She Sparks Tech

Melanie Crissey is a Product Marketing Manager with more than 11 years of experience in high-growth SaaS startups. She is passionate about customer experience and product-led growth. With a background in customer service and marketing operations, she has most recently been focused on developer marketing, promoting tools and applications that improve daily experience for people who code. Melanie is currently building the foundations for a product marketing practice on the growth team at Warp, a next-generation terminal application with AI built-in.

Find Melanie at the links below:

As a Product Manager + Career Coach, Anna Miller creates user experiences that are easy to follow and create intended results. With 10+ yrs experience working in tech, she has been through enough job searches herself, to learn a great deal about the job search process. If you are looking to grow your confidence in getting the job you want, asking for more money, or finding a more fulfilling career path, Anna works with clients daily to provide guidance in these topics.

Find Anna at the links below:

A native of Taiwan, Diana Hu (she/her) started her leadership journey at the age of 6, reigning over her neighborhood streets. Since 2005 she has worked in technology groups dominated by a patriarchal culture where she was often the only minority. Her work titles have included: Geospatial Development Lead, Senior GIS Developer, and Agile Coach. She helps teams adopt agile mindsets as well as improved agile and DevOps practices. 

In 2022, Diana started Azimuth Coaching to help women and marginalized groups shine in STEM, as well as serving as a DEI Agile Coach for companies to incrementally develop and implement DEI strategies.

Find Diana at the links below:

Jenny Kay Pollock leads monetization at Together Labs, where she focuses on strategies that help keep IMVU a top 5 social app by spend in the US. Jenny routinely speaks on mobile monetization, women in the workplace, and building a tech career. She has published on these topics in outlets like Forbes and Ellevate. Find her discussing all things tech on Twitter at @Jennykaypollock.

Find Jenny at the links below:

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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

30 episodes
Doubled listener-ship
Listeners in over 20 countries

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.

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!

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.

Nicole Mills started her career in a classroom as an excited foreign language teacher, but she quickly found herself burntout and overwhelmed trying to be the best educator for her students. She knew she has to leave behind the teaching job she had long since worked for to save her well-being.

So what the heck does that even look like when you come from a field as specialized as teaching? Thankfully Nicole knew several friends and family members who worked in tech and actually enjoyed their jobs. So she knew that was what she would work towards.

Join Nicole & me as we talk about how she prepared herself for a career in tech and how she currently works as a Quality Assurance Analyst (and loves the challenge!).

Danielle Boris is the author of The Energy of Weirdos and the founder and CEO of Sandbox, a SaaS platform that acts as your personalized guide to consistently high-performing teams. Danielle believes that far too often, corporations put employees in boxes, labeled by job title. This siloing not only limits talent development but also inhibits organizations from leveraging the full knowledge, skillsets, and innovation in their workforces. Only by unboxing humans can employees, managers, and organizations all win together and create future-proof success.

A researcher at heart, Danielle graduated with a B.S. from Cornell University and an MBA from the Cornell University Johnson School of Management. Her studies focused on leveraging technology to enhance human interactions. She practices what she preaches, designing her life to be something she looks forward to living every day and infusing the world around her with positivity, motivation, and bright colors. Danielle believes that being authentic, and bringing our whole selves into everything we do, is the key to individual and societal happiness, which in turn, always leads to success.

For more information, you can connect with Danielle at the following places:

Trina L. Martin is the founder and CEO of Trina L. Martin International. She is a technologist, international speaker, advocate for women of color in tech, and best-selling author.

Trina is a retired US Naval Officer and former computer programmer. She has over two decades of computer programming, digital forensics, and intelligence experience. Holding a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and extensive expertise, Trina has experienced the biases of the tech industry. Trina's resilience helped her navigate the obstacles and make strides in her career that many said weren't possible.

Qualified but often overlooked, Trina calls herself 'The Queen of Equality in Tech.' She is on a mission to close the tech industry's racial, gender, and wage gap for women, especially women of color, and help them elevate into leadership positions, as well as help companies create a genuinely diverse and inclusive workplace.

If you want to get in touch with Trina or more learn about how she is empowering women of color in the tech industry, you can use the resources below:

Like so many women in tech, I struggled to find the right balance for myself - the work-life balance, the unpaid additional work balance, the bullshit balance.

