Friday, March 7, 2008

Mass High Tech celebrates 2008 Women to Watch

Sylvie Grégoire, president, Human Genetic Therapies division of Shire Pharmaceuticals, talks about the value of teamwork and inspiration during her acceptance speech for being named a 2008 Mass High Tech Woman to Watch.

Mass High Tech honored 10 outstanding women in technology Wednesday night at its fifth annual Women to Watch awards, held in Cambridge's Charles Hotel and attended by nearly 300 tech entrepreneurs, academics and executives.

While all honorees told compelling stories about their path into innovation careers, the quote of the evening came from engineer Christine Miska, who had been asked what she might do after being named an MHT Woman to Watch, answering it with "I'm going to DisneyWorld!"

As it turned out, Miska, who is a systems engineering functional manager for BAE Systems in Lexington, had in fact delayed joining her family on a vacation to the Orlando, Fla.-based home of Mickey Mouse by a day in order to accept the MHT award.

Attendees of the awards ceremony heard many stories of inspiration and challenge, but the overriding theme of the evening was perhaps best expressed by Wendy Frey Caswell, president and CEO of Zink Imaging Inc., who quoted Calvin Coolidge, who wrote that "Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race."

Also attending the event were girls and teachers from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, WPI, Trinity Catholic High School, Hudson High School, and Nashoba Valley High School, who were able to hear the stories of this year's roster of Women to Watch through the sponsorship of certain individuals, Mass High Tech and Intel Corp.

The 2008 Women to Watch event was sponsored by Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Shire Pharmaceuticals. This year's Women to Watch included:

• Afsana Akhter, director of business development, Medullan Inc.;
• Wendy Frey Caswell, president and CEO, Zink Imaging Inc.;
• Sylvie Grégoire, president, Human Genetic Therapies, Shire Pharmaceuticals;
• Sadiye Guler, founder, president and CEO, intuVision Inc.;
• Heather Healy, senior director, strategic planning, Office of CTO, EMC Corp.;
• Deborah Louis, senior vice president, on-demand operations, Authoria Inc.;
• Beth Marcus, founder and CEO, Zeemote Inc.;
• Christine Miska, systems engineering functional manager, BAE Systems;
• Amanda Parkes, co-founder and director of design engineering, Bodega Algae LLC;
• Ellen Piccioli, senior engineering manager, Intel Corp.