The FY17 nominating committee is very excited to present the following candidate bios for the elected positions listed below:
- Section Representative (elect up to 4):
- Elaine Reeves
- Erin Kiselica
- Julie Bennett
- Kalyani Mallela
- Kat Morrill
- Sonia Hingorany
- Theresa Krack
- Wendy Jenkins
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section Representative
Elaine Reeves
Elaine Reeves has been living in Redmond for 4 years now after moving from Edina, MN to work for Microsoft as an EMC Test Engineer. She graduated from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, MN in 2009 with a B.S.E.E. (Electrical Engineering), B.A. in Physics, B.A. in Vocal Music Performance, and a minor in Applied Mathematics. You may be wondering where the music fits into this, but Elaine says she obtained the music degree because while she thoroughly enjoy the challenges that are within engineering music feeds her soul, calms her, and gives her another way to express herself.
Elaine is currently one of the 3 section representatives of SWE-PNW. With her other co-representatives, she has been representing the SWE PNE section at the both local engineering group meetings and at the regional level. Previously in the Twin Cities SWE she was both a professional representative at both St. Cloud Stata & University of St. Thomas as well as Co-Chair of the Professional Development Committee.
Being one of the section representatives this last year has been a very enjoyable and enriching experience. I would like to continue serving the PNW-SWE section in this role to help further the vision the section is working towards.
Outside of work I participate in the RunDisney races with my husband at Disneyland, Disneyworld, and at the end of September I can also include Disneyland Paris. We are currently looking forward to both my husband’s first trip to Europe and then to Hawaii next year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erin Kiselica
Erin Kiselica has been involved with SWE since her freshman year of college in 2007. As a collegiate, she held a variety of leadership roles, including Outreach Coordinator and Webmaster. As a professional, she most recently held the position of Section Representative for SWE Philadelphia and served as a judge for society scholarship applications in FY16.
Erin graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) with her Bachelors in Computer Science in 2012. She is currently a Software Engineer at Amazon, where she works on the Seller Experience team for Amazon India. Outside of work, Erin is passionate about STEM outreach, and enjoys playing board games and traveling in her spare time.
As section representative, my primary goal is to keep strong lines of communication open between our section and the wider body of SWE, starting at the region level and onwards as we work through the upcoming governance changes. As a section representative for SWE Philadelphia (which in fact covers most of southeastern Pennsylvania and some of New Jersey) in FY16, I have experience with reaching out to members in a geographically large and diverse section, and if elected, can use this to bring new ideas to drive member engagement. As a recent East Coast transplant, I am excited to get involved with SWE in the Pacific Northwest, and appreciate your consideration!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Julie Bennett
No candidate statement or picture provided.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kalyani Mallela
Since 2008 Kalyani Mallela has held a variety of leadership positions at the local, region and society levels. Her passion and belief in SWE’s tag line “Aspire. Advance. Achieve.” reflects in her contributions to the organization. In SWE-MN, her contributions included leading and growing the outreach program, developing new programs to raise funds, mentoring the section leadership, developing goals for the growth and advancement of section, and leading the executive council to a successful year. Kalyani’s achievements have been recognized by the Minnesota Section with numerous awards including the “Most Dedicated Member” Award. At the Region level, she has held key leadership roles including serving a one year term as Region H Senator. Kalyani has been instrumental in re-aligning the SWE Society Awards to better align with SWE Strategy by leading efforts to identify gaps, understand the impact, working with other leaders to develop new recognition programs, and implementing them. She has been recognized by SWE as New Faces of Engineering top nominee in 2014 and received SWE Distinguished New Engineer in 2016. She has been an active member and a leader within the SWE community and continues to support and bring awareness about engineering and diversity.
SWE Society Level Involvement:
FY15-Present Strategic Initiatives Committee Member
FY14-FY15 Global Leadership Award Coordinator
FY13 Chair, Awards & Recognition Committee
FY12 Chair-Elect, Awards & Recognition Committee
FY11 Co-Coordinator Collegiate Poster Competition and Professional Development Section Awards
FY11-FY14 Judge for Freshman Scholarships
FY11-Present Member of the Program Development Grant Committee
FY10-FY15 Member of the Outreach Committee
Region H Involvement:
FY15 Region H Senator
FY12-FY14 Region H Awards Chair
FY11-FY15 Region H Outreach Representative
FY11 Region H Nominating Committee Member
SWE Minnesota Section Involvement:
FY15 Newsletter Editor
FY14 President
FY13 Vice President
FY12 Fund Development Committee Co-Chair
FY12 Alternate Section Representative
FY11 Section Representative
FY10 Outreach Committee Co-Chair
FY09-FY15 Active Member of Professional Development Committee
FY09-FY15 Active Member of Outreach Committee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kat Morrill
Kat Morrill is a Senior Systems Engineer with Honeywell Aerospace in Redmond, WA. Kat holds a BSE in Computer Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Kat has 15 years of experience testing software and hardware for a variety of aerospace applications including communication, navigation, radar and satellite systems. She has spent her career advocating diversity in engineering, including mentoring student engineers and interns at Honeywell. She also has experience working as a volunteer coordinator with a large organization in Phoenix. Her responsibilities included working with event planners to ensure volunteers were provided for large festivals and events in the Phoenix area.
