Theresa Palayoor

Theresa Palayoor, an Azure Cloud Solutions Architect specializing in the data and AI space at Mircosoft, brings over 12 years of experience leading data engineering and architecture projects and teams. Theresa holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Bharathiar University in India and a Masters in Computer Science and Software Systems from the University of British Columbia. She has worked in a variety of industries namely Fintech, Health Care and Aviation where she keenly engaged her creative and engineering side to build bespoke data architecture solutions for organizations. Theresa is passionate about STEM sciences , database engineering & the application of Machine Learning in Medicine. She currently resides in Vancouver with her husband, daughter and their dog Elliot.

She switched from being a Java developer to a database engineer in the early stages of her career only because she was able to foresee the data zeitgeist that would define the decades of the 2000s with the massive opportunities and benefits presented to organizations by adopting and practicing  a data-driven culture. In her own words , ”It was during my Masters program that I got introduced to discrete math and database engineering and having spent years prior during my engineering days, learning the abstract theories and principles of electronic circuits and Digital Signal Processing, I instantly felt at home and realized that here was a very tangible,relatable field of study that I was actually good at and could apply my agency .”

Throughout the span of her career, Theresa has spearheaded many data initiatives for companies be it in  Mass-Payment Systems for Fintech or building a comprehensive Self-Serve Analytics Platform for Flight Data Analytics at Boeing. Her inspiration and motivation come from the unique and authentic joy of creative engineering  and helping organizations and teams succeed. Today Theresa is here to share her unique perspective on what it feels like to be a woman in the realm of science that she so loves. She is a firm believer in the power of leading with compassion and empathy , building bridges through teams and practicing mindfulness in daily interactions with her peers and colleagues.

She is here is to explore and unearth some insights into what part women have to play in the technology economy of today,  what are the reigning perceptions of a woman who projects compassion and assertiveness rather than forcefulness and authoritarianism – are they skewed towards that of vulnerability, why do we believe, perhaps for good reason, that a woman’s journey navigating the technological thoroughfares today can be fraught with complications and frustrations and how does it feel like to be truly representing my gender. She will also be speaking on the expanding role of the contemporary data engineers and scientist and new attitudes towards women in data among millennials and how we can work towards gender parity in technology.