Tech. Strong. Women.

In this episode, join us as we delve into an important discussion on gender, equity and diversity in the AI industry with Paula R. Bratcher Ratliff. Paula emphasizes the imperative of incorporating diverse thought leadership, particularly from women, to combat gender bias in AI. Highlighting the potential of AI in fostering gender neutrality and balance, she sheds light on industry examples and the essential role of strong female leadership. Joined by hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan, they tackle the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women in the workforce and offer insightful strategies for career transitions and reentry. Gain valuable insights into creating a more inclusive and supportive tech landscape. Tune in now!

The cybersecurity conversation has recently shifted from reactive to proactive, focusing on software supply chains and risk management rather than playing whack-a-mole with ever-evolving threats. Today, it's important to take a holistic and proactive approach to cybersecurity, emphasizing open communication and collaboration to mitigate risks effectively. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Karen Worstell, senior cybersecurity strategist at VMware, to discuss the evolving landscape of cybersecurity.Worstell emphasizes the shift in cybersecurity discussions toward supply chain concerns, which she views as a security issue rather than purely a supply chain matter. Karen underscores the importance of addressing technical debt as a significant security problem and quantifying risk in cybersecurity. She introduces the concept of a "technical debt tax" as a means of allocating resources to tackle technical debt before initiating new projects and why it's important for organizations to translate risk appetite into actionable strategies, engage various business units to comprehensively address risk and prioritize cybersecurity practices such as change control and configuration management.

Born and raised in Kenya, Christine Abernathy's journey to the U.S. tech industry underscores the dynamic nature of the field and the importance of collaboration, innovation and adaptability in the rapidly changing tech landscape. Now a senior director for open source evangelism at F5, Abernathy joins this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, with hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan, to share her insights into open source, technology, mentoring and AI's impact on the tech industry.

In the tech industry, despite the propaganda to the contrary, no one achieves success on their own. For Lynne Doherty, she was cheered on every step of the way by friends, colleagues, mentors and supporters in her "Front Row." In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., Lynne Doherty, president of go-to-market and worldwide field operations at Sumo Logic, joins Jodi and Tracy for an insightful conversation on the significance of combining a culture of continuous improvement and technological advancements to drive progress and better outcomes. They also discuss the challenges of managing application development at scale and the importance of observability and security in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape and how the use of AI and automation is seen as a potential solution to improve security practices and combat sophisticated threats while having to navigate the challenges AI presents.Lynne also describes how her success is attributed to having a strong support system, including mentors and role models, who encouraged and guided her throughout her career. This support network, often referred to as a "front row," has been crucial in her personal and professional development.

As a corporate lawyer with 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Tricia Montalvo Timm has been part of small startups, large public companies and everything in between.Tricia is a leader, speaker and author of “Embrace the Power of You, Owning Your Identity at Work.” As a first-generation Latina whose first language was Spanish, Montalvo Timm has overcome multiple challenges to achieve the success she enjoys today. In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women, hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Montalvo Timm about her career journey, how to ignore all the 'shoulds' that are often thrown women's way, recognize your superpowers and use them to drive your own success.

Kathy Park's interest in tech began in a computer science class while she was studying business and finance. That initial interest never waned, and has continued through Park's career to becoming an advisor and partner at Silicon Valley VC firm Andre Capital, where she oversees investments in later-stage tech companies. In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Park about the opportunities and challenges she faced on her career journey and the progression of other young women, the education and career choices available to women in the past and now. Kathy discusses her firm's investment strategies in companies focused on cybersecurity, AI, big data, SaaS, cloud computing and other business enablement technologies and how women can make an impact in the male-dominated VC space.

In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan are joined by Ana Margarita Medina, Lightstep staff developer advocate, and Adriana Villela, Lightstep developer advocate, two powerhouse technologists who've focused their careers on SRE and observability. With experiences in leading observability and SRE adoption, Adriana and Ana work with developers, open-source projects like OpenTelemetry and technology creators to continue the advancement of observability and share the best practices of SRE. Ana and Adriana host the On-Call Me Maybe podcast, speaking with diverse guests from someone getting started as an SRE to highly experienced, sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Technology isn't immune to external geopolitical factors--from investments in AI to the dependency on Asian chip manufacturing, IT is front and center on the global political stage. Even seemingly unrelated events can have a direct impact on the software and hardware products we develop and consume. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women, Jamie Thomas, IBM general manager of strategy, development and CISO, talks with Techstrong Group's Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan about the very real concerns businesses face in both hardware manufacturing and software development. Jamie shares her insights into what the future looks like in an interdependent world, IBM's unique response to dealing with COVID-19 and critical areas that every business should consider in a turbulent geopolitical landscape. Jamie also talks about her work as the chairperson of the OpenSSF, her work with the Biden administration and how Log4j started an entirely new conversation around securing the open source software supply chain.

Business leaders tend to underestimate the one factor that could make or break digital transformation: the human factor. But underneath all the talk about new and emerging technologies like blockchain, ChatGPT, the Metaverse and other is people. In this episode of Tech.Strong.Women., Kamales Lardi, author of the book “The Human Side of Digital Business Transformation,” talks with hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy about the need for technology leadership to embrace qualities that were traditionally seen as “weaknesses” like empathy, vulnerability, authenticity and open communications skills and how those translate to empowering leadership and drive more successful digital transformation. Lardi also talks about how the focus on the “digital” piece of digital transformation is not sufficient without equal focus on “transformation,” and why the younger generation of tech and business professionals are better equipped to tackle these challenges.

In this episode of Tech. Strong. Women., hosts Jodi Ashley and Tracy Ragan talk with Liz Rice, chief open source officer at Isovalent, about extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) and its impact on the open source ecosystem and observability, the challenges open source developers face with the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act legislation and the significant impact AI has on open source. Rice will discuss how AI opens up numerous opportunities for further automation and optimization of open source development, integration and delivery all along the SDLC. Finally, Rice explores how the modern remote, work-from-anywhere technology landscape will empower more women and underrepresented groups to pursue tech careers.