Krissy Ferris
Lead Facilitator
Krissy Ferris is the founder of Bright Button, her FileMaker consulting and development company. She previously worked in the non-profit and healthcare worlds, and through her role as a medical office manager, started developing in FileMaker. She loves transforming tangled messes into streamlined flows. She is very excited to work with Women Innovating Together as the Membership Lead, especially because the annual luncheon was one of the most welcoming spaces at her first developer conference. Krissy holds a Master of Science degree in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam, and a BA from Oberlin College. In her spare time, she can be found organizing real-life things – from family reunions to house renovations to epic road trips.
Sarah Beete
Scholarship Lead
Sarah is a Solution Architect for Solis Digital, a globally recognized Claris Partner, based in the United Kingdom. She helps to bring people, technology, and business together by pairing her development expertise with her customer and retail management background. Starting her development career out of pure curiosity, over 6 years Sarah has achieved 5 Claris FileMaker certifications and has continued to build a successful career thanks to the Claris Platform. Sarah also had the honor of being selected as a speaker for the first time at DevCon 2018 in Dallas, Texas. As an advocate for young people in tech Sarah is an active member of the community and supports the growth of newcomers to the Claris community. Being a part of the scholarship committee since its beginning has allowed her true understanding of the real challenges that women face today when choosing a career in tech and she is excited to continue to participate in creating new opportunities and empowering women to go after their dreams.
Laura Betz
Virtual Meetup Lead
Laura is a full-time and vertical solution FileMaker developer at Cross IT Services & Solutions, LLC (FBA Platinum Partner). She has worked with the FileMaker Platform for over half a decade since version 10, but also getting a glimpse of version 9 all the way to the current version. With the help of social media, she is able to meet and discuss her interests and learning other people’s views and ideas, and she hopes to share all the knowledge she has gained. Women Innovating Together is a group that has many awesome ideas and energy, and it is great to be able to share that with as many people as possible.
Vanessa Costanzo
Events Lead
Vanessa manages the daily operations and oversees the implementation and use of technology to meet NaviCu’s business needs. She also works with their clients to guide them through the NaviCu p2s Platform. She has many years’ experience working to support and train clients to maximize the efficient use of their systems. Previously, she worked in project management for a major worldwide corporation. She completed a Master of Business Administration with concentrations in Marketing and Entrepreneurship in conjunction with a Master of Science in Information Systems at Boston University Questrom School of Business. When she is not working, she loves to work with the teams at WITfm & join::table, travel, and experiment with photography & cooking.
Makah Encarnacao
Educational Outreach Lead
Makah started working at Soliant Consulting shortly after graduating UCLA with a degree in Cognitive Science and a Specialization in Computing. Thirteen years and ten certifications later, she couldn’t be happier with her how her career has grown at Soliant. She is now a Technical Project Lead and co-founder of Soliant’s Humanitarian Committee, as well as co-founder of join::table. She’s extremely excited to head the Educational Outreach Committee, where we are hoping to introduce coding and FileMaker as a career option to many girls and young women. Makah resides in Albuquerque with her husband, their two daughters, and their 10-year-old perpetual puppy.
Laramie Ericson
Business – Finance Subcommittee Lead
Laramie is a project manager with more than 10 years of experience managing custom FileMaker development projects. She firmly believes that encouraging and facilitating communication is paramount for ensuring the success of a project while engaging all the key stakeholders. Laramie loves delivering exceptional projects to the client on time, on budget and on spec. In addition to managing projects; she helps to bring projects to life by exploring the core business needs, writing the requirements and building the preliminary mock-ups which are critical to establishing a roadmap to follow throughout the iterative development lifecycle. Prior to her career in custom application development, Laramie used her Master of Science degree as an art conservator to research and manage the preservation and conservation of everything from freshly excavated artifacts to modern outdoor sculptures. When she is not managing projects or working on a discovery, Laramie enjoys spending time with her family- swimming, building Lego, playing board games, cycling and cooking up new recipes.
Susan Fennema
Former Lead Facilitator
Susan is the Chaos Eradicating Officer (CEO) of Beyond the Chaos, a consultancy helping small business owners gain control of their lives through better processes, organization, and structure of their projects and basic business operations. If your projects are running you instead of you running them, she can help. She has over 30 years of experience in the software development, creative, marketing, and advertising industries. FileMaker has been a part of her world throughout all of those years. And, she currently serves many FBA and FBA Platinum clients. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a BA in journalism, living and working in McKinney, Texas, with her husband and her dog and cat.
Linda Gerbitz
Business Lead
Linda has a BS in Information Systems and Applied Mathematics from UWSP and has used her 25+ years of FileMaker development experience in various business environments. She has taken a marketing/research department of a major plastics manufacturer, a pre-press/print shop, and a tool & die shop from paper only to paperless environments. She is currently the office manager handling the Accounting, IT, and HR duties at JMB & Associates, an HVAC Distributor & Service Center. She has been on the board of directors of a national non-profit religious organization since 2003, taking them through the non-profit status life cycle. She looks forward to getting another non-profit off the ground.
