2022 Speakers

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Currently spearheading university relations and recruiting partnerships as a Program Manager at Jam City, a mobile game publisher based out of Los Angeles, Andrew has spent the last 6 years at the intersection of entertainment and tech. His passion for representation in tech comes from his personal upbringing in a Mexican-American home and in his experiences in being the first person from his family to work in a corporate role. Prior to joining Jam City, Andrew spent time recruiting at EA (Electronic Arts), Netflix, and Apple. He recently made the move to San Diego and is excited to try all the new restaurants and continue building community in the industry.

Lucy currently leads the Emerging Talent team at Dropbox. Lucy has been in the early career space for over a decade, but has committed to finding talent for Dropbox since 2017. Since her days of wanting to be a student counselor, she's always found early career recruiting and building early career programs a true passion of hers. One of the most fulfilling parts of Lucy's role today is being able to be a part of someone's career journey and watch them grow in their success!

Raphael drives recruitment strategies and engaging programs that connect diverse emerging and university talent with career opportunities at Cisco.

Before Cisco, he managed a national diversity internship program helping over 700 college students secure internships and jobs through partnerships with 40 media, entertainment, and tech companies.

Raphael’s academic and professional background intersects diversity and equity training, student affairs advisement, and talent recruitment. While at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Columbia University, he designed, branded, and expanded social justice, intercultural, and critical dialogue initiatives for students.

Raphael has B.A. in Urban Studies & Public Policy from Dillard University (HBCU), a Master of Science in Higher Education Administration from Syracuse University, and a professional certificate in Diversity and Inclusion for Human Resources from Cornell University.

A Baton Rouge, LA native, Raphael is based in Baltimore, MD. He can be seen exploring the city on electric scooters, looking for the best coffee, and trying to perfect iPhone photography.

Sarah has been in the early career space for almost a decade touching every stage of the process from sourcing, closing, strategy, programming, intern management, and events.  She is currently a University Talent Scout at Meta focusing on the Front End pipeline, though throughout her career has worked on roles from hardware to front end engineering roles. Sarah was first introduced to the early career space at Microsoft where she led their intern programming. She spent the bulk of her career as a full cycle recruiter at Redfin, positioning Redfin as a competitive force in the industry. Right before joining Meta she spent a year at Rockwell Automation helping their UR program update their recruiting philosophies and transition their strategy from local to nationwide recruiting efforts.  Sarah is most passionate about equipping all students with the skills and information they need to navigate the recruiting system and land  their dream opportunity. 

For last year, Sarah has been involved with the URx team helping put together conferences and marketing.

Carissa Contestabile University Recruiter for Software Engineer Interns at Duolingo. Previously worked at Uber ATG

Throughout her career, Jeanie has always had a passion for helping people. In her current role as University Programs Manager at Roblox, she is excited to help students find opportunities where they can have the biggest impact and ensure each student has a memorable experience. After attending URx Forward 2020, Jeanie is pumped to give back to the UR community and volunteer for this year’s conference! Talk to Jeanie about cool hobbies she picked up during quarantine.

Paul Bauer earned his Master's degree from Indiana University in Higher Education and Student Affairs before moving to Seattle in 2013. Paul started his career collaborating with employers and students in university career centers before moving into recruiting in 2014. Paul has recruited for Northwestern Mutual, Amazon, Expedia, Salesforce and Gopuff where he managed the early careers program.

Charlene (Char) Delapena is the Head of Early Talent at BitGo and the Executive Director for URx, a community for University Recruiting and Early Talent professionals. Leading the early talent recruiting efforts for BitGo, she is responsible for executing strategies designed to attract early career talent across the organization while managing programs focused on providing real life work experiences and mentorship to ensure career success. Char is also passionate about diversity & inclusion and makes it a priority to not only increase the diversity within pipelines but encourages an inclusive environment for early career talent to excel in and feel a sense of belonging. Char has spent nearly 10 years within the university and emerging talent recruiting space managing programs at BitGo, Robinhood, Quora, Coinbase and Dolby Laboratories and holds a Bachelors degree in Telecommunications from DeVry University.

