Women of color find success in IT

by Heather Cassell (San Francisco)

These eight very successful information techies come from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Australia and India as well as areas across the U.S. "BDPA provides ongoing professional development for its members while ITSMF bridges further development into leadership training and career opportunities." – Denise Holland, Amtrak and BDPA

By Claire Swedberg
Contributing Editor

ITSMF executive director Viola Thompson.Women of color are supplying the diversity that companies want and need in their IT departments. But as the economy struggles to shake off the recession, these women may have to be more competitive than ever to land the best jobs. This is especially true for upper-level management, say industry watchers at the Information Technology Senior Management Forum (ITSMF) and Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA).

ITSMF: coaching and much more Today the concern is not only about finding a good position but keeping it as well. ITSMF provides coaching to help high-level black IT pros rise farther in their companies. The mentoring group is offering special support to women of color in IT management with its new Project Uplift, which helps female ITSMF members "Organizations must support change from the top down," says BDPA’s Denise Holland, director of IT SAP at Amtrak. who have been laid off connect with prospective new employers.

ITSMF also sponsors speakers who talk about how to hold a position, the impact globalization will have on IT, and the future of IT in general. The organization is also helping its members understand "green IT," looking at sustainability and the impact IT has on people and the planet as well as a company’s success.

ITSMF executive director Viola Thompson says the organization is telling its members to make sure they stay abreast of what’s happening in the industry. "A balanced career is not just technical but also includes leadership," she points out.

"Girls need to know there’s a future"
"As I look across the various levels of IT departments," Thompson explains, "I see there’s still a disproportionate number of men at upper levels." To address that, ITSMF is working to create role models for young women still in school. Its influence is used, for example, to be sure IT-related conferences at HBCUs include women panelists.

"Young women need to know there’s a future in IT for them," Thompson says. More and more women are getting to mid-level management in IT: "It’s becoming much more balanced, and that’s a good trend."

Disparity remains
But there’s still disparity to overcome. A Gartner Inc study in 2006 predicted that by 2012, 40 percent of women will leave traditional IT career paths and move aggressively into business, functional and R&D processes or entrepreneurial ventures.

Three years later that prediction is still a concern, says Denise Holland, director of IT SAP at Amtrak (Washington, DC) and national president of BDPA through December 2009. "Organizations must aggressively communicate these trends to ensure change is supported from the top down. In addition, their HR and diversity departments must take an active role in recruitment and hiring decisions."

Leadership development
The idea, Holland explains, is to be sure that more than just technical skills have priority in hiring and promoting. "The communication, listening and nurturing abilities should be weighted high in IT selections."

Holland adds that to bring more women into IT, organizations must encourage and support leadership development and training. And, "It’s essential that IT educators stay abreast of ongoing and future trends in the field," she says, to effectively influence minority students toward higher job availabilities, salaries and growth.

Last but not least, "I strongly recommend that students and professionals become involved early in their IT careers with organizations like BDPA and ITSMF. BDPA provides ongoing professional development through programs, services, conferences and certifications, while ITSMF bridges further development into leadership training and career opportunities."

Cheri L. Raymond is a review team lead at State Farm
Cheri L. Raymond.Cheri L. Raymond completed a BS in math and CS at Dillard University (New Orleans, LA) in 1989. She went to work at State Farm Insurance (Bloomington, IL).

She started with four months of training, learning programming languages and State Farm standards, then moved to a job as a programmer in the claims systems division, supporting software for the claims processors. She liked the work right away: "They had a good bridge between the college world and the professional world," she says.

In 1998 Raymond moved to the testing coordination team. As a test coordinator she had a much larger reach than just claims, she explains. She got into enterprise customer relationship management, performance test processes, and finally became a subject matter consultant for performance testing.

In 2005 she moved to testing coordinator knowledge steward. She restructured the mentoring program for new testing coordinators and wrote the training information. Before she took the job, she says, the mentors all had their own ways of presenting information. "I suggested they should all be together for training," Raymond recalls. "And since I suggested it, I was the one who was chosen to make it happen."

