Kara's background is a mix of private and public sector experience, including Chief of Staff for the QuickBooks Online Platform at Intuit and Director of Experience Design in the Obama White House. In the former, she champions small businesses, solopreneurs, and freelancers around the globe. Prior, Kara received an appointment to the first class of Presidential Innovation Fellows, where she served as entrepreneur in residence, reimagining the relationship between the federal government and the people from a technology perspective. She was also Chief of Staff at 18F, TEDxIntuit founder, and worked on TurboTax, Oscars, and Super Bowl.   Kara does pro-bono digital strategy for the likes of Team Rubicon; spent 10 days in rural India teaching micro-entrepreneur women human centered design; and guest lectures at Stanford, George Washington University, and UC San Diego STEM Academy for high school girls. She graduated summa cum laude from Penn State with a masters in instructional design, and was San Diego Woman of the Year finalist. Twitter: https://twitter.com/karadefrias Website: https://www.karadefrias.com/.  

Intuit QuickBooks: Kara DeFrias

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Reema Poddar is a highly successful executive with 26 years of experience in the software Industry. Poddar is a respected thought leader in Technology and authority on Digital and Organizational Transformation. Her successes include accelerating Digital & Organizational transformations enhancing customer experiences, enabling companies to improve automation, developer productivity, and operational excellence.  She recently served Teradata Inc, as the Executive Vice President and “Chief Product and Development officer” of the company and was responsible for leading worldwide product, technology, innovation, corporate security, and analytics strategy. Here she was instrumental in helping the company through its ambitious cloud transformation and the transition of multibillion-dollar product line from a perpetual to a subscription-based offering. In 2018 & 2019 under her leadership, Teradata delivered the world’s first Data and Analytics Platform – “Vantage”, and the first SaaS application- “Vantage CX”. These multi-cloud offerings led to acquiring net new enterprise logos & doubling the cloud revenue for the company. Prior to joining Teradata, Poddar held a variety of senior executive positions within General Electric Company, Emerson Electric and Software Start Up - Intellution Inc. She is a passionate leader who empowers teams to take risk, fail fast and learn. She is focused on helping women in all areas of technology to reach their next level of success in life and work and is actively involved in a variety of STEM programs, Women in Technology initiatives and other nonprofits.  She holds several business, technology, and CEO leadership awards at GE and the companies she has served. In 2019, Poddar was named one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology by the National Diversity. In 2018, Poddar was honored by the San Diego Business Chambers for her business impact and technology leadership, as well as San Diego Magazine recognized her in the top 5 of the city’s powerful female leaders. Poddar is also an honored recipient of the 2015 Edison Awards for New Product Innovation for healthcare industrial internet of things. In 2014, she was honored with the Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology award for the most innovative new product solution.  Poddar holds a Master’s in computer science and a Master’s in Physics.

2019 Top 50 Women In Technology & CXO: Reema Poddar

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Matthew Joyal is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Pillar Technologies, a risk management platform for construction site developers and general contractors to monitor for destructive environmental conditions through the deployment of on-site sensor for real-time notifications. Matt started Pillar back in 2015 shortly after developing sensor technology applications in college. Since then, Matt and his cofounder were listed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list of 2019.

Pillar Technologies: Matthew Joyal

Monica Caldas is the Chief Information Officer for Liberty’s Global Retail Markets (GRM). In this role, Monica is driving the digital transformation within GRM’s global IT organization by delivering innovative solutions for customers and employees. Monica brings IT industry expertise from both the financial services and industrial sectors to deliver business model innovation through a robust digital strategy.   Monica joined Liberty after a 17-year career at General Electric where she held senior executive CIO roles across several GE businesses covering multiple lines of business including Capital Rail Services, Capital Fleet Services and Transportation. In those roles, she focused on areas such as IT Operations, Software Development, ERP management and global roll outs, systems integrations, and organizational effectiveness.     Monica was recognized by Hispanic Executive magazine as a Top 2016 Leader, was a 2017 Chicago CIO Orbie Awards finalist and was recognized as Digital Leader of the Year 2018 by Information Age Magazine.   Monica holds a Bachelor of Science in business and management information systems from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Business degree from Pennsylvania State University.   Outside of Liberty Mutual, Monica enjoys working in the community to encourage and inspire more girls to pursue STEM roles, is an active member in Hispanic Affinity networks and is a student of mindfulness and meditation. She recently relocated from Chicago to Boston with her husband, two young children and their very curious rescue dog.

Liberty Mutual Insurance: Monica Caldas

Nicole Neumarker is currently working as Vice President of R&D; for Cotiviti, a leading solutions and analytics company that leverages unparalleled clinical and financial datasets to deliver deep insight into the performance of the healthcare system. At Cotiviti she is responsible for delivering value through the software engineering and innovation teams globally. Nicole is the former VP Technology of Helix Education, and originally began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley.  Currently at Cotiviti, Nicole’s initiative portfolio under management, includes all development for new product introduction as well as innovation across the existing install base. She does this by driving lean portfolio and agile practices for scale and entrepreneurial teams for research and innovation. As a member of the Operations senior leadership team, her COE serves product, operations, and go to market functions.  Nicole began her technical career at Cisco Systems’ headquarters in Silicon Valley where she worked on everything from branding and the corporate website development to enterprise data and security initiatives. In her time at Cisco, she learned the criticality of weighing the business value of a project prior to applying scarce and costly technical resources.  Nicole is kept endlessly busy outside of work with her family and kids and is in constant pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee by roasting her own coffee beans in her garage. She has served on the board of a local nonprofit organization focused on high school STEM education, as well as a mentor with the Utah Valley University women’s basketball team.

Intuit QuickBooks: Kara DeFrias

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