Building High-Functioning, Diverse Teams to Power Growth

Nancy is a product & engineering executive, advisor, and investor who is passionate about creating seats at the table for women, especially within engineering and technical roles. Most recently, as General Manager of Data Protection at AWS Nancy scaled her engineering teams from 18 to 100+, all while averaging over 45% female and delivering triple-digit YoY growth businesses that delivered over $1B+ ARR including its integration into Amazon’s suite of AI products. Previously, Nancy launched Rubrik’s (NYSE: RBRK) first Cloud SaaS business, growing their company valuation to over $4B in less than 2 years. Rubrik IPO’ed in Q22024, as one of the fastest-growing enterprise SaaS businesses. As Founder and Board Chair of the non-profit Advancing Women in Tech since 2016, Nancy helps prepare women and underrepresented minorities for leadership roles. She is currently a Venture Partner at Felicis, looking after their infrastructure and cybersecurity investments.

Mikaela Smith has 20+ years of experience in the technology sector building teams at public companies like Twitter and Slack, as well as many more pre-IPO startups. During her tenure at Slack, Mikaela and her team played a pivotal role in building out the early engineering team and hiring the leaders who took the company through critical years of growth leading up to their very successful IPO. Mikaela now works at the boutique executive search firm Smith & Whitten, and is the fractional Head of People at The New Club, a members-only network of 1,700+ women in engineering connecting members with the community and careers to excel. Outside of her professional endeavors, Mikaela actively mentors and supports women in technology, advocating for greater diversity and inclusion within the industry. She firmly believes that empowering underrepresented groups is not only the right thing to do but also crucial for driving innovation and creating a more vibrant and inclusive tech ecosystem. The data is clear. Building diverse teams and companies leads to better business outcomes.