Elizabeth Carlassare
Internet Strategist and Author of Dot.com Divas (moderator)
Elizabeth Carlassare is an Internet strategist and coach for women in technology and women entrepreneurs, helping them reach their goals and craft the lives they want. She's the author of "Dotcom Divas: E-Business Insights from the Visionary Women Founders of 20 Net Ventures." Carlassare was named one of the "Net's 25 Movers and Shakers" in February 2001 by Interactive Week magazine, and is regularly interviewed by the media on the topic of women's technology entrepreneurship. She is also the creator of dotcomdivas.net, an online community for women Internet entrepreneurs. She has more than ten years of experience with high-tech companies, including Adobe Systems, Intuit, SGI, and MyWebtivity (an Internet company she cofounded).
Robin Raskin
Editor-in-Chief
Family PC
Robin Raskin is the editor-in-chief and founder of FamilyPC. Regarded as one of the country's leading authorities on the integration of technology into the lives of parents and their children, Raskin has crafted a publication that is a must read guidebook for parents raising the first generation of digital kids. As editor of PC Magazine, she brought keen insights into the burgeoning high-tech industry and identified the need for a consumer magazine that would aid today's "connected" families. With Raskin at the helm, FamilyPC has grown in the past five years from a circulation of 200,000 to 700,000, reaching an audience of more than 2.3 million readers. Raskin is also an outspoken advocate for children's safety on the Internet. She has spoken to schools around the country on "Protecting Your Kids Online" as well as to industry insiders. Raskin has testified before the Federal Trade Commission on Internet safety; presented FamilyPC research to then-Vice President Gore on parental technology; and was invited to join former First Lady Hillary Clinton for a series of policy meetings on women technology issues.
Chell Smith
VP
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
Chell Smith is a vice president with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's Chicago office and has global responsibility for our Advanced Development & Integration practice. In this role, Smith leads the strategy, sales and delivery of technology services provided by 16,000 consultants globally. Her focus is enabling Cap Gemini Ernst & Young to provide unsurpassed speed, value, and quality in technology services through unique capability, distinctive partnerships and extraordinary thought leadership. Smith's responsibilities include the oversight of the global network of Accelerated Delivery Centers (ADCs). These centers, in 17 locations around the world, focus on the leading edge delivery of business applications in distributed component computing environments.
Deidre Paknad
Chair, CEO and Founder
R101
Deidre Paknad is a seasoned executive with nearly 20 years of experience in sales, operations, and marketing. She founded CoVia in January of 1996, served as CEO and president into 2000, and currently chairs CoVia's board of directors. During her tenure at CoVia, Paknad grew the company to over 100 employees and to multi-million dollar quarterly revenues. She led efforts to create substantial customer relationships and million-dollar deals with companies such as ADP, American Airlines, Chevron, Dell, First American Financial, Intuit, MetLife, ProStaff, Wells Fargo and others. Paknad raised over $35 million dollars for the company from Adobe Systems, American Express Financial, Dain Rauscher Wessels, Granite Ventures, SAP Ventures, and other investors. Paknad and CoVia have twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History for technology innovation; the company and her personal profile are a permanent part of the museum's collection.
Linda M. Scherr
Program Director
IBM Women in Technology
Linda Scherr joined IBM in 1973 and has spent the majority of her career in the development, marketing, and management of high-end systems software. In 1995, Scherr coordinated the activities of the IBM Women's Diversity Task Force; and in 1997, formulated the IBM Women in Technology Steering Committee, which she now chairs. The WITSC strives to foster an environment within IBM that supports the contribution and growth of IBM's technical women and encourages girls and women to enter and remain active in technical careers. Through the results of her Steering Committee, IBM is now positioned as a leader in the industry on behalf of corporate technical women.
Marguerite Raaen
SVP
e-Enablement, Cable and Wireless
Marguerite Raaen is SVP of e-Enablement at Cable and Wireless with responsibility for world wide business enablement operations, services and support. Before joining Cable and Wireless, Raaen was the VP of Business Development at Metiom, a B2B marketplace provider. Prior to that she held executive and management level positions at IBM in sales, marketing, product development, and research. As manager of IBM's Emerging Technologies department, she led a distinguished group of PhD's in exploring new technologies for IBM's top customer accounts. Her work in expert systems and intelligent agents led to several joint industry engagements for IBM. Raaen and her worldwide team in IBM's CIO's office improved IBM.com by introducing a new, self-service design for Contact IBM. The initiative dramatically cut the cost of handling over 50,000 monthly customer eMails, and led to new customers for IBM in eMail management, data mining, and web self-service. Raaen holds several degrees in psychology, education, and computer science. She has authored two books and 120 papers. In 1999, she and her teammates won a patent for IBM in Natural Language Processing/Categorization technology.