Join us for a unique panel discussion featuring women inventors from the Boston area. Vicki Donlan, Founder and Publisher of Women's Business, will moderate the discussion focusing on how the featured women inventors came up with their ideas, how they turned their ideas into reality, and the lessons they learned along the way.

About Our Speaker(s)

Moderator:

Vicki Donlan is publisher and founder of Women's Business Boston, a 25,000 controlled-circulation newspaper devoted to women in business in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island region. She is a regular guest discussing women in business on New England Cable News' Business Day.

Donlan was the first Executive Director of The Commonwealth Institute, a nonprofit organization founded by twelve prominent Boston women CEOs to assist women entrepreneurs in the growth of their businesses. As co-founder and first Exectuive Director of the South Shore Women's Business Network and founder of The Alliance of Women's Business and Professional Organizations, Donlan has been instrumental in the growth of networking for women entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.

She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the U.S. Small Business Administration's Massachusets and New England Women in Business Advocate Award for 1994, the South Shore Women's Business Network's Women Mean Business Award, the Boston YWCA's Women of Achievement Class of 1999, and the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus' Abigail Adams Award as an outstanding woman.

Speakers:

Helen Greiner is Chairman and Co-founder of iRobot Corporation. Under Ms. Greiner's leadership, iRobot Corporation is delivering robots into the industrial, consumer, academic, and military markets. Recently, she was named the Ernst and Young New England Entrepreneur of the Year® for 2003 (with iRobot co-founder Colin Angle). Selected from entrants across New England, she was cited for her experience, expertise and innovation. She has also been honored as a Technology Review Magazine "Innovator for the Next Century," invited to the World Economic Forums as a Global Leader of Tomorrow, and has been awarded the prestigious DEMO God Award at the DEMO Conference. Her 15 years of experience in robotic technology includes work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Science, both from MIT.

Miriam Kadansky is currently the Manager of the Systems Technologies Hub at Sun Microsystems Laboratories in Burlington. In her seven years at Sun Labs, Miriam has worked in several research groups. Her major work has been in the Network Scalability & Performance group, where she developed innovative routing algorithms, and was Principal Investigator for the Java Reliable Multicast Service®, a toolkit for building reliable multicast applications utilizing a variety of transport protocols. Prior to Sun, Miriam held several engineering positions at Xyplex, a manufacturer of terminal server, bridges, routers, and switches, as well as Jupiter Technology, Interactive Data Corporation, and Distribution Management Systems. Miriam has a B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard College, and is currently pursuing an MLS degree at Simmons' Graduate School of Library Science. She has published numerous papers on networking algorithms, and is an inventor on thirteen US patents.

Sharon Mullen is the founder of Inventive Parent, a company she founded in 2000 after recognizing a need for inventive children's products and realizing that the existing products did not answer many parents' or children's needs. Her first invention came after her son was born and she found that attachable blankets did not exist for baby carriers and car seats for children over one year old. She then created her own design for a blanket that attaches to car seats, joggers and bike seats called the Original Car Seat Cozy. After visiting an international showcase of baby products, she became convinced that the best child products were invented by parents not corporations. She proceeded to create an online store to carry her own products as well as products created by other parents. In February 2002, she was the recipient of a $10,000 grant from Balance Oasis for oustanding female entrepreneurs.

Event Date and Venue

This event will be held from 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
One Network Drive
Burlington, Massachusetts 01803
Map

Please bring picture ID to check in through Sun security when you arrive. Free parking is available on campus. Follow the signs to VISITORS PARKING.
When this section is full, signs will be posted to overflow parking.

Directions to our Burlington Campus are online at:
www.sun.com/corp_emp/boston/map.html

From Logan International Airport:

Follow signs to 93 North Exit airport via the Callahan Tunnel. Merge onto 93 North immediately after leaving tunnel. Take 93 North to 95 South/128 South (approx. 10 miles). Take 95 South/128 South to Rt 3 North (approx. 6 miles). Take 3 North to next exit- Rt. 62. At end of ramp, turn right. At second set of traffic lights, turn right onto Network Drive and follow VISITOR PARKING SIGNS.

From the Massachusetts Turnpike and points West:

Take Mass Pike/Rt. 90 East to 128 North/95 North. Follow 128 North to Rt 3
North Take 3 North to next exit- Rt. 62. Continue directions from above.

From points North (Rt 3):

Take Rt 3 South to exit for Rt 62. At the end of ramp, at lights, turn left. At third set of traffic lights, turn right onto Network Drive and follow VISITOR
PARKING SIGNS.

Schedule

Networking will take place from 6:00 to 6:45, with the panel discussion following from 7:00 to 8:00. The last 30 minutes will be reserved for questions.

Pre-registration for this event is closed and on-site registrations will not be accepted.

About Our Sponsor(s)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is pleased to welcome WITI-Boston to its Burlington campus in March for one of many events to commemorate its third annual clebration of National Women's History Month. This year's theme, "Women Inspiring Hope and Possibility" aligns perfectly with the panel of women inventors who are scheduled to speak!

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.

Locally, Sun is located on a 140 acre site in Burlington, Massachusetts that serves as its East Coast campus. To learn more about Sun in Boston, go to: www.sun.com/corp_emp/boston/campus.html

For more information on National Women's History Month: www.nwhp.org.

Contact Us

For more info regarding registration or event details, please contact Christie Smith, Program Chair ([email protected]).

For more details about pre-registration, contact Tech Support.