Join Austin Women in Technology

speaker bios
Colleen Barrett

Colleen C. Barrett, our 2010 keynote speaker, is currently President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines Co., a high-frequency, low-fare, point-to-point airline which prides itself in its excellent Customer Service qualities.

Prior to stepping down as the Company's President on July 15, 2008, she oversaw management, Leadership, and budget responsibilities over the following areas/groups:  the Senior Vice President Marketing; the Senior Vice President Corporate communications; the Senior Vice President Chief People & Administration Officer; the Vice President Customer Relations & Rapid Rewards; the Vice President Labor & Employee Relations; the Vice President Reservations; the Director Corporate Security; and the Executive Office Staff.  She was also a member of the Company's Executive Planning Committee, and she chaired numerous special Teams, task forces, and committees relating to Internal and External Southwest Customers.

Prior to joining Southwest (in 1978), she worked for several years as an Executive Assistant to Herb Kelleher (Southwest's former Executive Chairman) at his law firm.

For Southwest Airlines, she served as a member of the Board of Directors from 2001 to May 2008 and as Corporate Secretary from March 1978 to May 2008, and she served as Vice President Administration from 1986 to 1990; Executive vice President Customers from 1990 to 2001; and President from 2001 to July 2008.

Colleen is divorced; has one son and one grandson; is active in numerous civic and chainable organizations in Dallas, Texas; serves on the JCPenney Company, Inc. Board of Directors, the Ken Blanchard College of Business, and the Becker College Board of Trustees; and has served on numerous advisory board and commissions.
Cathy Bonner

Cathy Bonner, our 2010 morning keynote speaker, is a philanthropic entrepreneur who has started and managed multi-million dollar organizations in both the private and public sectors. As President of the Austin based firm, Bonner Incorporated, she led the marketing launch for twelve states college savings programs now totaling over $30 billion in assets.
 
Fortune Magazine named Bonner one of the 25 most influential women entrepreneurs in America saying she is “smart, gutsy, and innovative--as interested in making a difference as in making money.”
 As Executive Director of the Texas Department of Commerce, Bonner managed the state’s economic development, foreign trade, tourism, and workforce development efforts from 1991 to 1994.  She was responsible for a $500 million biennial budget and helped Texas lead the nation in job creation for three years in a row.
 
Bonner is the founder of the nation’s only comprehensive women’s history museum, THE WOMEN’S MUSEUM:  AN INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution (www.thewomensmuseum.org).  She was honored by the Office Depot Visionary Award for her “extraordinary dedication and vision for raising $32 million” to build this nationally acclaimed museum with technology driven exhibits in historic Fair Park in Dallas, Texas.
 
Bonner is the founder of Leadership Texas, Leadership America and Power Pipeline.  She chairs the Advisory Board of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, Austin’s only public school dedicated to the education of young women.
 
In 2007, Bonner started the coalition effort that passed the legislation and the $3 billion state ballot initiative creating the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of
Texas. The Institute funds innovative research grants to find cures for cancer and prevention programs that help communities address early detection of cancer.

Cathy is the author of WHAT I WANT NEXT...Thirty Minutes to Reveal Your Future that can be purchased at www.lulu.com.  Cathy Bonner can be emailed at clbonner@aol.com
 
Brandi Clark

Brandi Clark is a social entrepreneur and recognized community leader who focuses her energy on connecting people, information and resources. Her passion is promoting healthier people, communities, businesses and planet; she offers professional services to help others do the same. 

Clark has become Austin’s de facto “green welcome wagon” and wayfinder. In fact the Austin Business Journal said, “If Austin had one green ambassador, it would be Brandi Clark.” She provides connections into the green scene, business development support, green guidance for homes and businesses, funding leads for green business ventures, and consulting for individuals looking to create careers with meaning.

Jenny Hoff

Jenny Hoff is a Political Reporter and Weekend Morning Anchor at KXAN.   Since joining KXAN in March 2005 she has covered state politics during Texas' legislative session, traveled to Washington D.C. to interview Texas senators and representatives, and traveled to Afghanistan for an in-depth report on local Central Texans working and living in the warzone. She anchors a two hour show on Saturdays and Sundays and has developed a political roundtable as well as a book club for the show.
 
