Keynotes for Connections conference spotlight hacking, robots and fostering confidence in girls

For this year’s summer conference, we’re teaming up with the Ohio Association of Career and Technical Education and joining the 2018 Connections to Education Conference.

We’re proud to announce the selections for keynotes at the event. Each of these speakers connect to some of the questions we’re most interested in.

  • Stephanie Domas works at the intersection of cyber-security, medicine and engineering
  • Dr. Lisa Hinkelman is a expert at understanding and improving how educators empower young women
  • and Chris Olsen’s firm Drive Capital has a deep understanding of the technologies and businesses that will create tomorrow’s jobs

Visit our conference guide to read about the other STEM events planned for the conference and check out www.ohioacte.org for details like the hotel accommodations. Rooms and registrations are expected to sell out so don’t wait!

Have a question our speakers should answer? Post it in the comments below.

Monday, July 23: Ethical Hacking and Other New Careers in Computer Science
Stephanie Domas is Vice President of Research and Development at MedSec, where she leads the development of services and products aimed towards addressing cybersecurity of medical devices in healthcare. MedSec partners with medical device manufacturers and healthcare delivery organizations to help address cybersecurity in medical devices, ranging from early in the product design lifecycle, through maintenance and asset management of deployed and legacy systems. She is a member of several medical device cybersecurity standard working groups, contributing to security guidance and standards for medical devices, a registered professional engineer (PE), and a certified ethical hacker (CEH). Ms. Domas has given a TEDx talk on medical product security and frequently publishes articles on medical cybersecurity topics.
Tuesday, July 24: Cultivating Confident Leaders: Preparing Girls for the Future
Dr. Lisa Hinkelman is a nationally recognized researcher, speaker and author who is a foremost authority on educating and empowering girls and creating environments that foster girls’ confidence, self-esteem and successful decision-making. She has spent more than ten years researching girls and educating adults both as a professor at The Ohio State University and as the Founder and CEO of the national non-profit Ruling Our eXperiences (ROX), an organization that delivers evidence-based programming, research, education and training focused on the critical issues impacting girls.

Lisa is the author of the award-winning book “Girls Without Limits” and the lead researcher of the 2017 groundbreaking report, ‘The Girls’ Index: New Insights into the Complex World of Today’s Girls’, the largest national study of-its-kind on teen girls.

Wednesday, July 25: Smart Robots Need A Smart Workforce
Chris Olsen is a Co-Founder and Partner of Drive Capital. He founded Drive in 2013 with Mark Kvamme to invest in technology companies based in the Midwestern United States. Drive’s inaugural fund of $250M targets Midwest innovation that would have otherwise been forced to move to coastal cities.

Prior to Drive, Chris was a Partner at Sequoia Capital where he met Mark and hatched the idea for Drive Capital. Together they invested $400M into companies like LinkedIn, Klarna, eMeter, Marklogic, and Electronic Arts. Today these investments are valued at more than $3B. Earlier in his career Chris worked as an investor at Technology Crossover Ventures after an analyst stint at UBS Investment Bank.

Prior to a career in technology investing Chris was an avid Squash player. At one point Chris dropped out of college to pursue the professional squash circuit, where he quickly learned his talents were better suited to startup companies than chasing drop shots around the world.

Chris is a native Midwesterner having grown up in Cincinnati, OH. He and his wife Gina live in Columbus, OH with two young daughters.

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