“Leadership is about scaling problem-solving.” This challenge only intensifies when your company faces extreme hypergrowth needs. So, how do you scale your leadership to stay ahead of your company? How do you build a culture where people aren’t afraid to make mistakes, share opinions, and push for better ideas? How do you build teams and empower people to make decisions at scale? Thuan Pham (CTO of Faire, former CTO @ Uber & Coupang) & Franziska Bell (SVP Digital Technology @ bp) will share strategies behind leading through empowerment vs. fear. They’ll cover how to build a culture that encourages problem-solving without fear of making mistakes and how to empower employees to contribute ideas and make autonomous decisions. Plus they’ll discuss how to scale yourself, and scale your team alongside the growth of your company.

Transitioning from leading part of engineering to overseeing the entire function presents a unique leadership challenge. How does your leadership need to change? In this session, Harold Gimenez( SVP of Engineering @ Hashicorp) and Lawrence Bruhmuller (SVP of Engineering @ Great Expectations) will share key lessons, insights (and mistakes) from his journey across different growth stages. He’ll cover systems around process, accountability, autonomy, execution, alignment, and collaboration. Plus the trade-offs involved with different management systems, strategies to maintain action orientation and overcome decision paralysis as you become further removed from day-to-day operations, as well as tips on building healthy high-performing teams!

Slides available here:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1J8-zdy8WMMb3MOVrNXy8GjbLsAdLNKcbwzyXbyxqyUo/preview?usp=sharing With over 25 years of engineering leadership experience spanning startups to large organizations, Wade has honed in on the critical beliefs, behaviors, and competencies that foster high-performing teams and cultures. In this session, Wade will explore two fundamental behaviors that underpin most leadership competencies, providing insights and strategies for enhancing these essential traits.

Aligning priorities is crucial in any organization, since having people pursue different objectives leads to waste and failure. However, we see many instances of organizations developing their business strategy in isolation from the technology organization. We also see many instances of architecture groups within technology making decisions while not being connected with the teams actually delivering the technology solutions. In this session, Chad Wathington (Chief Strategy Officer @ Thoughtworks) and Kathleen Vignos (VP of Software Engineering @ Capitol One) will describe various strategies for resolving these misalignments, including building a technology strategy that aligns with the business strategy. Strategies such as these give visibility into the rationale behind the decisions, the risks to achieving the overall business goals, and the tradeoffs that are necessary to achieve the goals holistically.

AI is transforming the way products are built, necessitating new forms of collaboration across teams and fueling a wave of product innovation. In this session with Anurag Agarwal (VPE, Google Workspace @ Google) & Lizzie Matusov (Co-founder & CEO @ Quotient) Anurag will share how he's fostering cross-functional collaboration in Google Workspace, while cultivating a culture of deep innovation in the age of AI.

Slides available here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nabg-fr8Z_6RueiZHQDZR2GpvVEXoTW2AinkNT5n0ak/preview?usp=sharing As an engineering leader, you’ve definitely been asked by your CEO about your approach to AI and you’re already building something. This talk dives into how to reflect on early learnings and take a step back to strategically evaluate generative AI's potential within the context of your business. At FOX, Melody is responsible for crafting offensive strategies to drive AI innovation and expand FOX’s creative execution and distribution reach while also implementing defensive measures against the emergent threats to the media ecosystem. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of ideas and opinions on AI within sports, news and entertainment, but how do you prioritize the projects that matter? She’ll discuss how to use your role as a technologist to set a comprehensive AI strategy that both enables your organization to thrive and springboards you personally to operate at a higher level with a seat at the broader business table.

In this session, we explore lessons on engineering culture and operational excellence across experiences from large companies to startups with Shibani Sanan (CTO @ Ladder), Rakesh Rajan (VPE @ Rippling) & Thanos Diacakis (Software Engineering Effectiveness Coach & Technical Leader @ Cosmic Teacups)! They’ll share insights on scaling systems and platform strategy to encourage speed, innovation and to minimize dependencies. Plus perspectives on shaping culture for engineering and operational excellence covering expectations for managers, production operational reviews, rewarding excellence, prioritization and more.

In this discussion, panelists will share personal experiences with career biases and the tools they used to overcome them. Audience participation will be key as we discuss and collaboratively find solutions to the biases attendees have faced or are facing. Join us for an engaging and solution-focused conversation! ELC & SheTO are partnering together to support the leadership and career growth of women in engineering leadership! Join us for a special morning gathering on day 2 of ELC Annual for networking and a panel discussion covering strategies to overcome biases. You’ll have the opportunity to build relationships, share insights & gain support with other women in engineering leadership in the SheTO & ELC communities!