Filling Leadership Gaps for Women in Tech: Finding Your Fit and Growing Your Career

Kriti is an innovator, product leader, and a global voice on AI and its impact on society. She was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for advancements in technology. She is a Google Grace Hopper Scholar and a winner of the Google Women in Engineering Award. Her TED talk has been viewed more than two million times, leading a global movement on AI for Good. In 2017, Kriti founded AI for Good, an organisation that's using AI and data to help solve some of the toughest global challenges of our time, such as violence, climate crisis, and mental health. She is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, TechCrunch and BBC.

Jelena joined Thomson Reuters in March 2022 as their first Distinguished Engineer.  Detail-oriented engineering professional and strategic technologist with 20+ years of experience, Jelena created and launched the Distinguished Engineer program for Thomson Reuters in early May. The program is designed to recognise Thomson Reuters’ outstanding technologists, establish a technical career path and strengthen their engineering culture. In the next few weeks, the first cohort of Distinguished Engineers will join Jelena and continue the program’s journey. Before joining Thomson Reuters, Jelena was a Distinguished Engineer with UBS, Switzerland’s largest global universal bank. There she spent 15 years in a variety of roles, largely in creative, service-oriented roles specialising in client experience, applied innovation and strategic topics. Those roles allowed her to combine her technical, organisational and people skills and brought her into the technologist she is today.  Drawing upon her passion for innovation, the culture of diversity and engineering excellence, in 2014, Jelena created a global hackathon for UBS and ran it until 2018. This global yearly event happened across four regions: Americas, APAC, UK, and Switzerland & EMEA and provided the platform for UBS employees to work on their creative ideas and embrace their unique experiences and perspectives. Over the years, the event grew from a smaller scale global IT event to an event spread across 17 locations and involving diverse groups of attendees: technologists, business and client-facing roles. Jelena is passionate about the world of technology, women's place and their role in that world and women’s empowerment, regardless of industry. She was one of the founders of UBS Regional Women in Tech and for more than a decade, she held the position of external stream lead. Set in place to encourage women to pursue a career in Tech, this cross- functional employee network also helps promote their achievements and supports them throughout their careers. Through this network, Jelena launched the mentoring program, organised yearly programming events with a focus on girls, ensured female presence at the job fairs across the region and supported different activities to help increase women's presence in Tech. In addition to UBS, her professional experience also includes roles with Siemens and other tech firms in Switzerland. Jelena has a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and numerous software and management certifications. When she is not spending time travelling or mentoring female talent, you might be able to catch her monthly radio show, where she is more commonly known as DJ Babymonster.