2021-01

This week's guests are Megan McCann, Jane Hamner, and Leslie Vickrey. Megan is an established IT recruitment and technology services leader known for building and leading highly successful IT services firms and for her work to advance diversity and cultivate talent across the technology industry. Jane is a dedicated and seasoned IT staffing professional with more than 30 years of experience delivering top technology talent and IT solutions to businesses. Lastly, we have Leslie, an enterprising Chicagoan with a keen entrepreneurial spirit, focusing on making a difference in the tech and business community. Today we talk about how different journeys can bring people to a single place and create a shared mission. Our different talents, passion for diversity, and affinity to technology led us to each other and has allowed us to grow diversity and inclusion within tech. We will also look at how everyone can help make a difference in the tech industry by driving a diverse and inclusive workforce. Thank you for listening; we hope Megan, Jane, and Leslie help inspire others to grow their tech career

This week's guests are Colette Buscemi and Melody Roberts. Colette is the Director of Women's Innovation Learning Labs at the Women's Business Development Center. The organization is focused on supporting and accelerating innovation by and between women business owners, subject matter experts, and corporate partners. Melody is the CEO and Co-Founder of Liv-Labs. They focus on combining self-care tools and easy-access services for convenient health management, starting with pelvic floor fitness. In today's episode, we talk about how innovation is a crucial aspect of business growth. The pandemic has made innovation difficult, but not impossible. Listen to the episode and learn how you can continue to innovate and thrive when facing the modern world's challenges. Thank you for listening; we hope Colette and Melody help inspire others to grow their tech career.

This week's guest is Anne Bathel, CEO and co-founder of ReDI School of Digital Integration. In 2006 Anne graduated from KaosPilot in Denmark, a hybrid of a business and a design school. From 2006-2009, she worked as a corporate social responsibility consultant. While in this role, Anne developed and implemented Samsung Electronics' award-winning corporate social responsibility strategy for Scandinavia. Anne eventually moved to Japan, where she spent two years researching open social innovation and received the prestigious Rotary Peace Fellowship. In 2012, she moved to Berlin to set up the Berlin Peace Innovation Lab in association with Stanford University. The lab focuses on how technology is facilitating emerging and measurable social change toward global peace. In 2015, in response to the refugee crises, Anne co-founded ReDI School of Digital Integration, a vocational training program teaching programming and tech skills to refugees and marginalized people. ReDI is currently teaching 1500+ adults and kids per year. 65% of these are women and girls. Anne was recognized by Edition F as one of "25 Women" revolutionizing German industry and by Handelsblatt as "Mutmacher of the Year" (2018). She was awarded Best Female Social Entrepreneur of the year in Germany 2020 Thank you for listening; we hope Anne's story helps inspire others to grow their tech career.

This week's guest is Rhonda Cook, a Senior Director of Customer Success at Microsoft. Rhonda is responsible for managing the adoption, consumption, and digital transformation for all United States Federal Agencies, Military Services, and Intelligence Organizations. Her focus is to ensure all aspects of these organizations have their needs met when it comes to their usage of all Microsoft 365 offerings. She has continued to help these organizations maintain a modern-day infrastructure in today's digital world. Rhonda's started her career by teaching mathematics and knew that she was excited about continued learning. She continued to train and learn about new technologies, which eventually led her to join an IT training organization. At this new organization, Rhonda honed in on how to find solutions for IT problems that arise. Her knowledge and newfound skill set for finding modern-day solutions allowed her to join Microsoft, where she continued to grow and flourish within the organization. Thank you for listening; we hope Rhonda's story helps inspire others to grow their tech career.