The EuroSTAR Community is made up of many amazing people. Over the past 27 years, it is this community of incredible speakers, dedicated programme committee members and fantastic attendees that have helped build EuroSTAR into one of the largest annual gatherings of software testing professionals in the world! We are celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting some of the women that have been part of EuroSTAR in the last year and together with many others help to make EuroSTAR such a welcoming and unmissable event.
Bojana Lund
Bojana has been working with SW Development for over 10 years and has very broad experience with both SW development, CI, Test and Automation. She has a great passion for test and is currently working hard on establishing a profession group for Technical Testers across several Consultant Houses in Denmark. She strongly believes in continuous learning and creative solutions. She is a hard working mother of two energetic small boys and proud wife of a fellow Technical Tester.
Follow Bojana @BojanaLund
Seretta Gamba
Seretta Gamba has 40 years’ experience in development and fifteen in test automation. After going through all the usual developer roles, in 2001 she was put in charge of test automation for her company. She developed a framework that enabled her company to quickly get excellent results. Having talked about the framework in a couple of conferences she met Dorothy Graham and was invited to write a chapter in the book, Experiences of Test Automation. With Dorothy Graham she has been developing the Test Automation Patterns Wiki and launched a book on Test Automation Patterns with Dot Graham at the 2018 EuroSTAR Conference.
Seretta and Dorothy’s New Wiki is now live at the following location : https://testautomationpatterns.org
Dorothy Graham
Dorothy Graham has been in software testing for over 40 years, and is co-author of 4 books: Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing and Experiences of Test Automation, and has developed the wiki TestAutomationPatterns.org as well as co-writing Test Automation Patterns book with Seretta Gamba. Dorothy has been on the boards of conferences and publications in software testing, including programme chair for EuroStar (twice). She was a founder member of the ISEB Software Testing Board and helped develop the first ISTQB Foundation Syllabus. She has attended every EuroStar. She was awarded the European Excellence Award in Software Testing in 1999 and the first ISTQB Excellence Award in 2012. You can read more about Dorothy’s session from 2018 here as well as check Dorothy’s website https://www.dorothygraham.co.uk/
Follow Dorothy: @DorothyGraham
Seretta and Dorothy’s New Wiki is now live at the following location : https://testautomationpatterns.org
Franka Buurmeijer
“Throughout my career Franka has been combining science and technology with creative activities such as writing, presenting and creating teaching materials. As an science communicator and astronomer, she started out in the field of astronomy, but I gradually expanded my field of expertise to physics, mathematics and computer science. As a tester, I now combine my knowledge of communication with automated and manual testing to improve the results of software development.” – Read more about Franka’s session from the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2018.
Gitte Oberbossel
She has worked within test management and improvement of test processes for 25 years in different companies. Because of this, she has experience in performing test management for several types of solutions, both application and technical. Her experience with working in test improvement includes all the steps of improvement: Defining and implementing test models, coaching and training, and performing measurements on the quality of running tests. She is now managing a test laboratory, which also includes defining and maintaining ISO27002 requirements for the laboratory house, tests and equipment.
Elena Kolpakova
Elena is a tester and a test coach with >10y of professional experience. Being a daughter of a software developer, you could say she took the path of a software tester as early as her childhood. Currently Elena applies her skills at AKQA GmbH in Berlin. This involves all kinds of testing activities, manual or automated, and helps her stay on track with the latest and pioneering technologies. In addition, she takes part in hiring testers and helps them develop and grow through coaching sessions, tech talks, and workshops.
Follow Elena: @HeleneKolpakova
Elizabeth Zagroba
Elizabeth tests software at Mendix in Rotterdam. She’s tested web apps, mobile apps, APIs, and content management systems. Her article about mind maps became one of the most viewed on Ministry of Testing Dojo in 2017. She’s spoken at conferences in the United States and Europe.
