Cincinnati WITCON 2026
Description
WITCON 2026: Celebrating 10 Years of Community, Connection, and Impact
For ten years, getWITit has been bringing people together to build stronger, more inclusive, and sustainable technology communities. In 2026, WITCON returns to Cincinnati to celebrate a decade of progress while looking ahead to the future of technology, leadership, and belonging.
WITCON is a one-day conference designed for women, nonbinary people in tech, and allies who are committed to creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. More than just a technology conference, WITCON is a community-driven experience that brings together professionals across all career stages and disciplines to learn, connect, and grow.
Throughout the day, attendees will engage with thought-provoking keynote speakers, expert-led breakout sessions, interactive discussions, and meaningful networking opportunities. Sessions will explore topics spanning technology, cybersecurity, AI, data, software development, infrastructure, product management, leadership, career growth, and building inclusive cultures that drive innovation.
What makes WITCON special is the people. You'll join a vibrant community of technologists, leaders, advocates, and changemakers who believe that diverse perspectives create stronger teams, better solutions, and a more sustainable future for our industry.
Why Attend?
Gain practical insights from industry leaders and innovators
Learn strategies to advance your career, leadership skills, and technical expertise
Build meaningful connections with professionals across the technology ecosystem
Discover new ideas and perspectives shaping the future of work and technology
Celebrate a decade of impact and help shape what's next for our tech community
Whether you're an emerging professional, experienced leader, individual contributor, executive, student, or ally, WITCON offers valuable opportunities to learn, be inspired, and connect with others who are passionate about technology and creating positive change.
Join us as we celebrate 10 years of community, champion the voices shaping our industry, and continue building a more inclusive future in technology—together.
Lineup
Elizabeth Tolia - Keynote!
My A Well-Rounded Career: Reimagining Growth Beyond the Ladder - Gayathri Rajender
The traditional career narrative demands constant upward movement. But in this relentless climb, are we growing holistically, or just burning out? This talk challenges the assumption of infinite professional scaling. We will explore whether standard advancement truly develops us and enriches our environments. By asking ""How much growth is enough?"", this session offers a fresh framework to shift from endless vertical chasing to sustainable, multi-dimensional success.
From Channel to Changemakers - Women in the Tech Industry - Sarah Schlueter, Emily Jackson
Our presentation is a career-focused overview of the B2B tech channel industry, designed to help young professionals understand how the "tech channel" works, where the opportunities are, and how to position themselves for long-term career growth and entrepreneurship.
Experience Is the New Competitive Advantage: Thriving in the AI Era - Jenna Marino
Artificial intelligence has transformed how we work, but it hasn't replaced the need for human judgment. In many ways, it has made experience more valuable than ever. As a designer whose career began before computers, the internet, and AI became everyday tools, I've had to reinvent my process through every major technological shift—from hand-drawn layouts to enterprise UX at Salesforce, civic innovation projects, startup consulting, and AI-assisted strategy today. The tools have changed dramatically, but the core skill has remained the same: identifying the right problem before rushing to solve it. This session explores why seasoned professionals have an unexpected advantage in the age of AI. We'll discuss how decades of pattern recognition, stakeholder management, customer empathy, and strategic thinking enable experienced leaders to use AI as a force multiplier rather than a replacement. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for combining timeless problem-solving skills with modern AI tools to deliver greater impact, lead through change, and remain indispensable in an evolving workplace.
Find Your Tribe: Growing Together in the Age of AI - Rama Nagaraju
Finding Your Tribe: The Most Underrated Career Strategy in the Age of AI. As AI reshapes careers faster than anyone can keep pace, professional growth is shifting from what you know to who you grow with. Drawing on decades of insights from diverse communities, including aviation, entrepreneurial groups, and personal book clubs, this session reframes community not as a nice-to-have but as one of the highest-leverage career investments available today. We'll explore why communities accelerate learning in an AI-enabled world, how belonging normalizes curiosity and risk-taking, and why, when the right tribe doesn't exist, building it yourself may be the boldest career move you make. Attendees will leave with a practical lens for identifying, joining, or founding the communities that will carry their careers forward. 3 Key Takeaways: Why a community, not just skill acquisition, is the real accelerant for career growth in fast-moving fields like AI; how to identify or evaluate whether a ""tribe"" is actually serving your growth; a framework for starting your own community when the right one doesn't exist yet.
Breathe Better. Lead Better. - Sicari Harned
You know how to optimize your technology. But what about the system running it all... YOU? In tech, being “always on” can feel like part of the job. But constantly pushing through stress can impact focus, productivity, decision-making, and recovery. Your breath can be a powerful tool for changing your state in real time. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how functional breathing can support focus, resilience, and performance, along with practical techniques you can use during high-pressure moments, from presentations and difficult conversations to back-to-back meetings and mental overload. You’ll experience the practices firsthand and leave with simple tools you can immediately bring into your workday. Because sustainable performance isn’t about pushing harder. Sometimes, it starts with breathing differently.
The Binder Effect: Five Leadership Practices That Turn Cross-Functional Projects into Successful Transformations - Jarissa Garcia
During an international technology transformation assignment in Paris, I discovered that my greatest contribution was not technical expertise, but becoming the “binder” of the team. By building trust, connecting stakeholders, and strengthening partnerships across teams, I helped create the collaboration needed to move transformation forward. This session explores five practical leadership practices for breaking down silos, influencing without authority, strengthening cross-functional partnerships, and helping technology-driven change succeed through people.