In 2006 she moved to test analyst for business. Now she was facilitating and updating training for many disciplines and doing a lot of the training herself. The next year she helped move about a thousand State Farm analysts through an updated course on test interaction requirements.

Today Raymond is technical analyst for IT R&D, and leads the innovation challenge review team. She creates and runs training and works with business partners to find solutions to challenges. "We help business partners envision solutions," she explains.

Besides her regular work, Raymond has been a leadership skills speaker, a career mentor and a volunteer for the catastrophe call center. She’s also been VP of membership management for BDPA and on the board of Habitat for Humanity. "I didn’t even know about all these things twenty years ago," she says.

The diversity at State Farm benefits everyone, Raymond concludes. "Diversity brings another perspective. The landscape would be very flat if everyone had the same experience."

Dianne Fleming, a State Farm exec and leader in the IT department, is in complete agreement. "With the never-ending and rapid pace of change within IT, diversity of thought, experience, approach and technique are key factors for success," she says. "Surviving in the IT world depends on leveraging diversity to create, maintain and expand an inclusive environment."

Celiana Marques is MasterCard’s VP of implementation services
Celiana Marques.Celiana Marques, born in Puerto Rico, is VP of implementation services for the Americas region of MasterCard Worldwide, working in the company’s Florida office. She completed a BSCS at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Daytona Beach, FL) in 1987, and went on to a 1993 MS in information management from Washington University (St. Louis, MO).

When she completed her BS she wanted not only a job that paid the bills, but "one I was passionate about," she says. The IT field was booming, and she found a good job with McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) in St. Louis. She was brought in as a programmer, working on the AV-8B Harrier Aircraft, and went on to analyst.

On completing her MS in 1993 she joined MasterCard in St. Louis. She was a technical specialist, helping financial institutions connect their applications to the MasterCard Worldwide network. In 1996 she moved to Miami to work for MasterCard as a project manager for the Latin America and Caribbean region. "It took me closer to my family in Florida and Puerto Rico," she notes with satisfaction.

As a VP at MasterCard global technology and ops, Marques is responsible for product management support to financial institution customers in the Americas. She oversees a diverse team of forty-seven people throughout Canada, the U.S. and Latin America; her team members come from all over the world, including the U.S., Puerto Rico, Spain, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Honduras, Kenya and Germany. "While most of the team comes from the banking or financial services industries, our diverse cultural backgrounds bring a wealth of perspectives to make the team stronger," she says.

Her fluent Spanish and English have been an asset, and as MasterCard’s business interests in Brazil grew she also learned Portuguese.

"I’m an analytical person, and that’s an important trait in my field," Marques says. "Being a woman in a male-dominated field and being of Latin descent haven’t really been factors in my career development. I think my attitude that I can create my own success has really helped me reach my goals."

Marques is part of a MasterCard business resource group that promotes talent development, business development, employee engagement and community involvement to create a more productive work environment. She’s also a member of the company’s women’s leadership and Latin networks.

"Diversity is important for business because it creates a healthy, robust culture and helps spark innovation," Marques says. "Solutions are stronger if they reflect the needs of diverse customers."

Janice Robinson Burns, chief diversity officer at MasterCard, notes that the company "views diversity as helping to drive business results, provide customized solutions and deliver shareholder value."

Women of color bring perspective, Burns says. "IT is global at MasterCard, with operations in 210 countries and territories. Our IT functionality is much more effective when we incorporate diverse points of view."

MasterCard’s global diversity and inclusion council, Burns notes, helps its leadership team guide its vision and strategy.

Mangala Datar is a lead developer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield
Mangala Datar.The diversity at health insurance company Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina includes Mangala Datar, lead developer in technical ops at Chapel Hill, NC. Datar says she’s used to people looking surprised when they first talk with her, because she’s of East-Indian descent but has a strong Australian accent.

