Speaker Bios

Mina Wallace - Vice President Risk Analytics - IBM
Mina Wallace is the Vice President of Risk Analytics, the group within the Business Analytics software division of IBM responsible for Enterprise Risk Management which includes the solutions from both the Algorithmics and Open Pages acquisitions. The group was formed after the acquisition of Algorithmics by IBM in October 2011, and in early 2014 Mina expanded her role as VP of Risk Analytics Services, to manage the Risk Analytics Business, including development, product management and services support.
A key initiative Mina launched in 2014 was to establish an executive advisory forum, with executives representing a combination of solutions and geographies. The inaugural forum was hosted in London in October, and included marquee clients to include State Street, Westpac, Bank of Nova Scotia and BBVA.
Following the acquisition of Algorithmics, of which Mina had been an executive member for 7 years, Mina successfully created a unified Risk Analytics Business Services team, combining common management systems and resources of Open Pages and Algorithmics teams to better deliver an integrated client experience across the Risk Analytics portfolio. She also managed the heritage Open Pages and Algorithmics business in Asia Pacific, traveling to AP as required and working out of the headquarters in Toronto. Mina was asked to establish the Risk Analytics Centre of Competence (COC) – a joint venture between the Risk Analytics team and Global Business Services (GBS), shortly thereafter in order to bring the best of integrated services and solution offerings to IBM’s key clients. Managing the services team at Algorithmics and subsequently IBM, provided Mina with a solid appreciation of the success criteria for complex projects that positioned Clients to transform their businesses. Mina was a pioneer in the implementation activities for the Algorithmics Real Time Credit Solution and Credit Life Cycle Solution now called Algo Credit Manager. Prior to the acquisition, Mina’s experience managing the Operation Risk Management team (which included Algorithmics OpVar Solution and the Loss Event Service, FIRST) positioned her well to take on product management responsibility for the broader eGRC solution as part of her current role.
Prior to joining Algorithmics in 2003, Mina held executive positions with INEA Corporation, 724 Solutions and most notably PeopleSoft, initially as their Vice President of Sales, and then as General Manager of Canadian Operations.
Mina holds both a Bachelor of Education and a Masters of Business Administration.

Jennifer Stott – Senior Vice-President, Investor & Treasury Services IT, RBC

As the Chief Information Officer for Investor & Treasury Services, Jennifer provides leadership and strategic direction for the global IT team, with responsibility for a comprehensive range of technology services and a portfolio of applications & projects supporting our business. Previously the co-chair for the RBC-Toronto Ride for Research for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), Jennifer is the co-chair of the Women in T&O employee resource group and a member of the T&O Diversity Leadership Council.
Since joining RBC in 1988, Jennifer has held a variety of technology roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, Jennifer was the VP, Payments & Trade Technology where she led technology transformation initiatives for wholesale payments across a number of lines of business and represented RBC on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Payments Association.
Originally from Ottawa, Jennifer has an Honours Bachelor of Math degree from the University of Waterloo and has completed an Executive Development Program at the Queen's School of Business. Jennifer is a regular participant in the University of Waterloo "Think About Math" events to encourage girls in grade 9 to continue to participate in math through high school and to think about post-secondary education in the maths/sciences. She is married and has three children.

Jennifer Flanagan - Co-founder, President and CEO – Actua

Jennifer Flanagan is the co-founder and President and CEO of Actua, a national charitable organization that engages Canadian youth in transformational experiences in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and contributes significantly to future innovation in Canada.

Jennifer leads a national network of university-based organizations across Canada that deliver interactive STEM programs annually engaging 225,000 youth in 500 communities. Over the past decade, Jennifer has led the development of STEM education outreach programs designed to engage underserved youth populations including Aboriginal youth, girls and young women, youth living in rural and remote communities and other at-risk youth. To accomplish this work, Jennifer partners with leading corporate sector companies, governments and other non-profits. Jennifer has served on the boards of local, national and international groups that are committed to furthering educational opportunities for youth and for women. She currently sits on the Boards of the Canadian Women’s Foundation and the Carold Institute. In 2007, Jennifer was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women and in 2011 she was the recipient of a Y Women of Distinction Award (Education and Training) and was named one of Ottawa’s Top Forty Under 40. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Management from McGill University in Montreal.

