Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs 2021

2021 | Volume-06 | Issue-05

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10 MOST SUCCESSFUL WOMEN IN CLOUD ENTREPRENEURS

Editor’s Desk Together We are Stronger

T

he rise in the number of women entrepreneurs in the last decade has been enormous, and almost every business sector has been continually experiencing the multiple waves of entrepreneurial tides.

Striking out the issues that come with conventional methodologies, these women entrepreneurs believe in taking charge in their hands to succeed. Women are known for their natural traits such as compassion, nurturance, eloquence, supportiveness, and much more. They implement these traits to bring a new approach to the table, cultivating a work culture that is diverse and inclusive, and assistive to the team. Culminating with such qualities that are proven to boost the business acumen, an initiative of Women in Cloud came into fruition.

Women in Cloud is a community-led economic development organization aiming to generate $1B in net global economic access for women entrepreneurs by 2030 through partnerships with corporations, community leaders, and policymakers. Women in Cloud is creating access to partnership opportunities and programs that accelerate business growth in the cloud and strategic alliances that advance the success of women in technology. Since its beginning, Women in Cloud has impacted various aspects of the communities, accelerating women entrepreneurs' growth. The initiative has proven to be an absolute boon for women leaders to empower each other to address various challenges while expanding their network.

As I previously mentioned, women are excellent in their innovative approach, and Women in Cloud entirely justifies that trait. These leaders not only came together but also have opened doors for aspiring women to contribute in a

way that gives them an incredible head start. In a world that is more demanding, women leaders are pushing their boundaries and rising above expectation, securing professional facets by surrounding themselves with people that support them to shine. Women reciprocate these behaviors by inspiring people around while encouraging the urge to deliver effective results that are unmatched in every way possible. These women entrepreneurs are flying high by staying down-to-earth, disrupting their niche, and are setting examples to be remembered for centuries.

To shed light on the tales of women entrepreneurs who have achieved a great feat in their field, outgrowing their fear of leading with a global mindset. Insights Success celebrates the journey of these leaders in its latest edition, "Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs".

We invite you to go through the featured profiles that distinctively cover several life aspects of these women entrepreneurs. Also, take a glance at the article that gives in-depth details about the Women in Cloud initiative penned down by the in-house editorial team.

Enjoy the Read!

Sourabh More sourabh@insightssuccess.com

CONTENTS Articles

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28

Stepping Out Why We Need Women in Leadership?

Supporting Entrepreneurs Leading Diligently by Being Empowered with WIC Program

10

Allie Knull Taking the Recruitment Process to New Heights

14 Cathy Light Driven to Help Companies Be Better for a Brighter World

18

Donna Conroy Innovating Clinical Data Analytics to Accelerate Drug Development

24 Gail Mercer-MacKay Serving Clients with Integrity

32 Geneviève Desautels Harnessing Innovations to Create Immersive and Unique Learning Experiences

36

Kiyeon Nam Preventing Kids from Going Missing and Keeping Them Safe Through Smart Wear IoT Solution

40

Kristen Miller Revolutionizing the Omni-Channel Shopping Experience

48

Martha Montoya Improving Profitability of Farmers and Buyers through Actionable Market Data

52

Nehal Mehta Securing Digital World in an Unconventional Way

56

Sarah Haggard Leading from Front by Walking the Talk

Editor-in-Chief Hitesh Dhamani Managing Editor Anish Miller

Executive Editor Sourabh More

Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

Co-designer

David King

Priyanka Rajage

Kartik Balapurkar

Shubham Dali

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshitij S

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Martin, Irfan

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Saurabh

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Amol Wadekar

Research Analyst Frank Adams

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

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Featured Person

Company Name

Brief

Allie Knull Founder and CEO

ResumeFree resumefree.ca

Resume Free is a job-matching site that connects candidates with employers, without using a resume.

Cathy Light Founder and CEO

Lideranca Group liderancagroup.com

Lideranca Group, Inc. is a business and workforce acceleration firm.

Donna Conroy Founder and CEO

SciMar ONE LLC

SciMar ONE operationalizes clinical data with AI to improve healthcare.

Gail Mercer-MacKay Founder and CEO

Mercer-MacKay Digital Storytelling mercermackay.com

Mercer-MacKay Digital Solutions is digital storytelling company.

Geneviève Desautels CEO

illuxi illuxi.com

illuxi supports experts and organizations to host, market and design online trainings, remote professional services, virtual events, live videos and podcasts.

Kiyeon Nam Inventor, Founder, and CEO

B’ZT LLC smartbzt.com

B’ZT Smart Clothing is the most comfortable tracking device for children and the most convenient assistive technology for parents and caregivers in the world.

Kristen Miller CEO and Co-Founder

Stylyze stylyze.com

Stylyze is a cloud-based SaaS platform.

Martha Montoya CEO

Agtools Inc. ag.tools

AgTools is a worldwide SaaS platform.

Nehal Mehta President and Co-Founder

Rainbow Secure rainbowsecure.com

Rainbow Secure Provides Password, Zero-trust login, Identities, Smart MFA ,Office Solutions.

Sarah Haggard Founder and CEO

Tribute tributementorship.com

Tribute is a workplace mentorship app that radically redefines and improves mentorship for your company and your employees.

Allie Knull Founder and CEO

ResumeFree

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Allie Knull

Taking the Recruitment Process to New Heights ttracting and retaining the best talent is a challenging task for all businesses. In an organization, having the right person for the job is necessary for the business.

However, recruiting the right person could be a challenge even when conditions are ideal. Identifying the competent candidates from the sea of applications is work of preciseness and needs to be done right from the beginning of the process.

A

and previous work experience. There could be marginalization from people in specific areas; those who couldn't get into elite colleges, those who didn't have an internship, or people who chose to do all of their schooling rather than work. These types of people could be turned down for roles because of their lack of experience, education credentials, or of voluntary roles.

Allie Knull is an inspiring entrepreneur and recruitment professional with 20 years of extensive experience, working to advance the recruiting process and to ensure that recruiters don’t end up losing vital organizational resources. Allie is the Founder and CEO of ResumeFree, an innovative technology which helps employers and candidates find the right fit, all without resumes. The idea was to align technology in a way that provides secure, job specific predictive analytics which simplify the recruiting process, taking the guesswork out of whether or not the candidate and employer “fit”.

At ResumeFree™, we understand that it is challenging to assign values to “intangible” characteristics on a resume, such as honesty or approachability. We screen candidates based on 175 behavioural qualities. The questions we ask reveal a candidate’s interpersonal and soft skills – all of the things that are impossible to measure in a resume. This data takes the guesswork out of hiring and gives employers more clarity and oversight throughout the recruitment process.

Every Challenge Brings New Learning Before starting ResumeFree, Allie was running a consulting firm. After she saw the possibilities with aligning technology and businesses together, she thought “What if we could do things a little bit better? What if we could hire without using resumes? What if we could have a tool that could do that?”

This integration of technology and recruitment process led to the inception of ResumeFree.

Being a non-tech tech founder, Allie had faced a lot of challenges to transform her vision into reality. From merging with the people that created the tool and licensing it, seeking global approval from all of the partners, to developing the tool as economically as possible, Allie had to overcome a lot of hurdles. She believes that there was a big learning curve on how much work needs to go in behind the scenes, and how to make a tool really, truly accessible for people as well.

A Comprehensive Screening Tool According to Allie, in today’s recruitment process the resume only shows the candidate’s achievements, academia,

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Empowering Others While Leading Being a leader very early on in her career, Allie has been managing people for 20 plus years now. Through her journey she has experienced different personalities and different styles of management all the way through. In her opinion, impactful leadership is all about empowering people to make decisions.

At ResumeFree™, Allie has a very small team of five people.

Even with this size of team, she allows her team to make their own decisions without feeling like they aren't allowed to fail.