Connie Norwell joined Zendesk in August 2021 as the Global University Relations Manager, overseeing a team of all-star recruiters and a program with interns all around the world. This is her sixth year in the UR space, and previously Connie has experience in the Healthcare and Aerospace & Defense industries. In her spare time, Connie enjoys getting outside, being active, and exploring the Dallas food scene with her husband.

Ebitie is a senior recruiting professional that brings unique solutions to business partners and hiring teams through an intersection of her skills in business operations, strategy, recruiting, and empathy. She is a diversity, inclusion, and equity practitioner that helps teams and recruiting organizations build a more inclusive product and world. Currently, she is a Senior Recruiting Operations Program Manager at Pinterest where she helps the company make equitable, inclusive, and efficient hiring processes. Previously at Pinterest, she was a Technical Recruiter for Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence where she recruited senior engineers to build a discovery engine that powers recommendations for over 400m monthly active users. Prior to Pinterest, she worked at Microsoft recruiting top engineering talent for Office, PowerPoint, and Yammer product groups. She has a wealth in knowledge about recruiting, DEI hiring operations, and she believes in building a better world one hire at a time.

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Christine is the Head of Candidate Engagement at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a new kind of philanthropy that’s leveraging technology to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges. In this role, she oversees CZI’s Sourcing team and University Recruiting program. Prior to CZI, Christine led a recruiting program management team at Google, was an early HR hire at two fast-growing startups and managed the university recruiting program at a media company.

Throughout her career, Christine has been driven by the power of recruiting to transform lives. She is passionate about enabling access to opportunity, and facilitating experiences where early career talent can learn, grow and thrive. She resides in San Francisco and holds a BS in Psychology from Fordham University.

Emma Surich has recently joined Perpetua Labs as their Head of TA and previously was with ecobee as Manager, Recruitment helping to grow ecobee from 125 to just over 500, and building ecobee’s campus recruitment and new graduate program to 30 students per term. With a focus on great candidate experience and a strong employer brand. Emma has been involved in early talent recruitment over the last 10 years and loves to see a co-op students and new grads bring their curiosity and drive to teams.

Kody Frakes is an experienced recruiting programs leader who has spent the past six years working in talent acquisition. After graduating with his bachelor's degree from California State University, Chico Kody moved to San Francisco to pursue a career in tech and saw the many barriers to entry that early-career talent face when trying to start their career in the tech industry. After starting his career at Genentech where he focused on building and scaling Genentech's diversity recruiting efforts Kody transitioned to focus on early career diversity recruiting programs at Twitter. While at Twitter Kody launched multiple diversity-focused early career programs and initiatives. During the latter half of his four years at Twitter, he developed and launched the Twitter Engineering Apprenticeship program in 2020. Kody has recently moved on to manage the Airbnb Connect Apprenticeship program. His lifelong passion is building movements that advance a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future for all.

Bernita Dillard, MBA is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leader and change agent with 10+ years of experience in revolutionizing hiring and talent management programs to attract and retain top diverse talent. She has dedicated her career to creating inclusive work environments to ensure underrepresented minorities have equal access to career opportunities.

She has successfully created strategic partnerships between corporations, government agencies, and community organizations to expand talent pipelines and develop support frameworks to improve retention rates.

Bernita has been able to deliver industry-leading results for the world’s largest tech firms, such as Facebook and Google, through the development of comprehensive DEI strategies. By designing inclusive frameworks beyond talent acquisition to incorporate learning and professional development, employee resource groups, and compensation and advancement, she has successfully driven increases in diverse representation in talent pools and reversed attrition patterns. Bernita is now the Global Head of DEI Recruiting Enablement for DoorDash.

