by Ashley Monseth, Rebecca McCann-Young, Ethan Sommer, Cailin Wertish, and Millicent Walsh | at MinneBar 13 | 9:25 – 10:15 in Zeke Landres | View Schedule
The gender gap in software engineering is well known. Recent studies show that although more women are graduating with engineering degrees, there remains a persistent problem: too many women leave the field mid-career, often citing a non-supportive work environment and lack of advancement opportunities. Target's 12-month Engineering Manager Immersion Program (eMIP) is designed to bring more women into engineering leadership positions. Hear about the program's origins, progress, and components, which include classroom training, cohort development, individual sponsorship, and on-the-job leadership experience. This will be a panel conversation with members of the eMIP advisory board and cohort member.
Ashley has over 15 years of experience in tech recruiting, most recently with Target, where she has built recruiting strategies to hire engineers at scale for Target Technology. She saw the need for the Engineering Management Immersion Program (eMIP) concept after facing the challenge of a limited candidate pool and brought that vision to life. She created the use case to support the program build-out and was instrumental in program content creation and execution. She currently is on the eMIP Advisory Board and is recruiting for the 2018 cohort.
Rebecca has been programming since grade school. She has worked in everything from bioinformatics and computational biology, to retail web development, to mass communications, to security. She is passionate about engaging new developers about emerging technology and strongly believes that anyone can program and do cool things with computers if they have the interest and are willing to take the time.
Ethan Sommer is the Director Engineering for Containers as a Service and External Cloud for Target. He has led teams at Target that facilitate moving to a cloud-native, multi-cloud architecture across the organization. Ethan is a member of the steering committee for Target's Engineering Manager Immersion Program (eMIP) as well as manager of one of the participants. Prior to joining Target, Ethan led the Cloud Engineering department at Code 42 software, supporting public and private clouds which backed up millions of people's work and digital lives on hundreds of petabytes of storage on six continents.
Cailin serves as the Director of Technology Learning & Development for Target, and her team runs the curriculum for the Engineering Manager Immersion Program (eMIP). She has been in the HR industry for over 10 years and has spent time as both a specialist and as a generalist. Prior to her role in Learning and Development, she supported Technology for 3 years as a generalist, where she began working on the eMIP program from concept to planning to execution. Cailin is now a member of the eMIP Advisory Board.
Millicent (or Millie — I am happy to be called either!) is currently a member of Target's first eMIP (Engineering Manager Immersion Program) and is a Lead Engineer on the Target flagship mobile app. I started at Target with the eMIP cohort kickoff in November. A normal day is divided into engineering tasks, eMIP training sessions, and on-the-job management practice. Prior to Target, I worked as an Instructor at Prime Digital Academy and a Software Developer at Code42. I am passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech and have been involved with various efforts to make tech safer space for everyone to work. I love talking about this, so feel free to reach out!
Outside of work I can be found doing various hobbies: Pilates, attending a feminist book club I started in the Twin Cities, dancing (flamenco and tango), gardening, cooking, traveling, learning languages, and making art.