She believes that as a leader it is essential to make sure that people are empowered.

A Continual in Growth After graduating from the Women in Cloud Microsoft Accelerator program, ResumeFree™ has since gone from one or two sales every month to growing monthly recurring revenue including returning clients that see it as being part of their recruitment process. Year over year thus far is 400% growth, and the company still has five months to go. Allie states “We’ve increased our client base five times what it was last year. We’re now listed on Microsoft Appsource and Women in Cloud Marketplace. We’ve gone from servicing one country to four and soon to be six.”

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‘‘

We use proven factors to screen for fit first, remove bias, saving time & money. Finally, a formula for hiring success!

‘‘

For Allie, the biggest hurdle was to navigate how to sell her product well as there are many different markets she can service. Women In Cloud Accelerator helped her in refining the message and more importantly change it to what resonates with the buyers/clients.

Allie mentions that 2020 was an impactful year, and for her team to share that it can reduce human bias in the screening process to zero was the key for the organization to gaining new contracts.

Allie asserts “As a female founder faced with a wildly unknown year, the support and encouragement of my cohort was absolutely phenomenal. We celebrate each other’s successes and support each other’s businesses.”

Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs Allie opines that Fortune 1000 companies will provide opportunities and connections for female founded vendors to have their solutions enter the enterprise marketplace with greater success and traction than before. These companies are striving for the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are

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actively putting into practice processes and programs to ensure equitable procurement for all vendors. These companies also have the unique ability to help companies do proof of concept and help define early-stage technology to not only advance their digital transformation within their organization, but also provide the access for these founders who may not have the funding to wholly build out their tech on their own.

Enlightening Emerging Entrepreneurs In her advice to budding women entrepreneurs, Allie says, “I think there are so many fear-based decisions because we are used to being in our comfort and safety zone. But, I feel you should take that leap of faith and not be afraid to step into something that's new or foreign or something that you didn't think that you'd be doing. There are lots of resources out there, just seek and find your community.”

She further adds, “Don't be afraid that somebody is going to steal that idea. It's your idea. You bring it to fruition, and then you will get all the accolades for it.”

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Cathy Light Driven to Help Companies Be Better for a Brighter World

B

eing a successful entrepreneur is not a destination; it’s a journey of risk-taking and learning experiences comprised of facing and overcoming challenges.

Being an entrepreneur is often nerve-racking and scary. Still, a consistent effort, talent, and a strong desire to contribute meaningfully to the world will ultimately lead to success and satisfaction. Cathy Light is a serial entrepreneur. Her journey through corporate America garnered her a great deal of experience and shaped her entrepreneurial spirit. Cathy is the Founder and CEO of Liderança Group, the parent of four strategic brands: Assessment Leaders, Leadership Balance®, Be Well Perform Well, and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

Cathy has long recognized that it is an organization’s people that are responsible for its success. That’s why all four of Liderança Group’s brands are people-focused and thrive by helping clients worldwide exceed their goals by transforming their workplace culture.

Driving Meaningful and Substantive DEI in the Workplace Cathy is a distinguished thought leader and a dynamic speaker with an engaging personality, who is widely known for the passion and rigor she brings to her work. She has built a team of people committed to helping organizations reach their full potential. The multi-faceted Liderança Group helps corporate leaders develop and manage internal teams dedicated to achieving exceptional results. Her company recently introduced a unique, metrics-driven program for driving meaningful and substantive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. It does so by helping leaders identify opportunities for improvement, elevate conversations around diversity, and inspire change.

In 2017, Liderança Group was engaged with several top Fortune clients who asked if she had a way to measure diversity and inclusion. They didn’t, but that became the inciting event for their newest project. Cathy’s team found

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that nothing existed that would measure what matters in the DEI-Belonging space. Knowing that in a data-driven world, what gets measured gets done, Cathy and her team created DEInamics®.

DEInamics is a software platform that measures an organization's DEI health in seven key dimensions and provides ongoing data collection and benchmark reporting.

By identifying people, process, power, and belonging gaps, DEInamics’ colorful charts and graphs, along with emotiongauging images, help to prioritize action plans to create more equitable and inclusive workplaces. For its advancement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality, DEInamics was named as part of Microsoft’s #BuildFor2030 Campaign Helping Clients Navigate Organizational Transformation Change brings incredible opportunity. Stagnation in business is not an option for future-facing companies and individuals with a growth mindset. Liderança Group’s business model focuses on helping transform the disrupters of today into the thought leaders of tomorrow. Liderança Group’s expertise lies in identifying areas of sustainable growth and providing actionable strategies that ignite change. Its key objective is to build long-term, successful relationships with its clients to help them navigate organizational transformation.

Delivering Substantial Value to Clients Liderança Group is committed to improving behaviors, developing people, and changing workplaces to help organizations reach the next level of growth and performance.

Liderança Group is built on the values of balance, generosity, innovation, learning, communication, and trust.

Cathy believes in connecting with all levels of people to create market-driven change, empowering innovation, and www.insightssuccess.com

Cathy Light

Founder/CEO Lideranca Group

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Ensuring Organizations Remain Competitive in an EverChanging Landscape Liderança Group delivers faster, better, and more costeffective solutions that have a profound company-wide impact. She states that her vision is “to do the right things to make our world a brighter and fairer place to live and work.”

Liderança Group is a proud disrupter of business, ensuring today’s organizations can compete in the ever-changing landscape. Highly experienced and having helped guide transformations in Fortune companies worldwide, Liderança Group offers consultative services that identify areas for sustainable growth with actionable strategies that ignite change.

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Liderança Group is a proud disrupter of business, ensuring today’s organizations can compete in the ever-changing landscape.

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transforming leadership. To do that, Liderança Group invests time in understanding clients’ cultures, processes and people to ensure it can deliver value.

Appreciation for the Lessons Learned from the WIC Program Since Cathy began as an entrepreneur in 2003, she has always made it a point to surround herself with people who augment her skillset. She states that the brilliant people she’s met through the Women in Cloud (WIC) Microsoft Accelerator Program, through Microsoft, and through the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) have taught her so much. Theresa Linson, VP of Innovation at Crayon, and her team, in collaboration with our product management technology team, are doing incredible development work.

Whenever Cathy and her team would stumble, someone in this vast ecosystem of support filled with talented resources would lend them a hand. Many doors opened to Cathy from the Microsoft community; supporters who want to see a woman-owned technology company succeed (especially for this much-needed data analytics tool). This fantastic group of people, especially Cathy notes, Chaitra Vedullapalli and Karen Fassio, are selfless and committed to creating economic access for women. Currently, less than 2% of funding goes to women-led companies – a statistic that needs to change.

Making Personal Sacrifices to Get Product to Market Since graduating from the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator on January 23, 2020, Cathy tested the product in

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beta and entered into a Development Partnership with Crayon.com – Microsoft's 2019 #1 Global AI Partner. The goal with Crayon.com is to advance DEInamics from a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to a Minimal Loveable Product (MLP).

The development and marketing of DEInamics have been self-funded by Cathy. She alludes that while it hasn't been easy to make the personal sacrifices to get this much-needed product into the marketplace, it is worth it as Liderança Group is now ready to scale. “I believe in the power of this product,” says Cathy. “It can be used as a force for good and help companies make informed decisions that will have a profound impact." Thus far, Cathy has not applied for any grants but will be pursuing growth options.

Support for Women to Pursue Technology Ideas Cathy believes that creating economic access for women should be a priority as there is a long way to go toward gender parity and equity in technology. Research shows that COVID set women back with many more women than men leaving the workforce to care for children and elders and support remote learning. Cathy would like to see VCs and PEs fund womenowned ventures by committing to a collective dollar amount, so women can go from the current 2% in funding to 10% by the end of 2021 and keep focused on growing that percentage.

