Q&A Panel with members and allies of our Indigenous @ Microsoft Employee Resource Group (ERG)
2022 recruiting season
By the end of this course, students will have a high-level practical knowledge of:
Many paths to Microsoft
About the facilitator
Adonis Trujillo, Business Program Manager | Datacenter Community Development (DCCD)
Adonis Trujillo is from Taos Pueblo, NM and joined Microsoft in 2018 with a personal objective to facilitate the creation and acceleration of community-based initiatives to benefit every person in every community he is part of. He is committed to bringing long-term meaningful impact in communities in which Microsoft operates and where Microsoft employees live and work. Through conversations with community leaders and organizations, he works to deliver on this commitment to support inclusive economic opportunity, protect fundamental rights, build a sustainable future, and earn trust.
Hear from our Indigenous @ Microsoft ERG Executive Sponsor
Q&A Panel with members and allies of our Indigenous @ Microsoft Employee Resource Group (ERG)
How to best prepare for the upcoming 2021 recruiting season
Speaker Bios:
Executive Sponsor: Steven Worrall, Area Vice President
As Managing Director, Steven Worrall is responsible for Microsoft’s overall business in Australia. He ensures the company meets the needs of its customers and the more than 11,000 partners and independent software vendors that sell or build on the Microsoft platform.
Steven joined Microsoft in March 2014 as Director, Enterprise and Partner Group, responsible for driving business growth and building strong customer and partner relationships in the Australian Commercial and Public Sector markets. In this role, Steven worked with organisations to drive innovation and business improvement through the application of technology in many areas, including productivity solutions, mobility and cloud services.
Previously Steven worked for IBM for 22 years and held a number of marketing, sales and general management roles in the services, software and financing segments of the organisation. Most recently, he led IBM’s software business in Asia Pacific region where he built organisational capability in diverse markets across the region and drove the business towards more cloud delivered services.
Steven is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion with a particular focus on improving Indigenous inclusion and addressing wellbeing and mental health in the workplace. Steven is the founding Chair of Corporate Mental Health Alliance in Australia and the Microsoft Global Indigenous Employee Resource Group Executive Co-Sponsor. Steven is also committed to a sustainable and inclusive future and is a founding member of the Climate Leaders Coalition in Australia.
Steven holds an Honours degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s in Business Administration. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.
Joseph Paranteau, Director Sales
Joe Paranteau is a Sales Director at Microsoft, where he has worked for sixteen years, helping many Fortune 500, SMBs, and startups in commercial and government segments. He is the events lead for Indigenous@Microsoft and a member of the Little Shell Tribe and Metis. Joe is a US Air Force veteran committed to helping indigenous communities, veterans and preventing child trafficking/exploitation. When he is not working, he enjoys traveling, fishing, and hiking. He recently finished writing a book called Billion Dollar Sales Secrets, which provides coaching to salespeople on developing a winning mindset and habits for success.
Steven Gum, Software Engineer
Steven Gum is a multi-racial Kānaka Maoli SDE 2 at Microsoft working on Conversational AI. He received his BA in Economics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and worked in Research Administration post-graduation. After moving to Seattle with his fiancée (now wife), he completed a coding bootcamp and began working at Microsoft as a contractor before joining fulltime in 2018. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Steven started programming in 2016. Recently diagnosed with ADHD, he looks forward to spreading awareness and increasing indigenous representation in the tech industry with traditional and non-traditional educational backgrounds.
Nicole Ghazal, Senior Business Program Manager
Nicole Ghazal started at Microsoft in 2005 and spent much of her career working as a marketer spanning the areas of newsletters, relationship management, and paid media. Today, she works on the Datacenter Community Development team as a communications manager and owns the internal and external community newsletters across ten global regions.
