Keynote: Susie Armstrong, SVP Engineering, Qualcomm - WIE ILC 2021

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Title: Sustaining Women in Technology: We Got Women Here, How Do We Keep Them?

There are many excellent initiatives focusing on supporting a diverse STEM pipeline, and starting it early. However, reports continue to show that mid to senior career women leave technology fields in numbers higher than we'd like to see. This presentation will address observations and initiatives in the tech world with a focus on overall retention and promotion.  Let's discuss additional strategies to help sustain women in technology.

Susan M. Armstrong started at Qualcomm working on Globalstar and then early  CDMA base station projects. She was a pioneer in bringing internet protocols to the  cellular industry, resulting in the first web surfing on a cellular phone in 1997, Qualcomm’s commercialization of internet access in 1998 and enabling what we now  know as the smartphone. Since then she has held various leadership positions, first  responsible for the development and commercialization of the software that drives  Qualcomm's chipsets, and then as the head of worldwide Customer Engineering, the  group who integrates and commercializes the company’s products in phones and  other wireless devices. In addition to her work on Qualcomm's inventions and new  technologies, she has worked extensively with base station makers, carriers, phone  and device makers in the US, Asia and Europe to bring those technologies to market. 

In 2015, Armstrong joined Qualcomm’s Government Affairs group, where she brings  the engineering and product background to Qualcomm’s worldwide public policies,  including 5G leadership, intellectual property protection, cyber security and STEM education. 

Prior to joining Qualcomm in 1994, Armstrong worked for 10 years at the Xerox  Systems Development Department and the Xerox Webster Research Center, holding  a variety of software engineering positions implementing data protocols (including  Ethernet, XNS and TCP/IP), contributing to IEEE standards and doing advanced  development in high-speed data networking.  

Armstrong holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic  State University, San Luis Obispo.

Title: Sustaining Women in Technology: We Got Women Here, How Do We Keep Them?

There are many excellent initiatives focusing on supporting a diverse STEM pipeline, and starting it early. However, reports continue to show that mid to senior career women leave technology fields in numbers higher than we'd like to see. This presentation will address observations and initiatives in the tech world with a focus on overall retention and promotion.  Let's discuss additional strategies to help sustain women in technology.

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