Speakers
Track: Action
Title: 3 Trust Building Strategies I have learned from Men
Speaker: Sana Choudary, CEO YetiZen
Session Description:
As women we often feel out of place and uncomfortable when networking. A lot of this is because we rightly sense people aren't trusting us as credible and as competent. In this talk Sana shares some of her hacks on changing people's perceptions that she has learned from the men in her business life that she feels all women must know.
Speaker bio:
Over the last 2 years Sana has been the CEO and cofounder of YetiZen a cornerstone of the game developer ecosystem. This includes the YetiZen accelerator, the wildly popular games focused accelerator that takes less than 2% of over 1500 applicants yearly and the YetiZen Innovation Lab, the only game developer community space of its kind for game developer business education and synergy in the new and ever evolving world of social mobile. It has served over 14,000 game developers in the last 12 months. Sana Choudary has a reputation for being a powerful force in creating successful entrepreneurs. She has been highly active in the entrepreneurial and gaming communities throughout her career as a leading member of StartupWeekend; co-founder of NYC’s largest entrepreneurial group Ultralight startups, co-chair of TieCon Youth (world’s largest enterpreneurship conference). Currently in addition to YetiZen, Sana chairs TiE SF Forum to inspire, educate and mentor the budding entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Through YetiZen, Sana is intimately involved with hundreds of startups, gaming veterans, investors, and gaming giants giving her a unique and unparalleled perspective on the game space. Sana often shares her thoughts and ideas on the business of games at @SanaOnGames and http://yetizen.com/blog
Her passions include all types of ethnic food (eating), hot tubbing, hiking, and helping people jugaad their way to success in spite of “reality.”
Track: Action
Title: Bias for Action: Making it Happen
Speaker: Donna Novitsky, CEO Yiftee
Session Description:
You have passion. You are a leader. Now, how do you deliver on all that? In this fireside chat, Ms Novitsky will share her tips for bringing your dreams to reality. How do you recruit, organize, measure and motivate your team (and yourself!) through the roller coaster life of a startup? How do you decide what to do and, more importantly, what doesn't get done? Having worked in 22 different startups, Donna brings experience from the best and the worst to this interactive discussion and invites your real-world questions.
Speaker bio:
Depending on how you count them, Yiftee is Donna’s 3rd or 19th start-up. She is also a former partner of a leading venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures, teaches marketing to engineers and entrepreneurs at Stanford University, is a frequent public speaker on the topic of women, entrepreneurship and investment at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business; and is mother of two teenage kids. She was recently named one of the 2014 Top 10 Women to Watch in Tech by Inc. Magazine.
As co-founder and CEO of Yiftee, Local Gifts, On-the-Go, Donna leverages her leadership and marketing background to build a global mobile commerce company for local businesses and consumers. Yiftee gives small businesses the eGifting technology that large companies have for mobile and web-based commerce, at no cost, with no technology to implement.
Track: Action
Title: Bias for Action: Making it Happen (Fireside Chat)
Moderator: Mary Trigiani, CMO, M31USA
Session Description:
You have passion. You are a leader. Now, how do you deliver on all that? In this fireside chat, Ms Novitsky will share her tips for bringing your dreams to reality. How do you recruit, organize, measure and motivate your team (and yourself!) through the roller coaster life of a startup? How do you decide what to do and, more importantly, what doesn't get done? Having worked in 22 different startups, Donna brings experience from the best and the worst to this interactive discussion and invites your real-world questions.
Speaker bio:
Mary Trigiani has worked with tech startups in Silicon Valley and professional services firms around the world on digital presence, messages and user engagement. She began her career with Andersen Worldwide, part of which now lives on in Accenture, and she then went on to manage a long-time consulting practice. Today, Mary serves as the CMO of M31USA. The company accelerates European startups and SMEs from a US base in Silicon Valley; its European headquarters are in Padua, Italy.
Track: Action
Title: Developing Contagious Creativity Cultures in Start-Ups
Speaker: Megan Gaiser, Founder, Contagious Creativity and former CEO of HerInteractive
Session Description:
Megan Gaiser was one of the first female CEO’s in the gaming industry. Gaiser's position as an insider and an outsider, a CEO and a woman of a modestly sized, non-Triple A studio gave her a unique vantage point. She had the opportunity to learn how to create and capture the market - and hearts - in order to thrive. After 15 years, she left HI to focus on fostering more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her talk will focus on the most important lessons learned as CEO and will explore the critical role of creativity as well as the need to establish more humanistic values in leadership.