Cathy states that it is essential to help more women pursue their technology ideas to close the industry equality gap. With the Accelerator Program, Microsoft and WIC have created an amazing opportunity to accelerate and refine ideas and make them viable for the marketplace. Cathy believes that women need more success stories to inspire other women to pursue their dreams. She says, “It’s easy to let fear of failure or lack of tech knowledge hold you back. But don’t.

Seek out what you need. There are support networks to guide you along the way: Women in Cloud, The WIT Network, IAMCP, and of course, Microsoft.”

Cathy’s advice to upcoming women entrepreneurs, "A good idea is not enough. You need to have an external go-to-market strategy and internal plans to support those strategies where you align people skills with processes that drive to an execution plan. The ability to consistently generate repeatable revenue is key. Compose an Advisory Board where industry leaders can contribute their expertise and help you to avoid pitfalls. Finally, timing and a little luck will play a role.

While it may seem daunting, know that you and your team can make it happen!”

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Donna Conroy Founder/CEO SciMar ONE, LLC

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

DONNA CONROY

Innovating Clinical Data Analytics to Accelerate Drug Development

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ur common global enemy is disease, so we built a system for pharma that uses data to accelerate development of drugs to fight emerging diseases,” says Donna Conroy.

Donna Conroy, M.S. is CEO and Founder of SciMar ONE, LLC, a clinical data analytics technology company.

Throughout her career, Donna has focused on two passions: translating complicated science to evolve drug development and building work environments that support women especially working mothers, a mission close to her heart.

Donna oversees SciMar’s day-to-day business and uses her extensive scientific background to support the clinical team.

Through her leadership at SciMar, Donna was named one of New Jersey’s Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs and was accepted into the prestigious Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator, 2020. Donna credits participation in Microsoft’s Women In Cloud Accelerator for stimulating key ideas and providing access to opportunities to catapult SciMar to where it is today.

The Problem with Clinical Data As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, there is a global challenge in managing tremendous volumes of clinical data to effectively treat disease. To combat this “avalanche” of information, the pharmaceutical industry needs a powerful solution to identify, process and align scientifically validated data to drug development workflow.

There has always been a wealth of clinical data, but rapid advancements in technology allow for huge volumes of both good and non-validated data dissemination. Add a volume issue to an existing myriad of clinical data interoperability challenges and pharma is left with a problem that both expediates and slows drug development.

Seeing this inefficiency within the drug development process, Donna identified the whitespace that informed SciMar’s mission to build a solution that expedites drug development.

Today, Donna’s work centers around SciMar’s proprietary technology solution called The Scientific Data Engine™ (SDE). The SDE is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug development platform that accelerates cross-functional drug development. SciMar was recently accepted into Microsoft for Startups, a global program to help build and scale the SDE.

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Translating Science with Evolving Technology Donna began SciMar as a consultancy in 2003 when she left a successful, fast-track career in pharma to have a family. As a consultant, she helped pharmaceutical clients translate complicated science into meaningful market needs. She developed, executed, and implemented drug development plans with strategies that delivered results, all while raising four children.

In 2014, as technology advanced, Donna transitioned SciMar from a consultancy to a small business. With a new vision, she led the company in building early-version technology solutions to identify useful data from mounds of clinical information. In 2015, SciMar offered a basic version of the SDE to solve a small portion of clinical data management challenges. These early solutions were customized for Fortune-500 pharmaceutical companies.

Although building and selling sole-proprietor solutions was beneficial, it was rate limiting, allowing SciMar to only work with one pharma company at a time in a specific disease.

When drugs failed the drug development process, or divisions were sold, the SDE was no longer needed. More concerning was the loss of significant data insights/analytics that could continue advancing patient care.

Seeing an opportunity to better meet the needs of multiple clients and progress healthcare globally, Donna made a strategic decision in early 2020. She would pivot SciMar’s business and re-imagine the SDE as a SaaS solution. This innovative and more comprehensive SDE would offer three distinct advantages: 1) SPEED to compile and sort mounds of validated clinical data instantly 2) FLEXIBILITY with disease-specific data models that quickly and easily adapt to any disease, and 3) UNDERSTANDING with deeper analytical capabilities that provide clients the exact information needed to develop datadriven, innovative drugs.

The incorporation of advanced technology was required to adopt this vision. The SDE was enhanced with AI powered

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“

Our common global enemy is disease, so we built a system for pharma that uses data to accelerate development of drugs to fight emerging diseases.

“

technology including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). The goal of reimagining the SDE to accelerate innovative drug development was underway.

Today the SDE system solves significant challenges within pharmaceutical drug development and gets life-saving therapies to market 2-3 years faster.

The most significant advancement is the shift of clinical data analytics from humans to technology. This shift streamlines drug development workflow and translates to significant savings of more than $34M for every drug in development.

Currently, there are 204 drug development teams working on just the top 6 emerging diseases which equates to a $7 billion dollar savings to the pharmaceutical industry.

Global Impact Awards and Recognition The decision to pivot the business and focus on progressing global healthcare resulted in recognition of the SDE’s alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 3: Good Heatlh and WellBeing.

In the fall of 2020, the SDE was honored as a top 10 idea solving the United Nations SDGs in the AI Solutions 2030 design contest sponsored by Ideagen® and Women in Cloud.

In February 2021, the SDE solution was chosen by Microsoft for its #BuildFor2030 campaign which supports Microsoft partners aligned to the UN SDGs and making a difference by enabling an inclusive economy, creating opportunities, and positive business outcomes.

successes for Donna. Participating in the accelerator program, she learned the value of flexibility, resetting the course and challenging her current knowledge base.

The Women in Cloud program helped Donna gain the skills required to overcome many business hurdles of reimaging the SDE. Specifically, she revamped the business model and reevaluated the SDE’s value propositions. SciMar’s partnership with Microsoft’s Women in Cloud helped secure industryleading technology advisors and advance the SDE technology with global expertise. In addition, the COVID-19 SDE became available to prospective pharma clients through both the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace and the Women In Cloud Commercial Marketplace to quickly expand the customer base.

Expanding Opportunities for Women Throughout her career, Donna has maintained a passion for creating work environments that support women – especially working mothers. She developed SciMar’s work-from-home model years before it was an accepted practice, to accommodate her own need for work-life balance with four children. This need evolved into a strong belief of attracting talent over physical presence. “What I learned is there were so many smart, talented women who wanted it all, but were struggling,” said Donna. “Yet there is an inherent efficiency in these women that translates to strong work born out of the desire to accommodate both family and a career.”

Over the years, this need transcended beyond women and therefore, SciMar is committed to building programs that hire talented people who would otherwise leave their careers because of life events. Donna has established a program providing flexible roles that allow people to build and maintain their careers and skills while balancing life. This flexibility not only attracts high talent, but fosters growth of SciMar’s employees, so they continue building a career at their own non-traditional pace.

Donna is eager to expand and create new opportunities for women at the executive level as she grows her company.

Goals include women representing more than 50% of the Board of Directors, executive management, and advisory boards.

In addition, SciMar proactively partners with women-owned companies, and is establishing internship and mentoring programs with at least 50% enrollment for women in STEM.

Micosoft’s Women in Cloud Microsoft Accelerator Navigating the Women in Cloud opportunity during a global pandemic created several interesting challenges and

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Gail Mercer-MacKay Serving Clients with Integrity

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assion plus experience equals great results. An avid marketer, Gail Mercer-MacKay combined a passion for storytelling with years of sales & marketing experience gained at technology firms to found MercerMacKay Solutions.

As a business owner and innovator, Gail understands the challenges of the corporate world and believes strongly in mentorship as a path to produce results. She has inspired many to forge their own IT journey. Along with her enthusiasm for story-telling, Gail is a problem-solver committed to helping people build valuable business and personal connections.