Some of Bernita’s key strategy and program development achievements include:

✓ Increased hiring of underrepresented talent by 70% through the launch of data-driven local talent acquisition program at Facebook

✓ Delivered 26% increase in diverse talent hiring through community job fair expansion

✓ Introduced global Diversity Talent Acquisition Summit at Facebook, attracting 1200 attendees

Bernita holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from San Jose University and an MBA from the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business at Mills College.

Inbar is a University Recruiter at Databricks. In her role, she focuses on early career technical recruiting and building out intern and new grad programs. Inbar is passionate about candidate experience and helping students find opportunities in tech.

Prior to joining Databricks, Inbar worked at Adaptive Insights, a Workday Company in recruiting and field marketing. She graduated from San Diego State University with a B.S. in Marketing and in her free time enjoys baking, yoga, and traveling.

Barry is a university relations professional who has been working in the industry for over 8 years. He currently leads the brand new University Relations team at LPL Financial, positioning the program for long term success with an eye for finding talent in unique places. Prior to his current role, Barry enjoyed learning the fundamentals of university recruitment at companies like Macy’s and Oracle. He thoroughly enjoys the UR space and finds it to be intrinsically rewarding when students achieve long term success through early-in-career programs.

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Nicole started her career as a talent acquisition coordinator in the middle of the recession, and one day, she asked if she could help out with the university recruiting program. It ended up leading to a career spanning a full decade among multiple Fortune 500 companies. She has worked in various industries, her favorite being where she has most recently landed: FOOD! Currently, she manages Conagra Brands’ early talent programs. Outside of her career, she’s a wife, mom to four boys and a silly pup, and a novice chef. Sometimes she is able to find a quiet space to curl up with a good book.

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Lindsay is a Recruiting Program Manager and lead of the Early Career Recruiting & Programming efforts at Box. She began her career in teaching and social work (AmeriCorps), but landed in the Recruiting space 5.5 years ago and hasn't looked back since! She's always had a passion for helping others, especially people newer in their careers or looking for a change. Outside of work, you can find her cuddling with her pups, tending to her plant babies, and sampling the latest drafts at the local breweries. She's pumped to be speaking at URx this year alongside other awesome Early Career advocates!

Querida Xie or Q is a Diversity Program Manager at Autodesk. Before becoming a Program Manager, she started her career as a recruiter for Internship Programs in various companies, and loved every moment of it. Early Career Talent is something she remains passionate about, and is continuously looking for ways to contribute in empowering and enabling the next generation.

Katelyn has been working within campus recruiting for the last 11 years. She currently leads the Global Campus Recruiting Team at MongoDB, which hires Software Engineering Interns, New Grad and Sales Academy positions. Our MongoDB campus team hires over 150 global Interns as well as 140 entry level positions.

Prior to joining MongoDB, Katelyn lead Protiviti's Global Technology Consulting, Business Performance Improvement and Digital campus recruiting efforts. She also lead Protiviti's Northeast Region Campus hiring team which included Toronto, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Metro DC offices.

Katelyn loves working in a team environment and brainstorming around strategy to come up with innovative solutions to bring campus recruiting to the next level. She has a passion for technology and streamlining processes to simplify to scale.

Dave has a passion for building early stage teams. Prior to Cockroach Labs, he was the first non-engineering hire at Vine, and then the first in-house recruiter at Yext. At Yext he grew his team to 7 people and was responsible for recruiting across all departments outside of Revenue. After 5 years at Yext, which included a 2017 IPO, he caught the startup bug again and made the move over to Cockroach Labs. He started as an IC Tech Recruiter and eventually helped build the Recruiting team to the current size of 13. Always eager to expand his experience, he took over a new focus about 6 months ago as the Senior Manager for Corporate Recruiting and Programs. His team focuses on hiring for all G&A roles as well as overseeing employer branding, events, and DEI initiatives.

He's a huge proponent of Cockroach Lab's core value of balance and most days he'll log off around 5pm to cook dinner for his wife Rachel and two kids, Ezra and Asher. Aside from family activities, he's been spending his free time during COVID on his Peloton bike and doing projects around his family's house in Connecticut.

