Beyond the Build: When Technical Brilliance Meets Business Impact (and a Whole Lot of Laughter) ✨

Last Wednesday, the conference room at First Tech in Hillsboro came alive. I’m still smiling. 

People navigated rush-hour traffic to be there. Name tags went on, and within minutes the room was buzzing with reconnecting colleagues, new introductions, and the kind of laughter you hear from across the hall. If you've been wondering whether TAO's Women & Allies Community (WAAC) is building real momentum, it is, and it has the energy and attendance numbers to prove it.

Wednesday, September 30 was the date. Our first event on the west side, “Beyond the Build: The Business of Technical Leadership.” This was also our first event in partnership with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). It brought two communities with a shared mission into one room for an evening about how technical excellence becomes executive impact.

🎤 Setting the Stage

WAAC Committee member Nicole Santschi opened the evening with a question that framed everything that followed: how does a strong technical foundation shape where your career goes, and how do you build on it to have a greater impact as you grow?

Our WAAC co-chair, Marta Zoglman, welcomed everyone. She talked about how much WAAC and SWE have in common and introduced our SWE co-hosts, Anne Rocheleau, SWE VP Professional Development and Keyla Bastardo, SWE President. Two communities, one mission, and a room full of people ready to talk.

💙 Thank You, First Tech!

None of this happens without great sponsors and great venues. Caitlin Scarpelli of First Tech's corporate impact team reminded us that First Tech has partnered with TAO for years, and that the credit union started about 75 years ago to serve employees of Tektronix. It still serves the tech community today. Thank you, First Tech, for opening your doors and keeping these conversations free for our community.

🌟 Meet the Panel

Moderated by the fantastic WAAC co-chair, Sumitra Sukumaran:

• Dorota Shortell, CEO, Simplexity Product Development
• Maureen Duhig, Vice President, Intel Foundry Strategic Planning
• Janice Little, SVP, SheerID

Three leaders and three very different paths. None of the paths was a straight line.

🛤️ "Did You Pick Your Career, or Did It Pick You?"

Dorota started us off by gently challenging the idea that you "pick" your career. You pick a little, she said, and you set the course. She came out of mechanical engineering knowing she wanted to do product design. But she quickly realized she didn't want to do the same thing every day, which pulled her toward product management. Then came the line that got a knowing laugh from the room: "Not all engineers are organized." That drove her a little crazy, so she started organizing everything and everyone. It was a natural transition to project management, then leadership opportunities. People noticed, and eventually she got the chance to run a company. What stuck with me was her point that things did fall into place, but only because she was already showing she could lead.

Janice had me hooked from her first sentence. She grew up in a family that was half ranchers and half academics, about as far from tech as you can get. She was studying biology at Oregon, working on the human genome, when she wandered over to the computer science department for help with the computing side. She never left. Her first real job was using lasers to find the best cuts in logs at a wood products company. She had a helmet and everything. I don't think anyone in the room saw that coming. Her advice is something I've written on a sticky note since: follow what gives you energy, and listen to what the people around you say you're good at.

Maureen started at Intel when she was 20, and she's still there. She spent her early years in a bunny suit and worked her way from engineer to group manager to running factories. Then she shared an old Intel saying: "Stay close to the wafer and they can't get rid of you." The room erupted in laughter. With so many current and former Intel folks in the audience, it was clearly an inside joke, and it was clearly true. She later took an expat assignment to help start a factory in China, where customs, government relations, and the logistics of just getting people into the office sparked her love of other parts of the business. (Fun fact she shared: Intel factories look the same on the inside all over the world.) Through all of it, she said, she's still an engineer at heart because she loves solving problems. The room felt that one.

💡 Your Technical Foundation Is a Superpower

Asked how technical depth drives business impact, Maureen gave one of the night's standout insights. As you move up, the problems get broader. Your technical background is what lets you connect the data and ask the right questions. Being able to speak both languages, technical and business, lets you say: here's the technical problem, and here's what it is costing our profitability. That translation is where the real impact comes from.

Dorota agreed. As a CEO, her engineering background still gives her context and credibility every day, and she still works at being a great engineer.

🤝 Mentors Are Easy. Sponsors Change Everything.

Janice credited a great boss, a longtime colleague with a military background, with building mutual trust through quick, honest feedback. She also credited her athletic background for making her coachable. She asked the room to give real feedback instead of softening it to be supportive. And she reminded us: "Today's former employee is tomorrow's ally."

