms. Carnes frequently testified before Congress, represented the United States in negotiations with foreign governments, and served as a liaison to, and advocate for, the technology business community. She also directed the National Medal of Technology, America's highest award for technological innovation, and created GetTech, a Telly Award winning national public awareness and information campaign to encourage teens to pursue technology careers.
Ms. Carnes previously enjoyed a highly successful technology business career. As an attorney at a top national law firm, Ms. Carnes structured and negotiated more than $1 billion in technology business transactions. These included joint ventures and strategic alliances, venture capital transactions, technology development, licensing and marketing agreements, systems integration projects, and large-scale computer outsourcing transactions.
Ms. Carnes is known as a dynamic speaker and forceful advocate for industry on technology and competitiveness issues. She is a frequent keynote speaker at national and international technology and business conferences and has been widely quoted in the media. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She also graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law School, where she served as Topics Editor for the Georgetown Law Journal.
Sandy Carter
VP, SOA & WebSphere Strategy, Channels & Marketing, IBM
Sandy is responsible for driving IBM's cross-company, worldwide SOA marketing initiatives. In this role, she helps oversee the company's SOA strategy across software, services and hardware, sets the company's SOA marketing direction, and directs SOA messaging and content, while leading a global team in driving customer demand. She has helped to identify SOA acquisition targets and ensure the successful integration of these organizations into the IBM SOA portfolio. Sandy's efforts have driven the WebSphere Family to sustain four consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, while the brand has won 7 industry awards. She has helped IBM's SOA initiatives earn third party validation and analysts' leadership rankings. Sandy is fluent in 8 programming languages, and is the author of the new SOA book from IBM, "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0".
Gayle Crowell
Sr. Information Technology Advisor, E. M. Warburg Pincus & Co.
Gayle A. Crowell is a veteran Silicon Valley executive currently serving as a senior information technology advisor at E. M. Warburg Pincus & Co., one of the leading private equity and venture capital firms in the world. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, she successfully grew RightPoint, a company where she served as president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, from a vendor of data mining technology to the industry leader in real time personalization for the Internet and call center markets. In 2000, Rightpoint was acquired by E.piphany, a leader in Customer Relationship Management solutions. Ms. Crowell then served as the President of E.piphany.net and as a member of the E.piphany board before becoming a consultant to Warburg Pincus.
Prior to RightPoint, Ms. Crowell was senior vice president and general manager of worldwide field operations for Mosaix, Inc., which provides enterprise customer relationship management call center solutions to more than 1,300 customers worldwide. Crowell spent the first 14 years of her career in senior executive sales and marketing roles with leading companies, such as Oracle Corporation, Recognition International, DSC, and Cubix Corporation.
Ms. Crowell serves as a director of the Uniscape, EchoPass and the Indus International boards and is active in a number of industry privacy initiatives and standards organizations, including serving as the secretary/treasurer of the Personalization Consortium. She also serves on a number of high-tech start-up advisory boards. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951 in Zürich, Switzerland) is an authority on emerging digital technology.
Dyson is the daughter of Freeman Dyson, a physicist, and Verana Huber-Dyson, a mathematician, and the sister of the digital technology historian George Dyson. After graduating from Harvard in economics, she joined Forbes as a fact-checker and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977, she joined New Court Securities as "the research department," following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen, renaming it EDventure Holdings. She sold EDventure Holdings to CNET Networks in 2004.
Dyson and EDventure specialize in analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. She is mainly known for the following numbered sequence of media ventures:
* Release 1.0, her monthly technology-industry newsletter, published by EDventure Holdings. Each year, Dyson writes several issues herself and edits the others.
* Release 2.0, her 1997 book on how the Internet affected individuals' lives. Its full title is Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age. The revision Release 2.1 was published in 1998.
* Release 3.0, her bimonthly column for the New York Times, distributed via its syndicate and reprinted in Release 1.0.
