Category: Women in Tech

Gessica Chies is a Principal Solution Consultant in Infor. Even though she doesn’t have a technical background, she started her career in IT as a Marketing Intern at Microsoft while she was finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Economics and made her way up by studying and challenging herself. She worked for some of the top IT companies: Oracle, Microsoft, Ingram Micro, VMWare, Mcafee, and finally Infor. After living abroad for 4 years, she decided to go back home and have a more stable life but she is always on the move, enjoying working in IT and traveling to different countries, speaking different languages and still learning every day something new.”

Meet Pretty Kubyane Co-Founder of Coronet Blockchain, Director of Iconic Wigs, and inspirational Conference Speaker.Pretty’s business experiences date back to her days in the village, where from the age of 6 she worked in her family’s business. Her father owned a car repair workshop and wood cutting businesses. Prior to co-founding Coronet Blockchain in 2019, she worked in management consulting, specializing in access to new markets. Key highlights include scaling a new business from 500 USD to 2 million USD within 36 months. She and her husband Shadrack Kubyane then received two funding tranches from a US multinational, to build Coronet, a tailored blockchain-enabled supply chain solution to disrupt Africa’s supply chains. Their vision leading to 2030: covers the top 3 BFFs: Beauty, Fashion and Food, supply chains. Leveraging tech, for social good across 9 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Uta Haller joined VMware 7 years ago and is responsible for Partner Go-To-Market for Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) in EMEA.In her role, she is responsible for the development and execution of the channel strategy, initiatives, sales plays and enablement to help partners position HCI as part of their customer’s digital transformation journey. Prior to this role, she was the SDDC Partner Lead EMEA and EMEA Partner Program Manager.Uta has more than 27 years of sales- and marketing experience, working with all routes to market in IT. She has worked for leading Tech companies like SAP where she developed and managed their EMEA partner programs, worked for BEA Systems as Channel & Industry Marketing Manager and their SOA initiatives in CEMEA, and held several Sales- and Marketing positions at Sun Microsystems.She is also an active member of VMware’s Diversity & Inclusion- and the VMware Foundation’s service-learning programs. Uta speaks fluent English and German.

Chioma Nzekwe is PMP Certified Project Manager and Tech Professional with more than 10 years of experience in different IT companies. She is currently working with SAP Germany and serving as a Senior Technical Consultant.She is passionate about telling stories (her truth) to empower and educate. She uses personal essays and blog posts to communicate with her network and followers.Her writing is published on Medium and Linkedin. She is a wife and mother of three children.

Liesel Klokkers who works as presales engineer at Salesforce, Germany is the mother of three children.Apart from being a woman in tech, she also loves reading and taking walks to observe nature.She leads a team of 35 presales engineers and she strongly believes in facilitating the development of her team even if it means that they move away, which she calls natural.She studied computer science and embarked on real-life applications in her with European Space Agency (ESA).In her career, Liesel has worked with Oracle, a startup, became a freelancer & consultant and then as a first-line manager in Salesforce.Her recommendations/tip are:1. Don’t be afraid of something that looks tough from the beginning.2. Believe yourself and be hardworking.3. In finding your career, find what you like to do (passion) and find mentors for yourself in those areas of interest.

Dola Akinduro is a senior manager with over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. She currently works at HubSpot where she leads a team of PreSales Solutions Engineers across EMEA. Dola is passionate about all things PreSales and is an advocate of DEI in the workplace. Proudly Nigerian by birth and Danish by choice, she has lived and worked in Denmark most of her life and now lives in Hamburg with her husband and 1.5-year-old daughter.

Meet Emma Rosell Chief Technology Officer at NetClean. Emma lives in Gotenburg in Sweden with her husband and her 2 kids. In her free time, she enjoys being active in skiing and climbing. Emma came in contact with tech as a child. Her best friend’s father worked from home on one of the early Apple computers. He allowed her and her friend to borrow it to play games. Emma believes that this early introduction to the technology is the key that created a lasting interest. As she got older, she discovered the Internet. She wrote her high school project paper on the Internet (this was at a time when the Internet could still be referred to as a single subject). After that, the decision to study information technology at university was easy, and she’s never regretted it. Before starting as a CTO at NetClean, Emma has held multiple other Leadership positions.

Lidia is currently a Specialist Solutions Engineer for the Network and Security Business Unit in the UK, where she’s responsible for the Healthcare sector. She has been in this role for almost 2 years now, with a background in Network Engineering.She’s incredibly passionate about making technology and technical careers approachable and accessible by sharing her own experiences. She’s also an advocate of bringing your true self to your work and not conforming to the expectations of a career in tech, especially as a woman in a primarily male-dominated field.Links to see more from Lidia can be found below!LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lidia-rosenova-vasilevaTwitter: www.twittter.com/packetmageWebsite: www.packetmage.com

Birgit was born in South Germany and now lives in North Germany,She started out with being a bank clerk to some other companies including Microsoft and VMware where she currently works,Brigit has no university degree but believes and participates in lifelong learning through various other platforms to acquire the relevant skills that she needs to build her career.She also discusses how the private life is relevant to the growth of the professional life when properly harnessedFinally, her advice for upcoming women in technology is to find and understand their personal motivation.