The WIT Luncheon has been a tradition at the Summit since 2008. It happens during lunch on Thursday of the event and is among the most well-attended sessions. Our task for this year’s event included finding a topic and finding women speakers who can engage in a discussion on the topic for an hour, followed by Q&A.

We have seen many women in our community rise up in the ranks into leadership roles. Notables include Vicky Harp, now manager of user experiences on the Windows team at Microsoft, Rie Merritt, Sr Program Manager for MVP Program with Microsoft, and Gilda Alvarez, Senior Manager, Data Domain with SkyTouch Technology. The path to leadership, for a woman, however accomplished, continues to be tough. We decided that a panel discussion on challenges women face, getting to be tech leads, would prove to be a valuable addition to the summit agenda.  The questions we wanted to tackle on this agenda included:

• Challenges with ambition – women asking for what they need,
• Finding allies and mentors around other women,
• Stereotyped notions around leadership such as ‘too emotional’ and ‘not technical enough’,
• Challenges around diversity and expanding notions of compassion with leadership,
• Imposter syndrome – facing up to ‘am not good enough’/’is this really me?’

Our panel as below will handle these questions:

Blythe Morrow – Former small business owner and newly minted Managing Director, Marketing on Solarwinds, Blythe works with a team of people who love Data Platform and technology marketing. She started ten years ago as the Community Manager for PASS and now spends her days helping companies that build products and services on the Microsoft Data Platform. Blythe will address questions related to ambition and women asking for what they need, in particular.

Anna Hoffman is a Group Product Manager on the SQL product team at Microsoft. Anna's team is focused on customer experiences, happiness, and growth. Anna is one of the authors of Practical Azure SQL Database for Modern Developers, available from Apress Media. Anna will talk to questions around Imposter Syndrome.

Jen McCown spent 20 years as a production DBA, earning her Microsoft Certified Master along the way. Now she runs MinionWare LLC with her partner, creating software solutions that simplify the care and admin of large SQL Server environments. Jen is a long time champion of WIT/Diversity related causes and will speak to women modelling paradigms of compassionate leadership.

Shabnam Watson is a Business Intelligence consultant and Microsoft Data Platform MVP with 20 years of experience developing Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions. Her work focus within the Microsoft BI Stack has been on Analysis Services and Power BI.She is a regular speaker and volunteer at national and local user groups and conferences. Shabnam will speak to stereotyped notions around leadership as well as women finding allies with other women.

The session will be ably moderated by Leslie Andrews, who is a Lead Data Architect with three Cloud Solutions, an Azure Certified Data Engineer and Data Analyst, and was a 2018-2019 Idera ACE.

If you have not added this session to your schedule at summit please do so now.  It is scheduled for November 17,12:30 PM–02:15 PM PST and will be live streamed for virtual attendees. We will be accepting questions for the panel and they will address as many as possible within time given. Questions may be posted on chat panel for the event on on twitter with hashtag #PASSWITNetwork.