Underserved Andrew Gelina

Eva Moscat caps off Season 10 of Underserved. Eva grew up in a math-intensive family, and a college course requirement introduced her to programming. She found her niche in network development, and as interconnected devices became the norm, her career prospects bloomed. We discuss the importance of mentors/networking, embedded debugging for vendor culpability, and robots obviating the landscaper.
 
Links
UMass Lowell https://www.uml.edu/
Samsara https://www.samsara.com/
Eva on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/emoscat/

Episode #121 of Underserved features Dmitry Grenader. Dmitry left the Soviet Union with his family and landed in Brooklyn. He worked his way up from odd jobs to a master's degree and became a software developer. A mentor saw promise in Dmitry's product management skills and encouraged him to lean in that direction. This has led Dmitry to a decades-long successful career in the Boston software industry. We discuss CES fame, writing a song to lobby for resources, and selling software to low-tech industries.
 
Links:
Boston University Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP) - https://www.bu.edu/eng/admissions/graduate/leap/
Lionbridge - https://www.lionbridge.com/
Sermo - https://www.sermo.com/
Vlingo, now part of Nuance - https://www.nuance.com/index.html
NetProspex, now part of Dun & Bradstreet - https://www.dnb.com/
Luminoso - https://luminoso.com/
Newmetrix, now part of Oracle - https://www.oracle.com/construction-engineering/construction-intelligence-cloud/#rc30p4
Marc Andressen "The only thing that matters" - https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html
Rob Snyder coaches startup on product-market fit - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1/
Amwell - https://business.amwell.com/

Episode 120 of Underserved is here! Our guest today is Christine Bird, a fellow UMass alum and veteran of the financial services industry. Christine started her career teaching some of the toughest students and learned to love it. Her foray into technology and QA taught her bug diplomacy, the SDLC, and how to make the skills vs. attitude decision. We discuss front-loading your tech learning, the AHA moment as a QA manager, and her love of being a city dweller.

 
LINKS
Glad.org
Sdlc-caat.com
Jobcorps.gov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/birdchristine/
 

In Episode 119 of Underserved, I interview Dustin Humphreys. From the level land in the Texas panhandle comes this pharmacist-turned-technologist. Dustin wore many hats to help bring drug stores online during the DotCom boom. He has since helped multiple drugstore chains advance their online presence and has branched out into other industries as well. We talk about feature obsession being overrated (now ADOPTION obsession - that is cool!) and the pachinko game of being a small company CEO.
 
LINKS
Dustin on LinkedIn
Rite Aid Bending the Adoption Curve
Dustin has some patents!

In Underserved #118 we interview Andrew Heffernan. Andrew grew up believing he wanted to be an engineer. After dabbling in civil and plastics, he found his way into the tech industry via customer support at Constant Contact. The company thrived and provided Andrew advancement into development, where he discovered that the hardest part of the job could be getting all the humans to work in concert. We discuss working with fellow Underserved guest Erik Dasque, what happens when you 10x your staff, and the double-edged sword of SalesForce.
 
Links:
Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-w-heffernan/
https://www.litify.com/ 
https://www.litify.com/careers
 

Episode #117 of Underserved features our guest Sree Kancharla. It looked like Sree was on track toward a math PhD and teaching, but a tech career blossomed instead. Sree was involved with many projects ahead of their time, including iterative deployment and Google Glass. We talk about innovating in the digital realm and product vs. service companies.
 
For more information: 
Sailpoint
Mandiant
Google
Sacred Heart – Volunteer Organization
T200  - Empowering Women in Technology
Irvine Tech - Mentoring in LA