Speaker bio:
As one of the first female CEO’s in the gaming industry, Megan's Gaiser spent the last 15 years experiencing the game industry as both an insider, and an outsider. This unique vantage point enabled her to not only sidestep the outdated habits of the game industry, but to create and capture the markets that had been left behind. As CEO of HerInteractive, she gained a reputation for identifying and engaging unproven markets, inspiring collaboration and a commitment to the highest artistic and aesthetic qualities. In partnership with her team, Megan was responsible for breathing life into Her Interactive by co-creating intelligent games for girls and women. Dubbed by the NYT as ‘The UnBarbie’ of computer games, Gaiser grew the company to $8.5M in revenues by co-creating the highly successful and award-winning game franchise based on the Nancy Drew mystery book series.
She recently formed Contagious Creativity to foster more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her reputation led to her being named among “Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women” by Next Generation; “Top 10 Most Influential Women of the Decade” by Gaming Angels;” "2011 Indie Cade Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement”; 15 Cine Golden Eagle awards, three New York festival awards, and the International Documentary Milano Award.
Track: Passion
Title: Passion for Play
Speaker: Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President, Maxis, Electronic Arts
Session Description:
A passion for play led to a career in the video gaming industry. Hear some of the challenges, stories and lessons from navigating this dynamic, creative and challenging environment and how “play” from childhood on has been a common theme.
Speaker bio:
Lucy Bradshaw has been named One of the 10 Most Powerful Women in Games by Fortune Magazine. Lucy oversees the Maxis studio, creators of The Sims and SimCity, and has been with EA since 1997. She has played a pivotal role in evolving The Sims, one of the biggest videogame franchises in history and one that is set to launch its latest installment, The Sims 4, next year.
Track: Passion
Title: How to Leverage Passion to Build Your Tribe
Speaker: Michelle Florendo, Founder of What If You Could
Session Description:
The best leaders use their passion to inspire others and gain momentum toward a common vision. This session will cover why, how, and when to convey your passion in a way that motivates your team and wins customers.
Speaker bio:
Michelle Florendo is the founder of What If You Could, a coaching firm that has shown hundreds of Type-A professionals how to align their work with their passions and purpose. Michelle has spent ten years working in management consulting, brand management, and public education. Over time, she refined her process for using decision analysis, career pivots, and storytelling to transition toward more fulfilling work. Michelle founded What If You Could to share her process with other brilliant, driven professionals who could be contributing so much more to the world, if only their work was more engaging.
Michelle has an engineering degree from Stanford University, where she specialized in decision analysis, and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where she was trained as a leadership communication coach.
She recently formed Contagious Creativity to foster more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her reputation led to her being named among “Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women” by Next Generation; “Top 10 Most Influential Women of the Decade” by Gaming Angels;” "2011 Indie Cade Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement”; 15 Cine Golden Eagle awards, three New York festival awards, and the International Documentary Milano Award.
Track: Action
Title: Shoot! I'm part of the problem!
Speaker: Elaine Wherry, Co-Founder & CXO at Meebo.com
Session Description:
I'm female! Surely my built-in female-to-female empathy means I'm immune to gender bias, right?
Unfortunately, no. In retrospect, I can see that I've also been guilty of bias and in retrospect, wish I had managed a few young women differently. Hopefully a little bit wiser now, I'll share a few stories and what I'd do differently the second time around.
Speaker bio:
Elaine Wherry majored in Symbolic Systems at Stanford. After Stanford, she worked at Synaptics as the Manager of Usability. In 2005, she started meebo with two friends from Stanford, Seth Sternberg and Sandy Jen.
Track: Action
Title: Taming the Elephant in the Room: How to tackle big problems
Speaker: Donna Boyer
Session Description: Facing difficult decisions is an inevitable part of growing a business, yet too often teams ignore the elephant in the room. In this session, Donna shares lessons learned on how to identify, communicate, and overcome the big issues blocking growth. Having led turnarounds and shifts in business models in multiple startups and larger organizations, Donna brings experience and real-world examples of how to (and how not to!) align your team to take action with courage and conviction.
Speaker Bio:
As Chief Product Officer for Blurb, Donna leads product strategy, new product development, and user experience across Blurb’s self -publishing platform. She’s a self-confessed product geek, currently obsessed with making it easy for anyone to create, publish, and sell bookstore-quality print books and interactive ebooks.
Prior to Blurb, she was COO & VP of Products at Kleiner Perkins-backed Callaway Digital Arts, where she worked with publishers to create award-winning, chart-topping children’s books for the iPad. As SVP & GM of Reach Media Group, Donna worked with brands including Starbucks, The New York Times and Yahoo! to develop digital out-of-home content and advertising networks. Previously, she led Network Personalization globally across Yahoo!
