Keynote Panel Speakers

Gabrielle Capolupo

Engineering Office of the CTO 
Juniper Networks


Ms. Capolupo has been with Juniper Networks since February 2007. She currently works for the Engineering CTO office and is responsible for providing program management for the Junos Architecture Council and a network service provisioning application project. She also started and manages the Juniper Women in Engineering (JWIE) employee resource group.  Previously, she provided program management for the Juniper Distinguished Engineering (DE) and Principal Engineering (PE) communities. This included managing the Juniper DE PE Council - responsible for approving DE PE promotions and new hires, as well as the annual DE Summit. Previously in this team, she was responsible for project managing several DEs working on major OS library re-architecture. Prior to her work in the CTO office, she was Sr. Director of Junos Governance, responsible for policy, process, criteria and schedule for all Junos OS software releases.

Prior to Juniper Networks, in her more than 11 years with Cisco Systems, she was Sr. Engineering Manager for the IOS Packet Engineering Group, responsible for large-scale corporate level software infrastructure planning and implementation. In addition, previous roles included remotely managing the Edge Services software team in Bangalore India, the collective hardware and software engineering teams for the leading Broadband Aggregation platform, and the IOS Source Code team, responsible for all major source code integration.  

Prior to her employment with Cisco Systems, Ms. Capolupo spent over seven years at various positions at Novell, Inc. Ms. Capolupo has served as a lead judge for the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition since 1995, after participating as a graduate student for San Jose State University. She has made a number of industry panel presentations including sessions for Women in Technology International (WITI), Women in International Trade (WIT), Women Unlimited, and the Project Management Institute of Silicon Valley.  

Beginning in 2022, Ms. Capolupo is a professional mentor for the TechWomen program, which is sponsored by the US Department of State. Ms. Capolupo received her Master of Business Administration from San José State University and her Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she was a member of the Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society and the Men’s Varsity Crew.

Monique Edmondson

Senior Director, Employee Experiences
Cisco

Monique is an IT and Employee Resource Organization leader who builds outstanding workplaces and performance driven organizations. She is an expert in customer centric design for employees and customers creating experiences at scale and for growth. Her vast network and empathy led leadership enable her to attract, hire and retain top talent. She is a Senior Director at Cisco Systems leading employee experiences and transforming the Future of Work for 75K+ employees. Her vast expertise in collaboration technologies and management of a remote global teams of over 400 people with a budget of $100M annually, gives her a unique perspective on how to lead in the new hybrid and remote work environments. Through her 25 years of experience at Cisco, she has the expertise to navigate through both the hyper-growth periods as well as when a company needs to spend time on optimization strategies. She knows how to consider the strategy, portfolio management, budget considerations, and talent engagement through these important company transitions. As the leader of the largest Employee Resource Organization at Cisco and being a pillar of the Diversity and Inclusion community, Monique knows how to create and grow employee inclusion strategies. Her network of people is robust and reaches across various technology companies where she is a connector who brings opportunities to her broad peer group. She was recognized as a top 100 Women of Influence in 2018 by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and has been a speaker at several diversity and inclusion conferences. She has been recognized by the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal for innovative millennial assimilation.

Sonal Sinha

Partner
PwC Consulting, Cloud and Digital 

Sonal is a Partner in PwC’s Cloud innovation and engineering practice and is passionate about helping clients achieve their business goals through people process and technology transformation. With over 23+ yrs of experience, she is dedicated to enabling client success through creating high performing diverse, innovative teams for greater return on investment for her clients. 

Her areas of expertise include:

●Building and enabling IT functions leveraging ServiceNow as a platform for IT service management, IT service operations, IT Asset Management,  change, incident and case, GRC, and low code no code paas for custom workflow design.

●M&A, divestitures - collaboration with investors, boards, CIO , Operations leaders to design and enable tech strategy and implementation aligned with future state operating model.

●Governance, Risk and Compliance - helping clients build enterprise GRC programs to manage risk through change management, governance and operating models, GRC tech, process optimization and automation.

Sonal is passionate about diversity, mentorship, and supportive initiatives for women in technology.  Her passions outside work include fitness, fine wine, music, travel and cooking. Her husband and her have two teenage kids who are both nationally rated epee fencers.  She holds a joint MBA from Columbia University and UC Berkeley and a BS in Information Technology from The University of Texas at Arlington. Sonal is passionate about giving back to the community and serves on the Board of Directors for the YMCA, Silicon Valley. She’s a member of Chief, an executive women leadership organization and serves as Diversity and Inclusion Partner for her practice. 

Lucia Soares

Chief Information Officer 
The Carlyle Group

Lúcia Soares serves as Chief Information Officer for The Carlyle Group, a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation with $376 billion of assets under management. In this role, she oversees the Global Portfolio Solutions Technology organization providing technology advisory to Carlyle investment teams and working with portfolio company executives to transform business operations and outcomes. Working with over 200 portfolio companies that have a combined technology spend of $4B+, Lúcia sets portfolio technology strategy and oversees technology growth initiatives and cybersecurity resiliency to drive business value creation.

With more than 25 years of technology, Ms. Soares has held a variety of leadership roles. Ms. Soares began her career working for an early Internet professional services agency, USWeb / marchFIRST where she partnered with clients to build first-generation web solutions and built the west coast User Experience practice and led its Project Management Office. She spent 15 years at Johnson & Johnson, serving a variety of executive roles, including CIO and board member of multiple high-growth medical device businesses. Ms. Soares led software development teams and created technology strategies to grow and optimize businesses with the use of technology, including creating an enterprise health technology strategy and launch of digital products. She then served as Managing Director at Health2047 leading venture formations that addressed U.S. healthcare challenges.

Ms. Soares serves on the board of directors for Hexaware, an IT services and consulting firm and for The Hilb Group, an independent insurance broker firm where she is also a member of the Risk and Audit Committee. She also sits on the board of HITEC, a non-profit organization that provides a forum for the career development and advancement of Hispanic technology executives.

Ms. Soares completed Executive Education coursework at Harvard Business School, and earned an MBA from San José State University, a Master's in literature from UC Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in foreign languages from San Jose State University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.