Alana is a Senior Design Manager on Dynamics 365 Customer Voice. With 8 years of Microsoft Design experience across Visual Studio, Power BI, Power Apps, and Forms Pro, Alana is responsible for leading and delivering the user experience of the product. Alana cares deeply about creating delightful, streamlined experiences. Creating inclusive spaces, teams, and experiences is a passion of hers, where everyone adds to the culture, rather than needing to fit in.
Wilkista is a renewable energy specialist with over six years’ professional experience in Sub Saharan Africa renewable energy markets focusing on; design and supply of solar systems, clean energy advisory, lobby and advocacy for green and inclusive energy policies at local, national, and regional levels. Her professional interests are largely in renewable energy technologies, power optimization in electricity markets, energy efficiency, predictive modelling and analytics, and more recently Power-to-X technologies.
Away from work, Wilkista is passionate about mentorship and the empowerment of young women and youth. She mentors younger women particularly those aspiring to pursue STEM or just getting started in their careers. Having been a beneficiary of the Global Give Back Circle, she leveraged on the experience and skills to co-found and run the Kakenya Centre for Excellence mentorship (KCE) program for 7 years. The program has over the years connected teenage girls in the Maasai community’s Enoosaen village with university and college female students as their mentors, among other life-skill workshops. In 2020, the program was handed over, as part of a sustainability strategy, to KCE beneficiaries who are now in college. Wilkista is also an environmental sustainability champion.
Edna is an international development professional with multicultural experience in adolescent and youth development programs. She has gathered mentoring experience in the past seven years through various roles; Edna is a mentoring advisory member of YouthPower2 by USAID, a mentor at the MasterCard Foundation Scholars program, the Kakenya Centre of Excellence, and at her former high school-Starehe Girls Centre in Kenya.
Previously in 2015, Edna leveraged her expertise in the design and implementation of a mentorship program for the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Center East Africa, where she is also an alumnus. She helped design the strategy and recruited and trained mentors from the private and public sector to work with the first two cohorts of YALI participants. Edna has worked in Kenya, Malawi, India, Bangladesh, Somalia and regionally in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Marjorie has been a champion of girls’ and women’s leadership for the last decade. As COO of Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW), an association that develops women leaders, Margie created events, programs and resources attracting nearly 2,000 young professional women to the organization. From CEW Margie went on to lead Marketing for the Girl Scouts USA. In addition to managing Greylock Associates, an LLC focused on corporate partnerships, Margie oversees all mentoring activities in the Circle. She is a graduate of Williams College and Kellogg School of Management.
Angela is a Senior Business Program Manager at Microsoft Corporation, where she has worked for over 15 years. Starting in Learning and Development, she now works in the Device Partner Sales organization, driving strategy and execution of a portfolio of partner programs. In addition, she was elected in 2017 as a Commissioner for the Port of Edmonds in Washington state and holds the seat for District 1.
Deeply grounded in her values, Angela advocates for people, educational opportunities, human rights, and the environment. She feels strongly that each day is a new day – offering countless opportunities to live passionately, confidently, empathetically, and with connection.
Angela has been a Global Give Back Circle mentor since 2011 and has helped recruit dozens of mentors for the program.
Erin Zuehlsdorff is a Senior Executive Recruiter at Google focused on hiring for Cloud Engineering. She also serves on the Career Development Pillar Leadership for the local Women@ Google ERG. Previously, Erin was at Microsoft for 8 years developing a wide breadth of recruiting and HR experience and expertise in hiring, mentoring, negotiation, community building, and cyber security. Erin has experience across all facets of recruiting including University, Sales, Operations, Engineering, Industry, and Executive.
Erin is a connector with a large network and knack for helping others recognize, develop, and share their gifts and expertise with the world. She has served as a mentor and advisor to the Global Give Back Circle. In the few years she facilitated over 40 #iamremarkable workshops to empower women and under-represented minorities to speak openly about their accomplishments and break the glass ceiling.
She has been busy growing her family while growing her career, enjoys daily walks with her children, dog, and boating in the San Juan Islands with her husband.
