Why and how did you start the WIT?

When starting at Cimpress, I noticed the small number of women who were software developers. I had met three others who started the same year as me, but we all agreed we didn’t know any other women in the same field. In a way, we all wanted to network and support those who felt the same way.

In college I was a part of the Women in Computer Science group. On a field trip to Google’s Cambridge office, we met several Google Women in Engineering (GWE) members. Stacy Wong’s presentation on Imposter Syndrome (being unable to own your achievements) sparked my inspiration. It was eye opening how many women in the room shared that same feeling. I reached out to Stacy afterward. She inspired me to think about starting a new resource group for women at Cimpress.

With the support of my manager, Charles Dale, I started the Women in Technology (WIT) group with eight of my colleagues from both technical and non-technical backgrounds. They didn’t know each other because they worked in very different groups. However, I happen to be the link between them because as part of the Global Strategic Partnerships team in the Vistaprint brand, I collaborate with various groups among Cimpress to understand how to hook up our systems with our partner systems.

What are your activities?

The WIT group began to meet once a month over lunch, and we’d just talk about anything – just like friends. By word of mouth, awareness of our group grew, and so did our attendance. A committee was created in order to help run operations for the group. The casual lunches started to evolve to incorporate an event each month. The meetings consisted of both internal and external speakers discussing their career paths while offering advice, intern presentations at the end of the summer and potluck parties and lightning talks given by our very own members. Members have also participated in trainings and networking and teaching events, all suggested or run by the WIT group. With more variety, our group started to exponentially grow. We have a strong cohort of 103 members only one year after it started!

What are your hopes for the group?

What gets me excited is that this group is still very young. There is so much potential for it to grow in many ways. Everything is new to us, so there are no limits to what we can try. We are still challenging ourselves to expand our portfolio to include more events for our members to enjoy and to offer the opportunity to connect and encourage others to succeed.

Do you think the technology field is changing for women? How?

Even though there are still not enough women in the field, there are tremendous opportunities for women who want to enter it. Many companies are working hard to attract women in technology. Already, I see that there are more women in the management side than I imagined. This is a great step to show that women are being recognized for their achievements and leadership abilities in the technology industry.

What advice would you give to other women looking to get into a career in technology?

From studying Computer Science to working full-time, I’ve noticed a few things that could be beneficial to women starting out. For example, speak up and ask questions. It is OK if you don’t know the answer to everything. Problem solving is one of the key skills a person needs when striving for a career in technology. By asking questions, you can show that you can be depended on to tackle any task and that you can always learn something new.

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The Cimpress Women in Technology Group invited 2015 BEYA Most Promising Engineer in Industry Recipient Jane Odero Greene to speak at their April 17^th gathering. Odero Greene, a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon, is currently working on a cutting-edge Navy radar program. After the meeting, Cimpress Software Engineer Siyi Gu talked with Odero Greene in depth about her work, being empowered by diversity and the next big thing in Tech: the Internet of Things.

What are you working on now that you are excited about?

Right now I’m working on the Air and Missile Defense Radar program, which is a next-generation scalable radar. For the Navy, this is a big deal as far as radar systems go. This is the first time that we are doing things very differently, building information protection from the ground up…and doing it as a part of the program protection team. So we are looking at software assurance, cyber security and supply chain risk management.

We are also doing something that’s new for the Navy, which is agile scrum development. This is my first time working in an agile scrum environment and deviating from a traditional waterfall design process. So it’s really fast-paced, really challenging and just exciting.

What intrigues you most about the state of technology right now?

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this term Internet of Things. You may start to hear it a lot. It has been used to describe this information ecosystem of connected devices sharing lots and lots of data. A lot of companies are tapping into this available data and using it to their advantage. It’s creating a lot of profit for companies.

Consider a company like Facebook, which is the biggest media owner, yet it creates no content. It’s relied solely on the user data that is shared on its platform. Think about the companies that are developing an automated infrastructure of smart sensors for smart metering, smart monitoring. Companies are using those sorts of technologies to drive down their cost of, for instance, product replenishment on shelves, and things like remote fault detection and then deploying people to fix this growing infrastructure of connected devices that is allowing this. And think about big data analytics, the ability to analyze data in national security for purposes like identifying terrorist activities. So there is this big data analytics around this Internet of Things with connected devices. Cisco and Morgan Stanley predict that there will be 50 to 75 billion connected devices in this Internet of Things by 2020. Imagine that.

You can’t talk about this Internet of Things and this sharing of and accessibility of data without talking about privacy and security concerns. For me as a cyber-security professional, the concern is that the devices are coming with vulnerabilities that are connecting to your network and so introducing new ways for attackers and hackers to get into your system and to compromise it. So to me, that is what is exciting: the Internet of Things, big data analytics, the technology around that big data analytics, and the security solutions needed in response.

What have you learned about how to succeed as a woman in technology over the course of your career?

