In Her Ellement

Many assume that senior career women with impressive resumes have a plan that they’ve stuck to without fail. Yvonne Wassenaar is here to tell you that that's not always the case. Things can happen to you that you don’t expect. Yvonne is the former CEO of Puppet and Airware and now serves on a number of boards, influencing change from the top down.Yvonne had a difficult start in life and set herself the goal early on of giving herself financial independence. She started working at the age of fourteen and has thrown herself into education and work ever since. Yvonne never intended to be a CEO, but many people encouraged her to test her limits and strive for more. Her advice to others in her position is to take more risks and keep building your networks.Yvonne is incredibly open and candid about the challenges she's faced and the opportunities she’s grasped. When she experienced personal tragedy in her mid-thirties, she made the decision to become a mother and continue building her career. Yvonne has had a lot of support along the way, which allowed her to continue to expand her career and stretch herself further.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.Mentioned in this episode:Future Hindsight PodcastHey In Her Ellement listeners! Do you want to be a strategic player in politics? Then we want to tell you about Future Hindsight, an award-winning podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for all of us. Mila Atmos is passionate about unlocking the power of everyday citizens. Join her on the show as she zeroes in on what you can do - to get engaged and stay engaged. Every Thursday she talks to bold activists and civic innovators to help you understand your power, and your ability to change the status quo. Find the show at Future Hindsight dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this special episode, we’re taking you back to Season 1 for Corin Lines’ conversation with Kesha Williams, Senior Principal at Slalom.Kesha shares how she became an expert across Java, cloud technologies, artificial & machine learning, and AWS. Kesha is a lifelong learner, a passionate mentor, and advocates for more diversity in tech. She firmly believes in paying your experience forward, no matter your seniority or skill level.Since beginning her coding journey in high school, Kesha has gone on to work for Chick-fil-A and Delta Airlines as a Software Engineering Manager and Senior Software Developer respectively. As Slalom’s Senior Principal of the AWS Cloud Residency, Kesha works to grow early career technologists into world-class AWS cloud professionals and leaders. Kesha has experienced being the only woman of color in the tech space many times throughout her career, which has been challenging. After personally experiencing the gender pay gap, Kesha created the Salary Overflow Tool, which allows for greater salary transparency. She also partners with Women Who Code to educate and inspire women to pursue careers in tech.Check out Kesha’s Salary Overflow tool to see where your own salary might compare to what others are being paid in your role. You can also visit Women Who Code to access free resources & workshops, browse job & scholarship opportunities and engage with an amazing network of technical women across the globe. Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology and business. 

How do we encourage more women and girls into cyber security? Kara Sprague is Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at F5, a multi-cloud application services and security company. She believes that we need to re-brand cyber-security to make it more appealing to women and girls.Kara began her fascination with STEM when her father brought home the family's first computer. She quickly became the go-to person at school for any computer-related issues. Kara started her career in a technical role at Oracle but made the decision to pivot into consultancy. She has plenty to share about her transition from an individual contributor to a leader and mentor, and how we can all do our part to make things better in the world.Between 2015 and 2022 Kara spent time on the board of Girls Who Code, an organization that seeks to increase the number of girls moving into computer science. In this role, she was able to see real positive change in how girls were encouraged into the field.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.

Starting her career as an ER doctor has taught today’s guest that “so long as no one is dying, it’s not an emergency”. Dr. Sophie Chung is the Founder and CEO of Qunomedical, an organization that helps patients navigate often complicated healthcare systems to get the treatment they need. Sophie may have started on the path to cardiology, but she decided to pivot into management consulting. In this role, she soon realized that she could create a digital solution for many of the problems that patients and hospitals face when allocating appropriate care and services. Sophie is candid about the challenges women face in becoming entrepreneurs and has a solid support network around her helping her to survive and thrive.Sophie's parents emigrated from Cambodia in the 80s to start a new life. She’s often asked if her parents were also entrepreneurs, and in a way, she says, they were. The most important thing she learned from them was hard work and determination, no matter what the circumstances. Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.

