Speakers
Aparna Khurjekar
Chief Customer Officer, Verizon Consumer Group
Aparna is Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer serving the 100 million wireless and wireline customers in the Verizon Consumer Group. In this multi-disciplinary role reporting to the Group CEO, she is responsible for the end-to-end digital channel sales and service, AI-led business transformation and governance, omnichannel sales and service experiences, retail experiences, and CX enabler platforms.
Under Aparna’s leadership, Verizon’s wireless brand NPS experienced record improvement. She also led the unprecedented growth in the digital sales and service mix as the company responded to the COVID-19 crisis. Her team has leveraged the latest technologies to launch new digitally-enabled omnichannel experiences that help customers engage better with Verizon. Aparna joined Verizon in 2008. Before her current role, she served as Senior Vice President of Consumer Products where she was responsible for an $18 billion portfolio and launched several of Verizon’s flagship offerings. Previous roles include Vice President of Network Operations and Engineering where she played a critical role in the deployment of Verizon’s 4GLTE network and network transformation, and Vice President of Global Strategy where she was responsible for leading multiple strategic initiatives across the company. Aparna established Verizon’s Machine to Machine (M2M) business and Verizon’s leadership in this space with the acquisition of Hughes Telematics, strategic investments in n Phase and Verizon Wireless’s joint venture with Qualcomm.
Aparna thrives on solving the most complex business problems in today’s data-rich environment, leading large team transformations, and aligning operations to groundbreaking vision. Often the most objective voice in a room, she believes in authentic leadership. She has committed to mentoring women and youth on the importance of speaking up with knowledge and conviction.
Aparna holds a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications & Electronics. She has been awarded several national awards and multiple wireless technology patents. Aparna lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband and two sons.
Linda Apsley
Managing Director, GFT Engineering and Data Services at Citi
Linda Apsley is a seasoned technology professional who is passionate about leading technology system alignment and innovation. She specializes in delivering large complex software solutions with sound engineering architecture. An expert in data management, her focus is on getting customers to access the right data – while keeping it safe and compliant – on systems that are resilient, accurate, and secure.
Linda joined Citi in June 2020 as an MD, where she oversees GFT’s architecture and technology modernization and is responsible for the finance and risk data eco-system. Before Citi, Linda spent three and a half years at Capital One where she was responsible for modernizing and moving the data eco-system to the cloud. Preceding Capital One, Linda worked at Time, Inc. for close to three years, moving their data eco-system, including analytics and just-in-time advertising, to AWS. Before working on the East Coast, Linda spent 18 months at Amazon building their Financial Ledger on AWS, and twelve and a half years at Microsoft in multiple roles, including working as an architect on Office 365 and Xbox, leading the effort to reverse engineer Windows for the Consent Decree, and various technical roles in the Windows Division, such as building out pre-release customer and partner technical integration programs.
Outside of work, Linda likes to relax and decompress bicycling, baking desserts, reading, and ballroom dancing, at which she is getting better every week.
Sabby Nachiyaar
Vice President - IT at Collabera
Sabby drives technology transformation for the Global Business Services (GBS) business unit. Additionally, she heads the Women in Tech @ Collabera (WiT@C) initiative and leads the Agile IT Center of Excellence (CoE).
With over 20 years of experience, Sabby has been instrumental in driving process optimizations and leading core product development. She has spearheaded key cross-functional initiatives including the successful rollout of ERP systems across 11 countries, carve-out of legal entities as well as integration of acquired companies. Her background also includes large-scale vendor consolidation projects forCollabera’s clients. Sabby’s current areas of focus include legacy application modernization, building cloud-native applications, and taking the lead in automation through RPA initiatives.
Sabby’s leadership experience includes establishing and coaching non-IT business functions such asGBS Operations, Audit & Compliance, and the PMO organization. Sabby has served as Head of Operations at a bay area startup that built a blockchain agnostic supply chain platform to pioneer global Trade Finance transactions as well as managed several proof-of-concept projects for banks.
She has a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University, an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from MIT, Manipal and executive education from Cornell and Harvard eDX.
Uma Meyyappan
SVP – Head of Product Innovation, LPL Financial
Uma is a technology leader with over 20 years of experience in the tech industry with a major focus on Financial Services. She currently is SVP, Head of Product Innovation at LPL Financial where her focus is to create a culture of Innovation, apply diverse technologies to accelerate business value, future-proofing, and bringing the outside-in view of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Before this Uma was at Wells Fargo, where she spent 15 years leading product management, technology, and lately, Innovation R&D. She has helped define Wells Fargo’sfuture vision for customer interactions and Innovation DNA across the company. Uma’s R&D labs executed numerous experiments and proof of concepts, many of which became production. She also headed the evaluation of startup companies for the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator, which invests in startups for return on Innovation and Investment. Before Wells Fargo, Uma worked for Fortune 500companies, management consulting firms, and startups.
Uma’s extensive research in financial technologies such as digital payments, biometrics, augmented reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in over 30 issued patents to her name.
Uma is deeply passionate about child literacy, entrepreneurship, and promoting women. She is on various nonprofits supporting these. Uma is a founding circle member of Neythri, a global community of south Asian professional women who are committed to helping each other succeed.
Dawn Serpe
Senior Vice President, Collabera
Dawn has been with Collabera for over seven years and she is Senior Vice President responsible for Collabera’s North American Strategic Accounts team, Collabera’s Marketing team, RFP proposal team, and leads the Talent & Culture Committee, Diversity and Inclusion, and the Collabera Women’s Leadership Advisory Board where she drives programs and initiatives for the women of Collabera to help them with career advancement and mentorship. Dawn’s expertise lies in business development, relationship building, and understanding clients' needs to help them solve their solution and staffing needs. Dawn has been recognized by SIA in the Global Power 150 – Women in Staffing list as well as she is an active member of the women executive group Chief and participates on numerous partnership and advisory committees.
With over 25 years of IT staffing and solutions industry experience, She believes that Collabera is working with their clients and doing some amazing things in the digital transformation space and is proud to see how far Collabera has come in providing their clients with total talent solutions and strategies. Dawn and her team are here to partner with clients, discuss their issues and concerns to provide solutions, and assist them in their journey. She emphasizes that there is a big difference between being a provider who listens and provides solutions that are right for the company you are working with and understanding what their needs to bring value-add to the table. Being a trusted partner who brings innovative ways to do things, as well as discussing ideas is what makes Collabera a very different total talent solutions provider.