Donna started her career at the Harvard Business School, where she researched and wrote about the impact of technology on economic innovation. She earned a B.A. with Distinction in Economics from Swarthmore College. While not at Blurb, Donna serves as an advisor to early stage startups, plays entirely too much Scrabble, and goes to as many amusement parks as possible with her family.
Moderating all Leadership Track sessions
Moderator: Mahak Sharma
Moderator Bio:
Mahak leads the Mobile Gaming team at Inmobi North America. Earlier she was a part of the product team at InMobi focusing on building operational tools for gaming advertisers namely LTV maximization tools, Audience segmentation etc., which contributed to more than 60% of company's revenue. Prior to InMobi, she worked as an investment analyst at Artheon Ventures, a VC fund based out of Mumbai focusing on the renewable energy sector. She holds a Masters Degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelors in Technology from IIT (BHU) Varanasi. She is an avid traveler & currently lives in San Francisco.
Moderating all Leadership Track sessions
Moderator: Stephanie Chuang
Moderator Bio:
Stephanie Chuang is a Special Projects & General Assignment reporter for NBC Bay Area. The Bay Area native grew up in Fremont and Pleasanton, and graduated as a proud Warrior from Mission San Jose High School before heading off to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago.
Stephanie began her career in Topeka, Kansas as a “one-woman-band” reporter as part of a college on-air internship – shooting, writing, and editing stories by herself. After Northwestern, she moved back to California, where she was an anchor and reporter at NBC affiliate KSBW in Salinas. During her time on the Central Coast she reported on a variety of topics; from a school district mired in controversy, to interviewing celebrities at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
Before joining NBC Bay Area, she worked briefly as a morning show reporter at another Bay Area TV station. Stephanie feels fortunate to be home – pursuing a career she loves. Off the air, she enjoys discovering more about her adopted city of San Francisco, in particular the culinary gems! Send Stephanie story ideas or follow her on Twitter at @StephChuang and on Facebook (ChuangTV).
Track: Action
Title: Worry about the Mosquitos, not the Sharks
Speaker: Michelle Zatlyn
Speaker Bio:
Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder & Head of User Experience of CloudFlare, the web performance and security company. Michelle creates products people love. Prior to CloudFlare, she worked at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. In 2012, CloudFlare was selected by the Wall Street Journal as the Most Innovative Internet Technology company, and named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Today CloudFlare accelerates and protects more than 100 billion page views for more than 700 million unique visitors every month.
Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and a minor in Management, with Distinction, from McGill University. She also holds her MBA from Harvard Business School and was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship. Michelle is an experienced public speaker, frequent panelist and sits on the Open Internet Advisory Committee for the FCC. She was named one of the Top Women to Watch in Technology by the Huffington Post and one of the Top 15 Women to Watch in Tech by Inc. Magazine.
Session Description: Over the last four years building CloudFlare, we have grown quickly. We have 1.5 million web properties that use our service, have 100 employees across two offices and help make the Internet better for hundreds of millions of web surfers each day. In building CloudFlare, there were lots of things that at first we obsessed about that turned out not to matter. This session will cover the things that really do and don't matter.
Track: Passion
Title: Living Out Your Passion--Lessons from a Serial Social Entrepreneur
Speaker: Shannon Farley
Speaker Description:
It's too simplistic to say "do what you love". The road between "doing what you love" to "living out your passion" can be long and tumultuous. But for this serial social entrepreneur, there is nothing she would rather do. Hear stories from the field and the lessons she gleaned up along the way.
Speaker bio:
Shannon is an experienced social entrepreneur. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fast Forward - the only accelerator exclusively for tech nonprofits. Previously, she was the founding Executive Director of Spark, the world's largest network of Millennial philanthropists. Spark has the distinction of being the only women's organization in the world with 50% male members. Prior to joining Spark, Shannon co-founded The W. Haywood Burns Institute, a MacArthur Award-winning juvenile justice reform organization.
Shannon has been awarded the New Leader’s Council “Top 40 under 40 Award”, The Aspen Institute’s Ideas Scholar Fellowship, and The Women’s Funding Network’s Changing the Face of Philanthropy Award. Under her leadership, Spark won the 2010 Outstanding Foundation Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals and served in the Inaugural Congressional Conference on Philanthropy and Innovation.
Track: Action
Title: Bias for Action: Making it Happen
Speaker: Alexa Andrzejewski
Session Description: Fireside Chat moderated by Sana Choudary. Discussion will revolve around Alexa's ability to grow from an idea stage to a hyper growth company, creating internal company culture, what it's like for a female entrepreneur to raise multiple rounds, and pursuing an acquisition.