Maureen picked up the thread with what may have been the most quoted moment of the night: women are often over-mentored and under-sponsored. Anyone in the room could be a mentor, someone you bounce ideas off. A sponsor advocates for you. A sponsor says your name in rooms you're not in and puts you up for the hard assignments.

Her own sponsor told her plainly: I won't be nice to you. I'll give you hard feedback. I'll push you. I'm vouching for you, so you'd better show up.

Her bottom line: allyship takes many forms, including the community you build and the mentors you lean on. But think hard about who your sponsor will be. That's a deep relationship you have to build.

🏗️ What Should Organizations Do Differently?

When Sumitra asked what organizations should do differently, Dorota talked about the power of setting culture as a CEO. At her company, an engineer is an engineer, not a "male engineer" or a "female engineer," and they're intentional about behaviors and about offering the same policies and flexibility to everyone. Someone up front asked if she was hiring, and the whole room laughed. (Honestly, I think a few people were only half joking.)

Janice said it starts with education, all the way back to K–12. And then she gave us what might be my favorite line of the night: "Make it unremarkable that we are women." Yes. That's the goal.

🔄 Feeling Stuck? Pivot, Don't Quit

Sumitra then asked about something a lot of us have felt: hitting a ceiling where the next level seems out of reach.

Maureen's advice was practical. If you've done the education and the hard work, don't just walk away. Look at your core skills and where else they transfer, whether that's a different role, a different team, or a whole different industry.

Janice introduced a phrase I'm pretty sure our community will be using for a long time: "Prompt and pray." Her point was that AI is an incredible tool, but it doesn't manage itself. We still need technical leaders who understand it, especially where sensitive data is involved, and who know when to go fast and when to slow down. Sumitra immediately suggested we make "Prompt and Pray" t-shirts. I'm not saying we will. I'm not saying we won't. 😄

Dorota wrapped up with a story that was very impactful. Years ago, a man came up to her after a talk. His daughter had been an engineer, didn't like the environment, left to become an interior designer, and was now helping him code his startup. He thought she might want to go back into tech. Dorota interviewed her, found she was an amazing engineer, and hired her. She's now been at Simplexity for almost 10 years. Sometimes it isn't the career that's wrong. Sometimes it's just the environment, the culture, or the company.

🙋 Questions From the Audience

One attendee from Intel Foundry asked how engineers can build business acumen. Dorota said she read books, listened to them on her commute, and joined groups of small business leaders and CEOs to learn from them. Janice said to be curious and look up anything you don't understand, especially the reasoning behind decisions. And Maureen told us not to be scared of finance. Take on a project that partners with your finance team and you'll learn more than you expect.

Another attendee asked how to switch industries without having every technical skill. The panel's answer drew a big reaction: most men in that position wouldn't even ask. They'd see that they have 10% of the skills and decide the job should be theirs. So don't talk yourself out of it. Take stock of the problems you've solved and the projects you've led, figure out what you'd need to learn, and go for it. Your diverse background might end up being your biggest asset.

And when someone asked how to find a sponsor, I loved the answer: finding a sponsor is not speed dating. Figure out who actually makes the decisions, do your homework, network around them, ask for introductions, and prove yourself over time.

We closed with "What motivates you?" One answer was the thrill of learning AI as fast as it's changing and teaching others along the way. Another was wanting to show two kids, ages 10 and 11, what it looks like to love your job and do it well. I'll admit I got a little misty at that one. 💛

🎉 The Grand Finale

Of course, we finished with our raffle. There was cheering, there was one very happy winner, and then there was the part I love most: nobody left. The conversations just kept going, in clusters around the room, long after the panel ended. That's how I know this community is something special.

👉 Come Join Us Next Time

If you've been on the fence about coming to a WAAC event, let me be the one to nudge you. Every gathering has been bigger, warmer, and more fun than the last. You'll leave with ideas you can use on Monday and connections that last well beyond the evening. Come for the insight, stay for the community, and bring someone with you.

📅 Keep an eye on the TAO events calendar for our next WAAC gathering: https://www.techoregon.org/events
💬 Learn more about the Women & Allies Community: https://www.techoregon.org/communities/women-and-allies

I hope to see you there! 💙

#WomenInTech #WAAC #TechOregon #SocietyOfWomenEngineers #SWE #WomenInEngineering #TechnicalLeadership #Allyship #Sponsorship #FirstTech #PortlandTech #SiliconForest

‍