On February 28, 2018, Salesforce Ventures and Work-Bench hosted the first event Navigate: Women in Enterprise Technology Summit.
We brought together the most prominent women and allies across enterprise technology - founders, world-class operators, and top-tier investors - for this half-day event.
Watch below to hear the insights from these leaders in enterprise technology as they share how they’ve helped build iconic companies, navigated their careers, and their thoughts on the future of enterprise tech.
Therese founded BlackLine in 2001. She designed the first offerings of BlackLine’s products, engineered its transition to the cloud in 2007, and has led the organization in automating the financial close process via the company’s flagship Finance Controls and Automation Platform. Under her direction, BlackLine has experienced strong growth since its inception.
Previously, Therese served as Chief Technology Officer for SunGard Treasury Systems. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Illinois.
Liz Maida is co-founder and CEO of Uplevel Security, the industry’s first adaptive system of intelligence that uses graph theory and machine learning to modernize security operations. She was formerly a senior director at Akamai Technologies and served in multiple executive roles focused on technology strategy and new product development. Liz holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Princeton University and dual master’s degrees in Computer Science and Engineering Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hilarie joined NEA as a Venture Partner in 2017 on the technology team where she focuses on enterprise software and services. She is also serves as an independent board director across several public companies.
An enterprise software veteran, Hilarie spent the last three decades at growth-stage technology companies in operating and board roles. Most recently, Hilarie was President at New Relic, responsible for New Relic’s growth strategies as well as leading global sales, marketing, customer success, support, and business development. Prior to New Relic, Hilarie was at Salesforce, where she was named President and led the company’s worldwide sales teams and focused on growing the business globally. Hilarie joined Salesforce from Intuit where she was vice president of direct sales for small business and a member of the executive committee.
Hilarie started her career at Oracle Corporation where she held a variety of roles over the course of 18 years, including senior vice president of Oracle Direct where she drove the company’s rapid growth in both the technology and applications markets.
Hilarie currently serves as a member of the board of directors for Tableau, Zendesk and is Vice Chair of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. She also serves on the advisory council of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. She previously served on the board of directors for Informatica, now a private company.
Hilarie has a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Mills College. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Steve and their two daughters.
Leyla Seka is an executive vice president who leads the Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s largest and longest-running business apps marketplace. In this role, she is responsible for driving recruitment, product, go-to-market and other key programs supporting startups and ISVs in the Salesforce ecosystem. This includes the AppExchange, AppExchange Marketing Program (AMP), Salesforce for Startups and more. Launched in 2006, the AppExchange features more than 3,000 apps, downloaded more than 4 million times—and used by 88 percent of the Fortune 500.
Prior to leading the AppExchange, Leyla was the general manager of Desk.com, Salesforce’s all-in-one customer service app for fast-growing companies. Under her leadership, Desk.com landed well-known customer-oriented brands such as Yelp, SnapChat, Fitbit, Bonobos and Disqus, and became known as the savvy customer support app that connects agents with e-mail, phone calls and social channels.
In her ten years at Salesforce, Leyla has held a variety of positions across product management, product marketing and business operations. Before joining Salesforce, Leyla worked in product management and marketing organizations at Primavera Systems (acquired by Oracle), Evolve Software, Vivant and Eutron SPA.Leyla also spent two years in West Africa as a Peace Corps officer in Mali.
Leyla holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French from the University of California, Davis, and a master’s in business administration degree from the Masagung School of Management at the University of San Francisco. She is active in women in technology and equal-pay issues, and was named a “Next-Gen Innovator” by Forbes, among other honors.
Meredith Finn is a Senior Director with Salesforce Ventures focused on investing in enterprise and impact technology companies. She has led over 40 investments on behalf of Salesforce including Twilio, Anaplan, Optimizely, Pendo, Andela, Ellevest and TalkIQ.
Before joining Salesforce Ventures, Meredith worked in finance at Twitter and Google, and as a technology and media investment banker at Evercore Partners and Citigroup. Her experience includes venture investing, strategic corporate finance, and advisory roles. Meredith has an AB in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA with Honors from Columbia Business School.
Jessica Lin is a Co-Founder and Partner at Work-Bench, focusing on investments in future of work and teams. Jessica previously was a Learning and Development Manager at Cisco Systems, where she worked with the Engineering org on Agile transformation, innovation and culture. Jessica is a graduate of Harvard University and developed Harvard’s first aspirational design and experiential education summer fellowship program in Cape Town, South Africa & Paris, France.
