Introducing Hack’n’Lead Ambassadors

Role models are an important ingredient of success for Hack’n’Lead. We’d like to introduce you to our brilliant and inspiring Ambassadors.

Maelle (Mae) Baud

Published in

womenplusplus

9 min readOct 27, 2019

Aliseé de Tonnac

CEO & Co-Founder Seedstars Worlds

Alisée is the epitome of what we consider a #rolemodel.
Next to founding Seedstars, an investment holding to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship, Alisée is also a board member of the School of Management of Fribourg and a member of the Swiss National Innovation Council. She was nominated Social Entrepreneur Forbes 30 under 30, Innovation Fellow of Wired UK, 50: Europe’s most influential women in the startup and venture capital space and the 29 Powerful Women by Refinery29.

Alisée stands behind Hack’n’Lead: “there is going to be a level of effort that is required from everyone to really rethink what are the appropriate models to #educate, #inspire and to #support women, communities and talents that don’t feel considered in the mainstream funnel of success in our industries. It’s these types of initiatives, that even though it’s difficult to sometimes give tangible metrics on their return on investment, I have seen it too many times across too many countries over the past years to not be convinced that it does have an impact in changing the mindset gradually, so that it doesn’t become a subject anymore”.

Monique Morrow

President VETRI Foundation // former CTO Cisco Systems

During our interview, Monique addresses the needs for diversity in the industry: “we need to be better as an industry in terms of growing and nurturing that talent and creating an environment that is nurturing for everybody. So it’s not about men being very aggressive or women being shy… It’s not that. Or being victims. Women are not the victims here, it’s about the environment. The environment has to be much more inclusive. In any hackathon or in any event where we come together to solve a problem I wanna see also males involved in this. I think it’s very important. Otherwise, we are an echo-chamber”. Recognized as one of the most influential technology leaders worldwide, Monique has earned multiple honors and worked tirelessly to align technologies to society’s needs. She is an advocate for women in technology and engineering, serving on multiple non-profit boards, publishing Internet of Women, Accelerating Culture Change in 2016 and facilitating the launch of the Women in Standardization Expert Group for ITU. Big Thank you to Monique Morrow for supporting women++ and HackandLead 2019!

Alexander Ilic

GM Magic Leap Switzerland

Alexander Ilic has an interdisciplinary background. He holds a PhD in Management, Technology, and Economics from ETH Zurich and a MSc in Computer Science from TU Munich. He also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alex received several grants including a scholarship of the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2009. He is now leading Magic Leap here in Switzerland.

Besides acting as an ambassador of Hack’n’Lead, Alex has selflessly taken the role as a mentor and advisor to women++ , helping us shape our shared mission to increase diversity in the #tech industry.

Carolyn Mattes-O’Brien

Research Engineer VirtaMed AG

A graduate of MIT and a Ph.D. candidate at ETH, Carolyn Mattes-O’Brien has 8+ years of industry experience as both a product engineer/manager and research engineer. Her job alongside her Ph.D. research is for a company that was once a start-up and has made the successful transition to being a Small-Medium Enterprise.

By studying and working in both Europe and the United States, she has experienced firsthand how different cultures and industries can affect women in tech.

Laurent Meyer

CEO & Founder Propulsion Academy

Spending most of his life between California and France, Laurent holds an MBA and has 15+ years of experience in business development for IT tools.

His passion is to educate the world in the most advanced IT technologies and fill the enormous demand for experts in the coming decades. He strongly believes that many talented, dedicated people coming from other disciplines can become successful IT professionals.

Propulsion Academy Zürich, which he helped found in Zurich in 2016, is the realization of that vision. He’s proud that graduates of the Data Science and Full-Stack Engineering programs find jobs in these industries. He is even prouder to see the gender diversity of students.

Find Propulsion Academy Zürich‘s top mentors at Hack’n’Lead where education is a key pillar.

Jen Jen Chung

Postdoc at Autonomus Systems Lab, ETH Switzerland

Jen Jen is currently a postdoc in the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zürich. Previously she was at the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute in Oregon State University. She completed her PhD at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics in the University of Sydney.

Her passion for technology is contagious! During our interview, Jen Jen talked about how Swiss tech companies can improve their methods to create diverse environments: “I know of a few start-ups that are associated with our lab and also some personal friends who reached out to say that they really want to try and diversify, get more women in their tech companies and they’re having a lot of trouble in doing so. I always try and tell them that there are initiatives like HackandLead. This initiative is a good opportunity to let people know that you exist and that you are interested in the skills that a whole, diverse community has to offer you as a company”.