How can you harness your strengths and understand your weaknesses? FYLD’s CEO Shelley Copsey has spent her extensive career figuring out just that and has some great advice for anyone that is hard on themselves about their perceived shortcomings. At FYLD she spends time with junior colleagues, unlocking their potential and expanding their horizons.When she was thinking about her future, Shelley’s dad told her that she should keep her options open. That meant she studied a variety of subjects and ‘future-proofed’ her career through extra learning. When she decided to take a side step into technology, she continued to invest in herself. She practices this at FLYD by sponsoring junior colleagues in pursuing higher education and making time in her schedule to mentor and teach. In Shelley’s first consultancy role, she struggled to find women in senior leadership that she could look up to. Now she’s outspoken about the massive lack of encouragement that women receive during their tech career advancement.FLYD is a digital platform that helps utility field workers manage productivity and safety in real-time. Shelley finds satisfaction in her work by helping people work in a safer, more efficient way.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology and business.

When women are asked about their experiences at work, what challenges do they face and what are their significant milestones? Neveen Awad is a Managing Director and Partner at BCG and leads the Women in Technology Initiative in North America. This wide-ranging study surveys a diverse range of women, bringing their career experiences to life through data.When Neveen completed her Computer Science BSc at Yale, she was the only woman to graduate. There have been many other times in her career where she’s been the only woman in the room and has scrutinized whether this is because of her abilities, or tokenism. Neveen works in the digital, data, and technology space, mainly with clients in the healthcare and government spaces. She’s on a mission to streamline overly-bureaucratic processes to help citizens get the most out of their public services.Through her work on the Women In Technology Initiative, Neveen has some fascinating insights into senior women’s experiences to share in this episode.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.

May Habib has been a CEO for the past decade and always knew she wanted to build a company. She currently heads up Writer, an enterprise AI platform, and has an incredible support system that allows her to do her best work and also hang out with her two children.May is truly a global citizen. She was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to Canada when she was little. She went on to study in the USA and has worked across the world. Her parents worked incredibly hard and May recognizes that her work ethic was inspired by them. May’s goal has always been single-minded; to build something that outlasts her that has a positive impact on the world. Writer is an operating system that tackles the unstructured nature of written content to comply with brand, compliance, and all the other elements that enterprises struggle to align on. May believes that it is impossible to be groundbreaking and inspiring when you are in survival mode, and believes that many women don’t have the support they need to thrive.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business. 

Self-belief is a journey, and there will be bumps in the road. A lack of self-belief is something Professor Margot Gerritsen still experiences sometimes, even after achieving Professor Emeritus status at Stanford. Margot now dedicates her time to running Women in Data Science (WiDS)Margot began her career in computational science over thirty-five years ago, and she predictably found that she was one of the only women in her class at university. Unfortunately, she hasn’t really seen the number of women in STEM rise in her career. WiDS exists to help encourage more women into this field, by offering a community to help them learn and grow. Margot also hosts the WiDS Podcast which you can listen to on a podcast app of your choice.Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.

Facing constant challenges can be daunting. How can you welcome them into your life? Shaku Kandan has always chased new challenges. From joining the groundbreaking startup AirAsia X to joining Malaysia Airlines at a difficult time, she’s always seeking out new ways to push herself further.Full Episode Description: Facing constant challenges can be daunting. How can you welcome them into your life? Shaku Kandan has always chased new challenges. From joining the groundbreaking startup AirAsia X to joining Malaysia Airlines at a difficult time, she’s always seeking out new ways to push herself further.Shaku loves to travel. If you name a country in the world, it’s likely she’s already visited. For her, she views challenges as opportunities, a chance to be part of history in the making. In both her airline roles she saw a huge transformation and relishes the chance to seek out innovative solutions.Shaku is also very thankful for the men in her life who have supported her. From her father to her male friends, they’ve all constantly reminded her that she is deserving of success. She also had two male mentors in her career who provided her with the self-belief she needed to succeed. Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.

When Suma Nallapati was growing up, she didn’t have many women in STEM that she could look up to. During her extensive career in tech, and in her current role as CIO at Insight, she’s put herself forward, inspiring the next generation of talent and giving women and girls a role model to give them hope.Suma was one of only two women who graduated from her nuclear physics class in her home country of India. When she moved to Colorado, Suma began to build an impressive career in tech. Starting out in programming, she always held a deep love for her local community. She even worked in local government for a while, as Secretary of Technology, making her the first person of Indian descent to become a cabinet member. Insight is unusual in that its C-Suite includes many women, including its CEO. As CIO, Suma leads a global team of more than 400 information technology specialists and drives Insight’s digital transformation efforts. She’s also a central part of creating the new solutions integrator category, which she’ll be breaking down in this episode. Join us every episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Corin Lines from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women in digital, technology, and business.