Read biographies of feature guests for the 2018 IoT Technology Networking Forum being held tomorrow Wednesday January 17 at The Godfrey Hotel Chicago.
MODERATOR
Juliana Ceja, Program Manager, Amazon
Juliana Ceja is on the ‘people side of software’. Her passion is getting teams to work together and driving products to market. In 2012 she obtained her professional certifications for Business Analysis and Project Management through DePaul University and Agile certifications through Scrum.org. In addition, Juliana is a Certified LeSS Practitioner; a software development methodology for large scale programs.
During her formative years in the South-west side of Chicago, her mother would always encourage her to take apart and re-engineer computers. Juliana was no stranger to Latina entrepreneurs and Latinas in tech as her Aunt ran an IT company. However, it was during her time at Coyote Logistics, a UPS owned start up, where she learned about software development as a Business Analyst and IT Project Manager. In 2014 she joined Rewards Network to assist in a company-wide transformation to Agile frameworks. It was there where she lead the requirements build to release their first financial product in over 10 years.
In 2016 she followed her passion and became an IT Consultant to companies ranging from financial institutions to virtual reality startup. Finding herself at the crossroads of team dynamics and software, she later started The People Side of Software Meetup which now has over 300 members throughout the Chicagoland area.
Now as a Program Manager at Amazon, she oversees a transportation project portfolio and serves as a liaison for technology projects. Her latest ‘passion project’ is focused on starting a Women’s Ideation Lab to encourage and support women in their entrepreneurial goals. Juliana lives in the Pilsen neighborhood with her fiance Alex and their one year old daughter Ava.
Jessie ‘Chuy’ Chavez, Software Engineer, Google
Jessie ‘Chuy’ Chavez is a Software Engineer on the Data Liberation team in Chicago which systematically provides users control of their data in Google products, and he recently celebrated 10 years at Google. Chuy was named to the Crain's 2015 Tech50 list of people to know in Chicago's technology community.
Apart from his main job, Chuy spends his 20% time coordinating education outreach and participating in diversity efforts in the Chicago office such as the Code.org/CS4All initiative in Chicago Public Schools, the Google.org sponsored Robot Revolution, the Chicago Public Library robot and hotspot checkout program, and many other intiaitves with local educational and community partners. He has also spoken to tens of thousands of students to help inspire the next generation to pursue careers in Computer Science.
Chuy is a founding member of the Chicago office’s Mosaic diversity group and local Latino Googler chapter as well as volunteers on initiatives with other employee resource groups.
Born and raised in Chicago to Mexican immigrant parents from Michoacan and Monterrey, Chuy’s first language was Spanish and he attended Chicago Public School's bilingual program until the fourth grade. As the oldest in his family, Chuy became the first in his family to graduate from elementary school, high school, and college. He graduated with a degree in Math from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as coordinated campus initiatives to help Latino/a recruitment, retention, and equality, including the famous 1992 Latina/o student protest.
Prior to Google, Chuy worked as a software engineer at FeedBurner (acquired by Google in 2007) as well as HSBC bank US and Mexico, Best Buy, and even as a teacher in Chicago. Chuy extends his technical expertise to many community and social justice causes in Chicago and Latin America, including serving as a human rights monitor in Honduras and a media volunteer for #Caravana43 from Ayotzinapa, Mexico.
Daniel Contreras, Technology Strategist, Microsoft
Daniel is a Technology Strategist at Microsoft, where he works with organizations in Chicago to help them accelerate their Digital Transformation journey. He has 20 years of technology experience, including 10 years at BP and 6 years at Accenture.
At BP, Daniel built and ran global technology teams across Malaysia, India, the U.K. and the U.S. that supported over 30 projects per year, including SAP and non-SAP deployments, upgrades, end-of-service life replacements (hardware/OS/DB) and data center migrations. He also led the formation of a multi-discipline, cross-organization team to urgently reduce P1 and P2 incidents across BP’s critical production environments. Daniel spent 2 years in Malaysia setting up an IT center in Kuala Lumpur and has extensive experience partnering with business and technology leaders to define and implement strategic initiatives.
Daniel is the co-chair of the Technology Committee of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the Executives Club of Chicago’s Technology and Financial Services Forums, and is also a member of 1871, Chicago’s tech entrepreneurship hub. He is the President of the Board of Directors for the Bleeding Disorders Alliance of Illinois and serves on the community services committee of New Life Community Church.
Before joining Microsoft, Daniel took a career break to mobilize technology workforce development efforts for youth in underserved communities in the South side of Chicago, exposing high school students to virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Daniel is bringing his passion for Diversity in Tech to Microsoft, where he is currently working with Microsoft Diversity & Inclusion leaders to continue to advocate for Diversity in Tech in Chicago.
Samara Hernandez, Principal, MATH Venture Partners
Samara is an early stage investor at MATH Venture Partners with a specialty in financial technology. Prior to joining MATH, Samara spent eight years at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top 5 in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting on business practices. She started her career in the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodity (FICC) group where she lead multiple technology enhancing projects across global exchanges.
Samara is actively involved in the Chicago tech community and passionate about helping underrepresented groups get into STEM education, venture capital and entrepreneurship. She is on the leadership council for Women Tech Founders, an active mentor at 1871, a mentor at the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and on the board of Communities in Chicago Schools and with VentureUp.
Samara earned an Industrial and Operations Engineering degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Northwestern University.
Sunil Peddakotla, Senior Manager, Network Security Engineering, U.S. Cellular
Sunil Peddakotla is the Senior Manager of the Network Security Engineering team within the Security, Applications, Analytics and Automation (SA3) organization at US Cellular. Formerly a Lead Security Engineer on the same team, his team manages the perimeter security controls for U.S. Cellular's corporate network and more than 5 million wireless subscribers and enterprises. This includes a vast portfolio of security services such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation, firewall architectures including M2M (Machine to Machine) firewalls, DNS, and messaging security to combat spam, phishing, and ransomware attacks to name a few.
One of his primary focus areas is to work on developing a security strategy to support a secure IoT infrastructure while ensuring customer business continuity in the unique wireless carrier landscape. He holds a Master’s degree in Telecommunications from DePaul University and Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from University of Mumbai, India.
For the last 3 years Sunil has presented Raspberry Pi based security workshops at the Circle City Con security conference in Indianapolis, IN.
Time is running out to register. The 2018 Iot Technology Networking Forum is tomorrow. Don't miss out >> http://bit.ly/2Di7Qld
Comments