MEET THE SPEAKERS

Juliana is the Head of Houston Incubator and VP of Innovation for Greentown Labs. A Board Member of the Angel Capital Association, Juliana is a Lead Investor of the Portfolia Rising America Fund that invests in BIPOC and LGTBQ founders, as well as the Portfolia Consumer and Rising Tide Funds. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the University of Houston Cougar Venture Fund, the Houston Diversity Fund, the Investors of Color network and Impulse4women. A Kauffman Fellow experienced in Bridging the Gender Gap in investing, she is part of the City of Houston’s Women Commission. Juliana was the Texas Medical Center Venture Fund Director and the Managing Director of the Houston Angel Network. She was the Manager of the in the French Riviera's Sophia Business Angels network and Antipolis Innovation Campus and Project Manager of several International Projects funded by the European Commission. Previously, Juliana worked for 5 years in Singapore: first as an International Trade Consultant for the Trade Commission of Spain in a broad range of industry sectors and then as a Project Manager for the Asia Technology Office of Citigroup, leading projects at the international level. Juliana obtained an MBA at the London Business School and Haas School of Business in Berkeley, specializing in Entrepreneurship.

An investment banker turned three-time award winning Latina entrepreneur from Bolivia, Carolyn Rodz serves as the Founder and CEO of Hello Alice. A free multi-channel platform powered by AI technology, Hello Alice guides business owners by providing access to funding, networks and services. Through a network of nearly half a million companies in all 50 states and across the globe, Hello Alice is building the largest community of business owners in the country while tracking data and trends to increase owner success rate. During her time at Hello Alice, Carolyn was recognized as a "17 Women to Watch," by Inc. Magazine, in 2020 was named Hispanic CEO of the year by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, has testified before the U.S. Congressional House Small Business Committee, and was featured in a U.S. Senate report by Senator Shaheen titled, "Tackling the Gender Gap: What Women Entrepreneurs Need to Thrive." She was selected by Mayor Turner of Houston to co-chair the Women and Minority Small Business Task Force in 2019.

Krista L. Taylor is a Technology Innovation executive at Accenture where she leads Immersive Learning for North America and Extended Reality (XR) for the US South and Houston Innovation Hub. With a knack for creative storytelling, Krista is passionately committed to creating memorable experiences that accelerate human progress. A native Texan, Krista lives in and loves the great city of Houston where she currently serves on the board of Girls in Tech in the role of Director of Data and Research. She is also an active volunteer with KIPP public charter schools where she served as a five-year board member and Young Ladies’ Leadership Chair. Krista holds a master’s degree in business administration and is a certified graphic designer, human resources professional, scrum master, and design thinker. Especially as a mother to two, Krista is dedicated to making a positive impact on the world by unleashing the power of technology and human ingenuity.

Fun Fact: Krista has lived, worked and studied in countries around the globe, including Spain, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

Abhinaya Ananthakrishnan (she/her/hers) leads the Risk Data Analytics team at Meta. Abhi is responsible for envisioning the overall measurement strategy for Global Risk Operations along with building the data infrastructure for our signal marketplace. Prior to Meta, Abhi has been part of other tech companies such as Walmart Labs, Dell and Mu Sigma. Over the course of her career, Abhi has been in various data teams playing different roles in different parts of the business. As a result, she has experienced the entire data ecosystem from infrastructure to building advanced ML models. Her journey has been unique since the data science industry has evolved into many different roles and specialities over the last 10 yrs that Abhi has been working in analytics. She loves data but also abhors pie-charts with equal passion. Abhi got her Master's degree in Business Analytics from UT (Hook'em) and her Bachelor's degree in engineering from India. She is also on the MSBA board at UT where she actively mentors students and informs the program about data needs in the tech industry.

Fun Fact: I am serial hobbyist and like to try new things all the time. Most recently I attended a soap making workshop and strongly considered a career in selling handmade soaps.

Alicia Moniz is a 3x Microsoft AI MVP awardee and has contributed to Cloud Solution Architecture for Fortune 10 companies. As an active Data Platform community member, Alicia speaks globally at Microsoft Data and AI events on #SQL, #AI and #EventStreaming topics. Last year, her book was published by Apress, Beginning Azure Cognitive Services: Data-Driven Decision Making Through Artificial Intelligence. She also authors the blog HybridDataLakes.com, a blog focused on cloud data learning resources, with notes on personal branding! With over 14 years of experience in data warehousing and advanced analytics, Alicia is constantly upskilling and holds more than 12 in-demand IT certifications including AWS, Azure and Kafka. Alicia has grown her personal brand via social media, print and community groups to increase her visibility in the workforce and enjoys supporting women in their personal marketing strategy for career progression.

