Welcome to this week’s edition of salesforce.com’s Women in Technology (WIT) Wednesday roundup! #SFWITWednesday
If you’ve been keeping up with the news these days, it’s no surprise there is a need for more women in technology across the industry. I believe one reason is that there are not enough WIT role models! Thankfully salesforce.com has a number of female engineers leading major products, and driving important technical decisions. At salesforce.com we celebrate our women technical leaders – our superheroes – without whom our products would not be the same!
Here are just 9 of our women in technology superheroes:
1. Reena Mathew, Principal Architect (Quality Engineering)
Superpower: Telekinesis that can summarize the details of a problem for different audiences.
Reena is currently the Product Owner of the Pipeline team in the Data Center Automation Cloud. She was the first QE to work on the Apex Language, the world’s first ‘on demand’ programming language. Her mantra, “Don’t worry, be happy,” is what got her to be the first QE in the history of salesforce.com to be promoted to the Architect and Principal Architect level. You can follow her at @reenamathew.
2. Theresa Vietvu, Architect (Quality Engineering)
Superpower: Extreme strength to continually attempts things out of her comfort zone.
Theresa has worked on almost all areas of the Salesforce application in the 12 years that she has been at the company. She now works on the API infrastructure. Even as an Architect, she has remained hands-on helping to test and ship features as a result of her unwavering passion for quality. Additionally, she still mentors and on-boards new hires to help share and teach our quality focused culture. Her motto, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission,” has helped her accumulate a stack of patents issued in her name. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
3. Bala Subramanian, Architect (Engineering Services)
Superpower: Laser sharp vision that cuts through chaos to create execution plans.
Bala currently works as the Architect in the Data.com business unit of salesforce.com. She founded the salesforce.com Release Engineering team after coming from a build and release background. Numerous releases and extremely successful datacenter build outs have Bala’s signature all over them. Bala is amazing at seeing an opportunity and taking responsibility before being asked. She successfully transitioned from being a manager to an IC which aligned more to her personal goals. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
4. Jeanine Walters, Architect (Software Engineering)
Superpower: Omnilinguist that can translate any technical conversation in a concise and effective manner.
Jeanine has worked in big and small companies in the past, including founding her own company. She now works on Salesforce1 and her biggest success was architecting a solution and building a team for a feature that no one else thought was possible. She first learned how to program when she was in the 1st grade and strongly believes in the saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You can follow her on Twitter @jeaninesw.
5. Susan Levine, Architect (Software Engineering)
Superpower: Extra-sensory ability to apply deductive reasoning, logic, and the scientific method to any problem.
After leading the successful integration of the Data.com acquisition, Susan now works in Sales Cloud. She created a model for the integration of numerous subsequent acquisitions. Her advice to her 24-year-old self – “It’s okay to make mistakes, even big ones.” Fun fact: Her twin sister is a Salesforce admin and developer whom she calls when she needs product advice from the real world. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
6. Sriramana Ghadiyaram, Architect (Quality Engineering)
Superpower: Telescopic vision that focuses on the big picture while working on details.
Sriramana has had a fantastic journey! After growing up in a small Indian village with only an elementary school, she is now a well respected QE Architect and has worked on Chatter! She has kept her enthusiasm to learn new things and approaches every job as a learning experience. Her encouragement comes from her favorite quote – “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” You can view her LinkedIn here.
7. Sue Shanabrook, Architect (Software Engineering)
Superpower: Neurocognitive ability to find the root of existing problems, foresee potential problems, and head them off.
Sue was the first developer in the Tampa office to work on Messaging, and then Monitoring & Management. She is now the Product Owner on the R&D App Delivery Cloud, and has built and structured a team that consistently and reliably delivers services to production. Some of these services include HBase Pilot, Splunk, Logging Hub stability, Message Queue, etc. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
8. Susanne Englert, Architect (Performance Engineering)
Superpower: Supersonic ability to have AHA! moments anywhere, anytime.
Susanne works on the Performance Engineering team, and has previously worked at IBM. In the past she chaired the TPC-H database benchmark development subcommittee for four years. Her initial work as a Performance Analyst is what drew her to Performance Engineering. The ‘detective hunt’ nature of the work intrigued her! She has worked alongside Computer Scientist Jim Gray who has been a source of inspiration for her. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
9. Qingqing Liu, Architect (Mobile)
Superpower: Hyper Speed where everything appears to be in slow motion around her
Qingqing works on the Salesforce mobile app, and has worked at Netapp and Genentech in the past. When Apple launched the first iPhone in 2007, she launched her first mobile app as a side project, which is where her love for ‘all things mobile’ began! She loves to hear feedback on the apps she built, and lives by her motto, “Be the change you want to see.” You can follow her on LinkedIn.
Readers, who do you consider to be your technical superhero? Post in the comments below!
About the blogger: Sukrutha Bhadouria is a Sr Member of Technical Staff at salesforce.com, and the Managing Director of Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners. Follow Sukrutha on Twitter @sukruthasays and follow Salesforce WIT @salesforcewit to keep tabs on other great content and WIT events.