In 1980 Datar graduated from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) with a BS in immunology. She went to work at Latrobe University in Melbourne doing lab work, but she was also introduced to data processing and began to see the opportunities there. She earned a graduate diploma in data processing in 1983 at Nepean College of Advanced Education (Sydney, Australia).

She moved to a programmer/analyst job at the Department of Social Security (Canberra, Australia), and worked in apps programming as a DB admin until 1986. But her husband was eager to join a post-doctorate program in Denver, CO, so the couple moved to the U.S., where their first child was born.

Datar worked as a contractor for several Colorado firms, doing database admin and programming. In 1989 the family moved to St. Louis, MO where she joined a defense contractor, doing Cobol and Model 204 DB programming. She also worked at brokerage firm Edward Jones in St. Louis doing CICS, Cobol and IDMS programming, often on the night shift. She learned the programs on the job, she says, building relationships with coworkers and clients. In 1996 MasterCard brought her in for a new system to support work with banks.

In 1998, with the children older, she went to work as a business application developer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Up to then, she says, "My whole career was around being employable and having portability," since her husband’s work had led to several moves, and she needed jobs she could do while raising the children.

In less than a year she was in information management, putting her experience in Unix, Oracle programming and Teradata support to work as a certified project manager.

The job gave her a chance to oversee hardware and software upgrades on apps servers and user PCs at the company. "I like the multi-layer complexity of project management," she says.

Now she’s a lead developer, enjoying the "people" contact. She’s leaving a lot of the technical work to "people who really love technology," she says, while she continues to grow in project management.

She’s also active as president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield information services diversity committee. "This is a very diverse organization," she says. "Because of the fast-paced nature of the business we can be on the phone with people from all over the world at all hours. It’s technology that makes that possible."

Venita Phillips is a section chief at the DEA’s IS office
Venita Phillips.At the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, Washington, DC), Venita Phillips is chief of the integration and management section in the Office of Information Systems.

A native of Washington, DC, Phillips started with a scholarship for physical therapy at the University of Connecticut. Her college counselor thought she would do better in math and computers, and after two years she transferred to the Computer Processing Institute (East Hartford, CT) where she completed a program in advanced computer ops in 1975.

In college she was part of the federal "stay in school" program which provided summer and holiday co-ops at the bureau which became the Drug Enforcement Administration.

After graduating, Phillips returned to Washington to live with her parents. She continued as a temporary employee at the DEA while looking for a long-term job. She took the civil service exam and qualified as a GS-4 and -5 computer operator with the U.S. government.

Or so she thought. But this was a long time ago, and she discovered that whatever their qualifications, women were not being hired to work in computer rooms. "I was offered jobs as a clerk typist or keypunch operator, but my heart was set on computers," she says.

Luckily, the times were beginning to change. Eventually the supervisor of the DEA computer room gave her a chance at a temporary slot as a computer operator. "I worked hard and even volunteered for shift work to prove my adaptability, and I was given a permanent position in December 1975."

All thirty-four years of Phillips’ career have been at DEA. She began as a computer operator in DEA’s main computer room, operating mainframe IBMs with connections to the Department of Justice mainframe. In 1977 she was promoted to DEA’s office of intelligence as a senior operator and shift leader on PDP 1170 computers.

About that time she ran into a woman actually working in a supervisory position. “Judy Bertini became my role model,” she says. "She is someone I looked to for direction and inspiration, and I still do today!"

Phillips took more computer programming courses under DEA’s Upward Mobility program and became a "computer specialist." She wrote programs for special agents and intell analysts and conducted training in domestic and foreign offices. She also developed programs for computer training and technical support in field offices.

In 2001 Phillips reached her first supervisory position, as unit chief for eight government employees and fifty contractors responsible for installing computers in new DEA offices.

Today she’s a section chief in the Office of IS. As chief of engineering and integration she supervises eighteen government employees and more than a hundred contractors responsible for keeping the complex "sensitive but unclassified" Firebird infrastructure viable.

The job is exciting and challenging, she says. "We explore new technologies, integrate them into our network and then deploy them to the field offices."

