Category Archives: Women in Tech

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.
Local Tech, Meetings, Uncategorized, Women in Tech

Kristen Olsen at May’s Women in Tech Breakfast

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

Kristen Olsen (@kdolsen) moved to San Luis Obispo nearly 20 years ago to pursue her dream of improving people’s lives through software development. She gets that opportunity every day as a Software Development Manager for Amazon, leading a team that enables people all over the world to independently publish their books for distribution on Kindle and print.

She studied Computer Science at Cal Poly and her career has been a tour of many of the large technology companies that people love – including Intel, HP, Apple, and Adobe (then Macromedia). Locally she started working for LEVEL Studios helping to create websites for large companies and then worked remotely as an Apple employee helping to write the services that Developers use to make applications available on iOS and Mac devices. After working remotely for years she wanted to come into a local office again which lead her to Amazon in San Luis Obispo.
Kristen lives in North County with her amazing husband Joe who stays home to take care of the kids and two young boys who are always at the ready with hugs. In her free time she loves to spend time with her husband and sons playing video & board games, watching eSports, being a part of a church community, and making crafts.

Weren’t able to join us in person? No problem. Join us digitally by checking out link below for Kristen’s insights on being a woman in tech, supporting a stay-at-home dad,  eSports, video games—and how, for Kristen,  technology is an act of making:

Share your own insights on our Facebook page.  Follow us  for updates on upcoming events, hear from other local women in tech, or nominate a speaker.

Meetings, Uncategorized, Women in Tech

Sarah Risley at April’s Women in Tech Breakfast

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

Sarah Risley (@SarahRisley) is the Nuclear Training Accreditation Supervisor at Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) Diablo Canyon Power Plant. In 2010, driven by her passion for recruitment and retention of women in technology, she founded the Diablo Canyon Chapter of U.S. Women in Nuclear (U.S. WIN). U.S. WIN is the premier network of more than 8,000 members that work in, and support nuclear and radiation-related fields, with a keen focus on public outreach and professional development. She continues on the board today, and also represents members from the central and pacific regions on the national level by her service on the U.S. WIN Steering Committee, and is the Executive Sponsor for the national Professional Development Committee. Sarah holds a Master of Business Administration from Cal Poly and Bachelor of Science in Corporate Communication from the University of Texas, Austin. Sarah, her husband Chris, and their two young children reside in San Luis Obispo’s south county.

For those you who missed the breakfast—don’t worry! We recorded the interview.

Check out the link below for Sarah’s insights on being a working mother,  movies—from Nightmare Before Christmas to Some Like it Hot—and women in tech: 

Be sure to stop by our Facebook page to hear about upcoming events, drop a comment, or request a future speaker.

Meetings, Uncategorized, Women in Tech

Kelly Irish at March’s Women in Tech Breakfast

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

Kelly is currently a software engineering manager at MindBody. She received a BS in computer science from Virginia Tech and has worked as a software engineer for the past 20 years. She’s coded for small consumer focused startups to business management software, but the majority of her time was spent coding for government contracts from submarines to surveillance.

For those you who missed the breakfast—don’t worry! We recorded the interview.

Check out the link below for Kelly’s insights on submarines, coding, and women in tech: 

Want more? Be sure to stop by our Facebook page to hear about upcoming events, drop a comment, or request a future speaker.

 

Local Tech, Meeting Summary, Uncategorized, Women in Tech

Bridget Benson at February’s WIT Breakfast

We had a great time getting to know Bridget Benson at this month’s WIT breakfast. Bridget is an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Cal Poly. Her research interests span computer engineering and aquatic sciences, focusing on selecting and developing technologies to advance marine science research.  

For those you who missed the breakfast—don’t worry! We recorded the interview.

Check out the link below for Bridget’s insights on electrical engineering, marine science, and women in tech: 

Apologies for the background noise. These interviews are done in an informal, coffee shop setting. We’re working on engineering a better audio setup, so stay tuned!

Want more? Be sure to stop by our Facebook page to hear about upcoming events, drop a comment, or request a future speaker. 

Local Tech, Uncategorized, Women in Tech

New Year, New Venue, New Faces—WIT 2017

We’re gearing up for 2017—and there are some exciting new changes coming to Softec’s Women in Tech (WIT) group!

First off, we’re going to shake things up with new days, times, and venues for some of our monthly events. Here’s what we’ve got planned:

Breakfasts:

Breakfast will now be the first Wednesday of the month at Steynberg Gallery on Monterey St.

7:30-8:00 Networking/coffee

8:00-8:20 Program

8:20-8:45 Q&A/discussion

8:45-9:15 Networking

For our breakfast program, we’ll be interviewing local women in technology—focusing on relevant issues—so bring your questions. For our first meeting, we’ll be doing some group brainstorming around the topic of “What does it mean to be a woman in tech?”

WIT and Wine Happy Hour:

Our wine nights will be the second Tuesday of each month at Wine Shed.

This is a great opportunity to grab a glass of wine and network with our local women. We keep this program loose and informal—with just a few announcements. The rest goes wherever the conversation may take us.

Lunch:

Lunch will continue to be at noon on the third Thursday of the month at Shalimar.

Take a break from the workday and enjoy a casual lunch with your WIT friends. Informal networking happens over lunch.

Can’t make it?

We’ll miss you—but you can now follow us on our brand new Facebook Page! Stay up to date on our latest events, get audio files of anything you might have missed, and participate in polls so we can continue to bring you the discussion topics you care about most.
See you in 2017!