Monique Aristy leads Early Talent Recruitment globally for Confluent, where she delivers a best-in-class recruiting function to build a pipeline of high-quality diverse talent. Prior to Confluent, Monique has held various recruiting roles at both Twitter and Goldman Sachs for over a decade. Diversity recruitment is a passion for Monique and during her time at Twitter, she created the ‘You Belong in Tech’ campaign to uplift and encourage emerging talent from underrepresented groups to believe in themselves and bring their most authentic selves to Tech.

Monique graduated from Muhlenberg College with a degree in Sociology and Media/Communications. Outside of work, Monique enjoys reading and music, but most relishes time with her amazing husband and daughter.

Emily is a Program Manager on the University Talent Programs Team at Adobe. She leads the intern onboarding experience and PhD intern programming for their 700 North America interns and grad programming for their 300 North America grads. She loves connecting with interns and grads to best understand their needs.

Stephanie leads the University Talent & Programs team at Rubrik, Inc. Prior to Rubrik, she has managed university and diversity hiring programs and spent some time in the college admissions space.

Alison is the University Recruiting Senior Manager- Employee Experience at SiriusXM. In her role at SiriusXM, Alison is responsible for overseeing the internship program that runs year-around and hires approximately 250 students per year in all departments of the business. She also oversees the Demo Tape apprentice program. Prior to this role, Alison worked in higher education as a career counselor where she counseled undergraduate and graduate students on selecting a major, exploring careers, and in all aspects of the job and internship search process. She holds a master’s in Counseling & Counselor Education from Indiana University Bloomington and a BA in Psychology from University of Richmond.

Therasa Cha is a driven recruiting and operations leader who has delivered impactful and long lasting change at startup to the enterprise level with companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Axon, and ServiceNow. For over 13 years she has been fortunate enough to have a career that spans all areas of Global Talent Acquisition as well as being in production engineering for the business. This experience ranges from shipping in house recruiting technology to leading global hiring initiatives (up to 6,000+ hires).

Therasa is first generation and multi-racial. She and her cousins are also the first of their family to receive a college level education. A recent graduate herself, in 2021 Therasa earned her Master's in Human Resource Management from University of Southern California. She's an avid fisherwoman. When she's not working, you'll find her on a river chasing a salmon or steelhead..

Andrei is a Director of Partnerships in the San Francisco Bay area where he focuses on building multi-threaded relationships with industry partners that both solve company talent needs and open up opportunities for our Northeastern students. Before joining Northeastern, he was an early member of the partnerships team at Udacity, a venture-backed education startup that teaches industry-relevant skills online. While there, he built partnerships to co-develop cutting-edge skills-based curriculum, raised millions in scholarships in funding, and built talent pipelines working alongside some of the most innovative companies in the world including NVIDIA, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and IBM. Before discovering his interest in tackling the skills gap at the intersection of education and industry, Andrei was a management consultant and corporate strategist.

Genevieve has spent the last 10 years in the university recruiting space. Currently, she leads early career hiring at Plaid. She built the program from the ground up beginning four years ago. Before Plaid, Genevieve worked on the university teams at Airbnb and McKinsey & Company. Outside of work, Genevieve enjoys spending time outside with her toddler and drinking coffee.

Celeste is a hiring strategist with deep expertise in program management, people management, university recruiting, and technical recruiting. Her area of expertise is DEI pipeline innovation, DEI conference and event strategy and engagement, and early career initiatives. She has led those initiatives at multiple Fortune 500 companies across the tech sector.

She is a Posse Foundation Alumna, Dickinson College Alumna, and current Human Resource Management and Development Master’s candidate at New York University. Celeste is a proud Brooklynite and she loves to dance, read, and travel.

Ashley Eng is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Thermo Fisher Scientific, overseeing their University Relations team who bring in 500 early talent hires each year. Ashley has spent over 10+ years in university recruiting in multiple industries and has always had a focus of driving diversity and inclusion into her organizations.