A native of California, Dena returned to her sunny homeland in late 2018, after spending nearly a decade abroad in Dublin, Ireland. As a Pre-Sales Portfolio Manager for Microsoft, Enterprise Services Division, she manages a multi-million dollar portfolio of Dynamics 365 Consulting Services opportunities in the US market. With a specialized focus in the Justice and Public Safety vertical, she drives an extensive portfolio of industry leading digital transformation motions in state and local governments where the aim to is to harness the power of Dynamics 365 technology to drive improvements in criminal justice service delivery and outcomes that will benefit society at large.
In addition to her day job, Dena contributes a significant amount of volunteer time on behalf of Microsoft in diversity and inclusion related programs. She currently leads the Women at Microsoft community’s partnership with GGBC and previously served as a global leader in GLEAM, Microsoft’s LGBT+ employee resource group. While living in Ireland, she was named Ireland’s LGBT Role Model of the Year in 2015.
Dena has Bachelor’s Degree in International Business from San Diego State University and a MSc in Management and Organisation Studies from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business (University College Dublin). Her master’s thesis on the role of hubris in the Irish banking crash in 2009 was published in the Journal of Business Ethics.
She is also a proud single mother to a bubbly, rambunctious toddler named Noah 😊
Katherine Kennedy is a Commercial Sales leader at Cisco based in Newport Beach, CA. She has been a Global Give Back Circle mentor since 2020.
Katherine is a graduate of North Carolina State University where her passion for mentorship started as a Peer Leader within the business school. Professionally, her passions lie in cybersecurity and creating strong teams. Outside of work she is passionate about yoga, surfing, spending quality time with loved ones and Global Give Back Circle.
Roxy Ndebumadu is a founder, technology leader, and elected-official known for being a bad-ass, game-changing, AI and cyber security enthusiast, who is making waves and redefining what it means to be an innovative professional powerhouse in today’s quickly changing world.
Through her work at Microsoft, Roxy has been instrumental in redefining how tech is used both domestically and internationally, spearheading the modernization of cloud businesses and the development of tactical and strategic workstreams. She has taught her teams the value of intentionally leading complex systems focused on human-centered design at unheard of scale. Most known for her work in disruptive innovation with the United States House of Representatives, Safaricom, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Roxy has become the “Olivia Pope” for Federal Government, Commercial Enterprises, and C-suite executives across the world.
In 2019, Roxy became the youngest female and first African American woman to be voted and sworn into office as a Councilwoman for City of Bowie, District 4 in Maryland, serving a community of 68K constituents. Roxy was recently recognized and appointed by Governor Hogan to the Maryland State Board of Waterworks. A Howard University graduate of Nigerian descent, Roxy has always viewed empathy as the great equalizer that will bring society together. Respected for her resounding voice of reason, her dedication to the empowerment of others, and her technical expertise marketing to underprivileged communities, Roxy was named one of the most powerful women to watch out for in African Diaspora.
Out of viewing her life as a vehicle set to empower others by encouraging them to embrace their most authentic selves, own who they are, and amplify the reach of their individual unique voice, Roxy started Alika Women’s Alliance LLC. With a history of overcoming opposition and successfully challenging limiting beliefs, there is no telling what this passionately driven young woman will tackle next. You can catch her on BBC News, keynoting conferences, or advocating for STEM education in Bowie.
Lynda Kanguha is a nuclear scientist with a background in Mechanical and Production Engineering. She worked on research projects on sprayability of fuel additives to improve the efficiency of combustion in diesel engines and in the assessment of heavy metals in environmental media gold mining areas. Lynda also researched the improvement of combustion efficiency in firewood stoves, using a gasification process.
Lynda is passionate about advancements and improved delivery of water and energy solutions to emerging markets, with a focus on the African context.
Global Give Back Circle leverages connectivity to create opportunities for all women to make an impact. Today, history is in the making as 3,000 mentors walk alongside at-risk adolescent girls, providing them with the tools they need to rise up as economically empowered young women who are breaking down barriers, changing the systems and leading the movement for diversity and inclusion.
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