A Strong Advocate for Women in Cloud Today, Mercer-MacKay is a Microsoft supplier and partner.

Chaitra Vedullapalli – Founder of Women in Cloud – introduced Gail to the Women in Cloud (WIC) Microsoft Cloud Accelerator. During her six-month accelerator journey, Gail built her own application on Microsoft Dynamics in the Azure cloud.

Gail says, “The WIC Accelerator opened my eyes to the power of the Microsoft Dynamics platform. It's a great technology to

During her years working in the world of IT sales, Gail learned the kind of messaging that customers want to hear from technology companies, but it was when she left the role of VP of Sales & Marketing for a Microsoft ISV that her entrepreneurial journey really began. She started a small agency helping Microsoft partners tell their stories, market themselves and connect with customers. Over time, she built a successful agency that cracked and then exceeded the milliondollar revenue ceiling, something that few female entrepreneurs are able to do.

Recognize Opportunities Gail prides herself on being a risk-taker but believes in making calculated bets. Along her journey, she carefully assessed available opportunities before investing, ultimately building an agile, resilient, scalable business that offers value to a broad community of clients.

Throughout her career, she witnessed start-ups being built – some were successful while others failed – and took those lessons forward when she established Mercer-MacKay. She set out to create something unique, fostering a culture where everyone at the company could both contribute to its growth and share in its success.

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Gail Mercer-MacKay, Founder and CEO, Mercer-MacKay Digital Storytelling

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build on and it's fantastic for women entrepreneurs who want to build in the cloud because you can get into the market really quickly using ‘citizen developers’ for no-code/low-code programming.”

mental health benefits. At the outbreak of the pandemic, they put extra support in place to ensure everyone was cared for, including offering special tutors for parents homeschooling their children as well as additional ‘pandemic-days’ off.

As a Microsoft Dynamics partner, Mercer-MacKay was able to build MVP (Minimum Value Product) for under $100,000, going from paper to product in 8 weeks. Gail credits her participation in the WIC Accelerator for helping MercerMacKay receive software development funding, allowing the team to then develop a revenue-generating version.

In her life and her work, Gail is guided by the Zig Ziglar quote that says: "You will have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get everything they want."

Expanding Diversity in Canada Mercer-MacKay’s plan to build on Microsoft Dynamics as well as Gail’s participation in the WIC Accelerator attracted a lot of attention, including that of the Canadian government.

The NRC IRAP program provided funding to help with expansion and the company grew 79% in the past year. In 2020 Mercer-MacKay was ranked number 7 in the top 100 companies certified as a Great Place to Work in Canada, highlighting their focus on women and inclusivity.

A Big Believer in Giving Back Gail sees Mercer-MacKay as part of an ecosystem; she believes in nurturing all parties, including employees, partners, customers, and suppliers. To that end, the company holds daily meditation breaks, and offers both healthcare and

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I believe that when we serve others and help them become the best version of themselves – whether personally or professionally – there are no limits to what we can achieve.

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Mercer MacKay launched its first software module one year ago and immediately had 300 registrants generating over $200,000 in sales. The company’s annual sales revenue went from $3M to $6M and it was selected by Forrester[1] as one of the world’s top marketing firms for providing channel marketing solutions to technology companies.

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Stepping Out

Why We Need

Women in

Leadership?

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he more we learn about the dynamics of the business world, the more we realize that female leadership in the business world is crucial. Various surveys across the globe prove that organizations with adequate representation of female leaders can outperform organizations that lack female leadership. Organizations with gender diversity and sufficient females in leadership positions are more profitable than those with issues like gender discrimination, gender inequality, and differences in the pay gaps between men and women. The organizations that treat both men and women fairly and avoid prejudiced mentality against females can thrive more than the organizations having issues with female leadership.

Having female leaders in any organization create a positive and non-discriminatory environment all-around. The potential and capabilities of women leaders should not be underestimated. They have the tremendous potential and abilities to deliver more than expected or more than needed.

Female leadership is a boon because their soft and cognitive skills help them become the most empathetic and efficient business leaders. Both male and female leadership are complementary to each other. Both can do justice to their roles and responsibilities more judiciously; therefore, avoiding all forms of gender discrimination is a win-win for everyone in the business world.

Female leaders add incredible value to organizations with their skills, abilities, talents, and resourcefulness. Their composure, calmness, and serenity help them make the right decisions in the interests of business growth and profitability. Women leaders have a fantastic blend of courage and consideration; courage in them allows them to make bold decisions, and consideration within women leaders helps them guide others empathetically to bring out the best in them.

The qualities of fine speech, sharp memory, cognitive intelligence, patience, thoughtfulness, and fortitude help them deal with almost any situation bravely and respond with intelligence. They are good negotiators; therefore, female leaders can make good business deals and ensure the profitability of the businesses.

fields worldwide is certainly not beneficial for the all-round growth and development of all sectors. Celebrating and upholding the spirit of gender diversity is crucial in all industries. Better financial outcomes are pretty quickly possible for businesses with gender diversity.

Equitable and fair representation of both genders in all leadership positions is the way to make the world a better place. It is generally said that variety is the mother of enjoyment, and it is true. The teams with gender diversity perform better because the viewpoints and ideas from both genders help organizations be more innovative and more creative, and innovativeness leads to more positive outcomes for businesses.

No organizations can sustain their competency in the business market without female leaders on the board and overall equitable and fair representation of women in their organizations. The world is evolving rapidly with evolution in technology, and no organization can afford discrimination and prejudice mentality against women leaders. Women leaders bring their unique skills, different viewpoints, structural and cultural differences, which help drive effective and evolved solutions to the existing problems in the business world. The female leaders have proven themselves that they can lead from the front and inspire fellow team members to bring out their best for the cause of the organization. Women leaders are good at leading by example. They set exemplary standards in front of others and lead by promoting the spirit of contribution in the team members.

Having more women in leadership positions can help close the gender pay gap, which will be a more positive step in all sectors. Women leaders can negotiate well in high-stakes situations, and they are also capable of making high-value decisions. The approach of complacency is negligible in women leaders; therefore, this approach helps them lead with responsibility and judiciously, which helps drive more profitability for organizations. With all the benefits that female leaders can deliver, organizations should encourage and empower females to be in significant leadership positions for their sustainable success.

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Geneviève Desautels CEO, illuxi

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

GENEVIÈVE DESAUTELS Harnessing Innovations to Create Immersive and Unique Learning Experiences

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o sustain in the competitive world with cut-throat competition one needs to keep learning continuously to avail the advantage over others. Traditional methods of skills development no longer meet the needs of the ever-changing work environment. This leads to the learning decline in the workplace. Recognizing this, Geneviève Desautels decided to find a technological solution to this learning decline in the workplace. That's where illuxi, an interactive e-learning platform, came in. As a CEO, Geneviève is steering the ship of illuxi.

Geneviève worked in human resources for over 15 years before starting her professional coaching company. Through her journey coaching executives and managers in 300+ companies, she noticed that companies had less money and less time for learning and development efforts. An urge to bridge this gap led her to incept illuxi.

On top of that, there’s a little part of Geneviève that fights to instigate change and allow daughters to grow up in an entrepreneurial ecosystem focused on equality that includes female entrepreneurs in technology.

Competing With Major Players in e-Learning Geneviève joined Women in Cloud in 2020 because the opportunity for community appealed to her personal goals.

She wanted to meet and learn new things from fellow women entrepreneurs. Joining the Women in Cloud community helped her come up with creative ideas to improve illuxi's business model and lead illuxi to success.

Promoting Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All At illuxi, its team members focus on promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, as they noticed a learning decline in the workplace, mainly because organizations do not see the direct benefits of investing in their workforce development. illuxi’s AI-based learning solution will change that, by providing the data needed for organizations to further invest in their workforce education.