Kelly currently heads up the technical recruiting organization at Verkada where she has most recently been building the university recruiting program from the ground up. She first launched her career in university recruiting at Rubrik where she helped scale the technical early career and internship programs. Kelly is passionate about empowering the next generation of engineers to feel confident in forging their individual career paths.

Leanne has spent her entire career in university recruiting at various size companies in the technology industry. She has been a part of a large team and has also been the one woman show running a university program. Throughout her career, Leanne has implemented new ways to engage students, influence leadership, and position brands as an employer of choice for students. A quote she often references, "All progress takes place outside the comfort zone." She's looking forward to being a part of URx 2022!

My career focus has been on building a wide set of experiences across a range of HR roles. From operations and data analytics, to onboarding, performance management and company culture, I've tried to gather best practices from the many different types of work in the human resources function. At Sprinklr, I've been leading the build-out of our first early-in-career hiring team for the US and EMEA. It's been an exciting adventure, with challenges aplenty, but working with early-in-career talent has been immensely energizing! 

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Elizabeth Diley leads campus recruiting at General Mills, one of the world's largest food manufacturers based out of Minneapolis, MN. During her 14 year tenure at General Mills she has held various external recruiting and internal staffing roles. Currently she is responsible for all campus recruiting activity and designing and implementing their award-winning internship program. Elizabeth and her team are committed to attracting and converting top early career talent, all while championing diversity and inclusion efforts. Over the past year, her team has developed innovated approaches and engagement strategies to combat the ever-changing recruiting environment brought on by the pandemic. Under her leadership, GMI has had its best intern to fulltime conversion rate at 95% and exceeded all hiring expectations.

Elizabeth holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management from the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University. Outside of work, Elizabeth spends her time outdoors skiing and fishing, cooking, and dreaming of her next travel adventure. Her favorite General Mills product is Lucky Charms!

Dr. Jessica Nguyen completed her Bachelor's in Psychology from Berry College in 2010 before completing a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy from Liberty University in 2011. Jessica spent a year working in the counseling field before transitioning into higher education as a Transition Coordinator for Georgia Northwestern Technical College. After three years, Jessica transitioned to the Dual Enrollment Office and served as a Career Transition Specialist for two years. During her time at GNTC, Jessica completed her Doctorate of Education in Higher Education Administration from Northeastern University in 2018. She then took a role as the Associate Director of Career Development with University of West Georgia. Most recently, Jessica transitioned to Mohawk Industries as their University Relations Manager in April of last year where she oversees their internship program and the recruitment for several programs looking for recent graduate talent. When she's not working, Jessica competitively shows horses, can be found on stage at Rome Little Theatre, and enjoys reading mysteries and thrillers.

Ahva Sadeghi is a passionate social entrepreneur and co-founder of Symba, a venture backed and all-female founded tech startup. Symba is focused on designing the internship experience and the future of work. Ahva is an economist and researcher focused on remote work and workforce development. Prior to launching Symba, Ahva worked at the US Department of State in the Human Rights Bureau and completed a civil rights fellowship with Congressman John Lewis in Atlanta. She was recently named Forbes 30 Under 30 and a Global Entrepreneur Scholar by the US Department of State.

Ahva completed her graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and received her BA from the University of Arizona Honors College. In her spare time, Ahva enjoys playing the cello.

Jenny has spent the entirety of her career working with early talent - from college counseling and admissions to university recruiting and managing development programs for early-in-career talent. Now in her sixth year at Workday, Jenny manages the global intern & co-op program across 10+ sites and over 250 interns. She loves Workday's Core Values and all the inspiring people she gets to work with daily. When not at work, you might catch Jenny out for a run, learning about American history or gobbling candy.

