Karen Bennett
Director of Engineering at Yahoo! Canada
Karen has extensive experience in the software development area academically (with degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics and Project Management from Queen's University and University of Toronto) as well as in the area of development and management. She initially started her career at IBM as a programmer in the development tools and database areas. She moved into management and has launched a wide range of products including e-business, WebSphere and Java applications, development tools for AIX, 370, AS400 and with DB2 database.
Karen later became Director of Research at IBM Canada where a key component of her role involved technology transfer from many of the North America universities and Centres of Excellence to the IBM development teams. She sat on the MIT Media Lab board for several years. Karen was named the first Canadian Women in Technology to help support the IBM CEO and staff on assessing the Open Source and Linux technologies. She decided to try her hand at a start-up company and joined Cygnus Solutions who did embedded programming work for such companies as Intel, Sony, Oracle, Hitachi, Fujitsu and IBM on Linux. She was involved in developing a software simulation model for the Sony Playstation 2 system before the actual hardware was manufactured. This project enabled Sony to bring the PS2 product line to production 18 months ahead of schedule. Cygnus Solutions was acquired by Red Hat and Karen transitioned into VP, Engineering for Linux working out of the HQ Engineering office in Boston, MA. She managed multi-disciplinary teams of engineers in Europe, South East Asia, Japan, Australia, US and Canada. She learned first hand how to do open collaborative development with the different communities, make revenue from free code and work with partners. Her husband's career change required her to return to Toronto with her husband, two children, one dog and three cats, and she moved to Yahoo! Canada to manage their Canadian Engineering group.
Karen is currently on the Canadian Research Council, is a board member of three Canadian start-up businesses as well as BEA Systems. She consults with Venture Capital companies like NorthBridge and IBM and is in the process of getting a Tim Hortons franchise. She enjoys playing on a women's soccer league, being member of the Toronto squash team and driving her children to their multiple activities.
Cindy Gordon
CEO and Founder, Helix Commerce International Inc.,
Vice Chair, CATA WIT Toronto
Dr. Cindy M. Gordon is the Founder and CEO of Helix Commerce International Inc, a company specializing in business innovation and growth acceleration strategies.
Prior to founding Helix, Cindy was a partner with XDL Intervest, a tier-one venture capital firm and a Global Practice Leader with Andersen Consulting. Prior executive roles include General Manager for Xerox Outsourcing and Professional Service, Xerox's President for the Women's Alliance, Senior Director of Global Information Systems Strategies for Nortel Networks and founding partner of InfoTech Consultants.
Cindy advises on a number of high technology company boards. She founded and chaired the CEO Fusion Center, an early-stage technology CEO mentorship community. She is a founding Vice Chair of the CATA Women in Technology Forum (WIT) Toronto Chapter, sits on the National WIT advisory counsel, and has numerous other not for profit board experiences.
Cindy recently published Winning at Collaboration Commerce The Next Competitive Advantage. She holds a Ph.D. Innovation, eCommerce and Knowledge Management, UofT, a Masters of Information and Business Management and BEd from the University of Alta.