The main reason Geneviève went about building a tech business is to offer inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, as stated in the United Nations 2030 agenda. She believes that technology can give power back to the people through education.

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“illuxi supports experts and organizations to host, market and design online trainings, remote professional services, virtual events, live videos and podcasts on its platform developed in Montreal.”

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Since graduating from the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator, illuxi has been able to more effectively target large companies with many employees to train. To offer training programs to companies with 1000 employees or more, one needs to have as many optimization processes already in place as possible, which Women in Cloud helped her to achieve. Women in Cloud allowed illuxi to compete with major players in e- learning, especially with the opening of a new office in Europe in September 2020.

In addition, Women in Cloud allowed illuxi to stand out among the official Microsoft partners in the United States and solidify its partnership with Microsoft by obtaining the "cosell" badge, which means that Microsoft invests directly in the sales efforts of illuxi's technology solution.

Moreover, illuxi gained more than 10,000 new users and increased its sales by 50% in Quebec. In addition, it made its very first major sales in Europe (Luxembourg) in early 2021.

It is targeting three $100,000 projects in Europe by the end of the year. To this end, illuxi is already in discussions with major partners in Europe (including the global giant Decathlon) who are interested in its Cloud technology. www.insightssuccess.com

Tackling Strategic and Tactical Challenges Women in Cloud made it possible for Geneviève, as a CEO, to reflect within a group and tackle strategic and tactical challenges that directly affect her company and, more broadly, female entrepreneurs in technology throughout the world. It was the desire to meet people (men and women alike) who understand her reality as a female entrepreneur in technology that brought her to Women in Cloud—and that’s exactly what led illuxi into becoming an international company.

Reaching Out to Women Entrepreneurs One of Geneviève’s main goals with Women in Cloud was to reach out to women entrepreneurs from around the world to share and learn about industry challenges and about the positive role women can have in enabling women’s economic inclusion. Geneviève wants to contribute to increasing the participation of women in the tech sector because she believes that including more women in tech is proven to boost the economy with creativity and new ways of doing business.

entrepreneurs can make it possible to reach economic inclusion by collaborating with each other, and Fortune 1000 can make this happen quickly. The collective power of people to create change, even as a virtual community, has never felt more meaningful and necessary than today.

Geneviève is of the opinion that women entrepreneurs should be able to fulfil the desire of female CEOs at Fortune 1000 companies to meet female entrepreneurs who are both mothers and entrepreneurs in technology and are aged 45 years or older. Fortune 1000 companies have to share the thoughts and experiences of women who were able to find investors and acquirers for women entrepreneurs to understand how they were able to keep the bigger part of their companies’ shares.

Promoting Women’s Economic and Tech Inclusion As the CEO of illuxi, Geneviève feels that Fortune 1000 companies play a major role in creating networks and determining the conditions for access to capital. They come up with potential solutions for women in technology to grow their companies while contributing their diverse talent to the global tech community.

Keeping a company up and running and profitable is a huge task, especially for women in the tech sector. In the context of economic inclusion, Geneviève believes that Fortune 1000 companies can create fluidity and quality of communication, allowing everyone to learn from each other. Collective power is the ability to combine talents, ideas, and forces to solve complex challenges or crises and to fulfil new goals. Women

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Kiyeon Nam Preventing Kids from Going Missing and Keeping Them Safe Through Smart Wear IoT Solution

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rowing a small company into a universal brand is like climbing a mountain; the journey has many obstacles. For a leader, a positive attitude inspires him/her to keep moving forward. One such innovative leader is Kiyeon Nam, the Inventor, Founder, and CEO of B'ZT® (Beacon Zone Technology).

prevent missing children and adults. She came up with a comfortable and cost-effective solution for tracking children and vulnerable individuals using Smart Clothing and smartphone apps.

Kiyeon’s passion and dedication to create something new are unmatched. Her experience as a fashion designer and business merchandiser brings a special kind of creativity and affordability to fashion technology. In addition, her desire to improve herself and everyone around her makes her a great leader.

Many Internet of Things developers build their solutions first to target big enterprise customers. Kiyeon took a different path. She wanted to solve an everyday problem that parents and caregivers experience with children and vulnerable seniors. B'ZT products and apps were developed for parents like herself, and they were soon evolved to be the safety solution for teachers, institutional caregivers and enterprise customers. The Women In Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator inspired her to think out of the box and see the global potential of utilizing IoT technology to take B'ZT to another level.

Compassionate for the Vulnerable The global issue of missing children is staggering. According to FBI statistics, one child in America goes missing every minute. Young children, especially with autism and similar conditions, are prone to wandering off. Researchers have found that almost half of autistic children attempt to wander away, usually into dangerous situations.

The tracking device industry is full of gadgets that are uncomfortable to wear, easy to lose, or require monthly fees.

They offer unique but expensive products that don't gear towards safety. The devices also lose functionality after washings.

Ability to Think Outside the Box

An Inspiring Business Savvy Before B'ZT, Kiyeon worked as a professional in the fashion industry for more than 20 years. Naturally, her vision of B'ZT’s potential was limited to a Direct-to-Consumer model,

Nevertheless, there is an old saying that states amid chaos, there is opportunity. Using her expertise in fashion design, Kiyeon created B'ZT after temporarily losing her 3-year-old daughter at a shopping mall because she couldn’t find a location-based tracking device that was suitable or comfortable for her child.

Kiyeon created B'ZT to keep parents and children safe and connected, both here in North America and around the world.

B'ZT is an award-winning personal safety solution, combining fashion and geo-fence tracking technology to

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Kiyeon Nam

Inventor/Founder and CEO B’ZT, LLC.

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“

For the most vulnerable people in your life, we are committed to offer the most comfortable Smart Apparel.

Women in Cloud showed Kiyeon that B'ZT is not merely a consumer safety solution but an IoT Smart Wear Solution with enormous scalability. She can customize the company's patented hardware and software so that fashion brands, retailers, and hyper-scalers can license its solution. Kiyeon believes that Women in Cloud is truly a great platform for female entrepreneurs to network, collaborate, and succeed together.

Advancing Human Connection After the Women in Cloud accelerator program, Kiyeon received an email from Dr. Pereira-Smith at Medical University of South Carolina saying that B'ZT had finally been approved by the institution's Institutional Review Board (IRB). She still remembers the pediatrician’s first call last summer during the pandemic, "I recommend your products to the families [with autistic children] I work with.” Through the MUSC, Kiyeon has fulfilled the bulk shipment of the smart chipsets to 100 families with children with autism.

A few days after the enterprise order, CCS Disability Action in

“

similar to other fashion brands. She didn’t embrace the concept of the IoT and the lucrative data yielded by software customization and cloud computing. Women in Cloud revolutionized her thinking by giving a visionary mindset of what B'ZT could actually be.

New Zealand called Kiyeon to tell that B'ZT was a lifesaver.

One of the families that was using a B'ZT T-shirt for their 5year old autistic child was able to stop her right before she walked toward a highway. CCS is considering a re-order.

B'ZT is not a gadget that you sometimes use and sometimes don’t. Kids' safety is serious. That is why Kiyeon had to try and fail 11 times to come up with the latest version of the B’ZT machine washable smart chipset. She says B’ZT has a different purpose in the IoT world. Its mission is saving lives in the safest way possible.

Keep Moving Forward!

Here are a few ideas that Kiyeon would like to see implemented over the next 5 years: Companies could offer semi-annual investment grants to 12 female-led businesses that operate within the same sector. These entrepreneurs can utilize the grants to grow their enterprises as they see fit. Ÿ Companies can partner with female-focused associations or small business programs to sponsor mentorships of select female-founded companies for 1 year. Ÿ Stipends and scholarships can be created by companies for promising female entrepreneurs who need to further their education that would benefit their enterprise. Ÿ Companies can take an active role in bringing younger women into the STEM field by offering both internships and scholarships. The number of female entrepreneurs has been increasing over the years, but so much more can be done. Ÿ

The ideas that Kiyeon has put forth are merely a foundation in which female entrepreneurs can get a bigger seat at the table with the help of the Fortune 1000.

