Technically Women

Technically Women comprises a group of women from all walks of business. This blog presents our unique views on how technology is shifting our world. The women are business owners, marketers, evangelists and leaders. The idea for Technically Women stemmed from a “women and leadership” piece penned by Dennis Howlett, which brought several of these women together to share their unique views on the current state of business. We decided to keep the conversation going and bring in some additional voices. Let’s meet our team:

Cathy Brooks (@CathyBrooks) has spent most of her life saturated in media – ranging from print to broadcast and, of course, myriad on-line platforms. Today, in addition to blogging for BitchBuzz and The Huffington Post, Cathy operates Other Than That, a strategic firm helping companies navigate the murky waters of strategic relationships and social media. Most recently Cathy ran business development for Seesmic, a technology company enabling threaded conversations online using video as the conduit. Prior to Seesmic, Cathy worked with Guidewire Group – a global analyst firm focused wholly on emerging markets and technologies. Cathy produced and hosted two podcasts “I of Innovation” and “Six Minutes With…” and also produced two of the firm’s conferences – Innovate!Europe and Leadership Forum. Cathy also headed the talent and booking departments at TechTV, curated content at LeWeb for several years and has held several executive positions with PR agencies.

Laura Fitton (@Pistachio) is leading the charge of sussing out intelligent and productive business uses of emergent technologies like Twitter, where she is read by thousands of community members. The first to publish a white paper on “Enterprise Microsharing” (popularly called “Internal Twitter”) she also writes for an runs the TouchBase blog and is an early beta tester of Seesmic and Qik. She re-launched Pistachio Consulting in September 2008 to connect businesses to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of microsharing. Pistachio comprises the TouchBase blog (covering business use of microsharing), the TouchBase Link Blog (stream of Twitter and microsharing articles for businesspeople, wherever they are published), serves clients like Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Corporation, PeopleBrowsr, The Sister Project, Transplant-1 and CommuNteligence, and is writing Twitter for Dummies for Wiley publishing, due July 2009.

Maggie Fox (@maggiefox) is the founder and CEO of Social Media Group, one of the world’s largest independent agencies helping business navigate the new socially engaged Web. Widely acknowledged as industry-leading pioneers, SMG has created and executed social media strategies for the Canadian Government, SAP and Yamaha Motor. SMG has also been Ford Motor Company’s social media agency since 2007.

Maggie is a communications and content expert who has never met a medium she didn’t like. Over the course of her career, she has led teams that have marketed, written and produced television and web content for some of the biggest and best-known brands in North America, including Sears, Deloitte and Disney. Maggie is a frequent and sought-after speaker to press and business groups about the importance and use of social media in the enterprise, is a co-founder of Toronto Girl Geek Dinners and was named one of the Top 100 Marketers in the 100th anniversary issue of Marketing Magazine.

Rachel Happe (@rhappe) is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable and has over fifteen years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, ecommerce, and enterprise software applications. Prior to The Community Roundtable, Rachel served as a product executive at Mzinga, Bitpass, & IDe.  In addition, as a technology analyst, Rachel initiated IDC’s enterprise social software practice where she wrote groundbreaking research including The Power and Passion of Organic Communities: How Technology Can Be Used to Increase Discovery, Engagement, and Productivity;  The Social Enterprise: How Social Networking Changes Everything; and U.S. Social Networking Application 2008-2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold. Rachel started her business career at PRTM as a Business Analyst focused on helping technology companies understand and improve their product development operations. She writes at The Social Organization.

Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) is passionate about all things social media, especially enterprise, security, privacy and reputation issues, and writes about these issues for ZDNet’s Social Business blog. She has been a communications professional for more than 15 years. She currently works at the cross-section of social media and security as director of strategic communications for Fortinet, a leading network security appliance vendor. Jennifer has led or supported interactive social networking efforts for industry conferences including SOURCE Boston, RSA Conference and Black Hat USA, and founded the Security Twits, a community for network security professionals. She contributed to “Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging can Help or Hurt Your Company” (2008) and co-hosts the Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast with Aaron Strout. Jennifer was profiled in Silicon Valley San Jose Business Journal’s 2009 “40 Under 40″ edition, as a rising star for 2009.

Adele McAlear (@AdeleMcAlear) is a marketing consultant specializing in integrating traditional, online and social media marketing. An early adopter of social media, she launched McAlear Marketing in 2007 to advise others on the best practices of using social media as part of their strategic marketing mix. With a 20-year career spanning technology, entertainment, consumer goods and non-profit sectors, her clients include RCA Television, Weber Shandwick Canada and the actor John Cleese. In early 2000 Adele co-founded DigitalEve International, a global non-profit volunteer organization promoting women in technology that used online communities to bring on-the-ground programs to life. Recently named as one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Media in Canada, Adele speaks frequently about social media and writes for TouchBase, One Degree and her own Marketing Monster blog.

Francine McKenna (@retheauditors) has more than twenty years of in a range of industries in the consulting and professional services environment including tenure both in the US and abroad at PwC, KPMG/BearingPoint, JP Morgan and Jefferson Wells/Manpower. Her blog, re: The Auditors, explores the role of the Big 4 accounting firms in the global capital markets. She is a freelance writer with credits in the Financial Times, Accountancy Age, and various financial and accounting blogs. She also blogs at The Huffington Post. Her firm, McKenna Partners LLC, is a specialized consultancy, advising other professional services firms, especially those with interests in Latin America. She managed the Y2K PMO for JP Morgan in Latin America and was the first female Managing Director for BearingPoint in Latin America, responsible for the Industrial, Automotive and Transportation practice. She was a RVP for Jefferson Wells/Manpower and a Director for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, auditing the firm itself. She held various positions in accounting and financial management prior to her career in professional services and began her career as an internal auditor at CINB in Chicago.

Anne Kathrine Petterøe (@yojibee) is an SAP consultant living in Oslo, Norway. Before entering the enterprise space she worked as a web developer and designer, with a more-than-normal interest for the emerging social media scene. She has brought this interest with her into the enterprise and works with the emerging new technologies in this space. The SAP-Adobe alliance has been her main focus of interest, but is also managing ESME, an open source micromessaging platform for the enterprise. She blogs on http://www.yojibee.com

In the early 1980’s Marilyn Pratt (@MarilynPratt) transitioned from crafting theater productions in Israel to manipulating bits and bytes on a kibbutz: a self-contained socialistic community of 800 employees with industrial, agricultural, and social-care branches requiring substantial computer automation. In 1997, she arrived in the US becoming a certified SAP ABAP trainer logging over 5,000 hours of instruction and mentoring. Transitioned to editing and community management on the SAP Developer Network and in 2006 helped create a community for Business Process Experts as a Community Evangelist of SAP. Personal passions and major concerns are sustainability topics and Corporate Social Responsibility. An advocate of underserved communities, speaks up where she sees disparities of gender, culture or age.

Susan Scrupski (@ITSinsider) is Founder and CEO of SoCo Partners, a consultancy based in Austin, TX specializing in introducing 2.0 philosophies and practices to large enterprises.  She has been conducting research and chronicling trends on Enterprise 2.0 since 2006 on her ITSinsider blog.  Prior to discovering web 2.0, Susan was a leading industry observer, researcher, consultant, and writer on the IT Services and Outsourcing market throughout the 90s, including dotcom coverage of leading Internet Professional Services providers.  A more detailed description of Susan’s background can be found on her ITSinsider About Page.  Susan is “ITSinsider” on most social platforms, including Twitter.