The Abysmal State of Software Security - Dave Hatter
From the SolarWinds breach to ransomware shutdowns of hospitals and automotive giants, software supply chain attacks are causing billions in damages and threatening national security. Meanwhile, the software we depend on is increasingly assembled from third-party and open-source components that organizations often can't even inventory, much less let alone secure.
Agile Business Analyst: Thriving in the Modern Development Environment. - Kelsey Apple, Sponsored by Max Technical Training
The role of the Business Analyst continues to evolve as organizations increasingly adopt Agile methodologies to deliver value faster and respond to changing market demands. This session explores the critical transition from traditional waterfall approaches to Agile frameworks, specifically focusing on how Business Analysts can not only adapt but excel in these dynamic environments. Whether you're a seasoned Business Analyst preparing for organizational change or already working in Agile environments seeking to enhance your effectiveness, this session provides actionable strategies for professional growth and team contribution.
Beyond the Tools: Building Human Side of the Digital Workplace - Elisabeth Galperin
Technology is evolving faster than the human habits and workplace cultures required to harness its full potential. An organization's investment in technology should ideally be matched by an investment in the people expected to turn that technological capability into results. Simply put, tools cannot be prioritized over team. This session explores what it means for people to flourish in today’s digital workplace through three perspectives: individual, team, and organization. Participants will examine how cognitive capacity, digital friction, constant connectivity, and workplace norms affect focus, performance, collaboration, and well-being—and discover practical ways to respect human capacity, protect human connection, and create healthy digital norms and boundaries so people and technology can perform at their best together.
Personal Productivity to Enterprise Scalability: A Real-World AI Case Study - Sandy Steiger, Alyssa Stickley, Anita Baral, Bernie Lawson
AI experimentation is easy. Building AI that actually works across an enterprise? That’s where things get interesting. In this session, Lithko Contracting shares our journey from using AI to make individuals more productive to building a reusable foundation that can scale AI across the business. We’ll share what we’re building, why we made the architecture decisions we did, and what we’ve learned along the way. More importantly, we’ll talk about the messy stuff: balancing speed with scalability, figuring out when to buy versus build, and laying the right foundation while everyone is asking, “Can’t we just go faster?” This isn’t a story about having enterprise AI figured out - it’s a real-world look at what we’re trying, what we’re learning, and how we’re building for where we want to go.
The Context Layer as a Foundation for Trusted AI - Meenakshi Mahapatra
As enterprises move from traditional BI and data platforms toward AI-driven analytics and agentic applications, having access to data alone is no longer sufficient. Users need business-specific context - an understanding of what data means, how business concepts relate, which metrics are trusted, what policies apply, and how data should be used. This presentation introduces the emerging concept of the Context Layer, explains where it fits within the enterprise data ecosystem, and explores how it extends traditional semantic models, data catalogs, metadata management, and knowledge graphs. It will also examine why context is becoming increasingly important for AI readiness, governed self-service, compliance, and trusted decision-making, along with the technologies and architectural capabilities that can support its implementation.
The AI-Native SDLC: Building Custom Enterprise Software at the Speed of Intelligence - Mamita Mallina, Latimer Gray
Building custom enterprise applications no longer requires massive engineering teams or multi-year development cycles. The rise of agentic AI and orchestrated intelligence has fundamentally redefined the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), enabling organizations to build purpose-built, cloud-native platforms faster and more efficiently than ever before. In this session, we will break down the emerging and highly dynamic AI-Native Product Engineering Process as it is evolving today. This is a modern framework that pairs a Lean Engineering Pod (Product Manager, System Architect, Agentic AI Developer, and UI/UX Designer) with an integrated SDLC Platform. You will learn how dedicated AI agents - such as Spec Writers, Data Schema Architects, Full-Stack Developers, and Code Reviewers - work together to accelerate delivery, facilitate reliable outcomes with spec-driven development, and automate quality control.
Closing the Strategy / Execution Gap in Any Business with Product Management - Marc Aiello
Using Product Management Frameworks to Keep Operations Connected to Strategy Most organizations have more good ideas than they can fund, and the ideas are all reasonable, which is what makes choosing hard. Without agreed criteria, the decision goes to whoever argues best or asks last. Leadership sets a direction and it never quite reaches the work. The session covers how a team builds a shared picture of where it is headed, agrees on how it will decide what is worth doing, and describes work clearly enough that anyone can see what problem it solves and how they will know it worked. The result is strong alignment from leadership through the teams and into the work.
Cybersecurity Isn’t an IT Problem: Making Cyber Risk a Leadership Conversation - Kara Holland
Cybersecurity isn't just an IT issue, it's a leadership issue. This session helps technology and business leaders translate cyber risk into business impact, make informed decisions under pressure, and strengthen organizational resilience through better communication, collaboration, and leadership.
AI Isn’t Just for Developers: Practical Ways to Use AI in Everyday Operations - Kait Snyder
AI is often presented as a tool for developers, data scientists, and technical teams. But some of its most practical applications are found in everyday operations: improving processes, reducing repetitive work, strengthening communication, and helping teams make better use of the information they already have. In this lightning talk, Kait Snyder will share a practical, people-centered approach to using AI at work. Rather than focusing on technical jargon or futuristic possibilities, the session will explore how professionals can identify useful opportunities, encourage adoption, and use AI thoughtfully in their day-to-day workflows. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of where AI can create immediate value, even for teams without a technical background.
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