Dawn Heady
Claris Engage Booth Lead
Dawn is a senior technical solution architect at Soliant Consulting and serves as the co-chairperson of its FileMaker practice. A FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum partner and trainer, she has been designing and building custom apps with FileMaker since 1990. Dawn is co-author of the book FileMaker 12 Developer Reference and a frequent speaker at Claris’ annual conference. While based out of Soliant’s Chicago office, Dawn resides in Fishers, Indiana, with her husband and three cats.
Magalie Jeune
Database Management Lead
Through her last year of Master of Business Administration (completed in 1998), Magalie discovered FileMaker Pro at Editomac, which was already a member of Claris Alliance. After 8 years in the financial industry, she founded her own company and works mainly as sub-contractor for other companies (Editomac was one of those) as devloper and/or trainer. She bought and lead a sweeties company during 3 years, continuing her career in tech in the same time. In 2015, she bought Editomac from the founder, with the blog and his unique FileMaker world French-speaking tutorials. She was a speaker at the French DevCon (“fmconf”) in 2016 and in 2019. Magalie is a “DIY”-fan – from her own washing liquid to her databases! If you search for her, you can probably find her in a corner with a book in hand or walking on some pretty path with her son and husband.
Agnes Riley
Website Lead
Agnes is a Solution Architect who has been working with FileMaker since version 3. The last two decades revolved around systems, networking, graphic and web design, and, later, more and more FileMaker and web development—what was once a hobby became a full-time profession when she formed ZeroBlue, an FBA Partner. ZeroBlue offers FileMaker and web hosting and also provides the community with barcode and RFID scanners/readers. She excels at creating clean interfaces and user-friendly applications. She studied English, journalism, marketing, business management, and photography. When not at her desk, she enjoys learning about new technology, photography, discovering new restaurants, riding her motorcycle, and rock climbing. She also works for DriveSavers, so if you have data recovery needs, feel free to message her.
Karen Stella
Marketing Lead
After a dalliance with Fine Art and Photography, Karen started out her career with degrees in Advertising Design, and Illustration. Unfortunately, that year was 1984, and she met a fellow in her building who said: “Come up and see my Macintosh”, and she did, becoming one of the very first Mac Evangelists. By the following decade, she was managing computer systems and running a high-end corporate collateral print production department, working with a 4D developer to keep track of it all. After enjoying looking over his shoulder, she dove in and added a new skill; Database Development in 4D (ignoring FileMaker languishing on her home 512Ke). Several years later she hung out her shingle. At one of her early Mac OS consulting clients, she was asked to take on developing that department’s database; in FileMaker! That lead to being introduced to a fellow who quickly took a newbie FM developer under his wing, inviting her to the NYFMP group (thanks, Chuck Edwards!), setting her firmly on a path that would lead to her next, and final vocation. So there you have it, Jack of all trades, but FileMaker Evangelist. Oh, and a tendency to be verbose.
Sarah Stickfort
Donor Relations Lead
Sarah is a FileMaker Certified developer with the team at FBA Platinum Partner Skeleton Key. Before her career path changed to FileMaker development, she used her CPA as an internal auditor for Rockwell Collins. The trajectory of her career as a developer moved towards greater growth as a result of receiving the Karyn Witzel memorial scholarship to attend the 2017 FileMaker DevCon in Phoenix, AZ. The following year, she was privileged to speak at the DevCon in Dallas, TX. Sarah looks forward to serving as the Donor Relations Lead so she can help others experience the value and benefits of attending their first developer conference. Sarah lives in Iowa and enjoys trying new foods, showing hospitality, and playing the piano.
Beverly Voth
Membership Lead
Beverly Voth (rhymes with both, not moth) has been a Web and Database developer for 25+ years. Professionally first using Claris’ FileMaker 2.1 as an in-house contractor, she decided that becoming an independent consultant/developer was possible.
Beverly first attended the (2nd) annual Developer Conference in San Jose, Ca. She was a speaker at several DevCons, had a vendor booth once, and helped organize the early Women’s Luncheons. She received the “FileMaker Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to the FileMaker Web Publishing Community” in 2003.
Varied background experiences and programming training has helped as a developer and trainer. Creative writing courses helped turn the technology into many articles on FileMaker Pro. The book “FileMaker Pro 6 Developer’s Guide to XML/XSL (2003)” is still being read today. Beverly also served as a Technical editor on another FileMaker book. The article, “The Missing FileMaker 12 ExecuteSQL Reference” started as a simple blog in 2012 and became a full PDF document & set of sample files (also translated into Japanese).
As a full-service hosting provider (11 years), Beverly owned & worked with many servers for web sites, email, and databases (including MS SQL & MySQL). She works to integrate FileMaker with other systems and especially all aspects of using FileMaker in Web Publishing.
Currently living in the Forest about 20 miles from a waterfall, you can find Beverly on the Claris Community Forum (virtually, of course).
Heather Williams
Mentoring Lead
Bio coming soon!
