She Sparks Tech

Polina Norina is an account manager at a SaaS company specializing in project management software. Before working in tech, she was a content manager and led projects in publishing and consumer insight research. She delivered projects for companies such as Meta and Google, and now uses her project management experience to consult clients on the right project management solutions for their organization.

Connect with Paulina on LinkedIn.

Looking to transition into tech? Start exploring what comes next for

Stay in touch with Casey & She Sparks Tech:  

Instagram @SheSparksTech 

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-bertelsman/

The combination of analytical thinking, a realistic way of looking at the world and the passion for solving problems, drove Anemari Fiser to a career in Software Engineering without giving it a lot of thought.

Once she had her first job as a Developer, she quickly identified her next career goal: becoming a Tech Lead. And she made the decision to move countries and companies to join a team that supported her in pursuing a Tech Lead role faster than “the straightforward path”. And she became a tech lead at 26.

But like so many of us, she struggled with burnout once the pandemic hit. Anemari quit her job and was looking for a way to heal. 3 months later, she received her certification as a coach and started her business as a Career Coach in tech. 3 more months later she was working with a bootcamp to support their students getting their first tech roles.

In 2022, Anemari joined the CodeOp team as their Education Lead/Product Director. CodeOp is a company supporting women+ transition into tech. This led her to pursue a topic very close to her heart: working with companies on training and coaching their Tech Leads on tech leadership skills. -

Anemari still supports women+ transition into tech, but her main focus is growing Tech Leads, as she believes the best way to amplify positive change in a team is by having great leaders.

Connect with Anemari:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anemari-fiser/ 

https://anemarifiser.com

Looking to transition into tech? Start exploring what comes next for you  & your career with my easy to use Transferable Skills Guide! Download it here: https://linktr.ee/caseybertelsman

Stay in touch with Casey & She Sparks Tech:  

Instagram @SheSparksTech 

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-bertelsman/

Schlaine Hutchins is a Cybersecurity Professional with over 20 years of experience in Information Technology. Her responsibilities have grown from the helpdesk to leading Cybersecurity teams. Throughout her career she has worked in the healthcare industry, banking and insurance industries. Ms. Hutchins has worked with companies from 350 employees to more than 50,000 employees giving her unique insight into various organizational structures.

Connect with Schlaine on LinkediIn - be sure to send her a message knowing you found her on the podcast!

Looking to transition into tech? Start exploring what comes next for you & your career with my easy to use Transferable Skills Guide! Download it here.

Stay in touch with Casey & She Sparks Tech:

History serves as an important way of recording the past. By being able to recognize important figures, people can understand current circumstances and pave the way for a better future.

However for centuries, Black voices have been erased from the historical narrative, as storytelling has been told by primarily white voices and predominantly celebrates white figures.

Many students (including myself) have not been taught about the contributions of Black people, especially Black women, to this country’s history; even when they are, those lessons are often cursory and superficial, and minimize the impact of those contributions.

So this episode is dedicated to bringing some of those stories to life.

Emphasis on *some* because I know these highlights don’t even scratch the surface of the impactful women who have been ignored by history.

Resources:

https://woz-u.com/blog/black-women-history-impact-technology/

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53158292

https://builtin.com/women-tech/women-in-tech-workplace-statistics

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/telling-stories-black-women-tech-history-month-tarika-barrett-ph-d-/?trk=pulse-article_more-articles_related-content-card

https://www.paconsulting.com/insights/celebrating-black-women-in-tech-for-black-history-month

https://www.womentech.net/blog/black-history-month-30-outstanding-black-women-in-tech

https://girlstart.org/celebrating-black-history-month-women-in-stem/

https://www.poetofcode.com/

https://www.media.mit.edu/people/joyab/overview/

https://www.poetofcode.com/

https://www.tequitable.com/

https://wearebgc.org/

Some accounts mentioned in this episode:

@girlswhocode

@joyfulcode

@t_equitable

Jen Paxton is an HR and recruiting leader experienced in high growth tech startups whose degree was NOT related at all. She committed to really learning about the tech industry after starting her career in technical recruiting. That commitment led her to amazing HR success, focused on building HR and Recruiting strategies from scratch; including direct sourcing and employment branding, delivering exceptional candidates; working with managers to streamline hiring process; welcoming, onboarding and training new employees; driving initiatives to create company culture; advising new managers on best practices and counseling employees on career growth and transition.