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Kristen Miller

Revolutionizing the Omni-Channel Shopping Experience

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At Stylyze, Kristen’s mission is to provide a platform for retailers that revolutionize the omnichannel shopping experience. Stylyze’s platform synthesizes the elements of the in-store experience previously missing from the virtual and digital space, refining and advancing the online customer journey of the future. Leveraging cloud technology, Stylyze is partnering with some of the largest retailers in the US to transform their customer experiences.

Kristen is an inspirational leader and advisor for the Women in Cloud community, and she also presides as a board member for The Beyond Project. She is an in-demand speaker on retail innovation and entrepreneurship for Techstars Startup Week Seattle.

“

Take a step and be

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eaningful innovation is what transforms an entrepreneur into a successful business leader.

Connecting dots, building bridges to fill the gaps, and bringing a different approach is what drives innovation.

All of these distinct traits can be easily pointed out in Kristen Miller’s leadership approach. Kristen is a seasoned entrepreneur who has founded four successful companies in the Home Improvement and Retail industry and is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Stylyze.

persistent

How it All Started?

Prior to founding Stylyze, Kristen had another business in the home decor space, where she worked with clients and helped them to find and coordinate products for their homes. The work demanded hands-on effort day in and day out, trying to coordinate products and styles for the clients. “We would start our search online as the entire inventory was online, but there was no way to really narrow down the search based on what

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Kristen Miller

CEO & Co-Founder Stylyze

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the client’s style or aesthetic was,” says Kristen. She further adds that after finding a product, it was very challenging to find other products that would coordinate with it to create a specific design aesthetic.

Kristen’s co-founder, Lisa Perrone Cirelli, was an interior designer by trade and had experienced something similar.

They connected and saw the opportunity to transform the home and fashion industries through cloud technology.

Before starting Stylyze, they spoke with 80 different home decor and apparel retailers and brands to understand the gaps in the space and realized that they were all trying to figure out how to replicate the in-store experience online. Today, the company partners with leading home and fashion retailers to transform their customer experiences. Their Merchandisingas-a-Service Platform combines the latest in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with seasoned designers and stylists to equip retailers with the data and content that they need to be successful in an omnichannel environment.

According to Kristen, one of the challenges she has faced as an entrepreneur while serving the enterprise space is that large enterprises often lack the structure or a set of programs to work effectively with start-ups. Given the rapid rate of transformation taking place in the retail industry, and many other industries, she believes that this is a critical moment for enterprises and start-ups to learn how to better work together to keep up with the accelerated pace of change required to be successful in today’s world.

Kristen herself is very passionate about supporting other entrepreneurs who are on the journey. As an advisor to Women in Cloud, she asserts “I'm on a few boards and I would like to continue to support the ecosystem by continuing that work, speaking, writing, providing mentorship and angel investing. This is both an exciting and challenging time to be an entrepreneur and I want to help other entrepreneurs learn from my victories and my mistakes.”

Take the First Step

A Change was Required Thanks to COVID, the retail industry has experienced a rapid transformation and continues to change. One significant change the retail industry is experiencing is accelerating digital transformation and the urgency to offer all of their instore services digitally.

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In her advice to emerging women leaders, Kristen asserts “Get started and just take a step in the direction you want to go.” She believes that so many individuals who are considering the entrepreneurial journey get stuck in analysis paralysis.

They want to wait until the stars align perfectly, until either they have all the aspects in their life lined up or until they have www.insightssuccess.com

the perfect team or the perfect investors. “Entrepreneurs who are successful are the ones who take the first step and then continue moving forward with a great group of advisors to support the process so that they can continue moving in the right direction,” says Kristen.

initiatives which ultimately generated over ten pieces of coverage in the last 6 months alone. The network provided by the Women in Cloud Accelerator has also opened doors with key customers and resources in addition to being a wonderful support system throughout the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.

Stepping to New Achievements Everyday Women Entrepreneurs in Next Five Years Since graduating from the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator, Stylyze has grown revenue by 44% year over year and had the opportunity to position its business and management team as thought leaders in retail transformation and women in technology. Stylyze has been featured in several publications including the Puget Sound Business Journal, WWD, Women Of Wearables, Retail Innovation Hub, Authority Magazine, Silicon UK, Forbes, Retail Gazette, Thrive Global, The Next Web, and Tech Round.

Additionally, Stylyze closed a $2.8M Series Seed Round and successfully expanded its product offering into new retail verticals.

The Women in Cloud Accelerator provided Kristen and her team with a go-to-market framework that accelerated their time to close enterprise deals and also increased their closing rate. Additionally, Kristen and her team previously had limited PR and exposure. As part of the Women in Cloud Accelerator, Kristen was given the opportunity to share her story and the Stylyze platform with the broader community.

This exposure was critical to jumpstarting Stylyze's PR

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Kristen believes that organizations such as Women in Cloud are helping to not only educate Fortune 1000 companies about the benefits of creating economic access for women, they are also creating the ecosystem of women entrepreneurs and Fortune 1000 executives to facilitate trusted introductions.

Additionally, Women in Cloud is helping to prepare women entrepreneurs for those opportunities so that when the introductions are made they understand how to successfully navigate the enterprise landscape and position their product and service appropriately.

It is the combination of Fortune 1000 companies adopting inclusive procurement practices, providing the connection between Fortune 1000 executives and women entrepreneurs, and equipping women entrepreneurs to successfully navigate those opportunities that will move the needle in creating economic access for women.

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Supporting Entrepreneurs

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omen in Cloud (WIC) is a community-led economic development initiative to support female entrepreneurs in technology. The initiative within the WIC community is an immersive 6month program, the Microsoft Cloud Accelerator program, which is designed to help female entrepreneurs start and build their businesses through Microsoft and the cloud distribution channels of Microsoft. The Ignite WA leadership team leads the Women in Cloud initiative in collaboration with Industry Partners, Microsoft Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Meylah.

Women In Cloud program celebrates the female entrepreneurs in the technology world. It is a source of inspiration and support that connects and empowers women in Washington and beyond. This program helps female entrepreneurs to realize their potential and reach new growth through leading cloud industry, community, and government partners. The coaching, mentorship, and support of people through this program benefits women leaders in their journey immensely. WIC program is beneficial to female entrepreneurs in a variety of ways. It is a platform that offers women in technology the opportunity to accelerate their ideas and help them refine those ideas for marketplace viability.

WIC’s mission is to inspire, empower and accelerate the growth of women-led technology companies. This program focuses on the digital transformation to provide digital access, digital capabilities, and connections to customers through leading cloud industry, community, and government partners. Suppose female entrepreneurs already have a working prototype or any good business idea. In that case, they can apply for the WIC program as this program accelerates and turns good ideas into great businesses. This program empowers female entrepreneurs in technology to tackle tactical and strategical challenges.

WIC program is built to drive the growth of companies through cloud solutions and services. Whenever women leaders stumble, unlimited talent resources from the WIC program can help these female entrepreneurs by lending them a helping hand. This program empowers them with relevant skills, abilities, talents, resourcefulness. This opens many doors for female entrepreneurs. The amazing group of selfless people in the WIC program are committed to empowering, encouraging, and inspiring female entrepre-

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neurs to make exceptional contributions to their businesses and the industry.

Training from the WIC program allows female entrepreneurs to compete and drive their businesses to great heights.

This program help women to stand out from the rest of others and enable them to thrive even in tough competition.