As a technology leader, Sarah has a strong understanding of how to connect business and product visions, while leading software engineering teams to reach their objectives. She is passionate about building self-directed, high performing teams, and strives to curate working environments that are primed for innovation and experimentation.

Prior to embarking on her technology career, Sarah worked with businesses large and small on global partnerships and co-innovation as a government program manager. Today, her work through Culture ’n Strategy helps founders and leaders of fast-growing and sometimes distributed companies in managing and scaling high performing teams.

Positioned as the intersection between technology, business and leadership, and drawing from her experience in building and leading thriving co-located and distributed technology teams, she is able to relate and be adaptable to real business and organizational needs.

Sarah gives back to the community by mentoring fellow technologists and also serves as Global Community Growth Lead for Culture Collective and as Founder for its Houston Chapter. She also regularly participates in programs and conversations around technology leadership, culture and business.

Richa is a Data Science Manager at Capgemini with multi-functional expertise in consulting, technology, strategy, operations, and product development. She is currently leading a multi-million-dollar project for a major petrochemical client to enable end-to-end digital transformation of manufacturing operations. She has 7+ years of experience in serving the energy industry and is recognized for pioneering custom-built, go-to-market strategies, developing products, and optimizing solutions to benefit global clients, transform operations and improve business performance. Richa is passionate about understanding customer pain points, developing machine learning models to distill complex data and processes into actionable insights and to help business leaders make data-driven decisions.

Fun Fact: Fueled by her passion for travel and food, she developed a food image recognition app that can identify foods from 25 cuisines with over 97% accuracy.

Jennifer Plummer has over 20 years’ experience in the technology industry. She currently manages the Real Time Pricing Engine (RTPE) development team at PROS, Inc. RTPE delivers “Just in Time” prices by managing pricing rules when calculating real-time prices for every request with sub-second response time and zero downtime. She is an active member of several employee resource groups and a champion for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Jennifer earned a B.S. in Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar, a program dedicated to increasing diversity among future leaders in science, engineering, and related fields. She also graduated with a Masters in Information Systems and Technology from Johns Hopkins University.

Fun fact: When I was in high school I used to clean stalls in exchange for free horse riding lessons.

Mrs. Shanna Doucet is a nationally recognized nurse executive with more than 20 years of healthcare and leadership experience. She currently serves as a System Director for the Harris Health Center for Innovation. Harris Health System is one of the largest safety-net healthcare systems in the country. Mrs. Doucet developed the T.A.P into Innovation model in which Technology Access and People are used to cultivate ideas, create synergy and promote intrapreneurship. Mrs. Doucet has extensive experience building high performance teams and leading organizational excellence. She is as an Advisor and Head of Strategic Partnership for the Nursing Innovation Hub, a healthcare technology business accelerator. She actively volunteers as a Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library board member. In addition to this, Mrs. Doucet spent several years as a member of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners, a member of the Quality Texas Foundation, Texas Award for Performance Excellence Examiners and as a member of the National Association for Healthcare Quality Leadership Development Team.

Mrs. Doucet is currently pursuing her PhD in Nursing and Healthcare Innovation at Arizona State University. She holds a graduate degree in Business Administration from Texas Woman’s University and a Bachelors in Nursing. She is certified in Healthcare Quality, Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt and Organization Suggestion Systems Management. She has a passion for mentoring the next generation of leaders to promote innovation and organizational transformation.

Anjlica Malla is a business focused strategic information security solution architect, championing security by design in a dynamic DevSecOps culture. Anjlica is dedicated to instrumenting the security transformation through people and process in a sustainable way. She is actively involved in developing automation for controls assurance in a hybrid cloud environment. Her career spans telecommunications and IT. Anjlica holds a Masters in Computer Science as well as professional certifications in CISSP, and CCSP. Anjlica is passionate about shaping the leaders of tomorrow by providing situational leadership to BSA Scout boy, and girl troops in Dallas.

Reyna Gonzalez has over 8 years of experience as a Business Intelligence and reporting in the Energy and Commodities space. She is currently a Senior Data Analyst & Science Consultant with Publicis Sapient. She helps clients interpreting and analyzing data to drive business decision making. She is excellent at understanding the underlying business problem, handling large and complex data while also highly adept at storytelling, visualization tools and communicating data insights. She is passionate about solving customer’s business problems and making organizational impact through digital transformation. Reyna enjoys teaching and mentoring others to enable their potential in their own data journey.