* Release 4.0, her weblog. On March 4, 2005, this weblog moved to Dyson's Flickr account ( www.flickr.com/photos/edyson ).
Dyson is an active member of a number of non-profit and advisory organizations. From 1998 to 2000, she was the founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of 2004, she sat on its "reform" committee, dedicated to defining a role for individuals in ICANN's decision-making and governance structures. She has followed closely the post-Soviet transition of Eastern Europe, and is a member of the Bulgarian President's IT Advisory Council, along with Vint Cerf, George Sadowsky, and Veni Markovski, among others. She has served as a trustee of, and helped fund, emerging organizations such as Glasses for Humanity, Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Eurasia Foundation. She is also a member of the board for The Long Now Foundation, and is a part-owner of the First Monday journal.
Cathryn S. Gawne
Attorney, Silicon Valley Law Group
Cathryn S. Gawne, a shareholder of Silicon Valley Law Group, specializes in securities and corporate law. Her practice emphasizes the representation of entrepreneurs and middle market growth companies (both public and private) in connection with financings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate, partnership and joint venture organization and governance, and general business counseling. Her clients include entrepreneurs, corporations, partnerships, joint ventures, investors, and non-profit associations.
An active advocate for women in technology, Ms. Gawne currently chairs The WITI Foundation's Advocates for Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (AWSEM) Project in collaboration with The Junior League of San Jose, Inc., a project designed to increase the interest of girls in science and technology. She is also a member of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs. Ms. Gawne is the 2002 Chair of the Executive Committee of the Business Law Section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association. She is a member of the California State Bar Association and the American Bar Association. She is a frequent presenter at WITI events and for the USC School of Business and California AWED.
Ms. Gawne has practiced securities and corporate law since her admission to the California Bar in 1982. She received her A.B. degree in International Relations from Stanford University and her J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law where she served as a Comment Editor on the UCLA Law Review. She is a Wisconsin native and an enthusiastic, though unskilled, golfer.
Heather Healy
Vice President and EMC Products Division CIO
EMC Corporation
Heather Healy is Vice President and Business Unit CIO for the EMC Products Division and several Corporate functions. In this role, she leads the Business Technology Groups for Engineering, Manufacturing, Legal, Facilities, Licensing & Compliance, eBusiness, and emerging businesses. Heather is responsible for the strategic partnership between IT and these business functions, the exploration, definition, and delivery of technology-enabled business solutions to fuel revenue growth and innovation while improving business performance and efficiency.
Prior to joining EMC IT, Heather lead the Strategic Planning organization in the Office of the CTO. In this role, Heather managed the development and execution of company-wide technology and business strategies, focusing on hardware, software, and services. Prior to joining the CTO's office, Heather spent several years in product management and business development within EMC.
Before joining EMC, Heather held several key technical and managerial roles at Gensym Corporation, Oracle, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Heather is a past recipient of the Massachusetts High Tech Women to Watch award in recognition of Heather's technology and professional accomplishments, leadership and mentoring activities and her civic involvement.
Heather holds a BS from University of Lowell and a Master's of Software Engineering from Brandeis University.
Possessing a unique blend of technical and strategic experience and a passion for active mentoring, Heather speaks externally at many community forums with a focus on women in science and participates in the professional development of EMC employees globally.
Melanie J. McFarland
Managing Partner
Big Prairie Limited / BiMobi Limited
Melanie J. McFarland is the Managing Partner of both Big Prairie Limited and the digital pen solutions consultancy arm, BiMobi Limited; both were founded in 2004. She is responsible for the oversight of initiatives for client development with a special focus on Asia Pacific and North America while having global responsibility for the practice.
She began her career in marketing and business development within the telecommunications and information technology consulting sector for Telecommunications International Inc (TII) in Denver, Colorado, USA (1983). The consulting practice served mostly government entities such as state's telecommunications systems provided principally for the conduct of state and university system business. Some of the states served included Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, Montana, their associated universities as well as other universities such as Stanford University and Columbia University, etc. During this time she published her first article on telecommunications consulting in Communications News.