Speaker Bio:
Alexa Andrzejewski is the Founder and CEO of Foodspotting, a website and mobile app that finds and recommends dishes instead of just restaurants. Foodspotting was named a “Hot Trend of 2010” by iTunes and one of Time Magazine’s “50 Best Websites of 2010,” and Alexa has been featured in Inc Magazine’s “30 Under 30” and Gourmet Live’s “50 Women Game-Changers” in food.
Before launching Foodspotting in January 2010, Alexa was a User Experience Designer for Adaptive Path, where she helped both startups and enterprises craft great experiences through strategy, research and design. Following in the footsteps of other Adaptive Path colleagues, she set out to build her own “UX-Driven Startup” when she realized there were many restaurant review apps, but there was no easy way to find or rate specific dishes.
Having experienced firsthand the joy of seeing an idea from inception to funded startup, she loves sharing what she learned with others. Recent appearances include: An Event Apart, SXSW, WebVisions, Big Omaha, and the Web 2.0 Expo.
Track: Leadership
Title: Founder Mom, strategy for family building while company building.
Speaker: Lisa Fetterman, CEO, Nomiku
Session Description: Sheryl Sandberg says "keep your foot on the gas pedal," what gear do you switch into when you're expecting? One founder's action plan to leverage and negotiate with employees, investors, family, and others in order to start a family on her terms.
Speaker Bio: Lisa Q. Fetterman, CEO of Nomiku, named a top food and hardware leader by Forbes and EDN created the first sous vide immersion circulator for homecooks. Nomiku ran a successful Kickstarter campaign raising 300% over their asking amount, during height of manufacturing her modernist kitchen appliance she got pregnant.
Track: Leadership
Title: How to Trust Your Gut in a Data-Driven Town
Speaker: Stevie Case
Session Description:
Defining a career path isn't what it used to be. When you aspire to walk a less traditional line, how to know what to do next? Hear firsthand how to navigate challenging decisions when your corporate ladder looks more like a jungle gym. Stevie will share strategies for collecting and respecting data to inform your decisions without letting it run your life. Follow her journey from pre-law in Kansas to pro gamer in Dallas to VP Revenue at a celebrated San Francisco start-up. She will share direct experience and examples of how to leverage feedback to take calculated risks while maintaining your authenticity and leveling up your career. Beat (and become) the boss without losing your heart.
Speaker Bio:
You might know her as KillCreek rather than Stevie Case -- the world's first female professional gamer. Back in the day, Stevie beat Quake designer John Romero at his own game, and went on to join one of the first eSports leagues as a pro.
Stevie jumped next into game creation, working her way up from QA tester to level designer, producer, and later CEO of her own mobile games studio. Over the past decade Stevie has specialized in digital goods and microtransactions, serving as VP Sales at PlaySpan, a games industry technology provider acquired by Visa in 2011. Now she's VP Revenue at Layer -- the open communications layer for the internet.
Stevie describes herself as a hardcore gamer, a mom, wild prairie child, a certified sailboat skipper, a piano-playing activist, and an adventure-seeker. Her favorite game is still Tetris Attack on the SNES.
Passion track MC: Leigh Wasson
Speaker Bio:
Leigh Wasson is a Senior Wealth Director with BNY Mellon Wealth Management. She brings 26 years of investment management and client relationship management experience as an investment professional across companies such as Citi Private Bank and JP Morgan as well as a number of countries beyond the US.
At BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Leigh collaborates with team members and advisors to develop and implement comprehensive wealth management solutions for entrepreneurs, executives, philanthropists and their family members. Leigh frequently works with individual investors to prepare for the sale of a business. Specifically, she helps individuals transition from entrepreneur to investor.
Leigh earned an MBA from The Wharton School. Her passions include sailing, hiking,cooking and empowering youth to set high expectations and follow their own personal paths.
Track: Leadership
Title: Winning the Game of Influence
Speaker: Koh Kim
Session Description:
In today's connected world, building a strong network and making connections are critical. Learn how to identify influencers, leverage your strengths and win the networking game to help accelerate your career.
Speaker Bio:
Koh Kim is part of the Google Play Games business development team, leading scaled outreach and events. As a hardcore gamer, she works with indie game developers to create best user experiences, building player communities, and launching sustainable businesses on Google Play. She also advises game companies on international expansion and recently spent last year starting the Play business development team in Korea.
Prior to Google, Koh was a strategy consultant at the Cambridge Group, where she helped clients develop and execute growth strategies driven by identifying unmet consumer demand and creating differentiated products and services. She holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys playing and watching sports ranging from tennis to yoga.
