Bilal Baloch - Enquire AI
Bilal Baloch is the COO & Co-founder of Enquire AI.
Bilal Baloch is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Enquire AI (formerly GlobalWonks), a technology firm enabling businesses to connect with subject-matter experts inside or outside their firm in real-time. Prior to starting Enquire AI, Bilal was a Lecturer and Regional Director at the Lauder Institute of Management at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Prior to this, Bilal was an Associate at a leading strategic insights firm, Macro Advisory Partners in London, and Chief of Staff to Dean Vali Nasr at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies covering duties from operations and fundraising to research and marketing. Bilal has counseled the world’s leading financial institutions and corporates on geopolitical, business, and investment risk in emerging and frontier markets. His expert commentary on a range of global issues has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post. Bilal is also the author of how governments respond to credibility crises in developing democracies, a book that came out with Cambridge University Press in Fall 2021.
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Coonoor Behal - Mindhatch
Coonoor Behal is the Founder & CEO of Mindhatch.
Coonoor Behal is the Founder & CEO of Mindhatch, a consultancy that helps organizations create the conditions for innovation and creativity to thrive. Through Mindhatch, Coonoor delivers her unique mix of expertise in Design Thinking, Organizational ImprovTM, Innovation Facilitation, and Diversity & Inclusion.
Coonoor has helped Deloitte create, prototype, and launch an in-house design thinking consulting arm; be a part of a “stealth” team of design strategists and researchers guiding numerous teams at Starbucks; trained more than 100 people at Bethpage Federal Credit Union in design thinking; helped the Department of State and the Pentagon use improv to be more creative and collaborative thinkers, and has helped the Inter-American Development Bank’s Gender & Diversity Division generate and come to a consensus on their strategic vision.
Coonoor is also the author of I Quit! The Life-Affirming Joy of Giving Up, which will be published by New Degree Press in April 2021. The book seeks to help readers rethink and reframe quitting by sharing stories from everyday people who summoned the courage to quit things in their lives. Coonoor has been an improv comedy performer for over 10 years, is an avid fan of professional tennis, and dotes on Nikka, her Bernese Mountain Dog.
Twitter | LinkedIn
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Mindy Bohannon - Excella
Mindy is a Certified Business Analysis Professional.
Mindy thrives as an Agile Business Analyst and CBAP. She relishes solving business problems, developing solutions that drive the business forward, and relating to others with humanity, trust, and collaboration during the process. Mindy has been a BA longer than she was a database developer, is a part-time scrummaster, and has most recently worked on application modernization and data science projects. She has spoken on analyst and professional development topics at many local and national conferences over the years. Equally, she encourages others to share their knowledge as the President at her local IIBA DC chapter.
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Jenna Charlton - Functionize
Jenna is a software tester and product owner.
Jenna is a software tester and product owner with over a decade of experience. They've spoken at a number of dev and test conferences and is passionate about risk-based testing, building community within agile teams, developing the next generation of testers, and A11y. When not testing, Jenna loves to go to punk rock shows and live pro wrestling events with their husband Bob, traveling, and cats. Their favorite of which are the 2 that share their home, Maka and Excalipurr.
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Bob Crews - Checkpoint Technologies
Bob Crews, CEO of Checkpoint Technologies, is a consultant with 33 years of IT experience.
Bob Crews, CEO of Checkpoint Technologies, is a consultant with 33 years of IT experience in full life-cycle development and software testing. Bob and his organization provide services and solutions focused on QA with a concentration in functional, performance and security testing. He’s assisted organizations such as Harvard University, Raymond James, the FBI, and the DVA in developing teams, processes, and solutions. He’s consulted for over 290 organizations on QA, effective software testing, planning for the IoT, test automation, and risk-based testing. He’s exceptionally enthusiastic about the future of IT and software testing and believes “The best is yet ahead!”
Twitter | LinkedIn
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Nate Custer - TTC
Nate is a Senior Manager with TTC.
