Our panel is going to walk us through how they have "reinvented" themselves both professionally and personally in addition to guidance on how they themselves deal with attempting to balance these two aspects of their lives. All three of our panelists have pivoted and made significant shifts in their career trajectories. They will talk about their decision making process through their journeys of the past in addition to how they think about future decisions they will have to make. There will be a facilitator of the panel who will lead the discussion with pre-set questions and then will open up a Q&A session to the audience for continued dialogue with the panelists.
The panelists will be:
- Vidya Subramanian, founder of DevOpsly
- Coonoor Behal, founder of Mindhatch
- Sara Abdelmottaleb, Product Manager in Azure at Microsoft
Read below for their full biographies and pictures!
Please register for the event at the following Eventbrite link here:
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Please register for the event at the following Eventbrite link here:
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Vidya Subramanian
Vidya Subramanian is an entrepreneur with a passion for education and a technologist who believed in DevOps and pushed for it before the word was in existence.
Her firm Devopsly LLC helps startups and enterprises alike with operational excellence strategies building road-maps to execute the technical solutions for transforming software teams to be DevOps centric through incremental architectural changes.
Vidya is results driven and customer oriented and her leadership skills has helped teams at Expedia, GE, Boeing to start their journey towards engineering and operational excellence.
Vidya has built and managed teams across the globe including Europe, China, India, Thailand and the United States. She believes that for any company to be successful in today's world, the technology and software teams must be able to function across various locations seamlessly. Her deep empathy and respectfulness towards local cultures and language barriers help technology teams thrive globally as one unit despite geographic distribution.
A computer engineer by education, Vidya started her career as a Software Development Engineer in Test in the Windows 2000 division of Microsoft. She has been part of the .com boom and bust in the late 90s and has been part of teams of founding engineers for many products including Egencia – Expedia’s corporate travel product.
Vidya provides mentoring through SWE as well as other organizations and she is most passionate about supporting women in tech and keeping women in tech. She is an investor in Seattle area startups and has advised Seattle area devops startups.
Besides technology constantly learning and growing as an adult is her most important life philosophy. Most recently, Vidya learnt to ski.
She is most passionate about supporting the needs of girls and women and works with a non-profit in India. In her free time, she loves to be a dance teacher for her daughter’s group or sail. She has a captain’s license as a sailor.
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Coonoor Behal
Coonoor honed her creative problem-solving skills during her years as a strategy and innovation consultant at Deloitte Consulting LLP. For part of her time there, she worked in the firm's Global Innovation Network, spearheading and managing open innovation challenges across more than 100 member firms, and was awarded the prestigious GovLab Innovation Fellowship. Coonoor was also a trained and sought-after facilitator of design thinking workshops, innovation cafes, and Deep Dive sessions during her time at Deloitte, and is an expert in designing sessions that encourage and inspire interactive and experiential learning.
Coonoor has delivered Design Thinking consulting and training projects, and facilitated workshops for a variety of clients, including innovation companies, international law firms, restaurants, multinational banks, consulting firms, and international monetary institutions. She is a graduate of Adaptive Path's User Experience (UX) Intensive and has studied product design with the Wharton School of Business.
Coonoor has designed and delivered Organizational Improv trainings focused on creativity, listening, team building, empathy, public speaking, customer service, innovation, leadership, and collaboration to a variety of clients, including international law firms, “Big 4” consulting companies, major universities, and strategic communications agencies. She is also a regular guest lecturer on “Improvisational Mindsets for Leadership” at The George Washington University School of Business.
With years of experience as an improv comedian and teacher, Coonoor brings levity, adaptability, and composure to every experience and is an expert in using improv techniques to enhance collaboration and ideation. Her Innovation Facilitation sessions are experiential and engaging, using creative stimulus to help clients get more of the best ideas faster. She is certified in “Creative Facilitation and Design” by Retreats That Work.
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Sara Abdelmottaleb
My name is Sara Abdelmottaleb. I love to learn, and I live to help people.
My current passion is technology, as reflected in my work as a Product Manager at Microsoft. I am married to a hardcore software engineer, and a mum of an adventurous six-year-old daughter. My life has been a journey of discovery and learning, which I intend to continue in the pursuit of Technology Management MBA.
I was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At age 15, I returned to Cairo to earn my high-school and college degrees. I earned my BA in Hebrew Language and Literature with honors from Cairo University.
As a young woman, I developed an interest in competitive Archery. I earned a spot on the Egyptian national team and competed in both national and international championships over the course of 11 years.
The highlight of my Archery career was winning a bronze medal in the African Championship in 2010.
