Gather your team and BYO Lunch as you kickoff WIT with a guided roundtable discussion led by a WIT Luminary. WIT Luminaries are female-identifying technology executives and community leaders who join the event to meet our attendees and share their leadership journey.Teams will have the opportunity to participate in a pre-event or post-event Luminary discussion. This will be pre-scheduled by CTA with your team.

• Frannie Matthews, President & CEO, Colorado Technology Association

• Angie Hicks, Chief Customer Officer, ANGI Homeservices | Cofounder, Angie’s List 

Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie’s List and Chief Customer Officer of ANGI Homeservices, shares her experience as an entrepreneur and business leader. Angie will recount her experience starting and growing a business, describing how she handled hurdles and sharing the lessons she’s learned along the way, including the importance of owning your own story and making decisions to take it in the direction you want it to go.

This year’s event theme is Create Your Own Story, and we’re honored to hear from prominent tech leaders on how they created their story in tech. Each journey is unique and no journey is linear. As females in technology, there is the additional hurdle of sometimes being the only women in the room. These leaders will share their story of advances and setbacks of the past and how they’re crafting their narrative for the future.

Moderated by: Elaine Marino, Managing Director, Diversity & Inclusion, Charles Schwab
– Liz Giorgi, Founder, Soona
– Allie Magyar, CEO & Founder, Hubb
– Lee Mayer, CEO & Co-founder, Havenly
– Sandi Mays, Co-Founder, Chief Information Officer & Chief Customer Experience Officer, Zayo 

– Facilitated by: Sara Jones, CEO, InclusionPro

In this era of social activism, there is a strong desire to ally with people of color and other marginalized communities. Using real life scenarios, Sara Jones will help connect the dots on how to be an effective ally. She will cover:

– Social justice and the desire to act
– What type of actions matter?
– Support Ally v. Value Ally
– How Value Allyship is rooted in equity
– Value Allyship is to become a learner
– How to practice Value Allyship now

This will be a highly interactive workshop focused on leadership skills and business value as we build and grow inclusive teams.

• Jamie Shapiro, CEO/Founder, Connected EC; Author, Brilliant: Be the Leader Who Shine Brightly Without Burning Out

Spend a moment in reflection and calm connecting to your inner wisdom and story. In this session you will have the opportunity to give to yourself and nourish your energy and insight.

• Carol Sankar, Founder & CEO, The Confidence Factor for Women in Leadership

In the wake of Covid 19, women must continue to accelerate their value and presence in gender-normative spaces, professions and business models. Some women will be forced to pivot or make new life decisions. However, to commence anything new, we need the confidence to close the self-promotion gap. It may sound quite controversial, but there was a study conducted in 2019 and released in Forbes, which stated that women were less likely to boast about their accomplishments, and often felt a little shame to self promote themselves, rather they were more comfortable bragging about the accomplishments of other successful women. However, this lack of self promotion will limit women from excelling in the leadership spectrum if they continue to discount their achievements. This talk is designed to help women “brag more” and how to gain the confidence to accelerate.

Key takeaways
– Why self promotion is an important skill, especially during the changing landscape of the world
– How to build your confidence and avoid self-doubt
– Why minimizing your previous accomplishment(s) is the greatest risk to making your next decision

What is one thing you attribute to your success? How do you spend your time outside of work? What are things you still struggle with? These are just a few questions we’ll dive into with our Luminaries in this candid Q&A session. Join us to ask your question!

Moderated by: Monica Coughlin, COO, Colorado Technology Association
– Ashlee Collins, SVP, Technology and Product, Inspirato
– Aleta Jeffress, VP Consulting Services – State & Local, CGI
– Gauri Kapur, Vice President-Software Engineering/Business Intelligence, National CineMedia
– Aleks Krusko, Vice President of Information Technology and Digitization, CoreSite

• Carrie Carroll, RYT 200 Yoga Instructor, Ohana Yoga + Barre Denver

Carrie will lead a 15-minute guided meditation and restorative stretch session to create space in the body with deeper breathing, which can translate to a clear and calmer mind. This session will give you the opportunity to shed any distraction, negativity or tension, resulting in a clear and more focused mind that can follow you for this event and beyond. Everyone deserves time for self-care, which translates into a calmer consciousness.

• Frannie Matthews, President & CEO, Colorado Technology Association

• Gina Loften, US Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft

Gina currently serves as the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft US, helping companies put innovation into practice and leading Microsoft’s 15 Microsoft Technology Centers across the US. Gina built her technology career at IBM from Systems Engineering Lead to Research Program Director to leading Global initiatives for IBM’s Watson. Gina is also a passionate Diversity and Inclusion Leader. In this session we’ll hear about how she’s created her story in technology.

Many impacts of the pandemic are hitting women disproportionately hard. Women already do three times more unpaid care work as men and in addition have unequal pay, healthcare services and leadership roles. Businesses must place women at the center of their efforts to carry their teams through this crisis. This panel will explore some actions companies can take to support the women in their business through these challenging times.

– Moderated by: Ericka Hyson, President, WorkN
– Jennifer Henderson, CEO & Founder, Tilt
– Alison Moy, Senior Product Manager, DISH
– Elise Birkhofer, Global Head of Women’s Community & Programs, Google

• Facilitated by: Erin Weed, Educator on Authentic Communication

In line with this year’s event theme, the ability to tell your story can be a powerful tool in your professional journey. How can we communicate and connect with each other more authentically? In this workshop, Erin will share a simple formula: Speaking from the head, heart and core. When we dare to show up as fully human – thoughts, feelings and desires – we are able to relate to one another in a more meaningful way. This translates into deeper connections in one-to-one conversations, one-to-some group interactions and one-to-many communication (like speeches).

Erin will cover:
– How to tell your own story from your head, heart and core
– When to tap into these stories in your professional career

This will be an interactive workshop.

• Jamie Shapiro, CEO/Founder, Connected EC; Author, Brilliant: Be the Leader Who Shine Brightly Without Burning Out

In this session you will have the opportunity to reflect on how to take your learning from the event and put it into action. This session will give you the space to envision what is possible in your life from creating change. We will spend time pausing and connecting.

• Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson, Author, Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams // Associate Professor, CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business

In this session, Dr. Johnson will explain how people experience inclusion, why it is so important, and how leaders can create it. In addition, she will discuss some of the unique challenges and opportunities that Covid-19 has created for diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Gather your team as you wrap up WIT with a guided roundtable discussion led by a WIT Luminary. WIT Luminaries are female-identifying technology executives and community leaders who join the event to meet our attendees and share their leadership journey. Teams will have the opportunity to participate in a pre-event or post-event Luminary discussion. This will be pre-scheduled by CTA with your team.