Hanan Anis - NSERC Chair in Entrepreneurial Engineering Design, Professor, and Faculty Coordinator in Entrepreneurship and Innovation - University of Ottawa

Hanan Anis joined the University of Ottawa, as an Associate Professor at the School of Information Technology (SITE) in July2004.
Prior to that, Hanan was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Ceyba, an optical long-haul networking company that employed 250 people at its peak. Hanan played an integral part in conceiving Ceyba's product architecture, formulating its business plan, and successfully raising over $100M in venture capital to finance operations.
From 1994 to 2000, Hanan worked at Nortel Networks in different positions conducting pioneering research in various areas of photonics, ranging from device physics to optical networking. During this time, Hanan's research interests focused on soliton generation and detection, non-linear propagation, tunable lasers, agile all-optical networks and high-end transmission systems. Hanan received Nortel's 1998 Innovation award for her work on wavelength locked lasers.
Hanan holds a B.Sc from Ain-Shams University (1987), a M.A.Sc (1991) and a Ph.D (1996) from University of Toronto both in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
She has numerous journal and conference publications and patents. Hanan's current research interests include Biophotonics and Engineering Management.
Hanan has started the uOttawa Women's Startup Network with Catherine Mavriplis and Catherine Elliott for Entrepreneurship mentoring for women in technology and engineering. Twitter @Womenstartupnet

Catherine Aczel Boivie - Executive in Residence - Beedie School of Business - Simon Fraser University

Dr. Catherine Aczel Boivie is a widely respected executive with over 30 years of experience in the leadership of advancing the value of information technology as a business and education enabler. Catherine is the Executive in Residence at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. Prior executive roles includes: CEO and Chair Canadian Women in Technology (CanWIT), CEO Inventure Solutions and Senior Vice President of Information Technology/Facility Management for Vancity Credit Union; Senior Vice President of Information Technology at Pacific Blue Cross and Canadian Automobile Association of British Columbia. She has been publicly recognized for her contributions, named one of Canada's top 100 most powerful women by the Women's Executive Network and received the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee medal for being a "catalyst for technology transformation".

Hala Assal – PhD Student – Carleton University

Hala has 6 years of teaching and academic experience. Her PhD research looks at tools and methodologies to support collaborative security code reviews, and facilitate their integration in the software development lifecycle.

Olga Baysal - Assistant Professor - School of Computer Science - Carleton University

Olga Baysal is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research interests span a wide range of software engineering areas, including empirical software engineering, mining software repositories, software analytics, software maintenance and evolution, and human aspects of software engineering. Much of Olga’s work focuses on understanding how software engineers create, use and maintain software systems. More details can be found on her website: http://olgabaysal.com/

Julia Blackburn - Executive Director - NPower Canada

Julia is an executive with broad experience working with small businesses and nonprofits. After an early career in management consulting, she has spent over 25 years in non-profit management in both the performing arts and social service. She is currently the Executive Director of Toronto-based, NPower Canada, a non-profit workforce development organization that provides free IT skills training, paid internships and job placements to under-served, diverse young adults. Under her tenure, the program has increased its female student ratio to 50%. Julia recently served as a member of the Civic Action Champions Council.

Justine Boudreau - Makerspace – uOttawa

Justine Boudreau works at the uOttawa Makerspace where she is developing various programs to promote engineering and science with girls.
She also works with the Makermobile to bring 3D printing, laser cutting, robotics and programming to schools in the Ottawa region.
Her hobbies include tinkering, robotics and crafting with pop tabs.

Laura Bouwman - Manager of Network Membership - Actua

Laura Bouwman began her Actua experience as a summer instructor at Science AL!VE (Simon Fraser University) while she was an undergraduate student. While completing her Bachelors of Science in Biology from Simon Fraser University she became director of the program where she planned and managed outreach projects throughout BC and oversaw training and supervision of a team of outreach instructors. Currently, Laura is Actua's Manager of network member services and is responsible for managing and delivering Actua’s network membership services to network members like Science AL!VE. Laura is one of the main points of contact between Actua and its network members and plays a critical role in the successful achievement of Actua’s mandate and the strategic plan as it relates to network member services.

Neesha Desai - Co-founder - Education Technology company Alieo Games

Neesha “is an accidental entrepreneur who helped co-found the Education Technology company Alieo Games. She recently graduated with her PhD in Computer Science and spent her fall in Silicon Valley participating in the startup accelerator Imagine K12. At the moment, she is actively looking for new opportunities - hopefully within EdTech and likely with a small startup.”

