Industry Panel: Career Paths in Small- to Mid-Size Companies
Five industry mentors will come and share their career experience and discuss the many successful career paths that exist beyond large companies.
Date: Thursday, March 29
Time: 5:30 - 6:30 pm
Location: DMP 110
Panelists:
Ghislaine Chan, Systems Development Manager at Broadridge
Ghislaine Chan graduated from UBC with a Bachelor of Science in Computer
Science. She is currently the Systems Development Manager at Broadridge
Financial Solutions where she builds inter-departmental rapport and
leads the people in the Development group. She works on mission-critical
projects for Broadridge and provides expertise and service in the global
financial industry. Ghislaine is a technology enthusiast and is always
seeking to find better solutions in a dynamic business environment.
Ken Pratt, Senior Software Developer at Ruboos Technology
A UBC CS grad himself, Ken has worked for companies large and small
around Vancouver. He spent a few years at EA, building up the core
code for a new online service , but has since moved on to small
start-ups. He's currently working on an e-book start-up called Leanpub
at Ruboss, as well as launching a web-based tactical game as
co-founder of Burger Function. Ken enjoys learning new programming
languages & technologies, and has written a ton of JavaScript, Ruby,
Erlang, and Scheme (and a bit of C++ & Python) in the last year alone.
Terry Coatta, President of AssociCom
Terry is currently President of AssociCom Ltd. He has worked in a number of Vancouver-based companies as a technology leader. His expertise in software architecture and software development processes has allowed him to make significant contributions in all of his roles. Prior to Associcom, he was the Chief Technology Officer for Vitrium Systems Inc., where he lead the development organization through the release of three new products. He was also responsible for the strategic focus and direction of Vitrium’s technology, software development and evaluation, and management of the software development group. From 2001 to 2005, he was the VP of Development at Silicon Chalk Inc. where he lead a team developing a unique real-time collaboration tool for use at universities and colleges. Terry was also a founding partner in Network Software Group Inc. (acquired by Open Text Corporation, 1996) and Director of Software Development at GPS Industries Inc.
Tom Magliery, XML Tech Specialist at Just System
Tom Magliery is a technical services engineer at JustSystems Canada, Inc. with the inscrutable official title of "XML Technology Specialist". The advantage of an inscrutable title is that it gives you the freedom to perform diverse roles in an organization. Or maybe it's the other way around: holding diverse roles in an organization can lead to inscrutable job titles. Tom's path to current inscrutability includes undergraduate degrees in computer science and math at the University of Kansas; a master's in computer science at the University of Illinois; some work at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the Mosaic web browser (predecessor to Netscape and Internet Explorer); and an interlude as a web developer at a software startup in the customer support industry in Austin, Texas.
Gayan Pathirana, Intermediate .Net Developer, Blast Radius
- Graduated from UBC Computer Science
- Web developer for 2 years at MDA.
- Then joined Blast Radius, and that's where I am now. However, after about 2 years I left and joined PNI digital media for about 6 months and came back to Blast Radius.
- I am currently working on a project for Nike Golf.