Women of Influence – The Next Frontier: Meet the Tech Visionaries Designing the Future

WOI SPOTLIGHT EVENT Women of Influence is thrilled to announce our return to Montreal for one exclusive engagement on May 15th. Join us for a career-defining evening of learning, connection and inspiration! Montreal has emerged as an advanced tech hub burgeoning with innovation and three of the industry’s brilliant minds are right here leading the way. From genetics to robotics to perceptual display processing, these are the women literally designing our future through pioneering technology and AI innovation. Their collective impact is fascinating and reaches across the globe — and they’re only getting started. Who are these women and what did it take to break ground and become some of the first to rise to top positions in the industry? In what unique ways are they disrupting their respective fields? How will their insights, experiences and knowledge shape the future we will experience — and opportunities for women? Most importantly, do they have diversity and inclusion in mind? In a compelling conversation led by Moderator Cindy Fagen, Chief Operating Officer for SAP Labs Canada, our panelists will share their first-hand stories and reveal what the journey to ‘success in tech’ can look like from very different entry points. Soodeh Farokhi is a visionary technology entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in computer science who was recognized last year as one of the top digital innovators in the world and the top young entrepreneur in Quebec. In 2011, she became the co-founder of the first research-industrial institute in the field of Web service & service-oriented architecture (SOA) in Iran. Today, as the Founder and CTO of the award-winning software startup, C2RO Cloud Robotics, Soodeh is passionate about applying AI to enable cognitive capabilities for affordable service robots and other smart devices that can increase business efficiency and improve the quality of life. With a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, a Masters in Artificial Intelligence, and a Ph.D. in Image Processing and Computer Vision from Vienna University of Technology, Tara Akhavan is regarded as a brilliant innovator and pioneer in the field of perceptual display processing for the automotive industry. In 2015, she became the Founder and CTO of IRYStec, a Montreal based start-up that is revolutionizing the visual experience of portable displays. Prior to that she was awarded for scaling a major telecom product all the way from analysis and design to deployment in a 3GPP mobile network with 20 Million subscribers. Josette Landry’s entrepreneurial journey began while working towards her Ph.D. in Genetics, when she co-founded a consulting firm that provided bioinformatics services to the Vancouver biotechnology sector. Today, as the Founder & CEO of Streamline Genomics (Techstars NYC’18), her focus is on developing a platform to help clinicians and researchers benefit from genomic sequencing without the need for data analysis expertise. In addition, Josette is the inaugural Innovator in Residence at Sainte-Justine Hospital and a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montréal.