The Reasonable CTO

Currently sitting on the boards of CMC Microsystems and EcoTank Canada, as well as an advisor to the Canadian Telecom Summit.

A 30 year veteran of the IT industry. A member of Women of Openstack, and Women in Comms, Van is active in  showcasing and championing women in tech fields. Currently splitting her  time in various open source communities, she was the Chair of the  Technical Steering Committee of Open Source Mano. She is also a former  member of the Layer 123 NFV advisory board as well as a Linux Foundation  Board Member. In addition, she spearheaded the VNF Onboarding Open  Source community focused on rapid templating and automation of  virtualized network function workloads.

Van attended the University of Toronto where she majored in Computer  Science and Astro-Physics. Vanessa currently makes her home in Toronto  Canada, where she enjoys spending her free time playing hockey, tennis  and fishing.

I started in the IT industry very young, having hassled the local  freenet so much that they offered me a job as a sysadmin.  I was the  precocious kid that had to reboot the dialup modems when they hung,  reset passwords, installed system updates and kept the email server from  crashing.  That really lit the fire that became my passion for  technology.   I believe it takes a specific type of personality that can  become a female CTO in what has been a very male dominated industry.   Saying I am able to navigate difficult situations and find a unique path  to success would be an understatement.  Throughout my career, I have  always challenged the status quo, and questioned "why can't we do this  any better?"  Then followed those questions up with a plan on what to  do, and how to get it done.     I've been described as a change agent  who has been known to step out of my lane when I needed to.    While at  EMC (formerly VCE) I saw a market need for a telecom focused platform,  qualified the market, lead the technology build of the platform and  built the go to market strategy for it.  I was not asked, I saw the  opportunity and took action.   That platform generated millions in new  revenue the first year it was deployed.  I believe that was why I was  noticed and hand picked by VMware to be one of the founding  members of  their telecom vertical.  I examined the landscape, assessed what was  needed and built it.  In this instance I first built the global  ecosystem and programs to support it and then later built the R&D  strategy and lead 3 global innovation lab teams.  I also found creative ways  to fund the innovation and development that gave us the competitive  edge in the market.  By the 3rd year we were closing 100 million dollar  deals in Europe, APJ as well as North America.     I think it is worth  mentioning that I have had some experience on the technology side of  loyalty programs, having worked in technical roles at Shoppers Drug Mart  and Airmiles (now LoyaltyOne).   While those experiences were a while  ago, I believe that the knowledge gained of that industry has granted me a lot of insight in to how powerful data and patterns can be.     As I progressed through my  career I have put considerable time and effort in to becoming a trusted  and recognized technology leader by authoring white papers, speaking at  conferences, being interviewed by analysts, sitting on various  podcasts.  At this point I am sought after for my advice and expertise  by industry partners, customer executives.  I have also won a number of  awards and been recognized for my achievements including being  recognized as a "Top 10 Inspiring CTO".   I am now able to use my years  of experience in the tech industry as a Board member for companies and  organizations.   I also use my experiences as a tool to mentor young  women who are exploring careers in technology and hopefully help  clear  some of the roadblocks that I faced when I was young, so that they do  not have to.   I am passionate about Diversity and Inclusion, and  volunteer my time and services to a number of organizations that further  that agenda.    One of my more recent passions is exploring practical  opportunities to leverage AI as a means of generating new revenue.  I  have recently brought a new solution to market in that arena that I am  particularly proud of.

I've spent a good deal of my career as a consultant.  At this point I am more focused on business and technology strategy, but here are some of the highlights throughout the years:

• Telecom industry white papers, blogs, reference architectures etc. 
• Web 3.0 and AI strategy for compliance and policy enforcement.
• Cloud go to market strategy for commercial focused system integrators.
• P and L model for evaluating and maintaining a partner ecosystem.
• Bringing a Dev/Sec/Ops framework in to an engineering team.
• IT Operations frameworks and governance. 
• ITIL practice development.
• Technology Automation and Orchestration.
• Data Protection and Recovery strategies and solutions.
• Sales programs.
• IoT infrastructures and deployment.
• Network Infrastructure and Security Audits.
• PCI Compliance audits and practice.
• And many more....