Nicole spent her early life living in Stevensville, Montana, approximately 30 miles south of Missoula in the Bitterroot valley. Nicole’s childhood home was next door to the St. Mary’s Mission Historical site which was the cabin location of Salish Chief Victor (Little Bear Claw, Slemcry-cre). While Nicole is not of indigenous descent, throughout her life she has felt a reverence and connection to indigenous people and is honored today to serve as an Ally in the Indigenous@microsoft group.
Nicole lives in Kenmore, Washington with her partner Brian, son Roman, and 16 year old dog, Gus. Together they love to travel, ski and camp. While most of her recent travel was in the US, she has visited 12 countries with the most notable being Egypt, Japan, and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.
Outside of work and travel, Nicole loves I love creating art with paint or fibers.
Kimberly Marreros, Business Program Manager
Kimberly Marreros Chuco is a Quechua Latinx woman born in a mining town in the Andes of Peru. She is a first-generation student and will graduate with a double major in Information Systems and Operations at Boston University in January 2021. She interned as a Business Program Manager at Microsoft within the Cloud Operations and Innovation team. During her internship, she led Training, Augmented Reality, and Cybersecurity projects. At BU, Kimberly is the Co-Founder of Boston University Cybersecurity Association and she works as an IT Consultant for the Questrom School of Business. Before attending BU, Kimberly took a gap year to work at a software company, where she managed the daily operations of three sports betting shops. In her spare time, she loves dancing bachata, cooking Peruvian food, and attending virtual networking events. After graduation, Kimberly will join Microsoft as a full-time employee!
An overview of the business drivers and technology solution provider landscape within the hospitality industry, i.e. hotel, resort and casino gaming.
System level and individual workload process flow required to facilitate and innovate the industry.
The role of networking, data processing, computer vision, data analytics, location-based services used to create an enhanced guest experience and increase operator profitability.
Background information on self-service kiosks, service robotics and interactive signage system
By the end of this course, students will have a high-level practical knowledge of:
How Intel® hardware and software can be applied to the hotel, resort and casino gaming industries.
STEM opportunities for contribution in the hospitality industry.
About the facilitator
Tom Lasiter
IOTG/RBHE Vertical Markets, Intel Corporation
Tom Lasiter leads Intel IOTG Americas Hospitality vertical segment with a focus on application of cross Intel and cross industry technologies into the hotel, resort, and casino ecosystem. Tom has experience with both large tech companies as well as venture capital funded startups with experience in digital signal processing, artificial intelligence, communications infrastructure, wireless strategy, and casino/lottery gaming systems. Tom holds a BSEE and MSEE from Oklahoma State University as well as an MBA from University of Missouri.
The history of AI and why it's one of today's key technologies
The role of AI in the enterprise and various industries—from medicine to automated driving
Why data is important to both training neural networks and the steps in a data science workflow
An introduction to supervised learning and deep learning (prior to taking a full deep learning course)
An introduction to current hardware and software
By the end of this course, students will have a high-level practical knowledge of:
The definition of AI, machine learning, deep learning, and the historical developments that now differentiate modern AI from AI of the past
How AI can help solve problems in the industry today (with examples), and how it is becoming more important in enterprise computing
The importance of datasets, data sources, problem-solving with data, and data science workflows
The fundamentals of supervised learning and an introduction to the concepts of deep learning
How Intel® hardware and software can be applied to solve AI problems
About the facilitator
Meghana Rao
AI Developer Evangelist, Intel Corporation
Meghana Rao is an Technical Marketing Engineer at Intel and serves as a developer evangelist for Intel family of products and solutions. In her current role as an AI evangelist, she works closely with universities and developers in evangelizing Intel’s AI portfolio and solutions, helping them understand Machine Learning and Deep Learning concepts, building models and POCs using Intel optimized frameworks and libraries like Caffe*, Tensorflow* and Intel®️ Distribution of Python*. She has also worked on the Intel(R) RealSense(TM) Technology and Windows* 8 application development for scalable form factors. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering and a Master’s degree in Engineering and Technology Management with past experience in embedded software development, Windows* app development and UX design methodologies.