Jessica is actively involved with the education and workforce development community, as an advisor to LaGuardia Community College and a longtime GED educator.
Jessica received a BA from Harvard University in Government and African Studies.
Karin Klein leads east coast investing activities for Bloomberg Beta, an early-stage VC that invests in startups making work better, with a focus on machine intelligence. She was on the Techweek100, Silicon Alley 100, Crain’s Women to Watch in New York Tech, and New York Business Journal’s “Women of Influence.”
Karin currently serves on the board of directors for Paramount Group (NYSE: PGRE), Harvey Mudd College, TechCrunch's Crunchies, and L’Oreal’s Women in Digital. She also enjoys volunteering as a mentor with TechStars and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Prior to launching Bloomberg Beta, she led new initiatives at Bloomberg and led Softbank’s venture fund team that reviewed all new investments. While at Softbank, Karin sourced and served on the board of Buddy Media prior to its acquisition by Salesforce. She first developed her passion for building businesses when she co-founded an educational training company for children.
Karin has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Annenberg School of Communications and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Julia is a software engineer, maker, and avid athlete. She is currently Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack. Prior to joining Slack, she was Head of Engineering at Tindie, CTO of WeddingLovely (a 500 Startups company), Product Manager at a mid-stage startup, VigLink, and a Research Engineer as part of one of the world's top User Experience Research groups at IBM Almaden Research.
Julia holds a BS with Honors and MS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where her research focused on both distributed systems and human computer interaction.
Rosa M. Ramos-Kwok is responsible for the Global Wholesale Banking infrastructure globally. Rosa leads a team of technologists responsible for the operational support and infrastructure delivery for the Global Wholesale Bank and the Investment Banking division.
Rosa joined Bank of America in February 2014 to lead the GWB CTO organization. Rosa has over 25+ years of experience at Morgan Stanley and was promoted to all levels of the organization during her tenure at Morgan Stanley (from associate, to Vice President, Executive Director and Managing Director). Rosa joined Morgan Stanley as part of their Information Technology Training Program. Upon graduation from the training program, Rosa held roles in Application Development, Infrastructure Management, Risk Management, and Production Management. Immediately prior to joining the Bank of America, Rosa was the Morgan Stanley Global head of Enterprise Production Management as well as the Americas regional head of Enterprise Infrastructure. While at Morgan Stanley, Rosa was a champion of Diversity as well as Women in Technology and served as the Chair of the Latino Employee Network.
Rosa graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from New York University and also attended the Bronx High School of Science.
Rosa resides in the New York Metropolitan area and has been recognized as a leader in the Hispanic Community and Diversity. Rosa has been featured in several publications including Latina Style Magazine, Diversity and Careers Magazine, and was recognized as a Latin Trendsetter by Latin Trends magazine. Rosa was recognized as a great mind in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) by the HENAAC organization and was recently (2013) recognized by HITEC as one of the top 100 U.S. based Latinos in Technology. Rosa is also a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE).
Polina Marinova is an associate editor at FORTUNE and the author of Term Sheet, FORTUNE's newsletter about deals and dealmakers. Her coverage focuses on entrepreneurship, technology, and startups and she has interviewed founders including Virgin's Richard Branson, AOL's Steve Case, and Foursquare's Dennis Crowley.
Marinova has served as a moderator at FORTUNE events and hosted "Founder Fridays," a weekly live-streamed video series.
Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen leads the administration’s efforts to grow and diversify New York City’s economy, invest in emerging industries across the 5 boroughs, and build a new generation of affordable housing.
On her watch, the City has undertaken the biggest affordable housing plan in the nation’s history, and is building more new affordable homes than under any previous administration.
The Deputy Mayor has made it a citywide priority to secure and expand modern space for hi-tech manufacturing and innovation firms, making unprecedented investments to make New York City more competitive.
She has made boosting the earning power of women a hallmark of her tenure, founding WE-NYC, an internationally recognized platform for funding and training women entrepreneurs—cited as the reason NYC is ranked as the best place in the world for women to start and grow a business by the Women Entrepreneur Cities Index.
She has spearheaded the administration’s efforts to expand infrastructure from CitiBikes, to ferries, to broadband, to keep New York City competitive.
Coming from the private sector, she has applied a career of experience to strike deals that protect the public sector and spur economic growth, and to spread the city’s prosperity to neighborhoods that have historically been left behind.
She is a born and raised New Yorker, and she has built a deserved reputation as one of the toughest, savviest people in the business—but also someone who is truly mission-driven, and cares deeply about the people she serves.