Margarita Grinvald

PHD Student at Autonomus Systems Lab, ETH Switzerland

Margarita Grinvald is a PhD student in Robotics at ETH Zürich. She pursued a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and later specialized in Robotics during her master’s. After taking part in different hackathons, both as participant and mentor, Margarita sees the importance behind this type of collaborative events. She encourages everyone to engage in such an experience, as she thinks it is the perfect opportunity to bring talent and mentorship together to achieve innovation!

Sebastian Bürgel

CTO & Co-founder Validity Labs

Sebastian, a technology virtuoso, is skilled at teaching, decentralized software architecture, microfabrication and electrical engineering from his career in academia at ETH Zürich. He is the CTO and co-founder of Validity Labs AG, one of the companies bringing the challenge of the winning team of Hack’n’Lead 2018.

One of women++ values is to educate: we see in HackandLead a great opportunity to connect different sources of education with tech talent to build a community in Switzerland that stands behind diversity and education. Our mentors come from diverse backgrounds and are both from sponsoring companies and ambassadors that support the value of education.

Andra Maute

Head of IT Strategy, AXA Switzerland

Andra is an IT-Strategist and IT- Architect with over 9 years of experience in IT strategy-, transformation- and data migration-projects. She is passionate about exponential technologies, blockchain and would love to see more women studying and working in a STEM area. Andra led multicultural teams in Europe and Asia and studied computer science and electronics in Germany and Canada.

As Andra Maute says: “Coding is a state of freedom of mind and I love it. Maybe just like you. And yes, I wished there were more female coders in this world”. Increasing diversity in the STEM fields is a mission as important to Andra Maute as it is to women++ (womenplusplus) because “diversity is essential for innovation”.

Susanna Tron

Analytics Knowledge Engineer, Swiss Re

Susanna Tron holds a Master’s degree in Computational Linguistics from the University of Zurich. She started her career in Tech at Microsoft and then Roche Diagnostics.
Since September 2015, Susanna has been working in Swiss Re as a knowledge engineer focusing on providing AI solutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making processes in the area of reinsurance contracts and claims.

Susanna is passionate about how developments in the field of technology are transforming both industry and society. Connected to this, and especially since she first met with members from women++, the topic of diversity and inclusion in the tech domain is very dear to Susanna’s heart.

As one of Hack’n’Lead 2019’ Ambassadors, Susanna Tron will be participating on-site, mentoring and helping teams with their challenges. Join us in a space where many industry experts would love to connect with you!

Wonil Chang

Senior Quantitative Analyst, eBay

Wonil Chang currently leads a global team of data scientists and analysts focused on optimizing digital marketing at eBay. His team works on a wide range of projects including computer vision, natural language processing and designing incrementality tests. Prior to eBay, he worked at a hashtag#datascience consulting startup. He is excited to participate in HackandLead as the benefits of increased female participation in technology have been well-documented, from reducing bias in hashtag#AI to more creative problem-solving. Wonil Chang spent too many years studying Physics and still enjoys pondering the fundamentals of the universe. Find him at HackandLead as a flying mentor helping participants with their challenges!

Marica Bertarini

Mobile Software Engineer

Marica Bertarini is a software engineer who has been developing mobile and web apps in Italy, China, and Switzerland over the past 6 years. She obtained a MSc in Computer Science from ETH Zurich and works now as a project manager and developer of enterprise apps.

She is the only woman in her current firm and is continuously looking for other women to join her. This is a key driving force for Marica Bertarini to support Hack’n’Lead and women++ : to find motivated women that share her passion for technology.

Elena Oleynikova

PHD, ETH Switzerland

Helen has been a Doctoral student at the Autonomous Systems Lab @ETH Zürich, where she investigated how visual sensors can be used to prevent collisions involving flying drones. Previously she completed her Master of Science in Robotics, Systems & Control in 2015.

“I think for Hack’n’Lead it’s really important to have women on site who are able to mentor and give advice. One of the roles that I had as a PhD student was supervising a lot of master students. That’s one thing that I had to repeatedly do as a supervisor. The most important part often wasn’t giving technical advice or encouraging what they should do or how they should solve a problem, but often it was motivating students that what they are doing is good. That it’s OK to make mistakes. It’s alright to try something that fails. You’re not a failure if you do one thing wrong or pursue a path that’s not correct and that you should just keep trying and keep going. I think some of my students have joked that at the end of their project, when they’re more experienced on a topic they did than I was, that I was mostly a psychological support, a psychological supervisor than a technical one”.

From the whole team, we’d like to thank you for your support and engagement to make Hack’n’Lead 2019 an amazing event bringing diversity in the tech space!