Women in IoT Center of Excellence (WIoTCoE)
The WIoTCoE aims to collectively provide women in the IoT arena with strategy development and how to implement best practices which promote equality, fairness and meaningful outcomes.
Our Mission and Purpose
The goal of the Women in IoT CoE is to engage and enable organizations and leaders to create and sustain an inclusive culture to advance the development of IoT solutions globally.
What We Do:
Facilitate discussions, knowledge sharing, learning, best practices and connections that reinforce inclusive and diverse thinking targeting STEM, Diversity, and Industry Engagement.
How We Succeed
By establishing ourselves as a credible source of truth and practices for leveraging and embracing the power of women in the loT community:
- Learning portal and knowledge platform
- Center of Excellence content approach
- Live conferences and on-demand dissemination
The Internet of Things (IoT) community is growing rapidly. In today’s world, most everything is “smart” or has a “smart” option available. Everyday items such as computers, phones, televisions, refrigerators, watches, and even scales are integrating modern technology to enhance their features and functions. With this growth of technology use, women in IoT can be considered rare. According to the National Science Foundation, women who are pursuing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) degree only account for approximately 20% of students in STEM degree programs. Despite the low numbers of women seeking to join the IoT community, we believe they play an essential part in the IoT world.
IoT can encompass entrepreneurial skills, software/hardware development, commerce and much more. Despite the seemingly lack of women in tech jobs, it does not mean there are not women innovating in the IoT world. IoT Community is dedicated to providing a platform for women in IoT to connect and network with other senior business leaders and IoT practitioners. The IoT Community platform is committed to providing a space to uplift, support and provide resources to one another.
In addition to helping remove technical, regulatory, financial and operational barriers we hope to create the most effective sharing platform for adopting IoT and sharing best practices.
WIoTCoE Leadership profiles
Michele Null is an evangelist for IoT, Edge, artificial intelligence and open hybrid cloud. She works closely with customers and partners to understand market requirements and then works in conjunction with product management and R&D to ensure technology and solutions meet key market needs and will help drive business value. She collaborates with partners to support strategic joint go-to-market initiatives in target verticals. Michele enjoys being an active member of global IoT consortiums including the IoT Community, serving on the Board of Directors and also as the Co-Chair of the Women in IoT Center of Excellence. She is an active member of RIoT, serving as a partnership leader and member of the Founders’ Roundtable. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Michele began her journey in the technology field, which has spanned nearly two decades. Prior to joining Red Hat earlier this year, Michele spent 7 years at SAS in various roles involving IoT go-to-market strategy. She became one of the initial team members of the IoT Division, which she helped charter. She led product and partner marketing within the IoT Division. Michele also held various roles during her 10-year tenure at IBM, including product management, product marketing and program management.
Advisory Board
The function of the IoT Community, is to focus on the adoption & application of IoT in commercial environments, seeking to understand & contribute to applying the technology or overcoming the wide variety of barriers, inhibitors, and technical & operational issues. As a member of the board, Michele will provide impartial input and guidance to the overall vision, strategy and execution that is helping to shape the current and future direction for the IoT Community, as well as the broader IoT industry.
Amanda Healy is an award-winning marketing leader, social media expert, and national speaker. As Head of Brand Marketing for Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) group, she drives thought leadership, brand awareness, and advocacy for IoT at Cisco. Amanda has trained world-class teams ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies on how to leverage social media, spoken at industry-leading conferences including the Massachusetts Conference for Women, Women in Technology International Summit, Microsoft Envision, Social Tools Summit, Watermark’s Lead On Conference for Women, and more, and regularly conducts workshops for small, medium, and large companies, trade shows, and groups. Get in touch with Amanda on Twitter at @amanda_healy, or send her an email at Amanda [dot] Healy37 [at] gmail [dot] com to bring her in to speak at your organization or event.