In this episode, I share my story that takes you through my engineering career, how I struggled with uncertainty and the need for change, and how I made my own change when I couldn't get it elsewhere.

The projects I started as hobbies turned into side hustles that became my full-time business. I can choose when, where, how, and with whom I work.

I love it every day and I know that my path does not have to be straight & clear, and by embracing the possibility of exploring what feels right to me, I have experienced a whole new world of opportunities.

If you're looking for a change and want to take about it, reach out. This is your sign to join that group, email that recruiter, or start what you've been thinking about.

If you want to connect here is where you can find me:

Elinor once stood at the periphery of her own career, feeling lost, invisible, confused. She gave away power and agency over her own trajectory, feeling dulled and limited.

She then realized diminishing herself to fit in will never work, as standing out is her prerogative. She realized there is so much more possibility than where she was.

Elinor took back control over her career and maintained extreme ownership and unwavering self-belief in her vision and her purpose.

This led to Elinor founding Australia’s first ‘construction coach’, The Construction Coach. As a Thought Leader, Elinor is also the host of the leading industry podcast, Constructing You, and the author of Constructing Your Career.

You can connect with Elinor at the links below:

Alexandria Tomayko is a nature advocate, sustainability connoisseur, nomadic traveler & experience planner. Her life work has been in creating memorable experiences for others as an Experience Coordinator. The main reasoning behind her success is her understanding of the need for human connection and how events can satisfy this. She is the Founder of the Little Black Book Series, through a need she had when planning national and international events for clients and herself.

In this episode, Alexandria shares her journey as a founder of an app that is bringing the event planning industry into the 21st century! She set out to build an app even though she had no background in technology - minus her limited AV knowledge for live events.

Here are some highlights:

In this episode, Courtney Greenwood digs into health data and how she made a way for herself in tech with no STEM degree and no coding. We talk about how she found her path, the major work in healthcare tech, and how it's improving our lives after being pushed live during the pandemic.

In this conversation, Nina Froriep and I discuss her background in tv and video and how that love of storytelling has brought her to what she does now - video marketing. This is one you won't want to miss f you create and consume video content!

Lorena Soriano is on a mission to create a world where Sci & Tech products are representative of the population that uses them.

Growing up Lorena wanted to be a scientist and doctor but due to the lack of representation, she didn’t think her dream was possible. While completing her degree in Biochemistry she realized that once again I lacked representation, having no Latina STEM professor. All of these experiences ultimately led her to start Every POINT ONE, a public benefit corporation that helps innovative science & technology leaders create guided and actionable Policies using their Standards to create an inclusive, diverse, ethical and unbiased organization.

You can learn more about Lorena & connect with her at the links below:

Virgginnia is a talent acquisition professional based in the Bay Area with a proven record of building and improving processes that help find companies find the right talent when they need it as well as orienting candidates on career advising and interviewing coaching.  She has a passion for consulting with companies to build incredible teams and operational strategies with a DEI lens.

If you want to get in touch with Virgginnia, check out the links below! She is always up to something great on LinkedIn, so be sure to find her there!

Daniella Flores is a software engineer, a serial side hustler, entrepreneur and cat lover. After her wife Alexandra and her were able to pay off $40,000 of debt with the help of side hustles, she fell in love with dabbling and the idea of financial freedom. Now she helps other multi-passionates create side hustles to gain back more control in their lives, careers, and financial futures.

Toni Collis is an award-winning leader in the field of Supercomputing/High-Performance Computing, turned Executive and Leadership Career Coach for Women in the Tech sector. She is the Founder of Women in High-Performance Computing - a non-profit operating across more than 70 countries - as well as a host of the Leading Women in Tech Podcast. She works with high-achieving women who are successful but not thriving, ready to break through the glass ceiling, whether as an up-and-coming leader or someone already in the C-Suite.

In this episode with Danielle Meadows-Stinnett we are talking all things graphic design and being true to who you are.

Danielle is the owner of minority-led branding agency Octane Design Studios and is also a podcaster, mentor, wife, mom of 4, and lover of cosplay, comics, chai tea, and live MMA. She chooses to mimic her Creator, living humbly & laughing often.

