Mentoring Circle | Parenting in Tech

Session Overview:

Come armed with questions and seek advice to successfully navigate your career as a parent in tech. Parents have to manage family and career.  Mothers in particular often have to consider foregoing their careers, reducing hours or even leaving their jobs.  Biases and misconceptions in the workplace promote the narrative that women cannot fully invest in both family and work.  Each mentoring circle will be guided by someone with knowledge and experience succeeding as a parent in tech.  We will restrict numbers for each mentoring circle to promote candid conversations about the challenges we face as parents in tech. 

Mentoring Circle Topics:

• Working While Raising a Family -Creating a Clear Direction
• Re-entering Work After a Break and Surviving the Coronavirus Pandemic
  
• Family Leaves: Tips to Exit Gracefully and Return Triumphantly
• Dare to Thrive: How to Reconcile Career Aspirations While Embracing Parenthood
• Making Work Life Choices in Tech: Raising Kids and Career Paths
• Bringing the Strengths of Motherhood to a Career in Tech

Melissa Brickhouse has over twenty years of experience in Technology. Melissa currently is a Technology Director driving excellence through integrated data and reporting. Melissa is originally from Philadelphia, PA and has 26 aunts and uncles.

Uma Smith is a Senior Software Engineer at Walmart Global Tech. In 2019 she rejoined the workforce through the Path Forward returnship program after a 4-year career break. After her returnship, she was hired full time as a software engineer and then transitioned to become a senior software engineer as a Subject Matter Expert. Her work focuses specifically on UI/UX design and development and their reusability. She is extremely passionate about making software modules efficient and portable among teams. Uma has 12+ years of experience working with frontend and mobile development including Swift, Android, JavaScript, Dojo, Ember, React and Micro-Frontends. She has also been a teaching assistant at Western Michigan University, handling computer science programming classes for sophomores. After graduating, she continued teaching technical classes at startup companies. Currently she is the prime hosting member of the show-n-tell session actively sharing subject matter knowledge with Walmart team members. She was also a co-author for the Poster titled “Reusable React components” which was displayed at vGHC 2020.

Shubra Shetty is a Senior Software Engineer working at Walmart Global Tech since August 2018. She earned her master's degree from San Jose State University and has 8 years of work experience in various backend technologies like BI, C, Java and now focusing on Micro-Frontends and React. As a returnee after taking 2 years off she is currently working as a UI lead on a Walmart internal platform tools team. She has hosted and participated in several Technical Knowledge Sharing Sessions with Walmart team members. Her goals have always been to work with modern technologies and to carry a positive attitude inspiring others working with her. When attendees from Girls Who Code visited Walmart in Sunnyvale 2019 she was a key speaker sharing her experience as a woman in tech and discussed insights about closing the gender gap in tech. She was also a co-author for the Poster titled “Reusable React components” which was displayed at vGHC 2020. 

Family Leaves: Tips to Exit Gracefully & Return Triumphantly

Morgan Dawirs is a Senior Ontologist and prolific mentor with 15+ years of woman-in-tech experience spanning Amazon, small businesses, startups, and self-employment. She’s navigated three family leaves in four years while pioneering applied Ontology and getting promoted. She is also Founder and current VP of Membership for Families at Amazon, an Employee Resource Group for working caregivers and allies with 11K+ employee memberships across 40+ countries. Morgan lives in Seattle, is married to another Amazonian, has two children under 5, and is mostly made of coffee.

Dare to Thrive: How to Reconcile Career Aspirations While Embracing Parenthood

Josie Zeng is a current Data Science Engineering Manager at Pinterest. She welcomed two children in high-paced working environments. She believes motherhood have shaped her as a person and have helped her redefine her professional goals and working styles. Josie has been an active member of WIT and mentors women aspiring to break into Data Science and Engineering.

Jennifer Kloke is a Sr. Staff Data Scientist at LinkedIn and formerly the CTO of Symphony AyasdiAI where she developed and commercialized topological data analysis. She is also the mother of three wonderful children (13, 10, 5). Her journey with parenthood began during graduate school and has continued in her 11 years in the high-tech industry. She has discovered a life-giving path for balancing growing her career with the beauty and struggles of raising children all while supporting her husband in his very demanding career.  Jennifer grew up on a farm in west Texas and got her start in mathematics by selling her cow to pay for math camp tuition.

Making Work Life Choices in Tech: Raising Kids and Career Paths

Prenthis Aguilar has over 30 years of experience in systems engineering, hardware design, manufacturing, integration and test, in the automotive, aerospace, telecommunications and consumer products industries. Her expertise is in product development, qualification, new product introduction and industry compliance. Prior to joining Northrop Grumman, Prenthis worked for several Fortune 50 companies including AT&T, IBM, General Motors, and Lockheed Martin.
 
Prenthis grew up Queens, NY. She is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and was Secretary in NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) during her time there. Twenty-five years after completing her undergraduate degree and while raising four children, she received her Master’s in Systems Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology located in Hoboken, New Jersey.
 
Prenthis volunteers for several organizations within Northrop Grumman and the engineering community. She has participated in professional development panels, middle and high school career days, college recruiting events and STEM education outreach in order to promote engineering to minorities and women as an exciting and satisfying profession. In 2020, Prenthis was featured in the book about women in STEM, “Wall of Wonder: Cornell Women Leading the Way in Science and Engineering”. She pursues her passion for STEM through her recently launched non-profit organization, Lopolopo Inc.
 
Little known fact: Prenthis has a fear of heights, but a life-long dream to be an astronaut. She constantly accepts challenges to overcome her fear and move toward her dream!

Krystle Stringfellow, originally from Northern California graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California with a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. She joined Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, California in the Test Instrumentation Design Department on the F-35 Program in 2003. She moved to San Diego with a job transfer within the company to work on the Firebird Program as a Systems Engineer. Concurrently, she obtained a Masters in Systems Engineering from the University of California San Diego. Krystle accepted a manager role in Manufacturing Engineering and moved to Sunnyvale, California as she also got married to a loving husband with 2 sons and had her first child, a daughter. Missing San Diego, she transitioned back to be Test Planning Manager on the Global Hawk program. Excelling in this role allowed her the opportunity to accept a promotion to Assistant Department Manager and in this role is when she had her youngest son. Currently, Krystle is a Department Manager for Electronics & Payloads Communications and Networks Engineers in Autonomous Design Center of Excellence in San Diego, California. She sees a lot of parallels between her role at home as a department manager and her role as a mom managing a household. Whenever possible she finds new ways to enjoy the San Diego sunshine with her family!

Bringing the Strengths of Motherhood to a Career in Tech

Kristen Sauvigne is a Director at PwC in the Tax Reporting & Strategy practice. She has over 11 years of experience, specializing in integrated use of technology for clients. Kristen has experience with process optimization, data analytics and visualization, robotic process automation, machine learning, and collaboration technologies. Her unique career journey has helped her not only to diversify her skillset, but also be comfortable seeking change and opportunity. This adaptive mindset has enabled her success both professionally and personally as a mother to her 2-year old son!