Jenny's goal as a journalist is to empower people with knowledge. Her experience prior to KXAN included reporting for WTVC as well as an NBC affiliate.   She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Missouri-Columbia and received two degrees: Journalism and Political Science.
Elizabeth Holloway

Elizabeth Holloway is a full professor and psychologist with over 25 years experience as a practitioner, trainer, and consultant in relational practice with leaders worldwide. She has held faculty appointments at the Universities of California, Utah, Oregon, Wisconsin, and currently at Antioch University in the Ph.D. Program in Leadership & Change. Her distinctions include Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has authored over 100 papers on her research and practice in systemic approaches to mentoring, coaching and “toxic” behaviors within organizational cultures. Her authorship includes four books, the latest co-authored with M. Kusy, Toxic Workplace! Managing Toxic Personalities and their Systems of Power She consults globally on system approaches to mentoring, coaching, and creating organizational communities of respectful engagement. She received her PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Read of her current work at www.toxicpersonalities.com and www.elizabethholloway.com
Elise Hu

Elise Hu is a political reporter who focuses on multimedia projects at the Tribune. She previously worked as the state political reporter for Austin's ABC affiliate, KVUE-TV, from 2006 to 2009. She was recognized by the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters three years in a row for her beat reporting on state politics and was named by the Austin Chronicle as "The Best TV Reporter Who Can Write". Before arriving in Austin, Elise held reporting positions at television stations in Waco, Greenville, SC and Columbia, MO. She's an evangelist for social media and multimedia journalism -- she tweets under the name "Elisewho". A native of Plano, she has a degree in broadcast journalism from the
University of Missouri.
Sherry Lowry

Sherry Lowry, a long-time entrepreneur, has founded and developed 7 businesses within 7 industries, each on a new and timely emerging edge.

Sherry works directly with founders and owners of small-to-medium sized businesses and C-Suite executives with their most important next directions and business strategies.
 
Particularly timely in this work right now as we have five generations in the workforce is her focus as an inter-generational specialist. She also brings an avid interest in supporting clients toward expansion through forming profit-sharing alliances and collaborations.
 
As a pioneering business mentor within her own field, she has trained over 3,000 business coaches/mentors, and offers group and individual advanced learning in this area and in coaching competencies for all professionals.
 
Charlotte-Anne Lucas

 

Charlotte-Anne Lucas wrote her first news story on a manual typewriter, and has taught online journalism, Web publishing and design, digital storytelling, interviewing and online content management systems at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and St. Mary's University in San Antonio.
She is project coordinator of NOWCastSA.com, a nonprofit community journalism startup, funded with a grant from the Knight Foundation, support from AACIS, and managed by the San Antonio Area Foundation.
Last year, Lucas and her journalist husband were selected to be editors of building43.com, Rackspace's online editorial venture, whose contributors include A-list blogger, Robert Scoble.
 
Lucas' journalism has earned dozens of awards, including being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She was managing editor of the online-only financial news site, TheStreet.com, Content Director of the converged Web site, MySanAntonio.com and business editor of the San Antonio Express-News.
 
Before that, she was a reporter for newspapers in Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco and San Antonio. Her freelance work spanned the globe from the New York Times to the Auckland (New Zealand) Herald.
Elizabeth Quintanilla

Elizabeth is a former overworked IBMer who started in 2009 an entrepreneurial plus advocacy journey.   She is not just your average Austin girl and the founder of EQ Consultants Group, LLC.  Also, a self-described Private Investigator focused on determining why customers don't buy products or services or finds waste through inefficient operations. She focuses on product management: the art of identifying urgent problems a market is willing to pay to solve, define the right requirements, and develop roadmaps to best solve these problems.  Her other interests vary to include business, technology, food, Austin, and things 2.0.

Elizabeth Quintanilla is also a former rocket scientist from Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she visited Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn from her cubicle. On her many adventures, one brought her back to Austin where she finished a full time MBA from University of Texas at Austin while working at IBM. Little known fact: Two of Elizabeth's favorite classes in the MBA program were cost-based accounting and entrepreneurial finance!