Follow Elizabeth @ezagroba
Sal Freudenberg
Dr. Sallyann Freudenberg is an agile consultant and trainer who assists companies in transitioning to more nimble, customer-centric and human(e) ways of working. She holds a PhD in the Psychology of Collaborative Software Development and since parenting an autistic son has developed an interest in neurodiversity. Through re-assessing her own traits and neurology, and considering the extra-ordinary people with whom she has worked over her 25+ years in tech, Sal is raising awareness of the benefits of having diversity in our organisations, and is helping the industry to begin to understand how to support and nurture every kind of brain.
Follow Sal @SalFreudenberg
Iris Pinkster-O’Riordain
Iris Pinkster-O’Riordain is test advisor at Professional Testing and has experience in testing and test management since 1996. She co-developed Logica’s method for structured testing: TestFrame ®, their test management approach and TestGrip, the method on test policy and test organization. Iris is the co-author of the books published on these topics. She often speaks at (inter) national conferences. In 2007 she won the EuroSTAR award for “Best Tutorial”. In 2017 Iris was Program Chair for the EuroSTAR Conference in Copenhagen.
Follow Iris @PinksterIris
Isa Vilacides
Isa started her career as a developer, but ended up managing Quality Engineering teams which she has continued doing for the last ten years. Since then she has helped different companies to reach continuous delivery by improving their development, testing and release processes through automation and risk analysis: the biggest Spanish social network Tuenti, a Rakuten video-on-demand service, the JIRA Cloud and Infrastructure Services divisions at Atlassian and currently CloudBees. She believes in giving back to the community and is therefore a frequent speaker at testing meet-ups like After Test and Agile Barcelona, and she has also spoken at international conferences such as Jenkins World 2017 (SF), Sevilla Developer Conference 2017, Devops Days Barcelona 2013, itSMF 2014 and expoQA where she has also formed part of the selection
Follow Isa @vilacides
Karen Johnson
Karen N. Johnson is a longtime contributor to the software testing community. She speaks at conferences both in the US and internationally. She is a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly publishers. She has published numerous articles; she blogs and tweets about her experiences. Find her on Twitter as @karennjohnson (note the two n’s) and her website: https://www.karennicolejohnson.com. Karen was previously an independent consultant but is now employed as Director, Jamf Now Development & Delivery at JAMF.
Mais Tawfik Ashkar
Mais Tawfik Ashkar is a Performance Engineering Consultant guiding clients to delivering faster, more scalable and reliable applications. Prior to consulting, Mais was a Performance Engineering Manager and lead with Pearson Learning Technologies representing their Denver and offshore teams and overseeing performance and scale solutions. An organizer of the Workshop on Performance and Reliability [WOPR] and a former SQUAD board member, Mais has over 12 years of experience in the software engineering industry working as a software performance engineer, automation engineer, and consultant. An accomplished speaker, Mais has presented at ExpoQA, QUEST QAI, WOPR and SQuAD conferences. Mais is passionate about the multi-faceted discipline of software quality engineering and data analytics. Mais was also winner of the Best Tutorial at EuroSTAR 2018 as voted by the attendees.
Follow Mais @MaisTawfik
Mia Johansson
Mia worked with test since 2001. I have tested, educated customers in the importance of testing, outlining test strategies and acted as Test Manager in all kinds of areas. The last ten years she has worked in agile projects, adapting processes and ways of working within test and verification for complex systems. Since 2015 Mia is the QA Manager at Data Ductus. Mia is responsible for test and QA strategies both on a project- and company level and work with customer communication to spread the word on QA. I am also a storyteller, engaged in the local storytelling society.
Follow Mia @falamh
Nathalie Rooseboom de Vries van Delft
Nathalie is an energetic, passionate and ambitious software and system test manager, test architect and –adviser. She puts the the question mark behind technological solutions and digital innovations.
Since 2004 she participated in and lead various projects in the financial domain, retail domain and public transport and has gained a solid experience with testing, coordinating and managing test activities within a diverse palette of development and management methods -including Prince2, IAD, SCRUM and SAFe- and types of organization.