Women need more success stories to inspire other women to pursue their dreams and not limit opportunities due to fear of failure or lack of knowledge. This program gives wings to the female entrepreneurs; they radiate with confidence, courage, and competence to thrive in the world of business. It helps them increase the revenue of their businesses and successfully expand the growth of their businesses.

The skills developed from the WIC program help female entrepreneurs lead their teams more effectively to achieve specific goals. With their enhanced skills, female entrepreneurs can lead from the front and set the right standards for others by being most exemplary.

WIC program gives female entrepreneurs a rich network of business leaders, entrepreneurs, advisors, and investors.

They get the opportunity to develop friendships with likeminded women and learn from them. This association allows female entrepreneurs to expand their skillsets, knowledge, and competency. The Connectivity with this network of talented people helps female entrepreneurs with unique business insights to make informed decisions that are beneficial for the growth of the businesses.

Having a mentor is a great advantage in life. Mentors have amazing experiences, and their experiences help future generations be saved from committing unnecessary mistakes. This saves precious time for business leaders, and they get the idea to do what is required to attain success.

The WIC program staff teaches and mentors other women in the cloud field. The mentorship experiences that female entrepreneurs get at the WIC program enriches them.

Through this mentorship, they can remove their doubts, fears, insecurities. This mentorship helps female entrepreneurs to have great suggestions and guidance from the experienced staff at the program. This way, female entrepreneurs can be more educated, knowledgeable, skilled, and competent to lead their businesses.

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Leading DILIGENTLY

by Being EMPOWERED with WIC PROGRAM

Those female entrepreneurs who have graduated from the WIC program appreciate the tremendous learning, friendships, mentors, empowerment, encouragement, inspiration, skills, talents, abilities, resourcefulness, and all-important capabilities they get from this value-driven WIC Microsoft Cloud Accelerator Program. They express their heartfelt gratitude to the facilitators of this program, and they feel deeply grateful for all the empowerment they get from this

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course. The female entrepreneurs after this program, with their enhanced skills, knowledge, and capabilities, can lead their businesses to maximum heights. They can make a difference in the industry and become the guiding light for future generations. Many WIC graduated female entrepreneurs recommend this WIC Microsoft Cloud Accelerator Program to aspiring entrepreneurs who have any good ideas and want to turn them into great business results.

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Martha Montoya CEO, Agtools Inc

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Martha Montoya Improving Profitability of Farmers and Buyers through Actionable Market Data

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aking sense of business-critical market data is a costly, time-intensive process, which begins with finding the data – internal and external. The challenge continues with the identification of the variables that matter, measuring them correctly, and acting. As the Agriculture and Food Supply Chain is fragmented with many contributors and a large geographic reach, industry participants need a better comprehensive solution to the challenge of measuring what matters. Supply chain optimization is vital for multiple industries and farmers.

Farmers are on the losing end of the supply chain and Martha Montoya has seen it firsthand across the world.

Martha started her career in the agricultural industry while sourcing ingredients from the Americas to New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand, which provided her with the knowledge of the product from source to delivery.

Agtools is a market business intelligence product. The company basically delivers market data which helps farmers and buyers to make decisions. It takes data from government entities across the world. Most of its programs are in Pascal and Cobol programming languages. Agtools reprogram the data into a simpler form. As the company understands the industry, it is able to put the data in context. Farmers and Buyers look for market data to act on that data and make macro decisions.

In simpler terms, as a worldwide SaaS platform, Agtools gathers real-time government and institutional data of over 500 specialty crop commodities, scraping it, including algorithms and M/L for farmers, buyers, and everyone on the supply chain to see and decide how to manage their forecasting and purchase orders.

An Entrepreneur of the Future

Currently, Martha is steering the ship of Agtools as a CEO. Agtools provides business-critical access to accurate, objective, and frequently updated real-time market data along with the performance applications and monitoring systems to provide management with the tools to develop, implement and monitor business initiatives and results. Agtools improves profitability through Actionable Market Data. The clients of Agtools benefit from data points for each link in the supply chain to improve their category and the performance of each function inside the organization.

According to Martha, as a businesswoman, one needs to learn how to read financials. She says the world moves with money, profit and losses, cash flows, and projections. Martha was not much aware of financials initially until she heard

Experience in Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Martha has been in the agriculture and food supply chain industry for the last 27 years. She has been boots on the ground by doing the crops and working with the farmers.

Furthermore, she brought in her two brothers, who helped her in the technical aspects of the idea.

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Martha mentions that the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator helped her shape her professional and personal journey. The community of leaders and mentors helped her grasp entrepreneurship better. She says Women in Cloud knows best in building frameworks and programs for entrepreneurs like her to empower them. After her accelerator journey, her company fundraised over 1.45 million on seed round, acquired yearly contracts with the largest foodservice, the largest fruit/vegetable companies in the world, and more. It also acquired cybersecurity certification and hired five more rural engineers in the US. Agtools is now fundraising 10 million and is very confident because of the enterprise growth path Martha was taught in Women in Cloud. Martha says that the community resulted in new friendships, connections, and interactions that will stay with her for the rest of the time.

Envisioning to Expand the Scope of Services

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Agtools goes beyond providing a data solution for the food supply chain and perishable industry.

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from a woman who runs 25 businesses, "If you don't know your cost per unit, you're doomed in the business.”

Agtools has a lot of work with around 600 million farmers in the world. Martha wants to focus on the United States market for the next five to ten years after which she wants to launch global operations to help farmers all around the world. She believes that she and her team have to understand how the world moves, so they can help the farmers farm better in the countries worldwide.

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

Nehal Mehta Securing Digital World in an Unconventional Way

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nnovation is not an option anymore; it has become a necessity. Today, every complex problem needs a novel approach. Nehal Mehta has exemplified this notion through her venture Rainbow Secure. She has addressed the growing concern of cybercrime in an unconventional way.

She is removing the security stress of users and making the human factor, a power factor.

Nehal is a mathematician, a statistician, an astute software engineer, and now an accomplished entrepreneur. She was a victim of cybercrime and was struggling to manage many online accounts and passwords.

Today, Nehal and her company are serving enterprise customers, a certified Microsoft ISV partner, listed on Azure App Gallery and Microsoft Marketplace, on a way to secure federal and defense solutions, services, and data with important certifications to handle their sensitive data.

How Exactly It Secures Enterprises?

Rainbow secure stops cyber-attack pain problems like: Ÿ Ÿ

One day her son was doodling his name in different colors and that gave her an idea, what if her passwords were like the doodles; a creative word that can be used every day and is easy to handle.

Ÿ

About Her Innovation

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Rainbow Secure is a future-ready suite of solutions aimed at reducing cyber-attacks, cyber frauds, data breaches, business risks, and technology liabilities of a business and keeping business. It is adding millions of colors and 100+ styles, so that password, Zero-trust Login, Multi-factor, Single Sign On, Identity Security can become powerful and eradicate the current challenges of cyber-crimes. This idea was the foundation of Rainbow Secure.

What started as a research entity that focused on innovation for a secure digital world, has grown into a potent force for smart and secure digital solutions for individuals, businesses, and big enterprises.

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Ÿ

Ÿ Ÿ

Ÿ

Brute Force - By giving 36 quadrillion options for making just one character of the password Password Reuse - No problem as the password has color, style, and position factor Keylogger, Malware - No problem as the password has formatting options that are not captured in the keylogger.

Credential Stuffing - Interactive Human-friendly password entry process, slows down and defeats it Automated Attacks, DDOS - Bots trying to DDOS the service are defeated by smart methods and environment insights Device Cloning - No impact on rainbow secure powered logins Phishing - No links to click in rainbow secure login process + business can opt for the anti-phishing module for a higher level of phishing protection Unlocked Device Problem - Users walk away from unlocked devices but save passwords in the browser or password manager, now not hurting the security of the system as the user still has formatting knowledge with him.