Entrepreneur, community builder, and diversity advocate. Wahab Owolabi is the Founder of OneReq, URx & Producer of the URx Conference. Currently Wahab is also a Diversity Business Partner at Facebook and on the Board of ColorStack a non-profit organization that promotes the advancement of underrepresented college CS students. Previously, Wahab built the University Recruiting and Talent Programs function at Rubrik. Rubrik became an employer of choice amongst top engineering students and ranked in the top 10 of Linkedin's Career Launching Startups. Prior to Rubrik, Wahab was a Talent Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, building a network of top university talent and supporting portfolio company recruiting efforts. Previously, Wahab worked at both Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University helping technology companies recruit university talent and helping students launch amazing technical careers.  

Stephanie has over 15 years of experience launching, scaling and maturing early career strategies and talent acquisition programs. Currently she runs a global UR team at Autodesk and manages TA programs and enablement. With a growth mindset, she is passionate about her team and constantly innovating. Previosuly as National Director of Campus Recruiting, at BDO USA, LLP Stephanie has developed and scaled a best-in-class campus recruiting strategy during a time of rapid firm growth. With a streamlined, digitally enabled approach focused on candidate care, Stephanie and her team hired more than 1500 students last year from some of the best colleges and universities in the country. With more than 15 years of recruiting experience, Stephanie is a thought-provoking speaker on many issues in the workplace, including multi-generational trends in the workplace, digital marketing, university recruiting strategies and the college-to-career transition.

Natalie Chwalk is a Program Manager on the Campus Team at MongoDB where she specializes in empowering and enabling emerging talent. She is passionate about building strong connections with students to provide guidance and support during their transition from college to career. Natalie graduated from Rutgers University where she studied Human Resource Management, Organizational Leadership and Labor Studies. Outside of work, you can find Natalie spending time with friends and family at the Jersey Shore, and capturing life’s most precious moments through photography.

I am currently the Talent Acquisition Manager for University Recruiting at Adobe. Throughout my 14 years of recruiting experience, I have worked for many industry leaders such as 3M, Amazon and now Adobe. With my recent transition to the University recruiting space, I’ve witnessed many areas where my team and I can make an impact on the careers of budding professionals. University Hiring efforts offer multiple opportunities to infuse new ideas that drive different layers of innovation into the organization. I pride myself on practicing and preaching to my teams the importance of a high-level customer focus. My expertise thrives in working backwards from a customer need while developing a solution to address them. The recruiting world survives on candidate experience, and a good reputation can take an organization a long way. Every connection you make helps to build the brand of your organization. I always like to encourage others to “ Do it right and Do it with the candidates best interest in mind always”

Sam is a former accountant turned University Recruiter at Bitgo and formerly at Robinhood as well as a member of the URx team. In addition to full cycle technical recruiting and strengthening the team's diversity efforts and partnerships, she is utilizing her accounting background by focusing on all things data and metrics. She kicked off her university recruiting career three years ago as a Recruiting Coordinator at Coinbase, eventually expanding her role to include building out the program for interns and new grads.

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Meirav began her career running a university recruiting department for a financial services firm, filling over 100 co-op, intern, and full-time entry-level positions annually in operations, technology, and finance, with students from top universities.  She recognized the need to provide campus relations departments tools to streamline their processes and connect university systems to ATS/HRIS systems and joined Symplicity to bridge the gap.  During her time with Symplicity, Meirav brought the Recruit product to market, sold it to some of the busiest recruiting departments in the world, and has worked to ensure the platform continues to meet their needs and evolves with changing trends.

Working with Symplicity's entire range of products has provided Meirav a unique perspective on the need to infuse the theme of Belonging throughout the process, which has made her an invaluable resource to her clients regarding trends, messaging, and positioning themselves effectively within their desired markets and target groups.

Tigran Sloyan is the CEO of CodeSignal, an automated-technical assessment platform that enables large and small companies to go beyond resumes and evaluate engineering candidates based on their skills and not the school they went to or the companies they’ve worked at.

Tigran is also the founder of the #GoBeyondResumes movement that brings together engineering, recruiting and career services leaders to create a mindset shift in the industry about how we approach recruiting and how we measure talent. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of education, assessment and recruiting and how these industries interact and influence each other.

