Ira Pramanick is a Staff Engineer at Google. Prior to Google, Ira
worked for nine years at Sun Microsystems, where she was an
architect for Solaris Cluster, and chaired the Cluster Architecture
Committee. Ira has also worked at Silicon Graphics and IBM, and
been in the faculty of the University of Alabama-Hunstville. She
has a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and holds six
US patents.
While at Sun, Ira served as a mentor in the Sun SEED mentoring
program for several years. She has been the keynote speaker at
the NSF-sponsored 2007 “Technology Powered by Women”
conference. She has a twenty-something daughter pursuing a career
in STEM, and is the founder of the MAGIC program, as well as its
CEO and the president of its board of directors.
Seema Shukla
Board Member & Secretary
Seema Shukla is the current secretary of the board of MAGIC. She has
been a consultant for Southern Living at Home for the past several years.
She served on the PTA Board for both elementary and middle schools. She
has also served as treasurer for the Chester Montessori School.
Seema has been an active member of the American Cancer Society in
organizing fundraisers and various other activities. She holds a
Bachelor's Degree in Botany, and a Master's in Political Science,
both from the University of Delhi, India. She has two sons who are
in their early twenties.
Jazmine Jung
Board Member
Jazmine Jung completed her undergraduate and graduate work at the
University of California, Berkeley. She has always loved science and
thrives in an environment where there is constant growth and learning.
She has been with Kaiser Permanente for more than twenty-five years now,
specializing in the field of Clinical Genetics. With constant advances
in technology, genetics is as challenging a field now as it was when
she began her career.
Jazmine has three adult children at different places in their lives. As
they complete their education and pursue their careers, she hopes they
always find joy in learning.
Ritu Kamboj
Board Member
Ritu Kamboj currently works as an engineer at Salesforce. She has
previously been a Principal Software Engineer at Oracle Corporation.
She has over twenty years of software development experience, with
expertise in database performance and high availability.
Ritu has a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, and a Master's degree in
Computer Science, both from India. Her interests include mentoring
young kids in yoga, and reading scriptures in all religions. She has two
teenage daughters.
Sonu Durgia
Board Member
Sonu Durgia is a Product Management leader at walmart.com, where she leads the
Search Algorithms team. Prior to Walmart, she was an entrepreneur, and
built an online platform to find and book children's activities. She
has a Bachelor's in Engineering from the Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Delhi, and an MBA from the University of California at
Berkeley.
Sonu has a young son and a daughter, and hopes to inspire in both of
them a lifelong love for learning, and the confidence to do anything
they want. She joined MAGIC in 2014, and is a former Chief Financial
Officer (CFO) of MAGIC.
Magreth Mushi
Board Member
Magreth Mushi is the CEO of the Tanzania Education and Research Network
(TERNET), and a lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania. She graduated
with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University,
studying under a Fulbright Scholarship. She has an M.Sc. and a B.Sc. in
Computer Science, both from the University of Dar es Salaam.
Magreth started with MAGIC as a mentor in 2013. She is
a self-motivated leader, with over fifteen years of
experience in management and computer science. She is
also a committed lifelong learner, with strong interests
in leadership, management, business, human relations,
and parenting. She has three daughters, and would like
to inspire them to always "Stay hungry, stay foolish".
Ian Gulliver
Board Member & CFO
Ian Gulliver is a software engineering manager at (Google) X. He
previously managed Google's Privacy Working Group and MySQL Site
Reliability Engineering teams. While an avowed generalist, Ian primarily
focuses on productionization of complex systems, both software and
hardware.
One of Ian's hobbies is videography, and his involvement in MAGIC began
when he volunteered to record final presentations and interviews at
a MAGIC graduation ceremony. His longstanding interest and efforts to
increase gender diversity in technology, especially software engineering,
made working with MAGIC a great fit. He is currently the Chief
Financial Officer (CFO) of MAGIC.
Pi-Chuan Chang
Board Member
Pi-Chuan Chang is a software engineer at Google, and holds a Ph.D. in
computer Science from Stanford University, specializing in
natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning.
After Stanford, she has worked at three companies of very different sizes,
including an education startup. She has led machine learning projects in various
product areas, such YouTube video personalization, NLP features in search,
semantic parsing for voice actions, and improved sequence models in
LinkedIn search.
Currently, Pi-Chuan is the technical lead of the open source software
DeepVariant which was released in December 2017. She has volunteered for
MAGIC since 2008.
Shami Ahuja
Board Member
Shami Ahuja works as a consultant, managing the Business Agility team at
Nisum Corporation. She has previously worked as a Software Architect at
FICO, and at many different start-ups, living the Silicon Valley dream.
She moved to the Bay Area after completing her Master's in Computer Science
from the University of Texas at Arlington.
She is involved in setting up the Corporate Sustainability Program for
Nisum, with special focus on diversity and inclusion. Her current program,
"Nisumosity", helps bring various volunteering opportunities to the employees
at Nisum. Shami has two daughters who are college students, and enjoys cooking
different kinds of food.
Ben Lunzer
Board Member
Ben Lunzer is an applications architect at GXS, Inc., in Gaithersburg, MD,
following a long career at JP Morgan Chase in technology and operations
management. He was previously with Accenture, where he led the global
middleware group. His prior work was in bioengineering.
Ben is a founding member of the Securities Industry Middleware
Council. He has served on the Advisory Council of the IAFE, and as
co-chair of its Technical Committee.
Ben and his wife, Hindi, a psychiatric oncologist, have three daughters.
The girls share an interest in computing and mathematics, and, with their
parents, the removal of any remnants of a glass, or silicon, ceiling.
Margot Hackett Miller
Advisory Committee Member
Margot Hackett Miller is a software engineer at Oracle Corporation, working
on the Solaris operating system. Prior to that, she worked for twenty years
at Sun Microsystems, and five years at NCR.
In the past, she has served as a MAGIC mentor for two years, and as the board
secretary for three years.
Ritu Khare
Advisory Committee Member
Ritu Khare is a senior data scientist at the department of Data Science
and Advanced Analytics at IQVIA. She has served as a mentor for MAGIC
since 2009.
Ritu received her postdoctoral training from the National Center of
Biotechnology Information at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
She has a Ph.D. in Information Science from Drexel University, and a
B.Tech. in Information Technology from the National Institute of
Technology, Bhopal, India. She grew up in various places in the state
of Madhya Pradesh, India.
In her spare time, Ritu enjoys Bollywood dancing and practicing yoga.