Padmasree Warrior is CTO of Cisco. Sophie Vandebroek is President of Xerox Innovation Group. Ann Livermore is EVP of Technology Solutions Group at HP. Safra Katz is President of Oracle. Susan Decker is President of Yahoo. And the list goes on. What do these distinguished individuals in the IT field have in common? They are all intelligent, influential and successful female executives. During the luncheon event, we will have three of Hong Kong's very own highly distinguished women IT leaders: Linda Brigance, Joelle Woo and Jenny Zhang. Our panel of prominent speakers will indulge you with a two-part discussion:
The IT industry:
* Insights to today's business challenges and how IT is enabling change
* What specific activities are helping organizations cut costs, be more efficient, and deliver better value/service for customers
The Career:
* What do female executives bring to the IT industry and how has that shifted in the past decade
* The panelists’ career paths – why and how they decided to specialize in IT
Linda C. Brigance is responsible for all software development as well as the support and network infrastructure for this region. Ms. Brigance joined Federal Express Corporation as a programmer in the Information and Telecommunications division, then became manager of International Customer Automation group and moved to Brussels to start up the European development group. In 1996 she moved to Hong Kong to start up the Asian development group for the Customer Technology group. She was then promoted to Managing Director of the Information Technology Division in Singapore and later to her current role.
Joelle Woo is responsible for Microsoft Hong Kong’s developer and platform strategy, and evangelizing the benefits and business value of the Microsoft platform to the developers, system architects and academia. She also leads the team to support local ISV solutions development and building a strong local ISV community. Formerly the Business Group Lead for Server Platform, Woo managed the business and marketing initiatives for all Microsoft Server products.
Jenny Zhang is the Head of Bayer Business Services, Asia Pacific, SAP Solutions and Services, Bayer. She has a devoted career with Bayer early in her career after obtaining a Bachelors of Science in information technology in the early 1990s. Soon after that joining Bayer as a system engineer, she was quickly promoted to head of information management for China and then for Greater China. Before embarking on her recent promotion to Hong Kong last year, she was the Project Manager for Bayer Corporate and Business Services in the USA and oversaw a variety of projects including BHC Diabetes Care MySAP. She is the recipient of the China Top50 CIO by IDG group in 2003.
Amanda Green led the Financial Services Strategic Change consulting practice for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Asia for 5 years. She has also held senior leadership roles in organizations, including a Fortune 500 US 11.5 billion consumer electronics distribution business where she enabled them to double their business in two years. She now runs her consulting firm Effective Solutions, which works with local and global organizations to manage change. In many instances the role of the IT function and its leaders has been critical to the transformation process.