Danielle Fudger: (Technology Associate – Institutional & Corporate Technology)

Danielle is a software developer at Morgan Stanley, who builds applications with a focus on user experience. Her favorite aspect of the job is interacting with the traders who use her software, and working with them to fix bugs and design better and more usable features. She was the first woman to graduate from the University of Guelph Software Engineering program and volunteers with Kids Code Jeunesse, teaching elementary students and teachers basic programming skills. Danielle is a self-taught full stack engineer, currently developing a Ruby on Rails web app for equine farriers. Beside her nerdy sides and is addicted to the games Settlers of Catan and Civilization, is an avid cross-stitcher, and absolutely loves cheesy police crime dramas.

Audrey Girouard - Assistant Professor - Carleton University

Dr. Girouard is an assistant professor at the School of Information Technology at Carleton University, Ottawa, and leads the Creative Interactions Lab. As a human computer interaction researcher, she specializes in next generation interactions: her work pioneers novel interaction techniques with emerging user interfaces through software and hardware design, development and evaluation. Her research focuses on deformable user interactions, flexible displays, and bend gesture inputs. Dr. Girouard completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Human Medial Lab at Queen’s University, and she obtained her PhD from Tufts University, and her undergraduate degree in software engineering from Ėcole Polytechnique de Montreal. Twitter @audreygirouard.

Latifa Guerrouj - Assistant Professor - École de Technologie Supérieure

Latifa Guerrouj is an Assistant Professor at the Département de Génie Logiciel et des TI at École de Technologie Supérieure in Montréal. Prior to that, she had the opportunity to work with Dr. Benjamin Fung as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University, Canada. Latifa received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computing and Software Engineering (DGIGL) of École Polytechnique de Montréal. Her research work/interests involves empirical software engineering, software analytics, data mining, and mining software repositories. More details can be found on her website http://latifaguerrouj.ca/.

Susan Ibach - Senior Technical Evangelist - Microsoft Canada

Susan is a senior technical evangelist at Microsoft Canada. Although she started out studying hardware in electrical engineering at University of New Brunswick, she soon discovered that software was her happy place. She spent a number of years working at a consulting firm in a variety of development roles, then switched jobs to teach coding, databases and project management. She is currently at Microsoft where she uses her high energy and passion for learning to create engaging presentations and content for developers to learn Microsoft technology. When not in front of an LCD screen she is probably training for a marathon, or driving her kids to hockey or school plays. Twitter @HockeyGeekGirl

Ghazal Jangani - Computing Science Student - University of Alberta

Ghazal is a second year student in Computing Science at University of Alberta, she is passionate about her major and problem solving, Data structure, algorithms, and programing.
She is one of the Ada’s exac, which is a group of students at the University of Alberta dedicated to promoting diversity in computing, games, and technology. She has been involved in many volunteer opportunities such as Ladies Learning Code as a mentor in teaching python, Mozilla in coding part, and USchool, which is a program initiated by the University of Alberta Senate that aims to introduce and connect junior students to the University of Alberta. Also, she has the opportunity to be an instructor in University of Alberta Summer Science Camps last year, and right now she is working with DiscoverE as a girls coding club coordinator.

Patricia Kaminska: (Technology Associate – Institutional & Corporate Technology)
Patricia enjoys travelling, drawing and reading when she's not coding. Since graduating from McGill with a Software Engineering Bachelors, she has had the pleasure to visit countries that vary in shape, size and culture such as Japan, Poland and the United States. She's a newfound vegetarian with an avid love for animals (and hence has two boxers that give her an excuse to buy new shoes). She currently works in Java but has a special spot in her heart for UI technologies.

Helen Kontozopoulos - Co-founder and Co-director - University of Toronto's DCSIL

Helen “is the Co-founder and Co-director of the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab. She is a lecturer at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Computer Science where she teaches lean startup methodologies, entrepreneurship, UX, CX, design and business innovation. Helen is on the University of Toronto/IBM Watson teaching team. Additionally, Helen is the Co-founder and Director of GLOBAL SMARTWEEK, an Internet of Things and machine intelligence conference and learning series based in Toronto. Helen is currently working on her next startup, it’s in the confusion stage.

