Shelmina Abji

Author, SHOW YOUR WORTH : 8 Intentional Strategies for Women to Emerge as Leaders at work, Gender equality in leadership advocate, Speaker, Former IBM VP, Angel Investor

Shelmina is an author, speaker, board member, former IBM V.P., angel investor and a distinguished alumni. Shelmina’s passion is to advance gender and racial equality in leadership roles.

Shelmina comes from a small town in Tanzania which did not have education past 10th grade. Driven by her desire to lift herself and her family out of poverty, she was first in her family to graduate college. When she started her career, there was no one that looked like her in her workplace. She questioned her capabilities, was afraid to speak up in meetings and underestimated her worth. Through many trials, tribulations and triumphs, she discovered strategies that helped her become one of the highest ranking woman of color at IBM- while raising her two children as a single mother since they were 4 and 2.

She started her career as a Software Engineer and then moved to Sales and sales leadership. She has led global teams and various businesses in multiple sectors. She has delivered over $1B in revenues annually and has consistently maintained high client satisfaction as well as team morale. She was a decision-maker in hiring and promoting hundreds of professionals. At the peak of her career, she left IBM to help other women achieve career success.

Through her speaking and mentoring thousands of women, she learned that women globally are facing the same internal and external barriers she did in scaling the leadership ladder. Many are discouraged by not seeing enough people in leadership ranks they can relate to and some are opting out of the leadership pipeline. They inspired her to extend her sphere of impact and influence by writing a book, SHOW YOUR WORTH: 8 Intentional Strategies for Women to Emerge as Leaders At Work.

Shelmina has degrees in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, and Mathematics from Wadia College in Pune, India. As part of IBM’s top talent, she received extensive leadership training at IBM and Harvard.

Shelmina serves on the advisory board of Girl Up, a global leadership development initiative by UN foundation positioning girls to be leaders in the movement for gender equality. She previously served on the board of TiE-Seattle, Bellevue College, and Young Women Empowered.

Blakeley H. Payne

Researcher, writer, and technology ethics consultant, University of Colorado at Boulder

Blakeley H. Payne is a researcher, writer, and technology ethics consultant. She received her B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of South Carolina in 2017, where she was a founding member and co-president of the university’s Women in Computing organization. Following her undergraduate studies, Payne completed her Master’s degree at the MIT Media Lab where she studied the ethics of artificial intelligence. Her thesis research concerned how we might teach middle school students to be conscientious consumers and ethical designers of AI. This work has been covered by popular media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, and Quartz. In addition to her academic work, Payne has also worked with a variety of industry and non-profit organizations around issues of artificial intelligence such as Adobe, Inc., and the Algorithmic Justice League.

Currently, Payne is a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests lie at the intersection of computer science, fat studies, and participatory design. Her goal is to understand how technology reifies oppressive systems such as anti-fatness, ableism, and healthism, and how we might design technologies which promote fat liberation.

Danielle Boyer

Founder, The STEAM Connection

Danielle Boyer is a 21-year-old Indigenous (Ojibwe) robotics inventor and advocate for youth who has been teaching kids since she was ten years old. Driven by her family's own inability to afford science and technology education, she is passionate about making education accessible and representative for her community so that no child is left behind. Danielle creates equitable and innovative learning solutions for minority youths with robots that she designs, manufactures, and gives away for free. In 2019, she created The STEAM Connection, a minority and youth-led charity that has reached hundreds of thousands of children worldwide with technical education. She focuses on using wearable robotics intersected with artificial intelligence to teach Indigenous languages. She has been named one of PEOPLE Magazine's Girls Changing the World, a MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellow, a L'oreal Paris Woman of Worth, an invitee of the White House to speak at the MTV Youth Action Forum, and a Verizon Forward for Good Winner. Based in Michigan, Danielle now travels to collaborate with Tribal schools across Turtle Island to build robots and is currently residing in Southern California.

Radhika Gurumurthy

Radhika graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and then started her career in the automotive industry, working for Ford Motor Company. She then moved to an electric vehicle start-up, Faraday, followed by a drone delivery start-up, Zipline, before starting her MBA at Harvard Business School.

Nikki Steltenkamp

Nikki Steltenkamp is an engineer and an MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School. She attended the University of Michigan and studied mechanical engineering, then started her career at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in a rotational leadership development program. Through the program, she worked in a variety of positions across engineering, manufacturing, and product planning organizations, and she earned her Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering while working full time in these rotations. She left FCA in 2021 to be the first employee at Verne, a startup in San Francisco developing hydrogen storage for heavy transportation. She is passionate about climate technology, dance, the great outdoors, and mentoring women to help them achieve their dreams. 

Emma Koslow

Emma is a senior at the university of North Carolina studying computer science and communications studies. She has had four internships and is currently doing a part time software engineering internship at Disney. She has been coding since elementary school and is super passionate about getting girls, especially in K-12 excited about computer science.

Kamya Jagadish

Kamya Jagadish most recently served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow, working with the U.S. Department of Transportation on its emerging technology strategies. Prior to that, she worked at various technology companies for four years, including Facebook, Lime, and Premise Data, in data science and product growth roles. She is currently pursuing a MPP/MBA at Harvard with the hopes of improving public private partnerships and leveraging technology for local impact.

Julia Wu

Julia was most recently an engineering manager at Brex, where she started and was responsible for the Card Fraud, Card Growth, and Rewards engineering teams. Prior to that, she was an engineer at Apple and Microsoft, and studied Computer Science and Econ at Brown. Julia is currently exploring a few ideas in web3, and has shipped ~20 personal projects in the space since 2017 while working full-time jobs. She grew up in Brazil and China before coming to the US for college. Julia is a regular at Barry's Bootcamp and is always listening to audiobooks. Learn more: https://www.juliawu.me/about.