I would like to work with the Society of Women Engineers to continue promoting diversity in engineering. Diversity doesn’t just include more women becoming a part of our profession, but also includes promoting diverse ideas and perspectives. I would like to work as a leader in our SWE section to continue promoting more diversity in our engineering community.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sonia Hingorany
Sonia Hingorany moved to Seattle a little over a year ago for her full-time job. She currently works at Amazon in the North American Transportation group, focusing on contract negotiations with third-party transportation carriers and Amazon's strategic vision for its transportation network. She earned her MBA from Carnegie Mellon University where she focused on concentrations in Information Systems and Operations Management. Before earning her MBA at CMU, she previously worked at Accenture for five years in a Technology Consulting Manager role, specializing in systems integration and technical architecture initiatives for various Financial Services clients around the world. She also has her BS in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Cognitive Science from UCLA where she held a position on the SWE board for three years. She likes to play soccer and tennis and enjoy the outdoors including running, hiking, and skiing. She loves to travel; she has been to more than 30 countries and visited 40 states in the US. She also spends her time volunteering for the South Asian Heart Center, where she writes grant applications to corporations in hopes of raising funds to help support heart research and the prevention of heart disease.
I am running for the Section Representative role, specifically the Membership Committee, for the SWE PNW chapter. I have extensive experience in working on boards of organizations and conducting outreach activities to attract, engage, and retain members of an organization. Not only do I have experience doing outreach but also have successfully demonstrated stewardship on multiple occasions by training and developing members of the organization to take over key leadership roles. I have performed these activities through being involved with a variety of organizational work at school, from being on the SWE board for three years and having a key role on the Indian Student Union and Asian Pacific Coalition club boards at UCLA, to being Executive VPs of both the Business & Technology and Operations Management clubs at CMU. As mentioned, I also volunteer my time to raise funding for the South Asian Heart Center in Mountain View, CA. My proudest accomplishment while I was on the SWE board at UCLA was the main objective of the Evening With Industry Chair, which was to create a networking night where students and representatives from a variety of engineering companies from all over the country had the opportunity to sit down and have a more intimate conversation over dinner followed by a career fair. This signature event required a significant amount of outreach to companies to attend and help fund the event, marketing to students, and event coordination with UCLA. Hearing my fellow classmates tell me they secured interviews and ultimately internship or full-time positions as a result of the connections they made at the event made it a very rewarding experience.
I bring a unique sense of cross-functional leadership, collaboration, and strong communication skills to the table from my involvement in these various organizations as well as from my professional experience at Accenture and Amazon. I have led teams of 40+ individuals and have worked in a global capacity with a variety of business and technical teams. I am able to recognize talent and build upon one's potential when I see it. I believe this skill will serve well in this role where it is imperative to be able to engage members and determine if they are interested and capable of taking on leadership roles. My vision for this role is to be very hands on with and interactive when evaluating if someone is interested in a leadership role and will likely succeed at it. My idea here is to have those interested take on some type of task to complete or event to plan and let them learn the job by actually doing it with some guidance from myself and others on the board. Encouraging them to come up with an idea and own the implementation of it in my opinion is the best way to attract, engage, and retain members.
I'm very much looking forward to contributing to the SWE PNW chapter and look forward to meeting you all!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theresa Krack
Theresa Krack has been an active participant and member of
the Society of Women Engineers since her college days at the University of
Minnesota, Twin Cities. She completed a dual degree program in 2006, earning a
B.S. (major: physics, minor: math) from the University of Wisconsin – Eau
Claire and a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She is passionate about continuing her
development as a professional engineer but also strives to pay it forward to
the next generation and continue to find ways to improve the SWE connections and
mentoring for current members.
Theresa was a professional member of the SWE Wisconsin
(SWE-WI) Section from 2006 to 2013. Her passion was to help bridge her interest
in SWE with her life-long passion for Girl Scouting. In May 2012, she became
the SWE-WI Girl Scout Liaison, working to keep SWE-WI involved with Girl Scouts
of Wisconsin Southeast (GSWISE), coordinating STEM outreach events for both
groups.
When she moved to the Seattle area in the fall of 2013, Theresa
worked to fit the SWE PNW events, both professional development and outreach,
in her schedule of balancing moving, a new job, and completing a Master of
Engineering Management. She wanted to quickly connect with her new local
section and was able to start meeting new people and learning what SWE PNW has
to offer.
As the SWE PNW Virtual Brand Coordinator, Theresa has lead
the effort to revamp and develop an improved virtual footprint for the section
over the last couple of years, focusing on improving the virtual space to
better member-to-member engagement for the section. She transitioned and updated
the section webpage, launched an integrated social media platform, launched a
new newsletter format and blog, and has been working to streamline the behind
the scenes infrastructure for the group.
In FY16, Theresa expanded her role with the section, taking on
a Section Rep role and leveraging that to help improve communication from SWE at
all levels to the local members. She also took on several major roles with the ABJ2016
joint regions conference, hosted in Seattle, including Co-Chair of the Programs
& Speakers Committee, Website & Tech Support, and Day-of Logistics
Coordination Team.
Theresa has been a Senior Certification Engineer with Honeywell
Aerospace for about three years, being recognized as a Honeywell Outstanding
Engineer for 2015, and has worked in the aerospace industry for approximately
eight years. She works with aircraft certification, dealing with FAA regulations
and compliance, and has worked projects ranging from certifying the use of cell
phones on airplane in Europe to Honeywell’s Runway Awareness and Advisory System.
She hopes to continue supporting SWE as a Section Rep,
building on the foundation of the virtual brand to facilitate improved communication
and interaction between members (and officers!) in the virtual space.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wendy Jenkins
No candidate statement provided.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