Track: Leadership
Title: Understanding and Embodying Your Personal Power
Speaker: Athena Williams
Session Description:
Join us for this fast-paced, experiential “lab” where you will explore your relationship to power as a woman entrepreneur. As you build your company and engage with others, it’s essential that you fully step into your personal power and embody who you are and what you stand for. Understanding how to skillfully work with power is crucial to your success. During this session, you will have an opportunity to:
-Explore your own definition of power in your business and life
-Identify three common power dynamics that play out through your interactions
-Gain new ways to be skillful with your own power and the power of others
-Practice stepping more fully into your power to create your vision in the world
Speaker Bio:
Athena Williams, CEO of The Leaders Studio, brings passion and commitment to developing conscious leadership. With over 18 years of global experience, Athena assists her clients to engage in the right actions to generate long-term positive impact for their organizations, community and society as a whole. She has developed and directed a variety of programs on leadership development, management, stakeholder engagement, leadership presence, high stakes presentations and performance coaching with leaders at all levels. Some of her clients include Adobe, Bank of America, Cisco, City of Palo Alto, eBay, Stanford University and many start-ups. In addition to coaching and facilitating, she is currently developing a leadership app and taking people on retreats to New Zealand, Australia, India and the Maldives.
Track: Passion
Title: From Passion to Payoff – Focusing Your SuperPowers on Your Dream
Speaker: Hilary Weber
Session Description:
Passion is a critical factor in attracting funding, hiring great talent and developing a strong culture – and many women founders are not making the most of this amazing tool. The trick to unleashing your passion for startup success is maintaining a realistic sense of balance for yourself and your new company – it’s powerful stuff!
In this interactive workshop, we will cover:
What is passion all about – and what are my passions?
How can harnessing my passions help me achieve my startup goals?
How can I add balance to the mix so I don’t burn out?
The workshop will include some brief exercises, lively discussions and plenty of inspiring yet foundational action steps to take right after the conference, all designed to make you a more successful and confident entrepreneur.
Speaker Bio:
Hilary Weber is passionate about startups because they will shape the future of our world. Her mission is to “do whatever it takes” to enable them to grow, thrive and become enterprises that sustain strong cultures and innovation. She is a Berkeley-Haas MBA, seasoned business leader, healthcare veteran, digital marketing expert, entrepreneur, leadership consultant and experienced professional coach. She founded her company, Opportu Startup Leadership, in 2012.
Track: Passion
Title: Begin with the end in mind--a guided meditation to define what success means to you.
Speaker: Julie Gieseke
Session Description:
The goal is not to better aim towards your target. The goal is to have the target pull you towards it. This happens when we have a vivid and visceral experience of what we want. When we haven’t fully defined the target, we can invest a lot of time and energy pursuing something that alludes us. We don’t get the support, success or satisfaction we hoped for from all our hard work. This meditation and brief brainstorm will initiate the process of uncovering our core desires. Knowing this will draw our greatest outcomes towards us.
Speaker Bio:
Julie works with individuals and businesses that are seeking clarity or refinement of their direction and vision. Over the last ten years her work has focused on integrating visual thinking, storytelling and creative engagement with strategic thinking. Julie has studied and developed methods that enable her clients to crystallize their path. They identify their specific strengths and hidden resources that propel them, with confidence and momentum towards their goals. The results her clients have experienced are new business insight, shifts in career direction, strategies for achieving greater business results, increased client base and profits, with deeper satisfaction and motivation. Some of her clients include Microsoft, Genentech, Capgemini, KPMG, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Autodesk, and Girl Scouts of America.
Opening Welcome Remarks!
Speaker: Heidi Mayon, Director of Business Development
Speaker bio:
Heidi focuses on the representation of emerging growth and well established corporate clients. Her emerging company practice focuses on pre-incorporation counseling, general corporate representation, angel and venture capital financings as well as liquidity events including initial public offerings and M&A; transactions. She has represented both corporations and underwriters in over 40 public offerings of equity and debt. Heidi also represents a variety of clients in ongoing general corporate governance matters and company reporting obligations under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In addition to her work related to capital markets transactions, Heidi represents clients in a wide variety of business combinations and divestitures, including mergers, acquisitions, tender offers and spin-offs. She is the co-author of two chapters in the widely used treatise, Venture Capital and Public Offering Negotiation.
She recently formed Contagious Creativity to foster more diversity in both the content and leadership of the industry. Her reputation led to her being named among “Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women” by Next Generation; “Top 10 Most Influential Women of the Decade” by Gaming Angels;” "2011 Indie Cade Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement”; 15 Cine Golden Eagle awards, three New York festival awards, and the International Documentary Milano Award.