Having worked as a Systems Architect, QA Automation Lead, Application Developer, Developer of Tools and Testing Harnesses for QA teams, and as Senior Manager with TTC for many Fortune 500 organizations – Nate is passionate about helping teams deliver quality software. When he is not at a computer, you’ll most likely find him reading a book, sipping scotch, or talking with his friends about Manchester United.
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Melissa Daley - Orca Intelligence
Melissa Daley is the founder of Orca Intelligence.
Melissa Daley founded Orca Intelligence in 2014 to offer clients a unique methodology to effectively capture, analyze, and manage software requirements.
Ms. Daley is an experienced Systems Engineer with a BA in Computer Information Systems and an MA in Technology Entrepreneurship. She also holds a Design Thinking certification from the University of Virginia. Melissa worked as a consultant with several organizations such as Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, and many other companies, such as the State of Georgia Department of Human Resources, NGP VAN, DMI, and ICF.
In 2007, Melissa Daley founded iT Gets Better, a non-profit organization in Atlanta, GA, to assist youth organizations with Information Technology (IT). In 2008, Melissa founded iGB Associates Inc. to support for-profit organizations with their IT services.
Twitter | LinkedIn
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Amy Jo Esser - Voice & Leadership Coach
Amy Jo Esser is a Voice and Leadership Coach
Accomplished Director of Quality Assurance with 25+ years of experience delivering superior implementations of complex software, meeting exact standards, functionality, and data quality by utilizing Agile/Scrum and Iterative methodologies. Improve processes, testing strategies, and test automation, building exceptional teams of quality managers, quality/testing experts, and automation engineers.
Amy Jo has taken her love for quality and leadership into her current role of being a leadership, mindset, and voice coach. Amy Jo helps people find and love their inner and outer voice to showcase confidence and develop leadership success at any level to make an impact in the world.
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Péter Földházi - EPAM Systems
Peter is a Test Automation Consultant at EPAM
Peter has been working at EPAM since 2012 and moved to the USA in 2019 where he is working as a Test Automation Consultant. He has experience in mobile, web and desktop testing in all levels of test automation in the financial, gaming, fitness and many other domains.
He is the first European and one of the first people in the World having successfully taken and passed the ISTQB CTAL Test Automation Engineer module exam. He is actively helping the ISTQB by reviewing syllabi of foundation and advanced levels. Peter is also an active speaker, having attended meetups and software engineering conferences with multiple technical and process oriented topics.
He used to be a guest lecturer at 3 Budapest based universities: Óbuda, Pázmány and the ELTE universities. Brewing beer and planting chilis are some of his hobbies.
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Gene Gotimer - Steampunk
Gene is a DevSecOps Senior Engineer at Steampunk.
Gene Gotimer is a DevSecOps Senior Engineer at Steampunk, focusing on agile processes, secure development practices, and automation. Gene feels strongly that repeatability, quality, and security are all strongly intertwined; each depends on the other two, making agile and DevSecOps that much more crucial to software development.
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Derk-Jan de Grood - Squerist
Derk-Jan de Grood works as agile transition coach for Squerist.
Derk-Jan de Grood works as an agile transition coach for Squerist. He has worked for organizations like ING Bank, RTL, DPD, Nationale Nederlanden, and Greenchoice and supported them in their Agile Transformation. He wrote several successful books and frequently publishes articles and columns for major magazines. In 2014 he won the EuroSTAR testing excellence award. This year he published his 8th book called “The waves of Agile” which deals with value delivery in medium and large organizations. Derk-Jan is an experienced trainer, workshop host, and a regular (keynote) speaker at conferences like Agile Business Day Venice, XP Days Copenhagen, Selenium Days Ney Zealand, and the Agile Testing Days and STAR conferences in Europe and America. On his own blog, he shares his knowledge and experience for everyone to benefit from.
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Glen Hellman - CxO Elevate
Glen Hellman is an executive coach and interim CXO of CxO Elevate.