"Today there are many opportunities for women and in particular women of color," she says. After a rocky start, hard work and flexibility got her where she wanted to be. "It’s important to listen and learn and take something away from each experience,” she concludes."

Deputy assistant administrator Dennis McCrary is Phillips’ boss at DEA. He notes that the diversity represented by Phillips and other IT pros adds strength to the agency. "We learned long ago that every perspective influences the way we work and what we do as we bring technology to our worldwide workforce," McCrary says.

DEA’s Office of IS has nearly 500 diverse employees, both direct hires and contractors. "I don’t believe we could do this job so successfully without diversity in our workforce. It is who we are, and a large part of what makes us an effective team," McCrary declares.

"Pioneers like Venita Phillips were among the first to open the doors of our computer rooms. They put management on notice that the workforce was changing. They never looked back, and the DEA grew and matured because of their tenacity."

Geeta Pyne: senior enterprise architect at Arrow Electronics
Geeta Pyne, a native of India, is senior enterprise architect at Arrow Electronics (Melville, NY), the global provider of electronic components and enterprise computing solutions. Pyne earned a bachelor of engineering in CS and technology at Bengal Engineering and Science University (Calcutta, India) in 1993. She started work as a scientist/engineer with Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), hoping to become a rocket scientist working with the latest and greatest space technologies. "I loved image processing and parallel computing and enjoyed solving number-crunching problems," she explains.

She moved on to telecom, then healthcare, and finally her current work in electronics distribution. She’s been with Arrow for almost ten years now.

"As an engineer starting with ISRO fresh out of school, I had a great opportunity to work with the best and the brightest," she says. "I enjoyed working on the development of mathematical modeling and algorithms to use remotely sensed satellite data."

But she began looking for something that would help her see the world outside India. She took a job as a technical lead at Hughes Software Systems in 1996.

The next year she came to the U.S. as a software consultant, working with Compuware in California and IBM in North Carolina. "I didn’t really enjoy consulting," she says. "It lacked the feeling of belonging." So she moved to Mount Sinai Medical Center (New York, NY) as a senior software specialist in the IT department, working on integration middleware and messaging between the hospital’s various IT systems.

And then she joined Arrow’s Internet business group as tech lead for the eCommerce branch. "Being part of the dot-com boom but still funded by a company with a solid business plan sounded really attractive," she says. She’s held various jobs in the branch: hands-on developer, tech lead, Web app architect and enterprise integration architect. "Then I got assigned to the Arrow ECS business as its Oracle ERP architect," she recalls. Today she’s lead architect for Arrow’s components business Web solution, as well as other parts of the cutover from legacy systems to Oracle ERP.

The work has two key elements. First, as lead architect and IT cluster lead for the ERP project’s Web Solution sales, she interacts with the business and works with a team based in the U.S. and India. She has already delivered blueprints of the solution and is currently working to implement it. She’s also an architect and project manager for the vendor management inventory (VMI) process, working on a technical solution to manage the end-to-end VMI chain.

"I get along easily with people and work without boundaries,” Pyne says. “Work is not just a job, it is what you want it to be."

Lisa Gaunt is a project manager at CherryRoad
Lisa Gaunt is a consulting project manager at systems integration and consulting company CherryRoad Technologies, Inc (Morris Plains, NJ), and is studying for her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

In school Gaunt thought she’d like to work in HR, and when she got a certificate in business from Katharine Gibbs Business School (New York, NY) in 1986 she went to work for the EEO manager of American Standard, the plumbing products company. In 1991 she moved to telecom at Bell Atlantic/Verizon, working as an HR data analyst and then in payroll.

She became a consultant fourteen years ago, helped CherryRoad implement an ERP system, then joined the company as an application consultant. Today she manages a team of consultants, making sure projects are deployed on time and on budget, and recently managed implementation and deployment of PeopleSoft HCM modules for a major U.S. city.