Reyna holds a master’s degree in International Business from Florida International University and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from University of Stavanger in Norway. She has professional certifications in Microsoft Data analyst, Microsoft Data Engineer and Azure Fundamentals Technology.

Outside the digital world, Reyna enjoys working out, traveling, meditation and personal finance. She is originally from Venezuela but lived eight years in Norway before moving to the US. She can speak English, Spanish, Norwegian and Portuguese.

Ashwini Athalye is a senior software engineer and an elected Member of Technical Staff at Texas Instruments. She works in the System Software Group within the C2000™ Real-time microcontroller business unit. Ashwini has over 12+ years of experience creating embedded products and embedded developer tools. She has held various roles from software architect, technical lead and project manager to brief stints in product marketing. Her current focus is on understanding automotive and industrial customer application needs and applying the insights into the creation and delivery of high performance and easy to use MCU software and tools to help C2000™ customers achieve full device entitlement. She is an active contributor to industry standards bodies and is currently the Secretary of the IEEE 1149.7 cJTAG working group. Ashwini has a Master's in Computer Science from UT Austin.

Fun fact: I love picking up new activities to enrich my spare time. These days I enjoy creating delicate French patisserie and using my newfound love for power tools to build playsets and fix things around the house.

Amanda started her career in technology working in customer support for a video game company and quickly transitioned into project and program management. As a Sr Agile Practitioner for Zapier, she focuses her time and efforts on helping engineering teams excel. The intersection of humans and technology has always been an interest and with a return to the no-code space, she's excited about how Zapier can help democratize technology for others.

Fun Fact: I LOVE camping, and camping gear is probably my largest 'luxury' expense. My partner and I have a camper, a car camping set up, and an ultralight backpacking setup.

Katherine Druckman is a software engineer and privacy advocate, and can be heard weekly on the Reality 2.0 podcast covering topics related to digital privacy, security, and identity with co-host Doc Searls. She is also a frequent guest co-host on This Week in Tech's FLOSS Weekly. Katherine was the longtime Digital Director for the late and highly esteemed Linux Journal, and is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Acquia, working on creating exceptional digital experiences with her favorite open source project, Drupal. In her spare time, Katherine is a decorative arts history enthusiast, and is working toward her next wine certification.

Fun fact: Katherine represented both Romania and Israel in the 2018 Roller Derby World Cup.

Ashton is a growth marketer with 13+ years of experience building, scaling, and optimizing growth strategies for B2C and B2B companies. She has worked in various industries including tech, retail, IOT, politics and public policy, e-commerce, app development, and startups. Ashton specializes in digital marketing, growth strategies, social media advertising, partnerships, and public relations.

She has served as a marketing advisor to non-profits in her community and currently serves as Chair of the Houston Liberty Leadership Council, as a court-appointed child advocate, and was recently appointed to the City of Houston's Millenial Leadership Board. She lives in Spring, TX with her husband, 2 dogs, 2 horses, and too many chickens to count.

Fun Fact: I adopted a draft horse from the Houston Police Department's Mounted Patrol unit.

Kim Raath is Founder and CEO of Topl. Founded in 2017, Topl is building an impact technology economy that enables digital and sustainable transformation across value chains and empowers the monetization of impact verified on the Topl Blockchain. Kim grew up in South Africa and comes from an ethical mining and sustainable agricultural background. She is the first Rice University student to simultaneously complete an M.A. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Statistics. As a leader in sustainability, Kim is a member of CNBC’s ESG Council and also sits on the advisory board of Xpansiv the global market for ESG-inclusive commodities. As CEO, Kim innovates around every problem that arises and continuously finds ways to grow the entire Topl ecosystem.

Fun fact: Kim was the South African national champion in heptathlon before being recruited to the US on a Division 1 NCAA Track Scholarship.

Amanda Ducach believes that women are empowered through connections. She created SocialMama, an Ai-driven ecosystem that supports mothers through friendship & medically vetted resources, for that very purpose. Amanda has an MBA, is a serial entrepreneur, and former hospitality executive, currently residing with her son and husband in Houston, TX.

Fun Fact: Amanda is travel obsessed and has been dog sledding in Antarctica.

As Senior Director, I currently lead MassChallenge's programs and operations in Texas including seed stage accelerators in Dallas, Austin & Houston alongside industry tracks in sports tech, space commercialization and defense innovation. I believe community is a verb and have spent my 15 year career developing social impact initiatives that help to define community and maximize public benefit. A serial entrepreneur myself, I am energized by advising impact organizations at pivot points in their development. By collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, I am committed to building inclusive, equitable networks that contribute to better business policies, standards, and innovation.