Glen Hellman is an executive coach and interim CXO of CxO Elevate
Featured as Mr. Cranky in the Washingtonian Magazine and Washington Business Journal, Hellman has been involved in the Technology Business for over 40 years. Hellman’s been a salesman, product manager, marketing VP, and GM for the Telco Software Division of a Fortune 500 company. In 2012, he was named by Tech Cocktail as the #1 Angel Investor in the United States. He served as an on-camera Business Strategy Analyst for the NBC station in DC. He spent a decade working as a hired-gun turn-around CEO for Private Equity Investors. Glen is formerly trained as an executive leadership coach and has coached over 100 CEOs in the last 15 years. He is a former board member at the University of Maryland Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and an Executive in Residence at the University of Maryland Ventures.
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Bob Johnston - Critical Logic
Bob Johnston is the CEO of Critical Logic
Bob Johnston, a 25-year veteran of the IT industry, has a proven track record of founding successful IT companies and is the creator of the automated test tool, IQM Studio. Bob brings a deep technical background to Critical Logic through experience ranging from programming to executive entrepreneurship. He is a featured speaker at many major software development conferences, consistently sharing his extensive knowledge with other industry professionals.
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Ard Kramer - OrangeCrest
Ard is a software tester from the Netherlands.
Ard is a software tester from the Netherlands and he works at OrangeCrest. He calls himself a Qualisopher which stands for someone “who loves truth and wisdom and at the same time is decisive to improve man and his environment” . This means he is interested in the world around us, to see what he can learn and he can apply in software testing. His dream is to participate, as a good qualisopher, in all kind of projects such as sports, culture or software testing. Projects which add value to our community: he wants to inspire other people by cooperation, fun and empathy and hopefully bring light in someone's life.
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Uday Kumar - Akira Technologies
Uday is the Chief Digital Officer at Akira Technologies.
Uday is product guy who grew up as a software engineer and an agilest. He currently serves as the Chief Digital Office at Akira Technologies and prior to that he led card platform product teams at Capital One. Uday is passionate about solving problems by “reasoning from the first principles” and envisioning what an awesome future state could be. He leverages his diverse data, analytics, AI/ML, and cloud technology experiences to develop product roadmaps and solutions that solve business problems by addressing the root cause in sustainable and scalable ways. Uday often speaks about a few different topics including his journey from an engineer to a product manager, importance and benefits of diversity in teams, and strategies for humanizing AI. He also volunteers at Loudoun County Public School’s Career and Technical Education program as well as Google’s Developer Experts (GDE) program as a Payments Technology expert.
Twitter | LinkedIn
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Michael Larsen - LTG
Michael Larsen is a Senior Automation Engineer with LTG/PeopleFluent.
Michael Larsen is a Senior Automation Engineer with LTG/PeopleFluent. Over the past three decades, he has been involved in software testing for a range of products and industries, including network routers & switches, virtual machines, capacitance touch devices, video games, and client/server, distributed database & web applications. Michael also advocates for and focuses on testing for Accessibility and Inclusive Design.
Michael is a Black Belt in the Miagi-Do School of Software Testing, helped start and facilitate the Americas chapter of Weekend Testing, is a former Chair of the Education Special Interest Group with the Association for Software Testing (AST), a lead instructor of the Black Box Software Testing courses through AST, and former Board Member and President of AST.
Michael writes the TESTHEAD blog and can be found on Twitter at @mkltesthead. A list of books, articles, papers, and presentations can be seen on his LinkedIn.
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Robert London - Torus AR, LLC
Robert London is an independent Senior IT Project Manager.
Robert London is an independent Senior IT Project Manager, Project Assurance Consultant, and Requirements Manager. His client work over the past 20 years has focused on project management, solution architecture, project restructuring, and requirements management for large and small ERP, BI-DWH, and custom development implementations with budgets from $5 to $250 million dollars and staffed with virtual and on-premises teams of 40 or more technical personal in commercial, state, and federal sectors.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in physiological psychology and a Master's in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robert’s first job was at AT&T-Bell laboratories designing and implementing communications and business systems. After cycling through several Fortune 25 companies, he settled at Oracle Corporation as a large-scale enterprise consultant for ERP and business intelligence projects, and after ten years at Oracle moved into independent consulting.
