Kaitlin talks with Microsoft's Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie. They discuss her journey from Birmingham, England working at Energis to relocating to the United States and helping create a culture of change at one of Seattle's most mammoth tech companies. On top of being the CAO, Jenny created and leads the DisAbility Employee Resource Group at Microsoft and also helped start the company's Ability Summit. Read more about Jenny here. Note from Kaitlin: Over ten years ago, I heard Jenny Lay-Flurrie talk at Microsoft's YouthSpark program, DigiGirlz. As a teenager at the time, I was inspired to pursue a career in the technology industry. Despite usually being behind the camera, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down with Jenny and interview her--full circle. :)

Jasmine Greenaway is a Cloud Developer Advocate in the Microsoft Azure Organization. She spends her days presenting at conferences and helping our product teams make .NET the best developer platform for building all your apps. Jasmine has had Software Engineer roles at Sears, Rockstar Games and GitHub. Watch this episode to learn more about her journey to Microsoft. GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT. Follow @CH9 Follow @Golnaz89 Follow @Paladique

In this episode of GALs, Soumouw interviews Harini Gupta, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. Harini has been working at Microsoft for 11 years with plenty of experience in developing and shipping software that is used by billions of people. She has spent most of her career as a software developer/engineer. Switched roles in the last 2 years and is currently a Program Manager within the Database Systems organization. Her team is responsible for building tools & services that enable Enterprises to modernize their data platform. She has been invited as a speaker at the STARWEST/STARCANADA software quality engineering conferences to talk about various software agility topics. In addition to Harini's day job as a software person, she is actively engaged in many hobbies and interests. Harini is very passionate about having an impact for a humane cause and giving back to the community that we live in. Since 2015, she has been involved in helping out with Making Connections at the University of Washington Women's Center. This program is aimed at increasing college enrollment and career interests in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields for underprivileged children. Some of her responsibilities include mentoring students, MS campus tour guide for middle/high school students, and attending annual fundraising events. Harini also has an immense love for animals since she was a little girl. She has expressed her caring and tenderness for animals in many ways over the years – whether it was growing up with a dog/pet, nurturing and feeding lost kittens, returning a lost dog to its family, dog sitting for friends, or volunteering at animal shelters. She was also fortunate to have several volunteer opportunities at animal shelters, where her responsibilities included dog walking, and cleaning up. Currently Harini serves as a Board Member on one of the local non-profit animal shelter (Homeward Pet Adoption Center). On the personal front, Harini lives in Redm

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz sits down with the amazing Cierra McDonald to discuss her career at Microsoft. Cierra has been within the Xbox organization for 9 years. She has worked in every aspect of gaming from billing, achievements to documentation. Cierra's love of gaming started at a young age. Her first introduction to technology was when she purchased a floppy disc of Monkey Island and learned to navigate DOS through the installation process. Watch this episode to learn more about Cierra's career path, passions and goals. GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT.

Soumow sits with Rachel Nabors, Program Manager at Microsoft. Rachel Nabors (rachelnabors.com) began telling stories online as a teenager with her award-winning web comics (rachelthegreat.com). Her love of web technologies transformed into a career in front end development, where she has worked with Mozilla, the W3C, and Microsoft to build the web forward. She recently launched a book on the science of using animation in web and app design Animation at Work: (bkaprt.com/animationatwork). Be sure to follow Rachel and Soumow on twitter! Follow @CH9 Follow @rachelnabors Follow @Soumow

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz sits down with Kris Nova to learn more about the girl behind the code. Kris Nova has been involved with free and open source software since hacking her parents computer as a child. She spends a lot of time contributing in the Go, Kubernetes, and Container open source spaces, and has a deep passion for building communities. She recently joined Microsoft as a Cloud Developer Advocate focusing on Linux and Containers. Watch the video to learn more about her journey to Microsoft. You can learn more about her Open Source work on her GitHub page, her blog nivenly.com or via twitter Follow @Kris__Nova.

In this episode of GALs, Golnaz chats with Ashley McNamara, a Principal Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Ashley has been in the tech industry for almost 20 years. But not in the traditional sense. She spent a lot of her time teaching photoshop workshops, doing business mentoring and building websites. But in 2011, she decided to go all in with front-end development. She found herself working with OpenStack, learning Python, joining Rackspace, then becoming a huge contributor in the Linux and Go communities. She finally landed at Microsoft, weird right? Watch this video to learn more about how this Open Source Gopher joined one of the biggest enterprise companies in the world! Here are some ways to connect with Ashley! Follow @CH9 Follow @Golnaz89 Follow @Ashleymcnamara

Sumit heads up the engineering for Microsoft's flagship Office products: Word and PowerPoint across all platforms. She is also responsible for new and upcoming investments in the authoring and storytelling space with Sway as well as reimaging the authoring experience in Word and PowerPoint powered by Intelligent services and investments in Inking and 3D. Prior to this, Sumit lead the Office Engineering team. Her multi-disciplinary team was responsible for driving radical improvements in engineering workflow. Under her leadership, significant progress was made revolutionizing the Office team engineering methodology, moving from three year cycles to continuous engineering with monthly "evergreen" releases. Sumit has a strong track record of engineering leadership and execution over many years. Before her current role, she was most known for her technical acumen and leadership in Excel and Access Business Unit and led development of the Access product through several releases. Follow @CH9 Follow @Soumow

Soumow sits with Ross Smith, Director Skype for Good. Ross is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and blogger. Author of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention and holds seven patents.He has worked at Microsoft for over 25 years and is a Principal Group Engineering Manager. He is a member of the Leadership Council for the Anita Borg Institute, co-chair for Grace Hopper Organizational Transformation track. He is a member of ABI Local in Seattle, and part of the gender partner LT and "male ally" panel discussions at the IEEE Women in Technology and National Center for Women in ​Technology (NCWIT) Summit and TechCrunch. Work with iUrbanTeen and Native Americans at Microsoft. Developed 42projects to promote cultural change, develop organizational trust and improve the lives of the managed. To help develop the next generation's interest in STEAM, he works with the Skype in the Classroom program and events like this recent day at Microsoft . He was invited to the White House for discussion on women in STEM. Keynote speaker for the ARTBA's Transovation 2014-2016. The work of his teams have been mentioned in Forbes, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, PSFK, the American Journal of Play, Harvard Business Review, and the London School of Business. He is a blogger for SHRM has worked on Skype Translator Check out the local Grace Hopper event, here is a linkhttps://community.anitab.org/event/abi-seattle-presents-ghc1-seattle/ GALs is a show about the women who work in Tech (at Microsoft or outside) from three ladies that currently work on the Channel 9 team. Golnaz Alibeigi, Soumow Atitallah, and Kaitlin McKinnon have started a new series featuring women in Tech who work in development, management, marketing and research who have interesting stories to share about their success in the industry and ideas on how to grow diversity in IT. Follow @CH9Follow @Soumow

Beth Pan is a Software Engineer and Content Producer for Microsoft Learning. She was a software engineer at Nationwide Insurance before her life at Microsoft started and graduated from Ohio State University. Learn more about her humble beginnings growing up in rural China and moving to America to follow her dreams of working in tech in the west coast. Follow @CH9 Follow @Golnaz89Follow @beth_panx