Follow Nathalie @FunTESTic
Ioana Chiorean
Ioana is a software engineer that has more than 9 years testing experience with a specialization in mobile apps. Currently located in Romania she is leading a number of teams in a digital innovation leading company, Softvision. These teams are responsible for several mobile apps. Web compatibility and testing IAM and community participation tools. She is the Module Owner for Mozilla Reps – a program that unites volunteers from around the world. As one of Moz Tech Speakers, she takes the stage and talks about different technical topics or community building subjects. In her free time, Ioana contributes to Open Source projects while enjoying a coffee or a good wine.
Follow Ioana @ioana_cis
Gitte Ottosen
Gitte Ottosen is a managing consultant at Capgemini-Sogeti Denmark and has 22 years experience in test engineering and test management, in both traditional and agile contexts. Gitte works with test management, test process improvement and supports projects and companies in their agile transition with her quality perspective. In her current assignment she supports an agile transition within a SAFe framework, ensuring a sufficient and proactive quality perspective. As a self-confessed test evangelist who preaches the need for a structured and committed approach to testing, Gitte is a strong advocate for a context-driven approach, a role requiring profound professional insight, passion, and persistence—qualities that Gitte holds in abundance. Gitte holds a number of certificates within testing as well as agile; ISEB Practitioner, CAT, TMap Test Engineer/Master and Certified SCRUM Master. She is a SAFe Program Consultant and is member of SogetiLabs
Follow Gitte @Godtesen
Isabel Evans
Programme CHair for EuroSTAR 2019, Isabel Evans is an independent quality and testing consultant with more than thirty years of IT experience in the financial, communications, and software sectors. Her work focuses on quality management, software testing and user experience (UX). She encourages IT teams and customers to work together via flexible processes that are designed and tailored by the teams that use them. Isabel authored Achieving Software Quality Through Teamwork and chapters in Agile Testing: How to Succeed in an eXtreme Testing Environment; The Testing Practitioner; and Foundations of Software Testing.
A popular speaker and story-teller at software conferences worldwide, Isabel is a Chartered IT Professional and Fellow of the British Computer Society, Programme Secretary of the BCS SIGiST, and has been a member of software industry improvement working groups for over 20 years. Isabel was also the recipient of the 2017 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award.
Follow Isabel @IsabelE_Test
Fiona Charles
Fiona Charles teaches organizations to manage their software testing risk, and IT practitioners project skills “beyond process”—hands-on practical skills essential to thrive and excel on any kind of software project. Fiona’s articles and blog posts appear frequently, and she conducts experiential workshops at international conferences, and in-house for clients. She is the co-founder (with Anne-Marie Charrett), of Speak Easy, a volunteer organization whose goal is to increase gender diversity at tech conferences and help new speakers find their voices. Contact Fiona via her website www.quality-intelligence.com, and follow her on twitter @FionaCCharles.
Anne Mette Hass
Anne Mette Hass has worked in software testing for over 30 years. She is interested in the technical aspect of testing as well as in the human aspect; after all, testers are people, people are different, and differences should be understood and respected. Anne Mette has written the book “Guide to Advanced Software Testing” and taught ISTQB Foundation and Advanced Test Manager and Advanced Analyst numerous times. She has spoken at many conferences over most of the world and is fluent in English even though it is not her mother tongue.
Follow Anne Mette on Twitter: @AnneMetteHass
Fiona Ring Ostensvig & Tone Molyneux
Tone and Fiona from the Norwegian computer society have hosted a special session on women in testing. Tone and Fiona are passionate about teting and see the need to get younger people and especially women into the testing industry. They have been an amazing inspiration to many women, including the female testers at our 2018 EuroSTAR conference in Prague.
Follow Tone on Twitter: @ToneMo
Follow Fiona on Twitter: @Anoifeiram
These amazing women and many, many others help the EuroSTAR Community to grow in unimaginable ways. They inspire other female testers around the world and we will continue to help and encourage female testers to be recognized and given opportunity to develop.