With over 12 years of marketing and multimedia agency experience, Danielle is a Grassroots Developer & Curator, helping brand and launch over 100 local businesses across America; ⅔ in Kentucky. She is always seeking to amplify voices and stories to both inspire and evoke change whether designing digital campaigns or designer sneakers. Danielle is also an advocate of non-traditional education, leading online meetups, and workshops for DIY marketing, motivated by her belief in empowering others.

Although Danielle is passionate about providing creative services, she strives to be more than just the graphics she creates. Over the years her hashtag #MoreThanGraphics has become a life principle for herself, one she executes through storytelling and sharing life chronicles as producer and co-host of the #MoreThanGraphics podcast.

Episode links:

Afifa Siddiqui started her career as an electrical engineer and then worked to build several successful companies for herself, based in improving systems with technology. From recruiting to job board software to payroll services, she has worked to continuously challenge the status quo for the hiring process and simply how companies go through the process.

Libby Robinson has spent her career doing many things. Settling for the status quo isn't one of them. And her new app BackFeed+ is helping to breakdown the current standards of feedback to help people have feedback that is actually helpful and actionable.

In this episode, Kelli Lucas shares her story of how her art degree led her to the user experience world. Not only has she held many high achieving roles in the industry, she also started a company to help people build apps by designing the user interaction components - which is important to establish before paying someone to code it. Kelli is an advocate for women looking for roles in technology and her career is a great example of how to make technology unique to where your passions lie.

A few of the resources that appear in this conversation:

In this interview with Stephanie Slocum, she is sharing a story that I find inspiring. She is an engineer, turned project manager, turned author and coach for women in STEM. Dream job trajectory if you ask me. She is sharing some great information about navigating the career fields as a woman and we chat about her book She Engineers.

Here are some of the great links mentioned in the episode:

This episode is another great one covering environmental applications using technology. Chelsea Whelmer works as the Palm Oil and Conservation Program Coordinator at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and she is sharing the conservation work she does for sustainable palm oil, how it impacts our lives every day, and how we can make more environmentally friendly choices with our at-home purchases.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Melissa Cristina Marquez, who works as a marine biologist and Shark Behavioral Ecologist. Melissa’s research has been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and she hosts her own podcast, ConCiencia Azul. She is also a freelance wildlife writer, TedX speaker, Scholastic author. In 2021, Melissa was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.

If you want to connect with Melissa, you can follow her on her social media. She uses interactive learning posting to get people excited about sharks.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Katelyn Sanchez, who works as a BIM-FM coordinator. BIM is building information modeling, where computer drafting for buildings is completed in 3D.

She has worked at a few companies, where she’s worked in a handful of roles. In each of these positions, she played a key part in detecting clashes and constructability issues.

If you are interested in connecting with Katelyn, you can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

This episode covers the all-female white house communications team that the Biden-Harris team announced over the weekend. This is the first all-women communications team and a very diverse one.

Kate Bedingfield - White House Communications Director

Pili Tobar - Deputy White House Communications Director

Jen Psaki - White House Press Secretary

Karine Jean-Pierre - Principal Deputy Press Secretary

Ashley Etienne - Communications Director for the Vice President

Symone Sanders - Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson for the Vice President

Elizabeth E. Alexander - Communications Director for the First Lady

Some references for the information shared today can be seen below:

This interview is with Juliana Costa, an online entrepreneur who started her own business after working remotely as a freelancer. She’s become a self-taught expert on connecting with people online and has grown her network to include clients and now-friends across the world.  She shares a bit about her story to get to where she is now and how she goes about networking online to continue to grow her business.

You connect with Jules on Instagram where she shares her experiences and helps others learn about finances and entrepreneurship.

Instagram: @Julesontap

This interview is with Madison Mackley, who shares how her family uses technology to improve the family farm’s efficiency and records. She shares details about they do that show her passion for agronomy, which she studied at Kansas State University.

She is active on social media showing her day-to-day on the farm. You can find her on Instagram @madisonmackley and Twitter @madisonkfrr. 

In this episode, I’m speaking with Dr. Isi Idemudia, the author of Out of Africa and Into the Cloud: Girls Can Code Too. She has a passion for sharing technology with young women and inspiring the next generation to pursue a career using technology.

I want to take a moment to introduce myself in this episode. I'm your host and happy to be here! Here's a bit about me and what to expect from this podcast.