Category Archives: Women in Tech

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Dr. Kristi Harter on Menstruation and Menopause in the Workplace

We are so excited to have Dr. Kristi Harter as our special guest on this month’s WIT podcast.  Dr. Kristi is a naturopathic doctor focusing on women’s health in Santa Barbara. 

Before we dive in on the topic, here’s a bit about Dr. Harter:

Dr. Kristi Wrightson-Harter graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration from the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, with a concentration in Restaurant Management.  While her classmates were learning about managing the business of restaurants, Dr. Wrightson-Harter was diving into the management of the body—fascinated with the importance of food intake as it relates to optimal health.  After several years, Dr. Wrightson-Harter went back to school for therapeutic massage, where she explored the deep connection between the mind and the body.  Through this process, Dr. Wrightson-Harter found naturopathic medicine and enrolled in Bastyr University, the world’s leading naturopathic university.

During her schooling at Bastyr, Dr. Wrightson-Harter worked with physicians from Northside Hospital in Atlanta as well as several integrated health clinics in Seattle.  This training exposed her to perspectives from both conventional and holistic medicine, creating a more complete protocol of care that employs characteristics from both forms of healing.  While getting her Naturopathic Doctorate, Dr. Wrightson realized the importance of educating her patients on health issues related to food and proceeded to get her Master’s in Nutrition.  She utilizes this exceptional background in treating her patients: using each person’s unique internal blueprint as the guide for working within the basic principles of health.

While she continues to have an integrated primary care practice, today, Dr. Wrightson-Harter focuses on women’s health, hormonal balancing and anti-aging therapies using an integrative approach.

Dr. Wrightson-Harter is a member of the California Association of Naturopathic Physicians as well as a supporting member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the only nationally recognized association for licensed ND’s.

Dr. Kristi sat down with me to talk about the importance of understanding female hormones and their impact on our workplaces.  Hear all her insights in the interview below:

Resources:

Here are a few interesting articles that discuss “period policies” in the workplace to think about:

The Conversation: Three Reasons Employers Need to Recognize Menopause

The Guardian: Menstrual Leave

BBC: Can Period Leave Ever Work? 

 Connect with us:

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Ashley Fry on Male Allies

We are so excited to have Ashley Fry as our special guest on this month’s WIT podcast. Ashley was one of our dynamic keynote speakers at our 2019 Women in Tech Dinner. In fact, we got so many great questions, we decided to sit down and explore the topic of male allies a bit more. 

Announcement: we’re doing a special drawing this month at our WIT breakfast. On June 5th, 2019 at 4 Cats in SLO, where our WIT breakfast meets, anyone who brings a male ally will be entered into a drawing for a giftcard (one for them and one for their ally).  We’ll have a second drawing for male allies who come on their own and know the codeword shared in the podcast.

Before we dive in on the topic, here’s a bit about Ashley:

Ashley Fry is currently the VP of Agile Development & Quality at Dassault Systemes, IQMS and also consults with businesses as a Leadership & Organizational Strategist and Scrum Coach.

It was in a Tech Support role where Ashley discovered the exhilarating high she received from uncovering and getting to the bottom of bugs. She made her way into product development gaining experience in various roles and ultimately worked her way up to management. Ashley has about 10 years of experience working in fast-paced Agile Scrum environments and has led large product development teams, creating both SaaS and on-premise solutions.

Ashley is passionate about creating psychologically safe, experimentation-based work cultures centered around learning, autonomy, and celebrating failure. She is a devout believer that cultivating this type of environment ignites employees’ passion, ownership, and empowerment. Ashley is also a champion for women empowerment and engagement in leadership roles- specializing in tech.

Ashley sat down with me to talk about the importance of male allies—why we need them, how to support them, and pro-tips for becoming one. Hear all her insights in the interview below:

Resources:

During the podcast, Ashley recommended a few resources for becoming and supporting allies:

 Connect with us:

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

2019 Women in Tech Update

Hello SLO WIT!

It’s been a bit since we had a post up, so we’re do for a quick update. 2019 is off to a great start for our WIT community. We started a new podcast, changed up the format of our breakfasts, and had an awesome Women in Tech dinner (shoutout to everyone who attended and made it such a success!). We even have a new newsletter focused on women in tech that will be coming to inboxes near you.

For those of you who want the scoop on everything that’s happened, here’s the short recap:

  • WIT has a new mission statement: To be a resource to women in the central coast community, supporting their pursuit of technical knowledge and careers through empowerment, professional development, and education.

  • Women in Softec leadership—while we’ve always had dynamic women on the Softec board and in leadership positions over the years, we’re excited to have Victoria Hanna as our president and Kelly Irish as our Vice President this year.
  • Our annual theme is retention. We’re talking about strategies to retain diverse talent on three levels: personal, organizational, and community.
  • We’re podcasting! Once a month we do a 15-20 minute podcast episode around a topic. We interview an expert and bring your questions. These get posted so everyone can listen to them prior to our breakfasts. We’re doing our best to pair them with resources and links you can take back to your workplace. Find updates here on our blog, on Soundcloud, or on Facebook.
  • Breakfasts are no longer interviews, but a discussion of the topic from the podcast. It’s a win-win—we get better audio quality on the interviews and you get more time to connect and discuss the topic.
  • WIT Newsletter: it’s coming soon! We’ll have a place for you to sign-up to receive emails about our events and get the podcast delivered directly to you inbox.
  • We’re listening: we want to hear from you—at our breakfasts and lunches, via social media, or through interpretive dance. Don’t be shy about sharing your questions, thoughts, ideas, poems, or insights—our community is why we do what we do.

