Conversations Café: Careers in Tech

Are you interested in working in Tech?

Join us as we chat with Arts alumni, about how they turned their Arts degree into a career in Tech.

Being a techie, and an Arts student is not mutually exclusive. Hear from Arts alumni about how they've been able to navigate the tech industry as an Arts degree holder. Collectively, our alumni speakers have worked in the technology sector for decades, with a couple of individuals with experience in tech HR. Come out and learn more about the careers in the tech industry.

Panel will be followed by breakout sessions.

Alumni Guests

Jessica Fung (BA '14, Psychology)

Jessica Fung is a Senior UX Designer at Google based in Mountain View, California, where she works on bringing health features on Google Search to life. Some of her recent accomplishments include launching features to help people find COVID-19 vaccines and healthcare appointment availability. Previously, she worked at LinkedIn on features that help jobseekers find work.

Jessica graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2014 with a Honours Bachelors of Arts, majoring in Psychology. Despite her interests in pursuing further studies in psychology, she found the best balance of understanding people and solving problems for them in her UX career in tech.

Negin Safdari (BA '19, Speech Communication and Business)

Negin Safdari graduated from UWaterloo in 2019 from the Arts & Business co-op program, majoring in Speech Communication and changing her minor too many times to graduate with one. She is a Recruiting & Search Enalement Lead at Artemis Canada, playing professional matchmaker by finding talented, kind-hearted and ambitious humans to change the world. She also helps enable the greater Artemis team to do the same through better analytics, tools & systems, training and more.

Prior to Artemis, she worked in tech sales, marketing, data analytics, event management, executive communications, business systems analysis, and tech implementations. Thanks to her jumping around, and the co-op program, she understands a little bit of a lot, which is helpful as a headhunter. She's passionate about communication and uses what she learned during her degree daily, both personally and professionally.

Denise Roy (BA '17, English Language and Literature)

Denise Roy is a Human Resources Executive, with over 20 years of experience in Human Resources management, specializing in “authentic human resources” practices, organizational behaviour, and talent development. Denise is currently a Professor of Human Resources at George Brown College and Queen's College of Business, Technology and Public Safety, and the Vice President of People and Culture at Upstream Works Software.

Prior to her work in academia, Denise was the Vice President of Human Resources at Cardinal Couriers, a Canada transportation and logistics company. Prior to joining Cardinal Couriers, Denise was the Vice President of Human Resources at IndustryBuilt Software, a leading ERP solutions provider, and one of Canada’s recurrent Great Places to Work. She has also held Human Resources positions at TeraGo Networks, Rogers Communications and Sprint Canada. Denise also previously served as Chair of the Peerscale Human Resources Roundtable, a non-profit member based community organization for technology leaders in Ontario. She was also Chair of the Board for Shakespeare in Action, a non-profit dedicated to fostering literacy, enhancing creativity, and promoting speech arts by making the language and stories of Shakespeare accessible and relevant to young audiences, their families, and communities in Toronto.

She is currently a member of the Town of Georgina’s Heritage Advisory Committee and the Optimist Club of Keswick. Denise completed her Human Resources education in 2005 and received her Certified Human Resources Leader (CHRL) designation in 2006. She also has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Human Resources Management from York University. In her spare time, Denise is a hobby farmer, avid fisherperson, Shakespeare enthusiast and vintage car collector.