Kelly Ireland founded CBT in 2001 as a value-added reseller (VAR) focused on unparalleled client service. However, having a keen eye for technology trends and always taking the time and opportunity to listen to industry experts, she assessed the impending changes in the industry early on. She built up CBT’s engineering expertise, data science practice and partnerships to revolutionize the company’s offerings and make the difficult transition from VAR to domain expert integrator. Since that time, the Company has flourished. CBT is now in rarefied air, bridging the gap between operational technologies (OT) and information technologies (IT) with groundbreaking projects like the Refinery of the Future (RotF) at Texmark Chemicals. Successful initiatives like RotF in Industrial IoT and High Performance Computing have positioned CBT as a key partner to industry-leading companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, PTC, Intel, National Instruments, Antea, RealWear, SparkCognition and more. This has spurred explosive growth for CBT, increasing its revenue by 55% in the last two years. Kelly’s leadership has also led to a myriad of accolades, including the 2019 Triple Crown Award from CRN, nine consecutive Boeing Performance Excellence Awards, three consecutive CRN IoT Innovators awards, and the 2019 & 2020 Women Presidents’ Organization’s 50 Fastest-Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies. Kelly has also achieved numerous personal awards, including CRN’s 2018 & 2019 Women of the Channel and Power 30 Solution Providers and 2020 Women of the Channel and Power 40 Solution Providers.
Advisory Board
The function of the IoT Community, is to focus on the adoption & application of IoT in commercial environments, seeking to understand & contribute to applying the technology or overcoming the wide variety of barriers, inhibitors, and technical & operational issues. As a member of the board, Kelly will provide impartial input and guidance to the overall vision, strategy and execution that is helping to shape the current and future direction for the IoT Community, as well as the broader IoT industry.
Emily Dilday is the Principal Business Solutions Manager for SAS’ IoT Division, driving the successful engagement of partner-driven solutions powered by SAS technology. Emily orchestrates a cross-functional team of R&D, customer advisory, support & enablement, analytics, and marketing experts to facilitate channel partner success. She also leads the development and strategy for the Microsoft Azure/SAS IoT partnership. Prior to joining SAS, Emily spent over 20 years at Cisco, leading teams in Information Technology, Enterprise Information Security, IoT/Network Security and Customer Experience. She holds a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Meredith College, an M.B.A. from Pfeiffer University and has completed professional certification in project management from Stanford University. She is a licensed Project Management Professional, certified by the Project Management Institute. As a Tech and IoT industry leader, Emily is passionate about supporting women in STEM and helping students enter STEM careers through mentorship and advocacy. She is a member of the IoT Community Women in Technology Center of Excellence and volunteers as a group mentor for AI4ALL. In her free time, Emily enjoys spending time with her family, travelling and boating.
Jennifer Halstead is the chief financial officer at Link Labs, a leading provider of an end-to-end IoT platform for tagging, locating and monitoring equipment, supplies and assets anywhere at any time. An expert in start-up and early-stage financing, Jennifer plays a vital role in projecting, forecasting, budgeting and reporting the capital required to support Link Labs’ go to market strategy. With more than 20 years of experience in finance and legal compliance, she also plays an essential role in the company’s marketing, human resources and operations management. Prior to joining Link Labs, Jennifer spent seven years as the director of finance with Cloudistics, an on-premises cloud computing company, delivering a complete public cloud experience with composable on-premises infrastructures to medium and large enterprises. During her time with Cloudistics, she supported the company through its integration of core technology into Lenovo’s ThinkAgile CP and acquisition by Fungible. Preceding Cloudistics, Jennifer was the controller for AppAssure Software, a software provider of backup, replication and recovery solutions for virtual, physical and cloud infrastructures, where she led the company’s sale to Dell Technologies. During her tenure at AppAssure, she played a key role in driving the company’s 33 consecutive quarters of revenue growth. After the acquisition by Dell Technologies, Jennifer was the controller for Dell Software’s data protection division, managing worldwide finance functions for all data protection products. For 15 years, Jennifer also ran her own public accounting firm, Halstead & Halstead PC, which specialized in outsourced CFO services to software companies and non-profit organizations. Jennifer holds a master’s degree in accounting and business management. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), passing the CPA exam in the top 1% in Virginia. Jennifer is a musician who performs regularly with her spouse and seven children, including performances at The White House.