Join the Department of Systems Design Engineering for a panel discussion with three alumni.
Dragana Beara
APAC Head of Customer and Ecosystem Engineering, Google Workspace
Dragana is passionate about the potential that technology brings to people - to connect, collaborate, solve existential problems, innovate and increase the quality of the human experience. In her role as the APAC Head of Google Workspace Customer and Ecosystem Engineering, she leads the pre-sales engineering team focused on helping organizations embrace Google Workspace and AppSheet no-code platform as the next generation productivity-transforming solutions for the digital age. Dragana has been a frequent speaker at industry and analyst events focused on the future or work and emerging technologies. Her expertise is in the areas of digital transformation, workplace productivity, UC&C, emerging technologies like AR/VR, AI and edge. Before joining Google, Dragana held leadership roles in sales, consulting, marketing, and alliances at Dell Technologies, HPE and several startups. Dragana’s international experience includes working in Canada, USA, Singapore, and obtaining primary and secondary education in Europe. Dragana holds an Honors degree in Systems Design Engineering from Waterloo University, Ontario, Canada.
Richard Dunda
Richard has spent more than 30 years in the software and communications industries including a long tenure at Microsoft as well as a strategic role with Rogers Communications. Since 2018, Richard has been working with start-up, scale-up, and growth companies as an executive, advisor, consultant, mentor, and coach. Richard leads the Centre for Integrated Transportation and Mobility (CITM) as Director. In addition, Richard also sits on a number of Strategic Advisory Boards for several small companies. Richard recently completed his Private Company Director’s Certificate to prepare for roles on the fudiciary boards of small growth companies.
Over the course of his career, Richard has held a series of roles in sales, marketing, product management and business/market development. His corporate career spans the onset of the PC industry to the mobile communications industry. He has a strong practical knowledge of the commercialization of technology as well as a deep understanding of business in general.
Richard holds a B.A.Sc. (Engineering) from the University of Waterloo. A long-time hockey and volleyball dad, Richard still enjoys youth sports as an enthusiastic spectator and volunteer. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, travel, cooking and reading.
David Gorbet
David has over three decades of experience bringing to market some of the highest-volume applications and enterprise software in the world. He has shipped dozens of releases of business and consumer applications, server products and services ranging from open source to large-scale online services for businesses, and twice have helped start and grow billion-dollar software products. Here at AWS, he is responsible for the data used in Sales, Marketing and Global Services to run the business, the science and economics used to derive insights from that data, and the infrastructure and tooling used to curate, manage, govern and protect it. Prior to AWS, he led the product and engineering organizations at MarkLogic, a NoSQL database visionary. Before that he helped pioneer Microsoft’s business online services strategy by founding and leading the SharePoint Online team. He lives with his family in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, where he can ride his motorcycle year-round.