Kelly Lyons - Associate Professor - Faculty of Information - University of Toronto

Dr. Kelly Lyons is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Faculty of Information, she was the Program Director of the IBM Toronto Lab Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS). Her current research interests include service science, social media, and collaborative work. Currently, she is focusing on ways in which social media can support human‐to‐ human interactions in service systems. Kelly has co‐authored a number of papers, served on program committees for conferences, given many keynote and invited presentations, and co‐chaired several workshops. She has been the recipient of an NSERC Discovery Grant, an NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant (Projects), an NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grant with SAP, and an IBM Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Grant, has received funding through the GRAND Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) and has been the recipient of two NSERC Engage Grants (one with Sciencescape and one with Dell). Kelly holds a cross‐appointment with the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science and is an IBM Faculty Fellow. From 2008 to 2012, she was a Member‐at‐Large of the ACM Council and a member of the Executive Council of ACM‐W. Kelly is very interested in promoting Women in Technology initiatives and has given several presentations to young people and teachers on this topic. More details can be found at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/klyons or Twitter @prof_lyons

Kaleigh Maclaren - Communications and Events Coordinator - Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology

Kaleigh, a passionate marketing-communications professional works to engage, inform and build connections with audiences online and offline through meaningful and targeted communications. Currently, Kaleigh is the Communications and Events Coordinator at the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, the Gold Standard in exercise science and personal training. She also is a consultant for the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering - Ontario region. Kaleigh thrives on working in the constantly evolving marcom field with opportunities to continuously learn, try new ideas and make an impact.
A proud recipient of the United Way Ottawa Community Builder Award in 2013, Kaleigh continues to be actively involved in the community as VP Partnerships on the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Ottawa board of directors as well as Promotions Coordinator at Kanata Nordic Ski Club. Kaleigh earned an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of Ottawa. Twitter: @kaleighmaclaren

Carrie Mah - Senior Computer Science student - University of Calgary

Carrie Mah is a senior Computer Science student at the University of Calgary. She has a concentration in Human Computer Interactions and utilizes her skills to help make daily lives easier and improve how they do tasks. She has had the privilege of working at the Interactions Lab with Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale in the field of data visualizations to make information accessible for others. When she is not working, she volunteers to teach others how to code, and expand student opportunities through extracurricular clubs. In her free time, Carrie also enjoys blogging, gaming, and cooking. Website: www.misscarriemah.ca

Sana Maqsood - Computer Science PhD Student - Carleton University

Sana is a PhD student in Computer Science at Carleton University. I hold a bachelor’s degree in CS and a Masters in Human-Computer Interaction. I also have 10-years of industry experience in User Experience and Web development. In my PhD research, I am looking at using human-computer interaction theories to design educational games to teach kids about cyber security and digital literacy issues. This research is part of the MITACS Accelerate program which connects researchers with industry partners to solve a problem. Through this program, we have partnered up with MediaSmarts, a non-profit organization for digital and media literacy.

Emily McGinnis - Change Management and Communications Specialist - Insurance Bureau of Canada

Emily McGinnis has more than five years of experience that extends from program management, strategic communications, social media and public outreach. She is currently employed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada as a Change Management and Communications Specialist. Emily holds a Master’s Degree in Communication from the University of Ottawa and has acted as a social media coach to businesses, politicians and university faculty.

Derek Meulmeester: (Technology Associate – Wealth Management Technology)
Derek holds a Bachelor's Degree of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. He has been working at Morgan Stanley for almost 4 years, having first joined as an intern and then a full-time employee as part of the Technology Analyst Program. Currently, he works as a front end developer on the Order Status team within the Wealth Management Technology division of the Montreal office.

Riham Mohamed- PhD student - School of Computer Science - Carleton University.

Riham is a graduate of information systems at the College of Computing, Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Egypt. Her undergraduate thesis was in computer security. She was graduated in 2008 and since then she has been working as a Teaching Assistant. She earned her Master's degree in March, 2014. Her Master’s thesis was in information systems for emergency planning. In September 2015, she started her PhD in the field of usable security at the School of Computer Science, Carleton University.

Carla Morawicz: (Technology Associate – Institutional & Corporate Technology)
Carla is just your average globe-trotting, kicking boxing, event going, friend making, meme loving programmer. She is an employed full-stack developer by day at Morgan Stanley, and actually pretty mainstream by night. You can find her either playing sports at the gym, attending a myriad of tech related meet-ups around Montreal, playing board games with friends, reading sci-fi and comp-sci books or just simply watching the Walking Dead. She has always been dabbling with web technologies in her spare time, and has recently started working on a Javascript front-end project at work, and so now she eats and sleeps Javascript, but more specifically AngularJS. Carla is continually learning and keeping up with the latest tech and trends.

Irene Pylypenko - Director of Marketing - PetalMD

Irene is passionate about leveraging technology to improve the healthcare system and our personal health. Currently she is the Director of Marketing at PetalMD, the leading Canadian medical scheduling software. For the past 3 years Irene has led the Hacking Health Montreal chapter and has driven global expansion for the non-for-profit. Her entrepreneurial journey started a decade ago leading technical and marketing teams in various industries such as the healthcare, internet, and eCommerce. Irene has an B.Sc. in Computer Science from University of Western Ontario and studied Bioinformatics at University of McGill.

