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Nithya Ruff is a strategic Open Source, Digital, and Media Technology Executive and Board Director with 20+ years of experience as a General Manager and technologist leveraging technology and innovation to scale growth in start-ups to Fortune 500 companies like Comcast, Intel, Avaya, and SanDisk. She brings unparalleled expertise delivering enterprise, embedded, and Open Source solutions across media and entertainment, telecommunications, digital storage and semiconductor. Nithya is a respected influencer and marketplace collaborator highly qualified to advise CEOs and boards on strategies for growth, monetization, technology investments, product transitions, business models, and go-to-market. Nithya leads the Open Source Program Office for the $94.5B media and technology leader, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA). As the Executive Director, she sets the strategy and influences direction inside and outside the organization as the face of Comcast to the open source industry, including licensing, compliance, engineering. Her organization influences strategy and development culture for 1000s of technologists resulting in over $100 million in savings, risk mitigation and productivity. She is also a key member of many internal decision making bodies such as the Innovation Fund and Comcast TechWomen. She also serves as an advisor to start-ups in the Comcast incubation program on software development and open source technology strategy. Nithya sits on the influential Linux Foundation board as chair and member of the finance committee. Nithya was elected Chair of the Linux Foundation Board, a highly respected and influential organization for companies and industries creating open source projects and ecosystems. She also sits on the open standards Oasis Open Advisory Board and is a visiting scholar at UCSC’s Engineering school. Previously, at SanDisk Inc., an innovative digital storage and memory solutions company, she was appointed as the first SanDisk Open Source Strategy leader, where she led Open Source strategy for the entire organization and advised on new architectures for new workloads such as cloud, big data and HPC. Nithya led Open Source and University Research as a part of an open innovation plan for the company, spanning retail, mobile, consumer and datacenter storage. Previously, at Avaya, Inc. (NYSE: AVYA), a $3B+ Fortune 250 IP communications and VoIP company, Nithya ran a $200M P&L and also led a senior team of professional services consultants that impacted $500M in revenue. At Wind River, an Intel subsidiary, Nithya led the Linux product line business growth over 100% year-over-year and led them to be named #1 Embedded Linux Vendor from VDC in 16 out of top 20 Tier 1 networking companies. She successfully positioned the commercial value of an open source-based product and partnered with Mobile, Auto, Networking, and Industrial teams to create differentiated platforms for these industries and developed all GTM strategies through cross-functional collaboration. Nithya also led the launch of a new business model for the open source solutions world-wide. Nithya is a thought leader and sought-after speaker and, asked to speak at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit, Grace Hopper Conference, GitHub Universe, IEEE Symposium and VMWorld, and DevOps Enterprise Summit. She was selected to participate in an entertainment and media industry leadership program, Oct 2019, and was recognized with the O’Reilly Open Source Award. Nithya has published numerous articles on OpenSource topics including Developing an Open Source Strategy — The First 90 Days, The NewStack, Trends in Corporate Engagement with Open Source, opensource.com, and Flash and OpenSource, What every datacenter CIO needs to know, 2015, CIO Review Magazine. Nithya earned an MBA, Finance, Accounting, and Entrepreneurship from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, and a MS, Computer Science from North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND.
Coco is founder and CEO of Athena Alliance. Prior to her current roles, Coco served as President, COO, and Board Director of Taos, a market leader in IT Services serving hundreds of F1000 companies, including Apple, Cisco, ebay, Facebook, and Silicon Valley Bank. Coco brings rich experience across F1000 companies, start-ups, and nonprofits in the roles of CEO, COO, advisor, and Board member to Athena. She possesses a unique understanding of the breadth of challenges and opportunities of leadership. She empowers leaders to execute successfully, working with them to develop the relationship between a company’s strategy and its organizational design and environment. Coco’s expertise in developing and strengthening these important linkages makes her a powerful C-level advisor and Board member. In addition to serving on the Board of Taos from 2004 to 2014, Coco served as a Board Director for MentorNet during its rebranding, product transformation, and subsequent acquisition by Great Minds in STEM. Coco was on the finance committee supporting the Board of Directors of Samasource and established the Operating Committee for the Silicon Valley arm of Golden Seeds, a New York-based early-stage investment firm. She also currently serves as Chair of the Nominating Committee for the Anita Borg Technology Leadership Award, one of the most prestigious awards honoring women in technology.
Join us for a Salon or Meetup to get a peek inside our community! Peer Groups and Learning Circles are exclusively for members - log in here
A Look Inside Athena is held monthly for prospect members to come and understand how Athena works. They will learn more about the backstory of Athena, see a tour of our platform, and have the opportunity to discuss more of what they are interested in and ask questions about joining our community.
Learn about the most pressing topics facing executives today in an intimate, yet casual, virtual setting. Hosted by board directors and leaders from the world's top brands.
Gather with Athena members in your area for a casual, in-person Meetup. These are planned by request and hosted by Athena members in various cities. If you're interested in hosting and/or joining a meetup in the future, reach out to the Member Success Team and let them know.
We have an incredible community of female leaders at Athena and we want to bring you closer together! Join a Peer Group and build a network of peers you can engage with for guidance, lessons learned and insights around a shared interest. Choose a topic that most interests you or drop in and out of multiple peer groups as it suits you best. You’ll find at least one peer group available to join every week. Each live session goes for one hour, no preparation is needed, just show up as you are. We look forward to seeing you there!
A Learning Circle is an opportunity to connect with a small group of other Athena members in a focused yet casual setting, creating accountability around targeted learning to assist you in achieving your goals. Over the course of 6 sessions, club members will meet every 2 weeks to participate in an organic, peer-led discussion of the session's "chapters" consisting of 1-2 Athena salons which are to be reviewed on your own prior to the group session. When joining, members are committing to completing all 6 sessions.
Typically led by one of Athena's coaches, networking events provide members an opportunity to meet one another in a smaller intimate and virtual setting.
These are typically in-person events led by Coco and our partnering companies on topics that are relevant to the industry and audience of our business partners.
A workshop is an interactive session for members to actively practice something, such as their pitch. These sessions typically involve breakout rooms, member to member feedback and are not recorded.
For members new to Athena looking for ways to engage, these bi-weekly orientations led by an Athena Member Success Manager, provide a live tour of Athena, member success insights, and a chance to get questions answered.
Athena customizes virtual learning events with expert business leaders tailored to a unique company’s needs. These events cultivate cross-functional community, development, and learning across the partner organization.
Athena listens and we're always adding new event types and opportunities for members to engage. See what new events we are currently offering members.
No Upcoming Events Found.
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Athena Alliance is the premier executive development platform for senior-level women, offering a powerful networking community, resources, executive education, and coaching to help women advance and excel in their careers.
Invest in your senior leadership career and join our global, virtual community of the most influential women in business.
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