Tigran holds bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) and has previously worked in Product Management and Engineering roles at companies like Google and Oracle. Between 2003 and 2007, Tigran was awarded 5 medals at the prestigious International Mathematics Olympiad that brings together more than 500 top young mathematicians from all over the world.

Nana-Gyasi Kessie graduated from Howard University law school in 2021. Nana came across Forage after being recommended White & Case's virtual job simulation. When he discovered the program was free, open-access, and included insights he hadn't learned as a paralegal or in law school, he knew he had to sign up. After preskilling in all things White & Case, Nana now works at their New York office as a Law Clerk. In his free time, Nana visits galleries and museums, reads up on current financial/global news, travels, and watches soccer and historical documentaries. 

Tom is CEO and co-founder of Forage, which he started along with co-founder Pasha in 2017. Prior to Forage, Tom was an M&A attorney at a global law firm (King & Wood Mallesons) specializing in cross-border transactions. In this role, Tom realized there was a disconnect between university and the world of work. From here, Forage was born. Today, Forage aims to give all students the means to advance their careers for free. With over 1.4 million students and 75 companies on the platform, Tom is passionate about helping students find their dream careers at great companies.

Danielle Oltman is currently an undergraduate student at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. She transferred to McGill from the City College of San Francisco, and she frequently volunteers as a mentor for students who come from similarly non-traditional backgrounds. A serial intern, her professional interests include writing, UX, robotics, and human-computer interaction (HCI). Her personal interests often overlap with her professional interests, but in her spare time she enjoys visiting friends and family, cooking/eating, traveling, and learning new languages.

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Deitrick Franklin is an Engineer, Program Manager, Recruiter, Mentor and DEI Advocate. As a University Recruiting Program Manager for Reddit, he is developing foundational structure, processes, and programming that seeks to attract and retain exceptional and diverse early talent professionals into opportunities. He currently creates inclusive recruiting experiences for both tech & business roles, such as Software Engineering, Data Science, Communications, Marketing, Sales & Account Management and more. Prior to Reddit, he worked as an Early Talent PM at Lyft to ensure an excellent employee experience for incoming Apprentices, Interns & New Grads. His focus included engagement and retention strategies that aimed to convert 100% of the participants in Lyft’s Early Talent Programs into full-time opportunities. Deitrick proactively engages underrepresented / underserved communities in tech, particularly Black, Latinx, and Women, to inform & encourage them to apply for high paying opportunities. As a former engineer who broke into the tech industry, he strongly believes in diversity, equity and inclusion and strives to help others see that #YouBelong. Deitrick is a native of Baltimore, MD, who received his B.S. (2012) and M.S. (2014) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively. In his spare time, Deitrick enjoys traveling, playing billiards, and making people laugh! If you’d like, please connect with Deitrick Franklin on LinkedIn!

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Mary builds partnerships with employers seeking to build their software development and computational early talent pipelines with a focus on diversifying their teams. Creating integrated programming between employers and students broadens the pathway into computational careers. This intersection of meeting employer needs while creating opportunity for students who might not have thought a career in technology was available to them is what drives her work.

Mary’s career started in banking, segued into television commercial production in New York; then ran film commissions in North Carolina leading her to Washington state where she first ran their film commission and then moved into economic development, managing the international trade and foreign direct investment teams. This varied path and range of experiences led Mary to her current role in strategic partnership development with Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences where she has worked since 2015.

Sue Harnett has been an entrepreneur in the technology space since 2003. Her most recent venture is a virtuous startup: Rewriting the Code. RTC couples Harnett’s passions for mentorship and technology. The organization's mission is to recruit, retain + advance college women-in-tech. Since the nonprofit’s launch in January 2017, 3,800+ undergraduates from 400+ universities joined the RTC community. RTC is conducting prospective research to understand and address why women leave technology-related degree programs and jobs at unprecedented rates.

