Date: October 28th 2021
About the Webinar
This webinar will have two parts:
Part 1 - The Post-pandemic world is exposing the uncomfortable truth about priority shifts between “business as usual” and transforming for the future, consumer behavior changes during the pandemic vs. the re-mobility world, and juggling between defensive mindsets vs. offensive mindsets. In this discussion we will dive deeper into the different perspectives on prioritizing our business needs in this post-pandemic world.
Part 2 - While we are on the post-pandemic topic, we wouldn’t do it justice if we didn’t talk about The Women Leaders in the post-pandemic DATA and AI world. “Work from home” has done more damage with soaring attrition in women across the globe than ever before. It has become nearly impossible to home-school kids, take care of the bulk of the domestic responsibilities, and be able to unplug from work. According to a recent Mckinsey report, over 2 Million women are leaving or have left the workforce and over 100,000 women in senior leadership roles are stepping away in the short term, widening the gender gap even further. We will discuss the challenges and interestingly, the opportunities this presents for women in tech leadership positions.
Speakers
Abha Dogra
SVP Digital Technology, Schneider Digital Chief Architect and CIO for NAM Schneider Electric
Abha heads shared Digital platforms offered as SaaS or PaaS and engineering teams and global enterprise architecture function while running IT operations. Abha drives Schneider Electric AI and Automation strategy to apply AI at scale for top-line growth and efficiency in finance, supply chain, employee experience, digital offers, and consumer science. Her focus is to drive both digitization and digital transformation through evolved organization operating model. She is a Senior Product and Software(technology) development evangelist with extensive experience in diverse areas of Enterprise Solution Delivery and SaaS-based business services.
Patty Ward
Co-CIO at Mizkan Holdings and VP of IT for Mizkan America Mizcan
Patty currently fulfills a dual role for her organization as Co-CIO at Mizkan Holdings (corporate HQ in Japan) and VP of IT for Mizkan America (HQ in Mt Prospect, IL). For the Co-CIO role, she is responsible for developing Mikan Group’s global IT/Digital strategies and supporting Mizkan Europe and Mizkan America strategic initiatives. For the VP of IT Mizkan America role, Patty oversees and provides leadership to the Mizkan America IT organization day to day operations. Prior to joining Mizkan in 2020, Patty’s previous roles were: VP of IT at Symrise, Inc (corporate HQ in Germany) supporting the Nutrition division 50+ sites across the globe, Sr Director International Technology at Walmart, Inc based in Bentonville, AR.
Stacey Howe
Vice President of Customer Experience Optimization, Wolverine Worldwide
Stacey is 15+ year veteran in the digital brand and ecommerce space; and, has held leadership roles in business strategy, digital brand marketing, ecommerce business development and customer experience optimization at some of the U.S.’ leading footwear and apparel brands. Currently she is Vice President of Customer Experience Optimization at Wolverine Worldwide [WWW]. Her focus is leading the transformation to a consumer-led, agile testing and digital product development process, accelerating the pace of in-market delivery, allowing for greater adaptability and continuous consumer needs alignment, and reducing overall marketplace risk. In addition to her primary job functions, Stacey has been recognized with several financial achievement awards at Wolverine Worldwide, as well as a series of industry related accolades, including a prestigious SXSW Innovation Award. Outside of the office, Stacey is an avid runner who has completed several marathons, including the esteemed Boston Marathon – her favorite course – twice. She lives in Arlington, MA; and has a ‘rescued’ black Labrador Retriever named Lucy.
Shalaka Prabhune
Head of Corporate IT ,Xperi Corporation
Shalaka is an accomplished leader with 20+ years of experience in IT industry, 8 of them in executive positions. Her background includes managing portfolios of IT projects and operation of applications, delivering IT services, hiring, training and leading large IT teams and delivering large scale transformations. She is currently working for Xperi Corporation as VP, head of Corporate IT. Before this she has worked at other companies like TiVo, Veritas Technologies LLC, Symantec and ADP. Shalaka is very passionate about mentoring and has participated and led several mentoring programs in and outside the company. She is an active member of the “Women in Tech” group at Xperi. She is a mother of 2 boys who keep her on her toes!
Chitra Varma
Head of Data & Analytic Engineering, Zoetis Inc.
As an innovative data & analytics executive, Chitra brings to market successful product offerings for Life Sciences through building and leading high-performance teams. Her proven track record uses innovative data strategies that leverage constantly evolving modern digital technology, analytics, big data, AI, and ML. Chitra brings a unique blend of experience in partnering, leading, and managing matrixed & cross-functional data-driven teams.
In her current role at Zoetis, her responsibilities include delivering the end-to-end supply chain of data & analytics platforms. Chitra brings over 25 years in various leadership roles where she consistently delivered on significant data & digital initiatives across multiple organizations.
Sandhya Balakrishnan
Senior Director, Data & AI Practice Mgmt & GTM, Brillio
Sandhya is a seasoned analytics professional with a keen interest to help customers drive adoption of big data, business analytics and AI. Her deep experience in crafting roadmap for digital solutions and data / AI products for sales, marketing, finance and supply chain functions enable quick and agile monetization of enterprise data. She has handled complex and diverse business portfolio across multiple customers and regions with P&L and people management responsibilities.
Muthumari S
Head of Data Science, Brillio
Muthumari is specialized in delivering AI/ML use-cases at scale across customer/product/marketing analytics, NLP and vision analytics. In her current role, she works with CXOs, in enabling their organizations to make accurate data-driven decisions as well as solve ambiguous problems involving unstructured text/image and machine-generated data with tangible business impact.
