04/07/2021
By Diane Reichlen

The College of Engineering and the RAMP to Success program invites you to join Helen Raizen for a talk on "Navigating Around Career Roadblocks" on Wednesday, April 14 at 4 p.m.

Talk Abstract:
Over the course of four decades as a software engineer, I’ve learned some things I’d like to share with other women in software engineering. One way of thinking about these lessons is that life throws various roadblocks in the way of your career. Some come from within yourself. Some come from circumstances outside your control. Some come from the unconscious biases in society. No matter the source, each roadblock presents a challenge to overcome by recognizing it, understanding it and then figuring out how to get around or over it and move on.

Three lessons are:

  • Don’t limit yourself
  • Embrace failure
  • Ask for what you want

Speaker Bio:
Helen Raizen spent forty years working as an implementer, designer, and software architect in storage, operating and distributed systems, including I/O stack, drivers, multipathing and block storage, file systems, memory, caching, locking, synchronization, and inter-process communication. She has experience with multi-processor and multicomputer systems, cache-only and non-uniform memory architectures, performance measurement and evaluation, data migration, and data security. She has been a technical and project leader, delivering high-quality and on-time products through use-case driven and test-driven development. She is a cogent documenter of requirements, architecture, functionality and design. In 2009, she was named Distinguished Engineer at EMC Corporation. She is a leader in innovation with 60 US patents and two innovation awards.

In retirement, she seeks to use her four decades of experience to:

  • encourage and support women in STEM
  • advise social enterprises on software use

In her non-technical life, Helen knits, crochets, swims and kayaks. She enjoys reading, singing in a Yiddish Chorus and, during the pandemic, walking in her neighborhood every day. She is active in local and national election campaigns and serves as a member of the Boston Ward 19 Democratic Committee.

Sponsored by the Research, Academics and Mentoring Pathways (RAMP) to Success Program and the Francis College of Engineering.

Register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.