She Geeks Out

C.A. Webb is one of Boston's leading ladies. We talk to C.A. about her career journey and how she made it up the East Coast from Atlanta to Boston. Over the years she's been involved in projects such as reinventing NEVCA and starting Underscore VC as one of a handful of female VCs. For more episodes and other goodness, www.shegeeksout.com.

Hallie Bregman, data scientist at Wayfair, shares her experience transitioning from a clinical psychologist to a data scientist. We get a little freaked out about the big data/personalization stuff, but in the end we agree it will all be okay. What could possibly go wrong with so much data about people, right? This episode is sponsored by Flatiron School, an outcomes-focused coding bootcamp offering the best in online Web Development education. Lean on instructors for professional support; move at your own pace through our proven curriculum alongside a thriving community of students finding purpose through programming. Learn to code online, but not alone. Flatiron offers a job guarantee and comprehensive career coaching - over 98% of grads accept job offers within 180 days of graduating! Flatiron School is focused on increasing access to coding education for women. They are pleased to offer SheGeeksOut listeners free access to their online Bootcamp Prep course plus $500 off your first month's tuition towar

Dr. Rachele Pojednic is an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons College, Flywheel instructor and a past SGO speaker. Her talk for our networking event in 2016 centered on #eatrealfood, which we dig into (pun possibly intended) further during our conversation. We geek out about fitness, nutrition, exercise, science and learning, and learn about the importance of taking your vitamins! For more about She Geeks Out, visit www.shegeeksout.com.  

Felicia and Rachel sit down with Katie and Laura to talk about our new SGO offering: corporate diversity training. We reintroduce our amazing workshop designers and facilitators Katie Greenman and Laura Parrott, share what the training will look like, talk about what diversity and inclusion actually mean, and discuss some of the issues and context for this work.

Tony, Director of Support at Localytics is our first male guest and is an incredible male ally. In truth, he's a human ally. He's all for creating and supporting a diverse culture at Localytics and doesn't shy away from sharing his experiences and knowledge with others. We joke that if we were looking for a job, we'd want Tony to be our boss. He shares some advice on how best to create and support a strong, diverse team. In Tony's spare time he has a wonderful newsletter called Diversity Hackers. It's a must subscribe!

We had a very candid conversation with the lovely Rica Elysee about dressing boobs, being yourself and how to deal with being a woman in the tech world. The truth is, not much is fair in boobs and entrepreneurship, but we're dealing with it honestly, openly and freely. Take heart, friends! For more, visit www.shegeeksout.com.  

Laura Parrot leads two lives! She is the Senior Learning & Development Specialist at Google, helping people managers and leaders strategically approach the challenges of leading at scale with an inclusive mindset and she is a yoga and core fusion barre instructor at Exhale Spa. She grew up in Detroit, lived in London and now makes Boston her home. Laura was also Senior Diversity Recruiter at McKinsey & Company and she shares some of her insights into the importance of diversity in the workplace.

Kristen and Jennie work for the very cool, very bad ass Proletariat Games, a Boston-based gaming company that creates games like World Zombination, which we get into. We're not huge gamers ourselves, but by the end we learn about Twitch (it's a whole thing), the gaming community and that, in fact, we technically are 'gamers' because we play Monument Valley and The Room. So there! Rachel HAS to geek out about Civ, in the hopes that there's someone listening that will relate.

Bridget Hogan is a software engineer for Amazon and works on Alexa. We chat with Bridget about her background, how she got into computer science, and what brought her from PA to MA. Rachel and Felicia lose their cool (almost) about how much they love Amazon and all the many products. We talk about technology and how it applies to our lives, and reminisce about some old-school movies (Smart House, anyone?). Want to work on Bridget's team? Amazon Cambridge in Kendall Square is hiring for Alexa, the groundbreaking voice assistant behind Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, and other devices. Alexa is built in the cloud, so she is always getting smarter. The more customers use Alexa, the more she adapts to speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences. If you love being a part of an entrepreneurial team and are passionate about new products, definitely reach out to alexageeksout@amazon.com.

Rayshauna has had (and continues to have!) an amazing journey. Having left college because she could no longer afford it, she chose to wander to different cities and learn from the world. Rayshauna shares her experiences living her truth and finding her way, making Boston her home. She currently works as a research assistant for a professor at Tufts focusing on the Great Migration, which is part of her family's history. You can learn more about Rayshauna at The Idealogue! Also, make sure to visit www.shegeeksout.com!  

Mel Choyce is a design engineer for Auttomatic, which is the company that created and maintains WordPress and more. Mel talks with Rachel about everything Auttomatic and WordPress, as well as her bad ass design skills. Rachel's been a long time fan of both open source content management systems and WordPress in particular, so they got into it a bit. The SGO website is proudly powered by WordPress! They talked about what it's like to get hired by and work for an entirely distributed company, as well as the future of WordPress. And, we also talk about Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Auttomatic. If you want to learn more about him, too, you can check out Tim Ferriss' interview with him. Lots of wonderful nuggets!

We're keeping it current! We have things to share so we're doing it now, while it's fresh and we have microphones. We're less than a week away from the election (it's so hard to hold your breath this long!), the season premiere of The Walking Dead was as devastating as promised (be warned, we do talk about what happened in Episode One so if you haven't watched it and somehow don't know what happened by now but actually care, don't listen!), ClassPass changed their business model, and we're talking briefly about our latest offering, corporate training on issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace!

Jory Burson is the COO of Bocoup, a super cool firm that creates open source solutions for businesses. Yep, they build stuff for companies and use and give back to the open source community. They do well and do good! We geek out about what it means to be in open source and Felicia and Jory bond over their secret lives in the public art space! Follow Felicia's 'secret' street art alter ego on Instagram @somervillegraff and you can find Jory's art here and on Instagram.

Maggie and Hannah are SGO Ambassadors, work for HubSpot and have serious wanderlust. We get our geek on about travel and hamburgers and also talk about what it's like to be a HubSpotter. Spoiler alert: They have some super creative ideas for how to effectively recruit and retain star employees. For more information about SGO, visit www.shegeeksout.com.  

In this week's bonus episode, Rachel chats with Felicia about her first two weeks of being full-time with SGO. We get real and talk about how things are not always awesome, but that's OK.

Rica Elysee is a busy woman! Rica has two businesses, a brand called Boston Naturals and a company called BeautyLynk, which provides on demand and in house beauty services. We talk about what it's like to be in 'tech' without having a tech background (lots of learning), what it's like to be a solo entrepreneur and the MassChallenge experience. We delve into some of Rica's background, which sets the inspiring stage for her current role as bad ass entrepreneur.

Lonsdale Koester is the Executive Director of Science Club for Girls, one of our favorite nonprofits in the universe. They create spaces for girls in underserved populations to learn and get excited about all aspects of STEM. Learn more about Lonsdale and the amazing organization. We're happy supporters of the organization as their mission is very much in line with our own. Finding your tribe and letting your geek flag fly! Here's the article Lonsdale mentions on male allies. For more information on Science Club for Girls, visit http://www.scienceclubforgirls.org.  

Laurel Ruma has been with O'Reilly Media for more than 10 years and her roles have changed in wonderful and exciting ways. Being at a publishing company during a time of such change in the industry isn't for the faint of heart-- she talks about some of those changes as well as O'Reilly's dedication to open data and open source in general. You can follow Laurel on Twitter and learn more about O'Reilly Media.