Out in Tech ATX | Spring Social at Native

1 in 4 LGBTQ+ employees experienced workplace discrimination in 2018.

4 in 4 LGBTQ+ workers are fearless and proud.

Join us for an all-star panel of out and proud LGBTQ+ executives and established allies from the tech industry. They will give practical advice about navigating gender identity and sexual orientation in their respective industries and bringing your “authentic self” to work.

Come celebrate with Out in Tech ATX for our first event of 2019! Drinks and food included, duh. See you there ?

6:15pm | Doors
6:45pm | Panel
7:30pm | Social & Networking

Drinks & snacks provided. 21+

MEET THE PANEL

Sheldon Darnell (Moderator)
Sheldon is a community organizer through and through. Currently, he serves as the President of Austin Black Pride, where he and his team curate events for Austin’s black LGBTQI+ community to exist comfortably and unapologetically. Sheldon currently works as a Health IT Project Manager at Caravan Health. In his free time, he enjoys hiking the Hill Country, cooking up southern cuisines, cycling(#HCRA19), and traveling.

Sarah Ortiz Shields
Sarah is the interim executive director of Austin Tech Alliance, a non partisan non-profit that advocates for civic engagement in our tech community. She was recently selected as a New Leaders Council Fellow, and was previously a City of Austin Design, Technology and Innovation Fellow where her team designed and developed a better permitting process for residents.

Kristina Puerto
Kristina is the social selling manager at Oracle NetSuite. She has spent the majority of her career in high-tech social media, most recently managing global social media programs at AMD. She is passionate about making her workplace and her community more accessible for diverse queer identities. She and her wife are the proud parents of two precocious dachshunds and avid brunch fans.

Jordan Dodson
Jordan is a graduate from the University of North Carolina with degree in Information Science with a concentration in Human Computer Interaction. They currently work as a User Experience Research Coordinator at Infosys BPM for Google. Their career interests include User Experience Research and Design, Research Coordination, and Event Coordination. Outside of work, they are interested in increasing racial and gender diversity in the STEM workforce.

Lauren Beecher
Lauren is a born in Baltimore, raised in Atlanta, University of Kentucky Alum, who has is obsessed with pizza and has lived in 6 different states. She is currently a team lead at Google in People Operations and co- lead for their LGBTQ Employee Resource Group. Prior to Google she was a collegiate athletics program director for men’s and women’s tennis. She switched careers and became a technical recruiter to be close to her now wife and dog Rilo.

Sean Lamar
Sean Lamar relocated to Austin, Tx from Atlanta, GA with his partner in 2016. He currently works in Human Resources and Recruiting. Outside of corporate life, he enjoys anything music related and discovering independent artists on SoundCloud.