Fun Fact: I have lived in Spain and the Czech Republic and love working with international startups trying to get a foothold in the US market.

Yelena is an Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Director at the Rice University’s Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie). She is an early stage VC investor, start-up mentor and an entrepreneur at heart. With over 10+ years of experience in the investments industry, she has been featured as one of the Top Women Investing in Latin American Tech by LAVCA.

Prior to joining Lilie, Yelena was a partner at Cantera Capital and a fund manager at Soldiers Field Angels (SFA), where she led seed and follow-on investments in early stage startups across Latin America. She started her career in venture capital after co-founding Zapatito Blanco, a marketplace for children's products in Mexico. Her work experience also includes Laudex in Mexico City, J.P. Morgan & Chase in New York and Morningstar Inc. in Chicago.

Yelena holds an MBA degree from Kellogg School of Management and a BA degree in economics from Northwestern University. Originally from Kazakhstan, Yelena has lived in the United States, France, Brazil, and Mexico and is fluent in multiple languages.

Anna is a sustainability advocate with a passion for the creative arts that has 5+ years in the tech startup space in both Texas and Europe. She graduated the University of Texas, Austin with a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Chinese Relations and has since devoted her time to help build a more sustainable future.

Trina L. Martin is the founder and CEO of Trina L. Martin International. She is a technologist, international speaker, best-selling author, and podcaster.

Trina is a retired US Naval Officer and former computer programmer. She has over two decades of computer programming, digital forensics, and intelligence experience. Holding a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and extensive expertise, Trina has experienced the biases of the tech industry. Trina's resilience helped her navigate the obstacles and make strides in her career that many said weren't possible.

Qualified but often overlooked, Trina calls herself 'The Queen of Equality in Tech.' She is on a mission to make the tech industry equal for women, especially women of color.

Trina lives in Houston, Texas, with her two children, Dexter the Doberman. She loves traveling, shoes, and wine.

Fun Fact: Growing up I was afraid to swim. To conquer my fear, I became a Certified Advanced Open Water Scuba Diver!

Rachel B. Williams is a Women's Leadership Coach, Super-Connector, and Speaker who helps women take their life back – turning up the inspiration in work and life by leveraging their unique gifts to naturally become authentic leaders.

After a decade of environmental project management for utility-scale energy projects, she pivoted her career to align with her natural talents, creating a unique position connecting energy leaders with the services they need while also being an advocate for women’s leadership in STEM. She also is CEO and founder of her own business, Authentic Women’s Leadership, where she serves women through individualized one-on-one coaching, group coaching programs, and leadership retreats.

She also finds great joy in spending time with her family and pets in Houston, Texas, and getting out into nature as much as possible!

Laura K. Wise is a writer, speaker, and content creator. As a freelancer for the last 12 years, she's built a life that she loves—on her own terms—and is dedicated to helping women everywhere rethink work.

She is the founder of Content Wise Communications (CWC), a boutique communications agency that works with brands to build communication strategies and tell brand stories in a digital world. She is also the founder of The Black Female Freelance Network (The BFF Network), a growing community of Black women freelancers sharing tips, tools, resources, and stories—but most importantly, creating a hiring pipeline.

Laura has supported some of the world’s largest brands throughout her consulting career by developing strategic D&I- and CSR-focused communication plans, successfully executing countless global impact initiatives. Additionally, she creates weekly content to support Black women freelancers (and friends) on their journey to build profitable freelance businesses.

Fun Fact: Laura was recently elected as Member Representative of the Freelancers Union, where she will sit on the board. Freelancers Union is the largest and fast-growing organization representing the 56.7 million independent workers across the United States.

Wendy Fong is the founder and principal of Chief Gigs, which offers fractional business leadership, organizational consulting, and team development. Chief Gigs helps businesses and the people within them achieve optimum performance and thrive in a dynamic and diverse world.

Wendy is passionate about building dream teams with leaders. She emphasizes the natural strengths and preferences of individuals to help team members attain the highest level of performance from each other.

Wendy has over 20 years of experience in culture change, leadership development, team effectiveness, capability building, and operations. She has worked with a variety of customers ranging from healthcare to financial services to engineering.

She is active in the community. She serves as the chair of United Against Human Trafficking and is a board member of Valhalla Investment Group, as well as several startups.

Wendy holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from Rice University.

Fun fact: Wendy loves food and often plans entire trips with the itinerary centered around the restaurants she wants to try.