We’re looking forward to a great year—thanks for being part of our community!

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Lori Jordan at our September 2018 Women in Tech Breakfast

We were so excited to have Lori Jordan as our special guest at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Lori Jordan moved to San Luis Obispo in 2012 after living in Los Angeles for ten years. Before this she was in San Francisco after leaving San Luis Obispo in 1998. Lori graduated from Cal Poly with a B.S. in Recreation Administration and a specialized concentration in Industrial Engineering.
 
Straight out of school, Lori worked for local SLO radio stations as the Promotions Director. She moved to San Francisco in 1998 where she found her place at OpenTV. A Start-up with under 100 employees, Lori experienced the growth and eventual IPO of the company while serving as Product Manager, Tools. After working at two more start-ups in SF, Lori eventually moved to Los Angeles in 2002 where she worked for Yahoo!, Movielink, Netflix and Paramount Pictures. She mostly focused on the new market of Digital Distribution for film and TV.
While at Paramount Pictures, Lori was inspired to start a business in the digital content space, so did just this with her husband. Red Staple focused on creating and delivering interactive movies, albums and books to the iTunes platform. She also started a company in the knitting and fiber industry, Yarn Pop, which she ultimately sold in 2015.
Today, Lori works at the Cal Poly, Center For Innovation & Entrepreneurship where she heads up programs and the Summer Accelerator as the Director of Student Innovation Programs.

Hear Lori’s insights on startups, creating culture, and  developing innovation by checking out the track below:

Note: Thanks for your patience with our audio quality. We’re grassroots and meeting in a coffee shop, so some noise slips through—but we feel the information is just to important not to post.

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Judy Mahan at our August 2018 Women in Tech Breakfast

We were so excited to have Judy Mahan was our special guest at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Judy Mahan has a dual role as the Incubator Director for the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the SLO HotHouse, and the Director of the Cal Poly Small Business Development Center (“SBDC”). At the SLO HotHouse, she leads the programming to assist in the business development of the twenty-one current incubating companies. On the SBDC side, Judy manages the pool of 24 expert consultants who support SBDC clients. With her experience as a corporate and securities attorney, Judy also provides legal guidance to more than 135 company clients within the SLO County SBDC network.

After graduating with a J.D. from the University of Paris X Law School, in France, Judy pursued an LLM in International Tax Law at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. She immediately began her career as an associate attorney for DLA Piper (formerly Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, LLP) in Palo Alto.  During her time in Silicon Valley, she represented tech startups in venture financings, as well as institutional investors in private equity and debt transactions. She also represented companies in public offerings (IPOs), and has experience in general licensing and commercial transactions, including mergers and acquisitions.

Judy has led a number of mutli-million dollar deals, including the IPO for Salon Media Group, Maxtor Corporation’s acquisition of Quantum’s computer hard disk line of business, and a number of acquisitions for Finisar Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of optical communication components and subsystems.

With her inquisitive personality, Judy’s career has been interspersed with a few adventures to the pacific region: one year in Vanuatu as a Senior Manager of Trust and Corporate Services, and another in the Federated States of Micronesia (“FSM”) as the Special Assistant to the President of FSM.

Hear Judy’s insights on starting a business, starting over, and calling out sexism by checking out the track below:

Note: Thanks for your patience with our audio quality. We’re grassroots and meeting in a coffee shop, so some noise slips through—but we feel the information is just to important not to post.

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Reese Galido at our June 2018 Women in Tech Breakfast

Reese Galido was our special guest at this month’s WIT breakfast.

For the last 9 years of her 14 year career in Software, Reese Galido has worked at Mindflash Technologies based up in Palo Alto, CA as their Head of User Experience and Market Research. Prior to this, she started her journey in the Software-as-a-Service sector as a Lead Analyst for Citrix Online, a fortune 500 company, in their Customer Insights group.
Leveraging her experience in Data Management, Market Research, and Software Development, Reese helps direct Mindflash to data driven decision making during the Product Roadmap planning process and rapid prototyping of new ideas. She interfaces with the customer, Executive Staff, and developers to create a more complete picture of the future of the Mindflash learning management platform.
Reese moved to SLO in 1999 years ago to attend Cal Poly on a tennis scholarship, and captained her team to a Big West Championship in 2003 before graduating in 2004. During her free time, Reese is a freelance graphic designer, recording engineer, and musician.

 

Hear Reese’s insights on UX, design, diversity, and hacking video games by clicking the link below:

Note: Thanks for your patience with our audio quality. We’re grassroots and meeting in a coffee shop, so some noise slips through—but we feel the information is just to important not to post.

