Fri 04.10.20
Fri 04.10.20
Fri 04.10.20
Fri 04.10.20
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” said tech leader Ester Peña when she spoke to an audience of first-semester Align students and Khoury College staff.
Photo credit: Josephine Pettigrew
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” said tech leader Ester Peña when she spoke to an audience of first-semester Align students and Khoury College staff.
Photo credit: Josephine Pettigrew
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” said tech leader Ester Peña when she spoke to an audience of first-semester Align students and Khoury College staff.
Photo credit: Josephine Pettigrew
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” said tech leader Ester Peña when she spoke to an audience of first-semester Align students and Khoury College staff.
Photo credit: Josephine Pettigrew
Ester Peña wants you to know that she is a lot more than her resume—and that you too are more than yours.
As vice president of software engineering at Travelers, an insurance company part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, her resume is quite impressive. Yet the message of her February 2020 seminar talk to first-semester Khoury Align students was that, in addition to being Puerto Rican and Cuban, transgender, and Ivy League, she’s also from an economically poor city, Lawrence, Massachusetts.
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” Peña told the room of around 30 students, plus staff, at the seminar. “Each of our intersectional identities are part of who we are, and they are part of everyone we work with.”
Like the students in her audience, Peña was not a computer science major as an undergraduate at Brown University. She had an encouraging message for those feeling imposter syndrome about their coding skills and job prospects: “Understanding the technology is table stakes to be able to get the job done. In order to grow an excellent career, you have to know a lot more than just the technology.”
She added, “Everyone can learn the technology. What makes you excellent is how you work with people and how you build technology that serves their needs.”
The seminar, titled “Tech in Human Leadership,” aimed to challenge students’ idea of how to lead well. Lessons were gleaned from Peña’s decade of technology leadership experience. One guiding principle was to “encourage the heart” because people will work hard when they believe what they’re doing helps others. On staff at Travelers and as a board remember of Resilient Coders, a nonprofit that helps underserved communities get into coding, Peña has enjoyed helping people develop their careers through mentoring, building balanced teams, and building places of belonging.
She knows people on her teams felt this culture of belonging because at her prior business, which was acquired by Travelers, employee referral was the biggest vector of hiring. “We hired more people because our own employees told their friends and families to come work with us. That’s super powerful,” Peña explained.
Though Peña is passionate about incorporating the human dimension into technology, she is a strong technical leader, managing software teams, engineers, and contractors at Travelers. In her work, she believes that the right culture is essential to achieve the right strategy. For example, her previous company encouraged remote working and established practices around it, informed by the idea that a remote worker was a “first-class citizen.” If anyone was remote for a meeting, then everyone would turn on their laptop cameras, even if they were in the office, to equalize the experience.
“Your values drive the behavior of your company, which drives the processes and systems you actually use to get work done,” Peña explained. “That’s the culture.”
Megan Barry, director of Khoury College’s Align program, attended Peña’s talk. Explaining that Align students have both questions about working in tech as well as doubts they belong, said, “Having a speaker like Es, who brings both deep experience in the tech field as well as an authentic message about how our students can succeed, generates so much inspiration amongst Aligners.”
Commenting on Peña as a tech role model, Barry added, “Seeing leaders who have achieved greatly in their careers but can translate the human component of their work will help our students build confidence and transition thoughtfully into new opportunities.”
Ultimately, Peña inspired Align students to “be a whole human” by helping and engaging others with an impactful career. “If you can figure out how to take your skills outside of technology from before you started this program and in technology from what you’ve learned here and then apply it to make humans lives better, you’ll be successful,” she said.
Ester Peña wants you to know that she is a lot more than her resume—and that you too are more than yours.
As vice president of software engineering at Travelers, an insurance company part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, her resume is quite impressive. Yet the message of her February 2020 seminar talk to first-semester Khoury Align students was that, in addition to being Puerto Rican and Cuban, transgender, and Ivy League, she’s also from an economically poor city, Lawrence, Massachusetts.
“The intersection of those privileged and non-privileged identities very much informs my value system. It informs how I approach not just my personal life, but how I approach my work,” Peña told the room of around 30 students, plus staff, at the seminar. “Each of our intersectional identities are part of who we are, and they are part of everyone we work with.”
Like the students in her audience, Peña was not a computer science major as an undergraduate at Brown University. She had an encouraging message for those feeling imposter syndrome about their coding skills and job prospects: “Understanding the technology is table stakes to be able to get the job done. In order to grow an excellent career, you have to know a lot more than just the technology.”
She added, “Everyone can learn the technology. What makes you excellent is how you work with people and how you build technology that serves their needs.”
The seminar, titled “Tech in Human Leadership,” aimed to challenge students’ idea of how to lead well. Lessons were gleaned from Peña’s decade of technology leadership experience. One guiding principle was to “encourage the heart” because people will work hard when they believe what they’re doing helps others. On staff at Travelers and as a board remember of Resilient Coders, a nonprofit that helps underserved communities get into coding, Peña has enjoyed helping people develop their careers through mentoring, building balanced teams, and building places of belonging.
She knows people on her teams felt this culture of belonging because at her prior business, which was acquired by Travelers, employee referral was the biggest vector of hiring. “We hired more people because our own employees told their friends and families to come work with us. That’s super powerful,” Peña explained.
Though Peña is passionate about incorporating the human dimension into technology, she is a strong technical leader, managing software teams, engineers, and contractors at Travelers. In her work, she believes that the right culture is essential to achieve the right strategy. For example, her previous company encouraged remote working and established practices around it, informed by the idea that a remote worker was a “first-class citizen.” If anyone was remote for a meeting, then everyone would turn on their laptop cameras, even if they were in the office, to equalize the experience.
“Your values drive the behavior of your company, which drives the processes and systems you actually use to get work done,” Peña explained. “That’s the culture.”
Megan Barry, director of Khoury College’s Align program, attended Peña’s talk. Explaining that Align students have both questions about working in tech as well as doubts they belong, said, “Having a speaker like Es, who brings both deep experience in the tech field as well as an authentic message about how our students can succeed, generates so much inspiration amongst Aligners.”
Commenting on Peña as a tech role model, Barry added, “Seeing leaders who have achieved greatly in their careers but can translate the human component of their work will help our students build confidence and transition thoughtfully into new opportunities.”
Ultimately, Peña inspired Align students to “be a whole human” by helping and engaging others with an impactful career. “If you can figure out how to take your skills outside of technology from before you started this program and in technology from what you’ve learned here and then apply it to make humans lives better, you’ll be successful,” she said.
