Leadership

2017 - 2018 SWE Austin Officers & Chairs

President
Charu Pandhi

Charu is an Advisory Software Engineer in IBM Accessibility, part of IBM's Research Division. With more then 20 years of experience as solutions engineer and as a member of the IBM accessibility team for over 10 years now, She is passionate about providing equal access to information and technology that makes everyone’s daily routines more pleasant and productive by pushing the boundaries of what defines accessibility and inclusive design. Charu is focused on innovations in accessibility that will help reshape the relationship between people, technology and the environment around us by supplementing and enhancing our human senses with text-to-speech, voice recognition, multi-modal authentication and location-based services.
In her free time, she immerses herself in various outreach programs, empowering women through the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and engaging girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) initiatives such as Girlstart and Girls Who Code

Vice-President
Grisel Del Hierro
Grisel has a BS in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso and a MBA from Arizona State University. She has experience in construction, mining, and information technology. One moment that influenced her as a person and as a professional was her experience at a copper mine. After completing her MBA, Grisel was hired as and electrical and instrumentation maintenance supervisor supporting a 24/7 critical mining operation at the largest open pit copper mine in North America. She currently works as an IT Project Manager for Ferrovial where she specializes in IT Infrastructure, Service Operations Management, and in establishing a positive and open relationship with stakeholders. Grisel has been a SWE member since 2004 where she has had the opportunity to serve as a scholarship reviewer, and more recently as a secretary for SWE Southwest TX in 2015. On her free time, Grisel enjoys running, swing dancing, and traveling.

Secretary
Monica Dettling

Treasurer
Akshaya Iyer

Akshaya Iyer is an associate consultant at Spire Consulting Group LLC in Austin, Texas. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Construction Engineering and Project Management in December 2016 from The University of Texas at Austin. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore, India. Her SWE involvement began earlier this year when she was made the GradSWE International Team Lead for FY18. Having moved to America from India in August 2015, she has experienced the drastic lifestyle change international students go through and is passionate about making future students’ transition easier by providing them with the resources they need to succeed. Akshaya is also a part-time personal style blogger on her blog, The Iyer Order. Given her website experience, she will be the webmaster for the SWE Austin Section. She is also a cute-coffee-shop enthusiast and loves exploring the different vegetarian food options that Austin offers!.

Professional Committee Chair
Suchitra Iyer

Suchitra has an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin. She is presently an Engineering Manager with the IBM Analytics Platform group - Private Cloud.

Suchitra relishes being mom to her 2 children and her hobbies include reading, dancing and cooking. She has been a SWE member since 2014.

Outreach Committee Chair
Sarah Kayali El-Alem

Awards Committee Chair
Julie Sengupta

Membership Committee
Open

Social Media/Website Chair
Kelly Churchill
Growing up in the South in the time that she did, girls were not encouraged to pursue technical careers so instead Kelly began working as a secretary. However, the call of coding was powerful and she finally answered by earning her degree in Computer Science while at the same time starting a family.
Since that time, she has built her career as a web developer by doing freelance work, working for interactive agencies and is now a software engineer at IBM. At IBM, she manages a team of developers on the Design@IBM core team and promotes front-end development best practices as the FED@IBM community lead.

Alternate Section Representative Dianne Beever

San Antonio Committee Jenerica Robinson

Corpus Christi Committee Jeong-sug Yang

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