Philly Tech Week 2018

Liz is a proud generalist committed to utilizing her interdisciplinary skillset as an urban planner, experience designer, and technologist to bridge gaps and highlight the importance of inclusion within innovation ecosystems. Recently she was named Managing Director at Backstage Philadelphia, an arm of Backstage Capital, a venture capital investment firm that invests in underrepresented founders. Additionally, Liz is the cofounder of BCKG, a think tank and consultancy that provides thought leadership and curated experiences to support leadership, growth, and momentum for startups.

Prior to launching BCKG, she cofounded and served as Co-CEO & Head of Design at Webjunto, a user experience focused design and software development agency that served 100+ startups and enterprises globally. In her free time, Liz continues to do work in the community as a civic hacking enthusiast, meetup organizer, and globetrotting public speaker.

Jill de la Fuente is an Art Director at The Archer Group, where she marries art and technology to create imaginative digital experiences for brands like Wawa, Morgan Stanley, and JCPenny Optical. When she’s not leading her team, she’s marveling at the way new digital tools, tech, and platforms have expanded opportunities for meaningful brand expression—and made her job a lot more interesting. And fun, too.

Jill is a 11-year industry veteran and a graduate of the University of the Arts.

Erica is CTO & Founder at IOpipe where she is building tools to help developers of serverless applications iterate faster and support their applications in production. She is a former maintainer of Docker and OpenStack and has been building cloud, ops, and infrastructure tooling for over 15 years.

Andrew directs the Innovation Management group within Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology. Aligned closely with the City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Innovation Management focuses on developing capacity for innovation within municipal government and finding ways to make technology accessible and meaningful to the public. Before moving into the innovation space, Andrew directed Philadelphia’s implementation of a citywide network of technology-enabled community centers known as Keyspots. Andrew earned a graduate Degree in Geography from Temple University in Philadelphia and continues to teach there as an adjunct instructor.

John Miller is the Founder and President of Scribewise, a content marketing and storytelling agency that's services include brand strategy, public relations, social media, graphic design and email marketing. He has worked in marketing for close to two decades, helping to build brands from Aqua America to Zipcar. Prior to that he worked in broadcast news, including a stint as an award-winning radio host for the Philadelphia Eagles radio network.

Erin Janklow is the Founder and CEO of Entrada: Employer Sponsored Learning. A social entrepreneur with a curious and compassionate disposition, Erin developed Entrada to create an equitable and sustainable way to improve workers' lives. Entrada is a tech company that teaches service workers English as they work in only 100 days, using our scientifically designed TalkBack Method. Our product empowers service workers for success in the workplace and in their communities in only 30 minutes a day. Erin is fluent in Italian and advanced in Spanish and learned both languages in her twenties.

Erin is a Halcyon Fellow, holds an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College, and a BA from Northwestern University. Her first entrepreneurial venture was teaching English as a Second Language, followed by 3 years working in sustainability and hospitality while at TripAdvisor. She is CELTA certified, facilitates energy work, and loves hiking, ancient history, and swing dancing.

Ariel Lopez is a career coach, entrepreneur, and public speaker with an expertise in digital media and technology. She's the CEO of 2020Shift, a company that provides professionals with the skills they need to find careers that they love in tech and media. Currently, 2020Shift helps top startups and brands like Spotify, Uber, Oscar Insurance, Yelp and more attract and retain talent. The company is also a part of the national “Tech Hire” initiative which aims to get 100,000 people employed in high paying tech jobs by 2020.

With over 7 years of recruiting experience she’s worked with top brands and startups to help them with their recruiting efforts. She’s helped with thousands of marketing, advertising, and tech professionals grow in their careers and find lucrative opportunities. She is a member of Forbes Coaches Council, and has been featured in Fast Company, Business Insider, Ebony, Huffington Post and more. An avid speaker, she’s spoken at several conferences & events including Tech Inclusion, Greenhouse Open, Hispanicize, Black Tech Week, Social Media Week and others.

Lori Aument currently serves as a business education instructor and is the virtual reality program coordinator, a new program, at Mercy Career & Technical High School (Mercy CTE). Lori spent fourteen years as a mathematics teacher at Mercy CTE prior to transitioning to her current role. During the past fourteen years, she worked as a key team member for developing and implementing a 1:1 computer program, facilitated professional development opportunities for faculty in the areas of technology and innovative learning practices and co-developed Mercy CTE’s IMPACT Philly program, a design thinking program. Lori’s time is spent creating immersive learning opportunities that incorporate virtual and other mixed reality programs in particularly in the areas of STEM and Mercy’s Health Occupations CTE program. These experiences provide students with a unique way of learning and retaining concepts that can be challenging. The students have responded very favorably to this kind of learning. They are excited, engaged, and work very well together when they are in the VR lab. Lori earned a B.S. in Elementary Education from Kutztown University and an M.S. in Learning Technologies with a concentration in Instructional Design from Drexel University. Lori resides in Oreland Pennsylvania with her husband, Christian, and her daughter, Evangeline (Evie). In 2015 Lori was nominated, along with three others, for the Philadelphia Inquirer “Person of the Year” award. She was also shortlisted for the 2018 Reimagine Education Awards. Lori’s students have received the following recognition under her guidance; 3rd Place University of Delaware’s Social Venture Competition, Audience Choice Award Jefferson University’s (formerly Philadelphia University) Celebration of Innovation Gala, and selected to present at the MIT Learning Innovation Showcase.