For me, the biggest thing is to embrace yourself, embrace your diversity and understand your diversity is your asset. When a company is evaluating their assets, I think diversity is an asset to be valued. Understand the value that you bring to the table as a woman. Own that, don’t shy away from situations, let your voice be heard, build your credibility, and understand that you are an important piece of the puzzle to any given company and that you bring a lot to the table. And that’s what I think is really important for women in technology to understand.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give other women working in tech?

Have mentors and build advocates around you that will allow you to succeed but also understand the power in other women and make sure that you’re being an advocate for them. There is still the statistic that women make 78 cents to every dollar a man makes, and companies are struggling to keep women in technology because at some point they are reaching a dead end. They feel they are not able to advance and so they are choosing to change careers, maybe even to leave technology altogether. So we have to encourage each other to succeed, and when you are in a position to make a difference, you have to be that role model to other women so that they see that there is hope for them to reach that level of success.

I would say for women in technology, it’s really important that we come together as a community to motivate each other and encourage each other. For us to succeed, we need to change the retention problem we have with women in technology.

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Gen Kallos is the Director of Production Solutions and a star member of the Cimpress Tech Ops leadership team, with 14+ years of experience in the software and information technology industry. Her outstanding project planning, organizational design, vendor management and resource balancing skills give Gen the ability to drive initiatives and lead teams.

We caught up with Gen when she spoke at the recent Women in Tech luncheon in our Lexington office and delivered her top recommendations for women in tech:

#1: SIT NEXT TO THE BOSS

It’s all about accessibility. Give your boss a glimpse into what you’re working on, get (otherwise unavailable) insight into what he or she is working on and you’ll soon find yourself the go-to person for bouncing ideas off of. Be visible.

#2: CONTINUALLY PUSH YOURSELF OUTSIDE OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

Sure, it’s going to feel uncomfortable and daunting to take on responsibility outside of your existing skillset, but recognize it as an opportunity. Why not take it?

#3: ASK FOR AND ACCEPT HELP

The “ask” part is the most difficult for me. I tend to wait too long, get too deep into something and then end up having to accept help anyway. This is true for the office as well as at home. If you can figure out where you will need help from the get-go and enlist it early, everyone wins.

#4: ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY

Asking questions is a great way to establish your credibility, whether to understand the goals of a project or the motivations of a direct report. The reality is that women tend to have a harder time establishing credibility, especially in the technology industry, so while most people’s definition of a “blank slate” starts at zero, I feel like women start at negative five. No matter how what my role or title is, I will never stop asking questions. Establishing credibility is a pre-req for working with people. It’s all about trust.

#5: TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS AND ADVOCATE FOR THEM

When I look back at times when I didn’t follow my instincts, it was because I assumed I had no choice in the matter or that others knew better. I’ve learned that when your instincts are clear and strong, you should listen to them.

All of these tips lead to and are an integral part of one thing – collaboration. The fun comes when you’re working on a team toward the same goal. My intent is not to climb the ladder; it’s to enjoy what I do and make an impact.

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Over the last few months, the Cimpress Women in Technology Group has been hosting a speaker series, inviting women in the technical community both inside and outside of Cimpress to share their wisdom, career stories, and humor. For our March meeting, we turned the spotlight on some of our group members in a lightning talk-style set of short presentations on the topic of their choice. Borrowed from the larger Lightning Talk event held by the Cimpress Technology Group, lightning talks are a series of rapid-fire, 5-minute presentations on a variety of topics.

Elaina Rivais, a software engineer in the Strategic Partnerships, chose to talk about the Rubik’s cube and group theory. Using an article by Janet Chen and a Rubik’s cube for demonstration, she explained what a mathematical group was (it must have elements and an operation) and what properties it must have (identity, inverse, closure and associativity). The original article was used to teach group theory to high school students, and the Rubik’s cube makes the abstract concept of groups that much more accessible.

Ann Wong, another Strategic Partnerships software engineer, spoke about creating and organizing a group (of people!). Ann is the founder of the Cimpress Women in Technology Group, and she used this as an example in her talk. She advised that the first step was having an idea, and then finding others with similar ideas. Activities can start small—in the case of the Women in Technology Group, as lunch meetings—and become larger and more ambitious as advertising is used to grow the group.

Samantha Boulay, a technology manager on the Product team, evangelized the idea of “10% to 10x thinking”. This involves a change in mindset from evolutionary thinking to revolutionary thinking. Rather than focusing only on how to make marginal improvements and linear changes, the focus shifts to large-scale, exponential changes. She ended with a quote from Larry Page, “If you aren’t doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”

Inspired by the presentations, Jill Maffeo, an analyst in Customer Analytics, volunteered to give an impromptu talk about her first major analysis: a comparison of college viewbooks and how well their picture matches their advertised statistics. Looking at numbers such as gender ratios, diversity statistics, and student-faculty ratios, she devised criteria for categorizing the subjects of the viewbook pictures, and then compared the pictured statistics with the reported ones.

Beatrice Sims is a software engineer in the Manufacturing Software group. She works on the User Experience Design team, contributing to the software used on the shopfloor in Cimpress’ manufacturing plants. In her spare time, she is also a competitive rower and enjoys reading, cooking, and being outdoors.

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