FY19 Annual Banquet: Guest Speaker, Helen Chiang

We are excited to introduce you to our FY19 Annual Banquet Guest Speaker Helen Chiang.

Fun Facts about Helen Chiang
Where do you live?
Kirkland

Did you grow up in the Pacific Northwest area?
No

What is the best piece of professional advice you’ve received? 
To always surround yourself with people smarter than you, and to make yourself replaceable.

What is your favorite hobby/hobbies?
Tennis, skiing and exploring new parts of the world.

What is your favorite place in the world?
New Zealand

Do you have any interesting or little-known facts about yourself?
I once ran the Boston Marathon next to Will Ferrell. And beat him 😊

Favorite TV show?
American Ninja Warrior

If you could eat one thing the rest of your life what would it be?
Sushi

What is your favorite thing about your job?
I am proud of the work we are doing to use Minecraft as a platform to build a better world.

Where can we find you on the weekends?
Exploring the Pacific Northwest with my husband and two daughters.

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About Helen Chiang

Helen Chiang is the head of Minecraft, where she is responsible for driving and implementing growth plans for one of the most popular video games of all time. Prior to leading the studio, Helen held the roles of General Manager and Senior Director of Strategy and Business at Minecraft, helping navigate the team through the Microsoft acquisition of Mojang and numerous updates, events and releases to the franchise over the last four years.

As a longtime Xbox veteran, Helen has been a key contributor to many aspects of the Xbox business. In her previous position as Chief of Staff for the Microsoft Studios group, Helen managed Studios business operations and communications for a geographically diverse organization of 1,000 people across three locations – Redmond, Vancouver, and London. Microsoft Studios is known for blockbuster franchises such as “Halo”, “Gears of War”, “Kinect Sports”, “Fable”, “Age of Empires”, and “Forza Motorsport”.

Prior to joining Microsoft Studios, Helen managed the Xbox LIVE subscriptions business where she was responsible for driving and implementing strategy and growth plans and was accountable for a $500M business. Under her business leadership, the subscriber base more than doubled in size and created the foundation for what Xbox LIVE is today – a world class online entertainment service with 40+ million worldwide members.

Prior to her nine years with Xbox, Helen managed the Streets & Trips software business where she was responsible for product management and product marketing.

Helen holds a dual bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and computer science from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In her free time, Helen enjoys taking on new athletic challenges and has summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, ran the Boston marathon alongside Will Ferrell, and climbed Mt. Rainier for charity. She lives in the greater Seattle area with her husband and two daughters, with whom she plays Minecraft in creative mode

Reinvent: Speaker Panel

We are excited to have a great group of panelists joining us for our Reinvent panel this January!

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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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.