Ms. McFarland has particular expertise in marketing, strategy and operations with an emphasis on digital pen solutions to help the enterprise streamline paper forms processing, meet compliance requirements, support analytics directly from the written paper and enhance brand image and value. Her experience with digital pen functionality began in 2001.
Before founding the Big Prairie and BiMobi practices in 2004, she worked to pioneer solutions featuring Swedish Anoto multi-functional technologies associated with wireless digital pen and paper solutions including pen, paper, server and print technologies to the Asia Pacific and MNC market focusing on business process re-engineering and change management. Her most recent article about APAC IT Talent trends entitled, 'CIOs beware - the times are a changing'; was published in Enterprise Innovation - where IT and Business Strategy Converge - a Questex publication.
Most recently she lead her partner team in the delivery of some of the 'firsts' in the application of digital pen with end-to-end solutions involving SAP and SharePoint as well as Simplified Chinese for a client operation in Mainland China. She has overseen client regional applications of digital pen in Hong Kong, China, India and Australia as well as for a client Antarctic expedition during March 2011.
Ms. McFarland's industry reach includes information technology and telecom, utility, financial services, healthcare, FMCG, logistics, real estate, hospitality, government, media, and more. She has held regional roles while living in USA, Europe and Asia Pacific, including Japan.
MS. McFarland is a recent past member serving three years on the Board of Governors for the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Hong Kong, past Chairman of the IT & Telecom Committee (AmCham) serving three years and also involved with several other committees including the Intellectual Property and Real Estate committees. Most recently she was invited to serve on the Advisory Board of WITI (Women in Technology International). Melanie is WITI Hong Kong's Network Director and has also been a member of WITI GEN (Global Executive Network).
Born and educated in the United States Melanie has a B.A. in Economics. She has lived in Hong Kong since 2001. Her hobbies include golf, tennis, writing, music and travel.
Adrian Ott
Author The 24-Hour Customer & CEO
Exponential Edge, Inc.
Adrian Ott has been called, "One of Silicon Valley's most respected, (if not the most respected) strategist" by Consulting Magazine. As CEO of Exponential Edge Inc (www.exponentialedge.com), she helps businesses gain market advantage in an exponential economy. Adrian has worked with some of the most innovative companies in the world including HP (where she was recognized in an annual report for "infusing HP with new revenue streams and new technologies and new business models"), Microsoft, Sierra Ventures, Symantec, Seagate, AT&T, and Clorox.
Adrian is the author of the forthcoming book The 24-Hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-Starved, Always-Connected Economy (HarperCollins, August 2010). She writes a regular column at Fast Company.com. Adrian also serves as Chair of the Strategy & Growth Roundtable for the Harvard Business School Association of No. Calif.
Adrian holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BS degree from U.C. Berkeley. Follow her on twitter at http:/www.twitter.com/@ExponentialEdge
Sheryl Root
Director, Executive Account Management for Business Strategy
HP Product Processes Operation
Sheryl Root is a leader in Stanford's Executive MBA Program, Director of Hewlett Packard's Executive Account Management for Business Strategy, Director of the Strategic Change office at HP, and owns a winery in Napa Valley.
Dr. Pat Selinger
IBM Fellow & VP Data Management Architecture & Technology, IBM
Dr. Pat Selinger is an IBM Fellow and Vice President of Information Management Architecture and Technology, IBM Software Group, at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, California. There, she leads technology development for the next generation of data management systems, responding to customer needs for information systems integration, including both classical database data such as payroll and bank accounts and also less structured data such as email and documents.
After joining IBM Research in 1975, Dr. Selinger became a leading member of the team that built System R, the first proof that relational database technology was practical. Her innovative work on cost-based query optimization for relational databases has now been adopted by nearly all relational database vendors and is now taught in virtually every university database course. In 1986, Dr. Selinger conceived and established the DataBase Technology Institute (DBTI), a joint program between IBM Research and the IBM software development team that accelerated advanced technology into data management products such as DB2 Universal Database. This is one of the most successful examples of a fast technology pipeline from research to development and has become a model other groups try to emulate.
