Susan Fennema
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 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.
Sarah Beete
Scholarship Lead
Sarah is a FileMaker Developer for Linear Blue, an FBA Platinum Partner, based in the United Kingdom. Starting her development career out of pure curiosity, over 4 years she has achieved 4 FileMaker certifications and learned how to successfully develop with the FileMaker Platform. She also had the honor of speaking for the first time at DevCon 2018 in Dallas, Texas. She works hard as an advocate for young people in tech and is an active member of the community to support the growth of newcomers to the FileMaker 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
Marketing – Social Media Subcommittee 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 oversees the development, implementation, and use of technology to meet Recruiting Pro’s business needs and the business needs of our clients. Having grown up using FileMaker since grade school, 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 travel and experiment with photography and 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.
Krissy Ferris
Membership Lead
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.
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 Connect 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.
Teresa Ingalls
Mentoring – DevCon Buddy Subcommittee Lead
Teresa is an archaeologist working to bring digital solutions to cultural resource management. She is the in-house FileMaker developer and digital data manager at New South Associates, a women-owned small business specializing in cultural resource consulting in the Southeast. She has a background in geospatial analysis, museum archaeology collections, and zooarchaeological research. She lives in Atlanta with her family, and enjoys brewing beer, eating dim sum, thrifting, and raising backyard chickens.
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.
Kristy Lapidus
Mentoring Lead
Kristy is an applications developer and the founder of Corvo Consulting Group, an FBA Partner. She has spent the last 16 years consulting with senior leaders on strategic digital business transformations. Kristy’s Master’s degree in Organization Development (OD) from Pepperdine University provides her with a unique perspective into the change management principles needed to ensure long-term user adoption and high ROI. She spoke at FileMaker DevCon 2013 & 2018 as well as at the 2018 ODN Conference on Technology Strategy. She is also facilitating a panel on the Intersection of Organizational Agility & Agile Teams at the 2019 ODN Conference. Prior to founding Corvo, she was the Director of IT/PMO at the leading herbal products brand in North America, Gaia Herbs, and before that consulted for many years with Soliant Consulting. Kristy is an expert at guiding teams to thrive in today’s ever-changing business environment and is thrilled to contribute to the growth of others through the mentoring program. In her spare time, Kristy can be found in the mountains of Western North Carolina, gardening or hiking with her partner Alexander.
Agnes Riley
Website Lead
Agnes 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 development—what was once a hobby became a full-time profession when she formed ZeroBlue. She excels at creating clean interfaces and user-friendly applications. ZeroBlue offers FileMaker and web hosting and also provides the community with barcode and RFID scanners/readers. When not at her desk, she enjoys learning about new technology, photography, discovering new restaurants, riding her motorcycle and rock climbing.
Elizabeth Swenson
Donor Relations Lead
Elizabeth started as a citizen developer, playing with FileMaker in her work environments to make her (and her colleagues’) jobs a little bit better. Loving the work but never dreaming that anyone would be crazy enough to pay her to play in FileMaker full-time, she kept this pattern up until May 2013, when she got hired as a FileMaker developer by an FBA Platinum Partner. After four years, she started her own business, UserSpace, which offers FileMaker development, support, and training. She lives in Los Angeles with her 9-year-old Klee Kai and her 19-year-old Black Arabian horse.
Karen Stella
Marketing Lead
Virtual Meetups 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 computers 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.