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Nehal Mehta President and Co-Founder

Rainbow Secure

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Solving User Pain

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We bring out Simple, Reliable and Easy to use solutions and security technology APIs that can be welcomed by end users with minimal training and integrated by developers with no fuss.

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Users no more have to create long complex passwords.

Multi-layer Security means no more frequent password changes. Ÿ Flexible Balanced Security model that adjusts security friction based on use case. Ÿ Ÿ

Delivering Next-Generation Multi-layer Multi-factor Login Security Rainbow Secure solutions provide next-generation multilayer multi factor login security with graphical elements. It's the only solution that provides improvised password as a first factor that gives enterprises game-changing security, scalable for masses, reduces your business risk, improves business continuity, productivity, wins customer trust, and lowers support costs.

You can secure old and new apps, on any platform.

Besides, Rainbow Secure also provides secure office solutions like Single Sign On, Workforce and Customer Identity, Access Control Gateway, Password & Data Vault, and a highly potent Encryption tool.

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Solutions are protected by AI monitoring, Risk analytics and threat alerting.

A Source of Business Growth Nehal’s success in enabling security for individuals and companies in their digital transformation journey has a driving force; Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator.

After graduating from Women in Cloud Accelerator, Rainbow Secure won pilot with healthcare startup, customers reaching 11K+ end users with 500% market growth, got nominated for Cyber Security Women Ally of the year, runners up for Founders Live and invited for talks on Women's International Day, WIPP, won coveted co-sell ready ISV Partner status, and have integrated with Office 365, Sharepoint, MS Dynamics, Google Workspace, IBM Cloud, Salesforce, Slack, Freshdesk, Oracle Cloud, Netsuite and many other Enterprise Apps and Cloud Services, enabling secure single sign on cloud and on premises.

Providing Essential Resources to Women Entrepreneurs According to Nehal, in the next 5 years, Fortune 1000 companies will begin to incorporate unique solutions largely offered by startups that can help them, promote innovation and allow women-led startups to pilot with their technology.

Reflecting on her own journey, Nehal has one piece of advice for emerging entrepreneurs; believe in your idea and validate it. In the long run, Nehal wants to be a part of the FinTech world. With her robust platform and cutting-edge solutions, she wants to help FinTech solution providers, government institutions, and Fortune 500 companies win the race against cyber-attacks. In a nutshell, she aspires to be a cybersecurity leader in future applications security.

Women in Cloud community gave her the opportunity to finetune and clarify her business offerings, talk, brainstorm with business advisors and get their feedback on her technology solutions, get guidance that she was missing, and meet enterprise executives and learn first-hand their expectations, environment, and needs for cybersecurity. www.insightssuccess.com

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Sarah Haggard Founder & CEO Tribute

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Top 10 Most Successful Women in Cloud Entrepreneurs

SARAH HAGGARD Leading from Front by Walking the Talk

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entorship plays a huge role in all our lives. A good mentor shapes our professional and personal journey. Sarah Haggard is an engaging speaker, writer, and mentor who loves to tell stories, and share her most rewarding (and challenging) moments as an Anthropologist turned Product Marketer and now pioneering entrepreneur.

Sarah went to school for anthropology and sociology with the hopes of being a humanitarian. At 24, she ended up at Microsoft by fate. She realized pretty early on in doing some of the social work that she wanted to make an impact on people's lives in a way that helped them have economic access and opportunities to rise above some of the challenges that they would have.

Today, Sarah is the Founder and CEO of Tribute. She founded Tribute after 10 years working at Microsoft and struggling to find a mentor. The Tribute came to life because Sarah is passionate about the power of human connection, and using storytelling as a means to find that connection. She states that when we feel connected, we feel empowered, supported, and most importantly capable of achieving our most aspirational goals. Sarah holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Seattle University and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Business Administration from Augustana College in Rock Island, IL.

personally prefers being a servant leader. Her superpower is her ability to spot patterns, create high-performing teams and activate the right people at the right time to deliver results.

Upholding Culture of Growth, Inclusivity, and Belonging Tribute is a mobile and desktop app, available on both the Slack and Teams marketplaces. It is perfectly positioned for a post-pandemic world to build and nourish virtual relationships by sharing stories, lived experiences, and wisdom. Tribute is not an average mentorship app. It is built by curious creators looking to disrupt traditional mentorship programs. They lead with social psychology, beautiful UI, and simple UX to facilitate the art (and science) of better connections.

Tribute believes in bringing one’s authentic self to work and that sharing stories and experiences is key to creating a trusted and diverse culture centered around growth, inclusivity, and belonging. What's great about Tribute is once you sign up, it's a 30-day commitment. It's a very short, time-bound engagement that each party can get into without having to

Sarah is a proven business leader who has led multiple startup initiatives within her decade-long career in product marketing at Microsoft, raising $40M to scale her last business. She is an expert in P&L management, enterprise software, and GTM strategy. Sarah’s tenacity and drive for results led to her being widely recognized as a turnaround expert and new business incubator. Her leadership style is engaging and authentic. Impactful leadership to Sarah means being in service. She believes in leading from the front, being transparent, over-communicating, and walking the talk. She

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and belonging. Tribute has a team of business leaders, strategists, marketers, designers, and more. What brings its team together is its shared mission and vision for improving mentorship experience for both employers and employees using the transformative power of personal stories and Shared Life Experiences™ to create next-gen learning experience platforms.

Befitting Women in Cloud Accelerator Program

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Tribute is a workplace mentorship app that radically redenes and improves mentorship for one’s company—and one’s employees. make these lifelong commitments, thus, it allows you to go in and have multiple different types of mentors for shorter engagements over Teams.

Creating an Empowering Mentorship Experience Tribute believes stories inspire action and everyone’s story matters. It is a platform that goes beyond traditional, topdown structures of most mentorship programs, amplifying the stories of everyone and thus making mentorship more accessible. By combining modern technology with the ancient art of storytelling, Tribute creates an empowering mentorship experience that breaks down the barriers between individuals, bridging differences and building better connections. It builds technology that supports autonomous choice with a mentorship platform that works seamlessly across one’s company.

Sarah narrates that the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator has helped her personally to communicate in a way that is compelling. Since graduating from the Women in Cloud Accelerator, Tribute went on to win the Seattle Angel Conference XVII pitch competition, tripled its revenue, successfully raised its first investment, expanded its team, been featured in Geekwire and King5 as well as added customers like Zillow and the University of Washington to its growing list. And Sarah says they are just getting started!

The Women in Cloud Accelerator elevated Tribute's brand awareness on a national level, and connected it with a rich network of business leaders, entrepreneurs, advisors, and investors. In addition, at the conclusion of the program, Tribute launched a 2020 mentoring initiative together that had over 300 participants and 45 mentoring pairs connected. After her journey, Sarah advises female entrepreneurs to trust themselves and advises them to apply for the Women in Cloud Accelerator if they already have a working prototype. She says that it is a great first step as Women in Cloud turns ideas into great businesses.

Bridging More Connections Across World Sarah hopes to have several more Tributes in — to keep on being an entrepreneur. She hopes to build more startups postTribute around the core theme, belonging. She is interested in building products and services that help human beings feel a greater sense of belonging and connection with their other fellow human beings, and not necessarily people that just look like you or live in your neighborhood. Thus, bridging connections across the world is something that Sarah really is passionate about and wants to continue to build technology around.

Sarah sees 2021 as a great growth year for Tribute. With its Teams and Slack apps, Tribute aims to be the de facto mentoring app for Fortune 500 companies. That is its vision.

Building Next Generation Learning Experience Platform Tribute is not afraid to be the leader. The future of work will look radically different than today. It is redefining mentorship for a future based on distributed team effectiveness, inclusion,

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