As a seasoned IT manager, he provides my clients with a mature perspective on improving project performance through sound project management practices and productive teams. Robert’s project leadership objective is always to create a collaborative and supportive team culture. Successful projects are about successful people. Current IT certificates include: PMI-PMP, CSM, A-CSM, CSP, ITIL, SSM, and ECBA.
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Steve Moubray - Edward Jones
Steve Moubray is a Lean-Agile Coach with a passion for Community Building.
Steve Moubray is a Lean-Agile Coach with a passion for Community Building, the Meetup they’re honored to host, “Agile Coaching DC”, and the new podcast they were recruited to co-host, Agile-World.news. Over the past 20+ years, Steve has worked in all organizational levels, from the mailroom to the boardroom. His focus over the past decade has been helping organizations embrace Agility through Lean Portfolio Management, organization around the flow of customer value, launching Agile Release Trains (ARTs), and helping to create Lean-Agile Centers of Excellence.
Bringing people together is something they enjoy. It’s helped them become successful in transforming organizations and building new communities. Steve often finds leadership qualities in people and love coaching and mentoring growth as it helps him grow too.
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Sarala Pandey - Chipotle
Sarala Pandey is presently serving as the Quality Assurance Manager for Chipotle.
Sarala Pandey is presently serving as the Quality Assurance Manager for Chipotle. She is responsible for managing resource, creating and maintaining QA standards and process for the entire Restaurant support and corporate support application in addition she also manages the RPA team. She drives all QA phases of the Agile development process and responsible for quarterly delivery of all restaurant support and corporate support applications to production. Prior to this Sarala has managed Digital team and in addition, Sarala has enhanced organizational efficiency & efficacy by piloting test automation, exploratory testing, and the continuing education program. She works with each IT team member including Developer, BSA and Architecture to achieve quality assurance operation objectives by preparing & completing action plans within budgetary constraints, as well as individual counseling to ensure professional development. Sarala has provided technical solutions and trainings outside of Digital Channels to the following teams at Huntington: Mergers & Acquisitions, Payment Center, Credit Card, ESS, EDW, MAX, MDM, HAWC, and Leapfrog Mortgage Loan Applications. Sarala is passionate about reducing cost without compromising quality.
She also does great job focusing on career development for her employee. She makes the work place also learning place, she has implemented continuation improvement plan and goal for her team. She not only sets the goal but also provides the resources to achieve those goals for her team Sarala began her career in QA with an internship at Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). Over the course of 20 years, she has served as a QA Analyst, QA Lead, Off-shore Liaison, and finally as a QA Manager. She is responsible for delivering industry-wide SDLC standards to AT&T/IBM, SypherLink and Huntington National Bank. She has extensive experience in analyzing scope document, reviewing requirements, writing test plans, providing estimate and project management strategy, project summary documents, metrics & reporting, requirement strategy, and defect management. Sarala has managed projects with Quality Center, Team Foundation Server, and JIRA. Additionally, she has built an offshore testing team while at AT&T and built a QA team at SypherLink, where there was no QA previously.
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Bob Payne - LitheSpeed
Bob Payne is an early adopter of Extreme Programming and Scrum.
Bob Payne is an early adopter of Extreme Programming and Scrum. He has worked exclusively as an industry leading Lean+Agile Transformation leader since 1999, helping individuals and organizations achieve results with Agile methods. He has worked in small startups, fortune 100 organizations and government with teams, programs and executives. He is the SVP of Training ahd Coaching at LitheSpeed. Bob was one of the earliest Certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs) receiving his CST certification directly from Ken Schwaber.
As a thought leader in Agile he is the host of the Agile Toolkit Podcast, founder of Agile Philanthropy, Chair of the Agile DC conference, organizer and speaker at national and international conferences. With nearly 20 years of practical hands-on Agile experience, Bob has served as a trusted advisor to executives, teams and management at leading firms, including United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, The IRS, Nike, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, National Geographic, Nationwide Insurance, Royal Bank of Canada, Samsung, and Walmart.