Leadership

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, her dog, and two cats.

Sarah Beete
DevCon 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 of FileMaker 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.

Dr. Brenda Cimbura
Marketing – Website Subcommittee Lead

Brenda is the COO of LuminFire where she provides leadership for business operations and FileMaker services. Brenda is coordinating the Women of FileMaker luncheon for the 2017 DevCon in Phoenix, Arizona. Brenda has taught graduate level courses and spoken on various leadership topics. Brenda is the mom of two middle school girls. In her free time, Brenda loves to experience great coffee, plan parties, find new restaurants (especially Mediterranean food), and swing dance.

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
Mentoring Lead

Makah started working at Soliant Consulting shortly after graduating UCLA with a Bachelor of Science. Ten years and seven certifications later, she couldn’t be happier with her how her career has grown at Soliant. She is now a Project Technical Lead and co-founder of Soliant’s Humanitarian Committee. She’s extremely excited to be the head of Women of FileMaker’s mentoring subcommittee, where we are hoping to connect women to mentors to assist in developing our careers as FileMaker consults. Makah resides in Albuquerque with her husband, their 3-year-old little girl, their 8-year-old pup, and another little girl on the way.

Laramie Ericson
DevCon Booth 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

Linda Gerbitz
Non-profit 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.

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.