She became the local Meetup Organizer for the Drupal Community. Lastly, she's actively volunteers as a Social Media Ambassador for the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (GAHCC), planning committee member of Product Camp and Product Potluck, and attends a variety of other Austin business and tech events.

Additionally, her company is a City of Austin certified woman minority owned business. Currently, she independently consults on a variety of topics, which include social media, product management, product marketing, as well as project management.
Mary Ann Roser

Mary Ann Roser, medical writer at the Austin American-Statesman, has been a journalist for 30 years. At the Statesman she has covered medicine stories since July 2000, writing on a wide range of topics from the billing of kidney transplant donors nationally to Texas’ secret storage of newborn screening blood for research.
Mary Ann’s journalism includes the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Austin bureau. She covered George W. Bush’s first campaign for governor and also specialized in education, criminal justice and social services.
Before that, she was a regional correspondent in the former Knight-Ridder Washington bureau. She was the Lexington Herald-Leader’s education reporter in Kentucky from1983 to 1989. She also worked at the Owensboro (KY) Messenger-Inquirer and was editor of a weekly paper in northern Kentucky, where she got her start in journalism.
Roser has won many state and national journalism awards, including two Knight Science Fellowships to MIT and a three month fellowship to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for medical writers in 2002. In 1990 that at the Lexington Herald-Leader she was a finalist for a Pulitzer in investigative reporting for the series, “Cheating Our Children.”
Carolyn Scarborough

Carolyn Scarborough, founder of Backyard Pearls LLC, is a professionally trained life and writing coach. Her passion is supporting women to turn the “whispering” to write into a reality. Her most recent book is “Backyard Pearls: Cultivating Wisdom and Joy in Everyday Life.” She is an award-winning magazine writer, editor and newspaper columnist and has published more than 500 articles in publications around the world. In addition, she serves as program director for the Austin chapter of the International Coach Federation, and is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas, Story Circle Network and The Association for Women in Communications.


Sheila Scarborough

Sheila Scarborough is a writer, speaker and consultant specializing in travel, tourism and the social Web (with a little NHRA drag racing thrown into the mix.) She writes for three different blogs and is also a certified Navy Master Training Specialist, with many years of experience as an instructor. Sheila trains and speaks regularly about social media to a variety of audiences, including journalists, public relations and marketing professionals, tourism and economic development experts and Web developers.


She is also the co-founder Tourism Currents www.tourismcurrents.com, an online learning community and membership site where tourism professionals learn how to use social media tools for their destination marketing.

Her blog for tourism and social media is www.sheilasguide.com
Chana Schulman Campos

Chana Schulman Campos is a software architect, developer and educator with over 20 years of IT experience. A former Lead Architect with KLM/Air France, she has led teams on some of the largest software projects in the world. She has trained developers all over the world, including employees of Accenture, ABN-AMRO Bank, Price Waterhouse, NASA, EDS, Freescale and Cap Gemini and ATOS on advanced technology issues.

She speaks regularly at conferences throughout the world on issues dealing with open source software adoption and development. She currently focuses her work on educating businesses to the advantages of open source software for leveling the business "playing field". To that end, she teaches open source content management systems and architectural and development strategies through her business, AustinCMS, one of the top Drupal training schools in the country. In the last year she has taught Drupal to staff from UT Austin, Austin Community College,  NVIDIA, the State of Texas and Texas CASA.
 
Deidre Walsh

As the community & social media manager at National Instruments, Deirdre maintains and promotes a Groundswell award-winning community for 125,000 engineers working on applications ranging from LEGO software to hardware for the CERN supercollider.

She also provides social media marketing strategy for product launches and other word-of-mouth campaigns that involve lead evangelists, brand blogs, viral videos, and social networks. Additionally, Deirdre connects developers offline at user conferences, Tweetups and other events.

Prior to this role, she specialized in media relations, crisis communications and public affairs for companies like National Instruments, Allstate, and Hewlett-Packard. Deirdre graduated in 2002 with a bachelor of science in public relations and minors in business and English from The University of Texas.