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Melody Klemin at our May 2018 Women in Tech Breakfast

We had a great time getting to know Melody Klemin at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Melody Klemin is a digital fundraiser at Cal Poly, overseeing online giving, crowdfunding and Cal Poly’s annual Day of Giving. A singer/songwriter who performs at wineries and weddings, Melody loves playing music, especially on the rare and spectacular occasion she gets to play in a local, all-women 80’s cover band called The Betrothed. In addition to helping form a SLO Chapter of Lesbians Who Tech, she also runs a local queer wedding blog, Central Coast Gay Weddings, and is starting a podcast called Queer SLO where she plans to interview local LGBTQ business and community leaders around SLO County.

Melody shared her insights on digital fundraising, the LGBTQ community in SLO,  and the need for mentorship in many different areas and methods. Catch up on anything you missed, or relive the action by listening to her insight interview below: 

Note: Thanks for your patience with our audio quality. We’re grassroots and meeting in a coffee shop, so some noise slips through—but we feel the information is just to important not to post.

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Julie Workman at our April 2018 Women in Tech Breakfast

We had a great time getting to know Julie Workman at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Julie is a lecturer at Cal Poly in the department of Computer Science, and the co-advisor for the Women Involved in Software and Hardware (WISH) Club.  She is passionate about teaching in general, but especially about recruiting and retaining women in computing!  She has supported growth in the number of women (9% to over 30% in the last decade), due in large part to the tremendous effort of the women of WISH and of the other dedicated faculty in the CSSE and CPE departments that she is so proud to be a part of.

Julie has a masters degree in computer science from Cal Poly and have lived in the San Luis Obispo area since 1992.  Her consulting work includes writing GPS software for Trimble Navigation, writing software for experimental robots with iRobot, and working as an intellectual property consultant.  She co-founded the SLO-OP climbing gym with Paul Hatalsky and Yishai Horowitz.  Her other passions include riding motorcycles and hiking around this beautiful area we live in!

Julie shared her insights on women and the need for mentorship, consulting, as well as her passion for climbing. Catch up on anything you missed, or relive the action by listening to her insight interview below: 

Note: Thanks for your patience with our audio quality. We’re grassroots and meeting in a coffee shop, so some noise slips through—but we feel the information is just to important not to post.

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Amanda Radakovich at October’s Women in Tech Breakfast

We had a great time getting to know Amanda Radakovich at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Amanda Radakovich is the Director of Customer Success at Dozuki, a software company based in San Luis Obispo that caters to manufacturers around the globe. As a part of a small leadership team within the company, Amanda has been responsible for building the customer success programs and scaling the support team as the company continues to grow. 

Amanda shared her insights on the software as a service (SAS) world—from communicating technical problems to determining how to best serve different client bases. She shared her story and her love of horses. Catch up on anything you missed, or relive the action by listening to her insight interview below: 

Looking for information on upcoming events? Have a speaker you’d like to nominate? Want to support local women in tech? Follow us on Facebook! 

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Women in Tech

Lorelei Sibet at September’s WIT Breakfast

First off—a quick apology for the lack of previous post from our summer WIT Breakfasts—we had some truly inspirational speakers. While we haven’t been able to keep up posting here, you can relive the adventure by heading over to our Facebook page. There you will find recaps from our wonderful guest speakers: Shannon Pileggi from Cal Poly’s Statistics Department, Jen Rushing from Central Coast New Tech High, and Erica Thatcher from SLO Library.

We’re back in the swing of things here, and should be posting all the rest of our recaps here on the blog. Which brings me to this month’s WIT breakfast recap!


We had a great time getting to know Lorelei Sibet at this month’s WIT breakfast.

Lorelei Sibet has more than 25 years experience as an entrepreneur and business owner. In addition to her agency, One Siren Productions, Lorelei is involved in several businesses, products, and community interests.

One of those businesses is SLO MakerSpace — a 24/7 community tool and craft shop. In the last year she’s expanded Ceramics, Woodturning, Summer Camp, Blacksmithing, Leathercrafting, and the MiniMakers Specialty Program in partnership with Inspire Charter Schools. MiniMakers has 50 homeschool children attending SLO MakerSpace 10-hours a week during the school year for a state curriculum driven and immersive project-based learning specialty program. Lorelei is now focused on expanding SLO MakerSpace’s resources and support for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Lorelei also runs the SLO County Women Entrepreneurs Meetup Group and  Facebook Group for women entrepreneurs and business owners meet, network, share resources, and promote to the community to help grow their businesses. 

After 24 years in the Washington, DC area, two years ago Lorelei moved to San Luis Obispo with her husband and business partner, Dharmesh Patel, to specifically support SLO MakerSpace and grow their other new businesses and products.

Hear all the action and follow along at home by checking out link below for Lorelei’s insights on being starting a new venture, supporting women entrepreneurs, what it means to be a maker, pie factories, and all the delicious details of the SLO MakerSpace: 

Follow us on Facebook for updates on upcoming events, hear from other local women in tech, or nominate a speaker.