Harnett entered the startup arena when she founded Replay Photos – a sports e-commerce + technology business with a host of top collegiate and professional brands. Harnett sold Replay Photos to Raleigh-based Lulu in October 2013.

Harnett’s success with intellectual property commercialization, college students, entrepreneurs and start-up companies comes from her passion and ability to recognize the viability of a concept, develop a foundational infrastructure for it, and quickly scale the idea into a business. She attributes the largest part of her success to creating teams of highly-motivated colleagues who embrace a culture of independence + motivation to do great things every day.

Harnett, a native of Staten Island, NY, holds two degrees from Duke University, including a master’s degree in Health Care Administration. Harnett received and All-America honors as a 4-year starter for the Duke women’s basketball team. She is a charter inductee of the Duke Basketball Hall of Honor and the 4th all-time leading scorer with a career point total of 1,785 points. Harnett continued her basketball career after she received her graduate degree and played on the professional level in Belgium.

Kate Beckman is the Executive Manager of Community & Insights at RippleMatch, a comprehensive platform for early career hiring. In her role at RippleMatch, Kate leads content, research, and events, facilitating conversations and community among talent acquisition leaders and publishing data-driven insights on the next generation of talent. Prior to her role at RippleMatch, Kate was the founder and Editor of a national online publication for college students and a writer for Cosmpolitan.com's 'Career' section.

Caroline Cunningham is a Sr. Manager for Early Career Talent Acquisition at Intuit. In this role, her team is responsible for Early Career hiring for Software Engineering and Data Science. Prior to Intuit, Caroline was at GE Digital where she built and rolled out their University Relations and Diversity Recruiting strategy. She also spent several years at Chevron where she worked in similar progressive leadership roles in the university relations and diversity spaces. Caroline has 20+ years of staffing experience and has worked in a variety of industries and major corporations including Johnson & Johnson, NorthBay Healthcare, consumer distribution and non-profit services. Caroline is an active member of NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) where she has participated on and lead numerous committees and also served as a member of the Board of Directors. She has presented at several national and regional conferences and events on a variety of topics related to recruiting and talent acquisition. She holds a bachelors degree from Occidental College and is PHR
(Professional in Human Resources) Certified. In her spare time, she is a volunteer host family and student interviewer for Youth for Understanding (FYU) and enjoys spending time with her husband and two teenage daughters.

Passionate about helping people find the right careers, especially in the early talent space. Experienced manager with a demonstrated history of working in the fast paced, competitive tech industry. Proven track record of delivering results in sometimes ambiguous situations with candidate and client experience top of mind. Skilled in building and taking teams to the next level, technical recruiting, college/university recruiting, and sourcing. Strong human resources professional with an eye to detail and polish. Strong process orientation and optimization with a BS focused in Operations and Info Systems & International Business from Penn State University.

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Nikita Gupta is an entrepreneur with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Cornell University. At Cornell, she launched Girls Who Code in Ithaca, NY and was heavily involved with Women in Computing. She has previously worked with Apple Inc., Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Martha Stewart, and a few startups as a software engineer.

Nikita is currently the co-founder and CTO of Symba, a platform to help companies manage and design remote internships. She was recently awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 in Enterprise Technology and is a Halcyon Fellow. Originally from NJ and India, Nikita is currently residing in NY/NJ. In her spare time, she can be found cooking (nikitaskitchen.com), dancing, or scuba diving.

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Experienced leader in higher education serving as the Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at Miami University of Ohio. She served as the Vice President for Research at Rowan University previously. During the first year as Vice President for research, awards grew by close to 50% over the previous year. As Department Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering for seven years previous to the Vice President for research position, led successful outcomes such as ABET accreditation, strategic planning, strong student enrollments, significant research growth and demonstrable student success. Hired and mentored a diverse group of faculty and staff. Also worked on diversity and inclusion efforts for campus by enhancing the perception and understanding of diversity and equality among students, faculty and administrators.