Inspiring Women in Tech: Breakfast at Subscribed ‘16

Join some of the most successful tech leaders for breakfast on April 13th at Subscribed ‘16!
Hosted by Zuora’s Women’s Initiative team, the panel features Magdalena Yesil, Founder Broadway Angels, Founding board member and first investor Salesforce, Coco Brown, CEO/Founder Athena Alliance, Carey Butler, CTO Seattle Times and Cathy MacDonald, EVP IT Xplornet.

Co-Moderated by Coco Brown and Alvina Antar, CIO at Zuora, these inspirational women will share their thoughts and experiences on topics ranging across technology, business and their respective careers. An interactive Q&A with the audience will follow. Here’s a short synopsis of their stellar achievements:

Magdalena Yesil
MagdalenaYesil
Magdalena Yesil was a pioneer in the commercialization of the Internet in its early days, helping it move out of the government and university domains and in establishing the infrastructure for e-commerce and financial transaction platforms.

Magdalena is a founder of Broadway Angels and the founding board member and first investor of Salesforce. She served on the board of Salesforce from inception to post IPO. Magdalena has been active in Silicon Valley for three decades. Most recently, she spent eight years as a general partner at the venture capital firm US Venture Partners (USVP), making investments in a broad spectrum of technology startups. She has been an early investor in over 30 companies including theRealReal, Socialcast (acquired by VMWare), Catch (acquired by Apple), Freshplum (acquired by TellApart and Twitter), Dotomi (acquired by ValueClick), 3Ware (acquired by AMCC), Valicert (IPO), 128Technology, Securify (acquired by Kroll), iEscrow (acquired by eBay), and many others. Prior to her investing career, Magdalena was a serial entrepreneur, founding two successful electronic commerce companies, CyberCash (IPO) – a secure electronic payment systems provider that had startups like Amazon as its customer, enabling the e-commerce industry, and MarketPay, an embedded payments software company.

Magdalena was a pioneer in the commercialization of the Internet in its early days, helping it move out of the government and university domains and in establishing the infrastructure for e-commerce and financial transaction platforms. When her plan to purchase Internet access providers from universities would not get funded by venture capitalists, she joined UUnet (IPO), the first commercial Internet access provider. Magdalena was chosen Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997 by Red Herring magazine. She started her career as a semiconductor design engineer at Advanced Micro Devices. Magdalena holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, both from Stanford University. She has spent the last few years working on international peace diplomacy and refugee issues in the Middle East. She is an immigrant to the United States and is an Armenian from Turkey.

Coco Brown
ZSC 2016-03-18 at 10.30.31 AM
Coco Brown has a particular passion for ensuring that the gender balance in the workplace mimics that of our nation as a whole.

Brown is the Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance which works to create key connections that promote qualified women to board of director opportunities and help them excel as they serve in that role. Her career in the tech industry has centered on IT and Professional Services Leadership as Board Director, COO, and President.
For 12 years Coco ran Taos, a privately held IT Services business, which she joined in 1997, becoming one of three owners, COO and then President & COO starting in 2002. Coco stepped down from leadership in 2012, but continued on as a board director and owner through mid-2014.
In 2013 Coco founded Executive Kinections, an executive management consulting practice. Her services include Strategy Workshop Design and Facilitation, building and leading Boards of Advisors, and consulting as a trusted advisor to Organization Design and Operational Strategy. Coco’s clients include Cisco, FireEye, Loggly, Jitterbit, MentorNet, Riverbed, and UCSF.

Carey Butler
CareyButler
Carey Butler is a successful technology and business executive focused on company technology leadership.

Butler is Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Technology at The Seattle Times where she provides strategic leadership on all technology matters and oversees the IT department. She is a member of The Times executive leadership team.
Prior to joining The Seattle Times in January 2014, she served in a number of technology leadership roles, most recently as Senior Vice President of Technology at Coinstar, Inc. (now Outerwall); and as Vice President, Professional Engineering Services, at BSQUARE.
Butler’s leadership roles extend beyond The Seattle Times into the broader technology and nonprofit community, where she advocates for STEM education and workforce development. Butler has held board positions at both the Technology Access Foundation and the Washington Technology Industry Association, and is a current member of the CIO Council at 501 Commons. Butler earned her degree in Business/Quantitative Methods from the University of Washington.

Cathy MacDonald
Cathy
Cathy MacDonald is a senior technology leader with many years of experience covering all aspects of IT, billing, collections and extensive program management.

Cathy MacDonald is EVP IT at Xplornet Communications Inc., a rural high-speed service provider. She’s responsible for all aspects of IT and Operations with a mandate to work with the company to put the customer at the center of all operational activities and ensure alignment of people, processes, and systems across the entire organization to consistently execute well for Xplornet’s customer. Cathy is the executive leader for customer care, billing and collections as well as being accountable for shaping and enforcing organizational policies and standards, while leading Information Technology, Program Management, and Learning and Development.
Prior to joining Xplornet, MacDonald held various senior IT and operational positions at Rogers Communications Inc. over a period of more than twenty years. These positions included Senior Vice President Enterprise Business Transformation and Senior Vice President of IT where she was responsible for all IT within the Communications division of Rogers (cable, internet, VOIP and wireless). She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and Masters of Business Administration from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

The breakfast session is open to all Subscribed conference attendees (April 12-13, San Francisco). Register today! (Only $399 before March 28th for you and a friend with the promo code ZUORA241)

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