Diane Reader Jones - President - LaserLand

Diane started as a Systems Engineer with IBM in Calgary, quickly progressed to the IBM Lab in Toronto, then married and moved to Winnipeg to work as a Systems Analyst to design the new U of M Payroll System, and on to Manitoba Data Services after the strike at U of M. Then she heard about microcomputers in ’78 and became the first woman Franchisee in the International ComputerLand Network when she opened ComputerLand Burlington in ’79. With the help of her husband, we grew that into 7 stores in <7 years, which made them the largest singly-owned group of ComputerLand Stores in the world (the few larger had multiple owners)”.
Diane served as the Canadian rep. on the ComputerLand International Software Selection Committee, which tested and choose which software products they’d sell around the world, and on the ComputerLand International Advisory Committee to the President. Diane is the president of PromoLand, where they consult in most cost-effective ways to grow your business, charity, team, or educational institution successfully, and to recruit, reward, incent and develop your staff, volunteers, or supporters. Diane is the president of LaserLand from 1988, where she Championed the introduction of Home Theatre and Laser Video in Canada in several LaserLand stores. Diane championed the introduction of DVD's into Canada. She became known as Canada's "Karaoke Queen" as she carried the largest selection of Karaoke music and equipment in Canada. Diane has been ublisher and Editor of "The Source" Home Theatre and Karaoke magazine for 19 years. Now mostly wound down, LaserLand is selling off remaining Karaoke products online.

Amanda Shiga - Vice President, Digital - Nonlinear Creations

Amanda is currently in the position of Vice President at Nonlinear Creations, where she leads the Digital delivery practice. She brings more than 15 years’ of experience designing and building web-based solutions across multiple verticals including internet services, banking, non-profit, health, government and manufacturing.
Amanda is designated as a Sitecore MVP, an award that recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world. She writes and speaks regularly at industry events and leads a technical user group in Toronto, and is a member of the Women’s Executive Council, Women’s Executive Network and Digital Analytics Association. She has also volunteered with Ottawa Young Entrepreneurs to appraise business pitches.
Amanda holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa and M.A.Sc. in Technology Innovation Management from Carleton University. Outside of work, she enjoys cycling, hiking, photography and music. Twitter @amandashiga

Amber Simpson – Computer Scientist - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center - New York

Amber is a Computer Scientist that specializes in medical image analysis and computer-aided surgery. She runs her own research group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, one of the best cancer centers in the world. Amber is from Hagersville, a small farming town in Ontario. I went to Trent University in Peterborough for her undergraduate studies in mathematics and computer science because they admitted students without high school calculus. She almost failed calculus, but turned things around because of a great professor, and went to graduate school at Queen’s in Kingston where she fell in love with medical computing.

Nikhita Singh - Deployment Strategist - Palantir

Nikhita is a fellow Canadian from London Ontario who joined Palantir as a Deployment Strategist in 2014. She completed her BSc in industrial engineering and operations research at UC Berkeley. During her undergrad Nikhita interned at Palantir. Since joining Palantir full-time, she has been designing software and conducting analysis for different organizations around the world in Paris, Los Angeles, and more recently, New York. She has worked on projects in the insurance, consumer-packaged goods, and media space. In her spare time, Nikhita likes to nerd out about robots and design!

Jenifer Spencer - Manager of Outreach - Actua

Jenifer joined the Actua team in 2013 as an Outreach Instructor and delivered science camps to Northern Ontario communities. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from McGill University, a B.Ed. in Primary & Junior Education from Queen’s University, and is certified to teach in two provinces. Jenifer has delivered STEM programs in Northern communities for four summers and taught for one year in a Cree community in Northern Quebec. As Actua's Manager of Outreach, Jenifer is responsible for managing the execution and delivery of Actua’s Outreach Program, fulfilling annual strategic objectives related to the program and developing mechanisms and resources for sharing the positive outcomes of the program with Actua’s network members. She works closely with communities to plan camps and school workshops delivered by the Actua's Outreach Team. Jenifer supports instructor training, curriculum development, and provides support for instructors once they're on the road.

Danielle Taillon - Makerspace – uOttawa
Danielle Taillon works at the uOttawa Makerspace where she is creating a wearables program to engage girls in STEM.
She also works with the Makermobile to bring 3D printing, laser cutting, robotics and programming to schools in the Ottawa region.
Her hobbies include knitting, loving her dog and trying not to strangle her dog.