Her current project is one of CherryRoad’s most complex deployments of HR, payroll, time and labor, absence management and benefits admin modules. "My attention to detail has probably served me best," Gaunt says. "I’ve always been detail-oriented, which is very helpful maintaining timelines and project plans.

"At CherryRoad my knowledge, abilities and work experiences count. I have satisfaction in knowing that my contributions are meaningful and appreciated."

Romea Smith: IT management at CA
Romea Smith.Romea Smith is SVP of business office and support centers at IT management software company CA (Islandia, NY). It wasn’t her original goal: she studied to be a schoolteacher and started out teaching math in Jamaica, her native country.

She decided to continue her education and looked for college opportunities in the U.S. She earned a BS in math at Prairie View A&M University in 1985. She was intrigued with automating processes and interested in pursuing a career as a software developer.

In college Smith worked as an intern at Sun Refining (Dallas, TX). After graduation she continued there as a systems analyst, helping to install and maintain software products.

In 1989 she took a job at Systems Center (Reston, VA), a software company, as a technical support engineer. She handled incoming customer calls, worked independently to analyze and resolve customer issues, and enjoyed it all. "I started as a frontline engineer, did QA and specialized in some products," she says.

In 1992 she was promoted to assistant manager, then manager. She oversaw a team of technicians, made sure customers’ problems were properly addressed and focused on employee development and training.

In 1997 Smith moved to a job in the company’s network management division. She was leading support for an unfamiliar technology. A year later she was promoted to director, adding responsibility for an international team.

In 2000 the company was acquired by CA. Smith helped her team stay together and transition into CA. She also took on responsibilities for the network management sustaining engineering team.

She became a VP In 2003. At first she managed North American support for mainframe products, then worldwide support of enterprise systems management products.

In 2005 new leadership took over the support organization and gave Smith responsibility for all support centers worldwide: 1,100 engineers and managers, and even broader responsibilities.

Today Smith is SVP of CA support, and oversees teams in North America, Europe and the Middle East. She’s also responsible for employee engagement, working to attract the best talent in the industry. "We want to be sure they have what they need to do their jobs, and to encourage collaboration and flexibility," she says. She also manages strategies concerning where the organization should be taken next.

"It takes a whole team to make something happen," Smith believes. "My ultimate goal is to be sure the voices of the customers are heard. We have a very successful support operation and do business in forty-five countries, so it’s important to have a diverse and talented workforce.

The bottom line, she says, is that "With drive, determination and confidence the opportunities are endless. You have to be committed to excellence, willing to work outside your comfort level and be passionate about learning."

Michelle Guieb, Web designer at M.C. Dean

Michelle Guieb.Michelle Guieb is fairly new in the IT workforce. She became a Web and graphic designer at M.C. Dean, Inc (Dulles, VA) after graduating from George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) in 2006 with a BA in integrative studies with a concentration in Internet and new media and a minor in multimedia.

Her original plan was to find a job as an in-house Web designer for a major tech company. "I had always loved computers as well as art and design, so a career in Web design was something I naturally gravitated toward," she says.

One of her professors was interviewing candidates for a Web design internship at his day job at M.C. Dean. Guieb applied and got the job, working fulltime in the summer of 2005 and part-time the next school year. After graduation she moved right into the Web designer job she had earned, and she’s still there.

On the job, Guieb works at graphic design for Web apps, Microsoft SharePoint site design and user training and support. She also mentors high school students and leads SharePoint training sessions for company employees. She has helped migrate the company to a new Microsoft SharePoint-based intranet, and she’s helping design a new website for M.C. Dean and M.C. Dean University. "I love the opportunity to work on so many different high-profile projects," she says. "I notice design elements and ideas everywhere; I’m constantly learning."

Her interest in photography, music and video games has been helpful in her job, she notes, but she believes the most useful on-the-job skill in her busy and stimulating work environment is actually her ability to multitask!

D/C

Claire Swedberg is a freelance writer who lives in La Conner, WA.

source: Diversity/Careers in Engineering & Information Technology