Then Jen made the leap to take all of those recruiting and people ops skills into creating Jamyr - a tech start-up platform that helps busy recruiting teams scale employee generated video content to attract more of the right candidates.

Looking to connect with Jen? Reach out at the links below!

For the last episode of the year, I want to celebrate everything that has come from She Sparks Tech.

30 episodes

I launched my How to Identify Transferable Skills Guide this month.

And if you aren’t following along on instagram @shesparkstech, you are missing some truly great content and that is really where I’m trying to bring the party to in 2023.

Listen to the episode for all of the advice that I want to revisit for the LAST EPISODE OF 2022. (Re: supposed to be posted in 2022, but I'm a human, whoops!)

Sidney Collin is the creator of NexStride, a small, versatile device that attaches to canes, walkers, or walking poles to help people overcome mobility issues. Sidney created the device as a student at Cal-Poly, after befriending a local veteran named Jack - who suffered from freezing of gait stemming from Parkinson’s. Determined to help Jack, Sidney used her knowledge of engineering and her passion for how the brain works, and created a device that allowed Jack’s brain to properly “communicate” with his body, helping him to overcome freezing of gait. Years later, Sidney’s device has been proven to help improve outcomes for people suffering from mobility issues stemming from strokes, cerebral palsy, MS, Parkinson’s & more.

Sidney’s academic research background is in computational neuroscience, including a research paper published in the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology. Previously, Sidney was awarded Cal Poly’s 2019 Outstanding Woman in Engineering Award, Outstanding Student Award, Lisa Hufford Scholarship Award, and was identified among the most influential women at Cal Poly by the Wire in their 30 under 30 list. Sidney has also been recognized by The Pacific Coast Business Times as an accomplished young business leader in their 40 under 40 list, as well as their Who’s Who in Health Care, Insurance & Life Science list.

Learn more at https://www.getnexstride.com/

Connect with Sidney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidneycollin/

This episode is all about TRANSFERABLE SKILLS.

Yes, transferable skills are communication, teamwork, problem solving, organization, analytical, technical, selling – but you can represent them SO MUCH better than that.

I’m sharing my process for finding transferable skills for a new role, walking through an example using a real job posting that you can follow along with.

My goal for sharing this is to help you see new opportunities in what your past roles CAN bring to the table. It’s a skill to learn to communicate that, one everyone is continually working on!

Also, I will be releasing a guide on identifying transferable skills and creating a resume before the end of the year – it’ll be the ultimate how-to guide based on this episode with other great tips & tricks and resources pulled together.

I will share more about how to access this guide before the end of the year, so be sure to tune in on upcoming episodes!

In the meantime, you can find me over on Instagram @SheSparksTech.

If you’re joining in on the example job posting breakdown, use this link.

This episode digs into applying for roles from the perspective of a recruiter. For anyone getting ready to apply for a new role - this is must listen!

Sanja was oblivious to tech throughout her undergraduate schooling, having majored in Child and Youth care. She began her tech career by fluke (and a little luck) as a customer support rep at Shopify, helping merchants with their business needs and problems. After having an incredible recruiting experience at Shopify, she realized recruitment was a perfect tie between what she learned in school and technology. She transitioned to the Shopify Talent Acquisition team in 2017 and hasn't looked back since.

She has held various roles in TA and People including Director of HR and Director of Talent Acquisition for various start-up and scale-up tech companies as well as leading a Go to Market team for a 10-person start-up. She is currently leading recruitment at Noibu and believes her skills are best suited to building a company's initial talent layer.

You can connect with Sanja on LinkedIn here.