Dr. Selinger was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1994, the corporation's highest technical honor. She moved from IBM Research to the IBM development team in 1997 to lead common technology initiatives across the IBM information management family. In 1999, she was elected into the National Academy of Engineering, among the highest professional distinctions an engineer can attain.
Dr. Ruth J. Simmons
President, Brown University
Dr. Ruth J. Simmons is the 18th president of Brown University, and she is the first African American to lead an Ivy League institution. Previously, she served as president of Smith College, the nation's largest undergraduate women's college and one of the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the country.
Dr. Simmons was the 12th child born to sharecropper family in East Texas. When she was of school age, the family moved to Houston, where her father found employment as a factory worker and her mother worked as a maid while Dr. Simmons entered public school. With strong family and community support, Simmons continued her education, earning her bachelor's degree summa cum laude at Dillard University in New Orleans and her master's and doctorate in Romance languages and literatures at Harvard University. Her effort to understand how her own society could countenance racial cruelty and legally enforced segregation led her to a lifelong interest in humanities and other cultures. She studied in Mexico and France and later served as an interpreter for the U.S. State Department.
Dr. Simmons has had a long and distinguished career in higher education. She has been a member of the faculties of the University of New Orleans, California State University, Northridge, Spelman College and Princeton University. Simmons has worked tirelessly toward opening higher education - particularly elite private institutions - to disadvantaged minorities, a mission she has described as "a matter of national salvation." At Smith, she established the nation's first engineering program at a women's college and started Meridians, a journal focusing on the concerns of minority women. Her achievements in higher education have brought her dozens of honors and awards including Danforth and Fulbright fellowships and nine honorary doctorates.
Dr. Darlene Solomon
R&D/Technology Manager, Life Science and Chemical Analysis
Director, Life Science Tech Labs, Agilent Technologies
Darlene Solomon has a dual role at Agilent Technologies. As Research and Development/Technology Manager for the Life Science and Chemical Analysis group and Director of the Life Science Technologies Laboratory (LSTL) at Agilent Labs, Solomon is responsible for research and development, strategy, investments, and product development processes in the life sciences. Her business expertise spans the life science, bio/pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. She has worked with technologies including mass spectrometry, microanalytical, micro/nanostructures, microfluidics, DNA microarrays, biosensors, separation science, and bioinformatics.
Dr. Solomon serves on the External Advisory Board for National Science Foundation's Nanobiotechnology Center and the Policy Board for DARPA's Center for Biochemical Optoelectronic Microsystems. She is also on the advisory boards for the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at University of California, Davis, and the Ibis Institute for Women's Leadership. In 2001, Dr. Solomon was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame. She is a member of the American Chemical Society and the California Analytical Separation Science Society, and serves on the executive advisory committee for these organizations, now in their Agilent incarnations.
Dr. Solomon holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Stanford University, a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she has completed Stanford's Executive Development Program. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and numerous Who's Who editions.
Karenann Terrell
Executive Vice President, Assistant Chief Information Officer, Walmart
Karenann Terrell is the executive vice president and assistant chief information officer for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Walmart).
Prior to joining Walmart, Karenann was chief information officer of Baxter International, Inc. from 2006 to 2010. She was responsible for the company's global information technology function supporting Baxter's businesses worldwide.
She previously served as chief information officer of Chrysler Group and Mercedes Benz North America, and she spent 16 years at General Motors, where she oversaw engineering, manufacturing and brand development at Cadillac.
Karenann serves on the board of directors for Women in Technology International and was named to Automotive News' list of 100 Influential Women in the Automotive Business. She has been inducted into the National Commission for Cooperative Education's Co-Op Hall of Fame and was named Outstanding Engineer by Purdue University and Kettering University.
She holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from General Motors Institute.
