Introducing the Advisory Board for REFACTR.TECH 2019!
REFACTR.TECH is all about growing and showcasing powerful voices of marginalized people and allies in tech. For three days, REFACTR.TECH focuses on technology while creating a safe space or thoughtful and nuanced conversations around diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality in tech.
At REFACTR.TECH, we’ll focus on creating an inclusive environment which features marginalized people and allies doing amazing work. We offer a combination of workshops, keynote, and track sessions to expand knowledge, hone technical skills, and make important connections.
Putting together a new event is fun but also a lot of work and we want to make sure that we get it right! As organizers, we want to ensure that we’re considering the needs and safety of all of our speakers and attendees. To do this, we have created an Advisory Board of amazing leaders in the areas of diversity and inclusion, entrepreneurship, event planning, marketing, and tech.
We’re happy to introduce our 2019 Advisory Board:
Vincent Mayers is an Oracle Java Champion, and has been a board member of the Atlanta Java Users Group since 2008. He also runs some of the USA’s premier community technology conferences with ConnectEvents: including Connect.Tech, VueConf US, DevNexus, JazzCon, DataSciCon, and Blockchain Conf. Vince’s experience as a conference organizer has been invaluable to us over the years and partnering with ConnectEvents for REFACTR.TECH was an easy decision.
Nadia Rahali is a digital marketing strategist and customer experience coach. As the General Manager at the Loudermilk Conference Center, her expertise in event logistics and concern for the comfort of our conference attendees for WeRISE Tech Conference 2017 and 2018, made her a logical choice for our Advisory Board.
Kim Crayton is a business strategist and the founder of the #causeascene movement and a proud multipotentialite and advocate for diversity, inclusion, and safe spaces in tech, who is committed to facilitating honest conversations and intentional actions for positive change.
Marcellus Haynes is a Senior Developer at AgileThought and founder of Technologists of Color, an Atlanta based organization focused on establishing a community to support and assist in the progression of African Americans in information technology.
Diana Rodriguez is a DevOps specialist focusing on infrastructure and security and a Google Developers Expert. She is also the worldwide Community Manager for Vue Vixens, an organization for women who want to learn Vue.js to make websites and mobile apps.
Todd Lewis has been building open source conferences, events, and communities for more than 10 years, and working in the technology industry for more than 15. He created and now chairs All Things Open, the largest open source/tech/web event on the East Coast, as well as the Open Source 101 event series. In addition, he’s served as an advisor for other influential events around the country you’ve probably heard of.
Neha Batra is an engineering manager at GitHub who, 6 years ago, was an energy consultant and quit to teach herself programming because “it was time.” She holds a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and enjoys foodie adventures, planning trips (and has docs for most of her trip plans), and collecting national park magnets. Neha is Director of Write/Speak/Code, a conference which promotes the visibility and leadership of technologists with marginalized genders through peer-led professional development.
Chelsea Bullock PhD is a Senior Researcher at MailChimp. She makes meaning from chaos, creates product strategy, and improves users’ connections with technological tools, and solve problems. Chelsea is also a leader for Women Who Code Atlanta.
N. Liberty White is Creative Director + Engagement Officer at CHOZEN MEDIA and Executive Director of ATL Webfast. Liberty has 15 years of experience in the media and economic development industries. She has managed domestic and international marketing campaigns consisting of web and content development, mobile apps and mobile sites, viral and video production.
Jamie Harrell is the business intelligence and analytics lead at Emory Goizueta Business School where she earned her MBA in May 2016. She received a degree in Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1996. She has been in the hardware and software engineering field for over 20 years, holding VP positions in 2 public companies as well as co-founding and selling two self-funded startups. Jamie is a keynote speaker, technical speaker, panelist, and panel moderator.
Stefanie Jewett is the founder and CEO of Activvely, the premiere social-pairing app that connects you with platonic fitness buddies. Stefanie’s path as a technology entrepreneur isn’t a conventional one; as a recovering journalist, she spent five years covering hard news at CNN, until her creativity breached the spillway and Activvely was born. A Miami native, Stefanie grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, her Cuban roots never far from her heart.
Angeleen Wilson is a mom, a data wrangling nerd, dapp developer, and company founder creating decentralized applications and distributed solutions for the children’s education space. In addition to her day job and blockchain business, she helps host the Women of Blockchain in Atlanta to help encourage women interested in blockchain to participate in this fascinating new industry. She also co-hosts a light-hearted podcast called CryptoRitas geared toward delivering emerging news and events on blockchain and associated emerging technologies. She helped organize and is working with various state legislators, leaders, enterprise businesses and communities building the Georgia Blockchain Coalition.
Jeremy Likness is a Cloud Developer Advocate for Azure at Microsoft. Jeremy wrote his first program in 1982, was recognized in the “who’s who in Quake” list for programming the first implementation of “Midnight Capture the Flag” in Quake C and has been developing enterprise applications for 25 years with a primary focus on web-based delivery of line of business applications. Jeremy is the author of four technology books, a former 8-year Microsoft MVP for Developer Tools and Technologies, an international and keynote speaker and writes regularly on cloud and container development.
