SIGMOID CAREERS Conference 2020: Exploring Career Paths in Software

Jackie graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2006 and obtained an Honours Science Degree with a minor in Psychology. She was a member of the Women’s Varsity Tennis team and was a student fundraiser, raising over $1 Million dollars for scholarships and students in need.

Jackie founded Recruit My Friends while a student at the University of Waterloo. Recruit My Friends is a top talent, referral-only recruitment agency in the technology industry. Her passion lies in cultivating top performance in individuals and groups. Recruit My Friends is 15 years old and specializes in working with fast-growth software companies to attract and retain top performers. Recruit My Friends clients are based in San Francisco, San Diego, LA, New York, Toronto, Waterloo, and London UK with plans to expand to Hong Kong and Singapore in 2021.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 Crisis, Jackie co-founded a non-profit organization called Masks For Covid with other UW Alumni that created a reusable N95-equivalent mask from scuba gear with a 3D-printed adapter, to aid surgeons and other frontliners working with COVID-19 positive patients. The mask is now in clinical trials at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto with sponsors like Canadian Tire, the Canadian government and private donors.

Sanjeev is a UW Software Engineering 2009 grad who joined Google straight out of school, working his way up to a Senior Staff Engineer and Tech Lead Manager. Sanjeev’s career path allowed him to hone his software skills as well as his people skills. His current role at a well-known electric vehicle company has him focused on making certain electric vehicles the most fun way to transport yourself.

John is the CTO of Moonbeast, a new studio founded by industry veterans that creates exciting games with innovative business models. He has been a strategic executive consultant with clients including Samsung, Activision/Blizzard and The Clorox Corporation. John was formerly a Director of Engineering at Zynga on Zynga Poker, as well as the Vice President of Engineering and Global Operations at hi5 Networks, Inc., a leading international social network for games.

John also held many exciting mobile roles over the years, including being the cofounder and CEO of Mofactor, a small boutique mobile publisher with many internally developed titles and very efficient porting technology. Mofactor developed and published Duckshot, an AIAS nominated title for game of the year, and many other original and branded mobile titles. John was also an early staff member at RIM and one of the founding staff members of Digital Chocolate.

Connie Kwan is a University of Waterloo grad and executive from Silicon Valley with 16 years of Product Leadership Experience spanning blockchain, digital health, energy, hardtech and software (Atlassian, MSFT, CY, SPWR).

She is an entrepreneur, advisor, and an active speaker on the topic of product storytelling. She is the VP Product and Marketing at a blockchain company and was previously the CPO at a Khosla-funded startup. She now advises CEOs and Product Leaders at Seed and Series-C startups on building product-led organizations and solving product strategy and execution challenges. She has founded 2 startups, and helped many founders craft and deliver their product visions.

She is a master at engaging different audiences through powerful narrative. Telling a great story starts with knowing your storyteller type. Find your storyteller type here.

Nabil is a Managing Director at NetSPI. He leads the company’s consulting practice, focusing on helping clients solve their cyber security assessment and threat vulnerability management needs. His background is around building and improving effective software security initiatives, with deep expertise in the financial services sector.

He has over 13 years of experience in cyber security consulting from his tenure at Cigital/Synopsys Software Integrity Group, where he has identified, scoped, and delivered on software security projects (architectural risk analysis, penetration testing, secure code review, malicious code detection, vulnerability remediation, mobile security assessments, etc.).

Nabil has also worked as a Product Manager at RIM/BlackBerry and has managed several flagship initiatives and projects through the full software development life cycle.

Sheldon is a seasoned executive, startup veteran and respected thought leader in the technical and enterprise communities. Throughout his career, he has applied emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to the enterprise. Prior to joining DarwinAI as its Chief Executive Officer, Sheldon founded Infusion Development as its CTO and helped grow the company to 700 before its acquisition by Avanade. In addition to his BASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, he completed a Master’s degree in theology at the University of Toronto with thesis work in neuroscience and metaethics and also pursued creative writing at Oxford University.

Darwin’s unique technology facilities edge and explainable AI and is being leveraged in numerous industries including autonomous vehicles, consumer electronics, and aerospace, and announced a strategic collaboration with Lockheed Martin in May and Honeywell earlier this month.

The company was named a cool vendor in Gartner’s October 2019 Cool Vendors in Enterprise AI Governance and Ethical Response report, and was also selected by CB Insights for its AI 100 annual list of the 100 most promising private AI companies in the world.

Dennis graduated from Computer Science in 2003 from the University of Waterloo and has over 15 years experience in engineering leadership as both an executive and entrepreneur. With experience building high-performing engineering, IT, and product teams in companies spanning media (CBS Interactive Kobo Books - acq. Rakuten 315M), e-commerce (Indochino - 50M+ raised) and, currently, healthtech (Carrot Inc - 45M+ raised) from the ground up.

Dennis enjoys leading the areas of a business where product and technology combine to create an experience that delights the end user.

Mike is a University of Waterloo Computer Science Bioinformatics grad from 2005 and obtained a Masters in Computer Science at UBC. He started his career at Google Research and joined numerous successful startups in their infancy, and was integral to growing the teams to successful exits like Platespin to Novel, and, most recently, Wave Accounting to HR Block for over $530 million.

Mike is passionate about developing people and is a well-known developer and community leader.

Uzair is a Software Development Manager in the Last Mile organization with Amazon. He leads a mobile development team that works on features for the Amazon Flex app on iOS and Android, which is used by Amazon delivery drivers across the world.

He has over 15 years of software development experience and over 10 years in mobile development working on products for the likes of Facebook, Ford, Bose, CNN, Starz, Rogers, OpenText as well as many others. Uzair also ran his own app development consultancy called AppFlex working on mobile apps for clients on a part-time basis.

From this experience leading his own part-time firm, in 2015, Uzair decided to move into Engineering Management full time and has been managing a wide range of development teams since. One of his biggest achievements is growing and leading the Engineering team at Connected from a 20 person team to a 120 person team in 3 years. Through his experiences, Uzair hopes to share what he has learned since being a manager and to discuss what it takes to be a great manager.