SPEAKERS

Shantel Dixon is a Computer Science major at Hunter College. Graduating from Bard High School Early College Queens, with an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts, she transferred to Hunter in the fall semester of 2018. She is now an undergraduate teacher’s assistant, and has attend two hackathons, Lehman Hacks and HackNYU, in the past six months.

Nina Ray is currently a senior studying Computer Science at Cornell University. She previously worked on Outreach and Career Development initiatives for Cornell's Women in Computing organization - this included running its branch of Girls Who Code, and co-founding a class for teaching technical interview skills to sophomores and upperclassmen. She has also worked for Girls Who Code as a Teaching Assistant, taught supplementary classes for a core CS major course on data structures and Java, and worked as a software engineering intern at Zenysis Technologies - a company dedicated to developing an interoperability platform to better the future of global health.

Chloe Quinto is a junior studying Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. She is the president of the Stevens Women in Computer Science which is a club that promotes the advancement of women in the computer science field. She is doing research in the data science and machine learning field to understand how online communities evolve over time. She worked for UPS as an application development engineering intern and this summer she will be working at BlackRock as a summer analyst.

Leah Behr is a senior at Sarah Lawrence College, where she also works as a lab assistant/tutor with the Computer Science department. She has been studying CS for two years, and spent the summer of 2018 developing teaching software with one of her professors. In the course of her studies, she has also explored literature, writing, and psychology. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in programming and software development.

Nadia Genevieve Masri is a 4-time founder, Forbes 30 Under 30, and the CEO & Founder of Perksy – a next-gen market intelligence platform that conducts real-time research with Millennial & Gen-Z audiences through mobile. With a fresh take on understanding the habits, behaviors, and preferences of Gen Y & Z consumers, Nadia is redefining market research for the mobile generation by making feedback the favorite form of engagement.
Prior to Perksy, Nadia founded 3 other companies before studying psychology and marketing at Harvard, which she left early to build Perksy. Nadia is passionate about product innovation, design, and neuroscience. When she isn’t studying human behavior, you’ll find her front row at NY Fashion Week or court side at MSG.

A lifelong entrepreneur, Deepti is the CEO and Founder of FoodtoEat, a community-minded catering concierge service. She started FoodtoEat in 2011 to connect immigrant, women and minority-owned food vendors to opportunities for growth - ultimately helping them strengthen their own business skills. FoodtoEat helps businesses feed employees great food and build stronger & more diverse work cultures. She is also a Co-Founder of Bikky, a platform solving customer engagement for restaurants.
As a mother and small business owner, Deepti is a vocal advocate for policies that benefit these communities. She served on the Board for the Business Center for New Americans, a non-profit that encourages immigrant entrepreneurship by providing micro-loans and financial education. She also writes about how companies can modernize motherhood in the workplace, and mentors female entrepreneurs as part of the NYC Mayor’s WE NYC initiative.
Deepti is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnae, and an avid runner. She lives in Queens with her husband (Abhinav Kapur) and two children (Zubin & Chetan).

Leandra Tejedor is a co-founder of Vidcode, an award-winning software that teaches teens computer programming through their favorite hobby: video-making. Vidcode has reached over one million students in over 113 countries. She studied Design and Interactive Media in undergrad, and fell in love with the creative potential of code, and started working for all teens to find a path to computer programming early in their lives. She's been named in Forbes 30 under 30 in education.

Charlotte Ross is currently an Associate at NEA, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms where she focuses on early stage investments in the consumer space. Charlotte has led investments in The Wing, a social network for women that has raised over $125M to date, CoEdition, a marketplace for plus-size women’s clothing and Choosy, a fast-fashion AI company. Prior to joining NEA, Charlotte was an Analyst in the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs. Charlotte graduated from Yale University in 2014 where she earned a degree in Economics.

Angelica Bato is a life-long STEM geek, and currently working as the iOS Engineering Manager at the Wall Street Journal. In her role, she works along side design and the newsroom to deliver digital content with the constantly changing news cycle while maintaining the stability of the app as technology evolves. She also taught at Upperline Code briefly when the Swift program was first introduced. Prior to focusing on iOS development, Angelica worked as a data analyst and MRI technician in Neuroscience research, conducting and publishing several MRI studies on Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder patients in hopes to better understand decision making and impulsivity.

Alexis Williams grew up in a small town in New Jersey that was a short train ride away from New York City. This seemingly unlimited access supplier her with the diverse and cultured view she sees the world in today. Alexis loves reading, writing and coding, as well as fashion, music, movies, and spending way too much time on social media. She decided to combine all of her interests to create Posie, a media platform with a mission to highlight and instill confidence in young women.

Noelle Marcus is the Co-founder and CEO of Nesterly, an award-winning platform for intergenerational homesharing. Her career has focused on building equitable cities through civic technology, entrepreneurship, public policy, and economic development. Over the past decade she has worked within and for cities around the world including Athens, Bogota, Boston, Detroit, Kampala, Kansas City, Oakland, Mexico City and New York. She is graduate of MIT’s Masters in Urban Planning program and received her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Barnard College.

Ellen Garrett is a registered landscape architect practicing in New York with the design firm Snohetta. She also is an adjunct assistant professor at City College and teaches representation to first year Masters of Landscape Architecture students. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a Bachelors of Architecture and went on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a Masters in Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on infrastructure in the public realm as well as research and design for polar and global environmental conditions.

An artist of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn’s artworks redistribute power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum). Characterizing her playful approach, MIT CAST writes, ‘[Jahn] introduces a trickster-like humor into public spaces and discourses, and yet it is a humor edged with political potency.” Her work has been featured at The White House, MoMA, and Tribeca Film Festival; reviewed in The New York Times, CNN, Hyperallergic; and received awards from Creative Capital and Sundance. She is the founder of Studio REV-, a non-profit that co-designs public art and creative media with low-wage workers, immigrants, and women. Jahn teaches at MIT, Columbia University, and The New School.

Trained as an architect and editor, Talia Perry has worked for various Pittsburgh artist studios, architecture firms, and research practices, contributing to the production of work by Dee Briggs, Bucco Architecture, and Epiphyte Lab, among others. Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts is her pedagogical home, where she teaches architecture design studios and digital media courses. Her current ongoing work uses digital modeling tools to spatialize historical social networks and other ephemeral spaces within a virtual-material environment. At the heart of her work is an interest in problems that cross disciplinary and typological thresholds, particularly those that critically examine how information and ideas are communicated across those boundaries.

Juno Morrow is a multidisciplinary artist, independent game designer, photographer and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. They are an Assistant Professor of Game Design at CUNY-Hostos. They have been developing the first public game design degree program in New York there since 2015. Prior to that, Morrow earned an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. An internationally exhibiting artist and designer, Morrow has presented games and spoken at events like SXSW, GDC and MAGFest. With over 10 years of experience as an award-winning photographer, they’ve had work featured in The Guardian, Dwell magazine and released 3 monographs of urban photography.