On Wednesday, October 30, 2019, Fairfield Dolan will host a special breakfast roundtable - Celebrating Women Leaders in Technology – presented by Future Tech Enterprise and HP. This event will feature women leaders from major financial, manufacturing, and technology companies who will share their keys to success, challenges faced, and recommendations for how schools and companies can better support the next generation of women technology leaders. All students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to attend.

The roundtable discussion will address the importance of women in the field of technology. Recent data shows that 74% of young women express a desire for a career in a STEM field. And in 2018, women held 25% of all U.S. tech jobs, and accounted for more than half of the U.S. workforce.

Hosts Donna Leonard, VP of Future Tech, and Allison Cohen, events manager at Channel Company, will lead the discussion with six women leaders in the field of technology:

Andrea Ayala is a channel manager at Datto, Inc., a cybersecurity and data backup company. Since working at Datto, Inc., Andrea has worked as an account supervisor to oversee a team of account specialists focusing on preserving revenue and facilitating sales requests, and as a partner accounts team lead with focus on the preservation and growth of Datto’s relationships, revenue, and reputation.

Cristina Dolan is the CEO and founder of InsideCHAINS, which works with organizations to create solutions and new business models with unique value propositions. Prior to this, she co-founded OneMain.com. At its launch, the company's IPO became the largest Internet public offering, surpassing Amazon and eBay. She has also held executive roles at IBM & Oracle.

Vanessa Forbes ’07 is currently a print sustainability and graphics solutions communications lead at HP. Prior to this, Vanessa was a member of the board of directors at Women in Cleantech and Sustainability, VP of Social Innovation at Edelman, and an Independent Consultant at Alpine of the Americas Project, among other roles.

Lori Groth is CIO, Industrial, at Stanley Black & Decker. She works to support technology needs for Stanley Engineered Fastening, Stanley Infrastructure, and Stanley Oil & Gas business units. Prior to this, Lori was CIO for corporate functions, the director of Global Finance and Sourcing Systems, and director of Controls and Compliance, among other roles.       

Francesca Lancer is CFO of Hive IO, a company that effectively balances the requirements for enterprise IT with security and cost to offer a simplistic, effective software-defined datacenter solution. Prior to this position, Francesca worked as an independent consultant at Cutaia Consulting Services, was VP of finance at Baldwin Richardson Foods, and corporate controller at Decru, among other roles.

Devra Sisitsky is the executive director and founder of Makerspace CT which combines manufacturing equipment, community, and education for the purposes of enabling community members to design, prototype, and create manufactured works. Prior to Makerspace, Devra was the regional sales manager for ATMOS Medical, Inc., principal at Health Management Strategies, LLC, and director of operations at HR1 Outsourcing Solutions, among other roles.