Women and Agile ...

Women Making Organizations Better

This is the second annual Women and Agile event.

It is NOT for women only. All are welcome!

But the focus is on women, who hold a range of roles and responsibilities, sharing stories about their journey into and through technology and how they have been influencers for individuals, teams and organizational outcomes.

The format is a moderated panel discussion where panelists field questions from the audience. Prior to the panel discussion, panelists share their story in a 5-7 minute “TED-like” talk.

Joanna Vahlsing, Moderator
Joanna is a results-oriented portfolio, program, project management and change leader with a history of leading highly successful teams in enterprise-level and global environments. She is currently the Sr. Director of Program Management at Centro. Prior to joining Centro, she was Director of Digital Portfolio Management at Weight Watchers International for over seven years. Her background also includes five years managing Federal and State Accountability Programs for the State of Georgia.

Featured Speakers

Alex Niemczewski
Alex Niemczewski is CEO and co-founder of BallotReady, an award-winning nonpartisan online voter guide to every race and referendum on the ballot. Previously she founded a research consulting firm and taught coding at the Booth School of Business and The Starter League. She has a background in workforce development and is an alum of The University of Chicago.

Courtney Shuster
Courtney Shuster is Co-Founder of RocketSled, a product launcher and startup studio that takes ideas and turns them into game-changing digital products. Previously, she was a Practice Lead in the Products & Innovation practice at Slalom Consulting. She began her career at a female-founded startup called Circles where she spent 10 years in a variety of roles. She is an alum of Dartmouth College, an avid tennis player and proud mom to her two young kids.

Ebony Nicole Brown
Ebony Nicole Brown is the Director of Learning & Organizational Effectiveness at Vivid Seats, a secondary market for event tickets, leading organizational training, change management, agility, and efficiency. Her Agile experience includes over 10 years coaching and leading large adoptions and transformations with various clients from Exxon to slot machine gaming to startups. Her goal is to bake agility into every aspect of organizations, removing the label of Agile to making it a part of everyday culture where it’s “who we are and how we work”.

Lana Rakhman
Lana is a software engineer at Braintree. She co-organizes RailsBridge, a national organization that provides free coding workshops for women. Before tech, she taught college English. She is currently pursuing her MS in Computer Science, and spends her free time trolling her cats.

Patricia O'Shea
Patricia O’Shea is Senior Director, Agile Program Management Office (PMO) at Cars.com. Previously she was a McDonald’s Director responsible for global IT digital technology PMO & global IT planning. Patricia’s areas of expertise include driving large scale change, agile and waterfall project and program management, leadership development and coaching, organizational effectiveness, and strategic communications. She is a happy wife and mother of two elementary age children.

Event timeline:

5:30 - 6:15 pm Networking / Refreshments
6:15 - 6:25 pm Welcome and Opening Remarks
6:25 - 7:00 pm Presentations
7:00 - 7:45 pm Panel Discussions and Audience Questions
7:45 - 8:00 pm Post Networking

Security Requirements

Please check in with building security on ground floor.