“WE’RE TRYING TO LIFT THE VISIBILITY OF FEMALE SCIENTISTS AND TECHNOLOGIES IN AUSTRALIA.” 

Today, as part of our STEM Mentor Spotlight series, we’re shining a light on Elaine Van Bergen - an awesome educator, mentor and engineer at Microsoft, who joined us for the girledworld University of Sydney Summit, and features as a brilliant virtual STEM mentor in our online learning and employability skills programs.

Elaine works in the Commercial Software (Azure FastTrack) Engineering team at Microsoft Australia, where instead of selling or developing products, she works directly with customers to help them get the most out of the latest features and services.

With a key focus on the health and government space, Elaine also works with large customers in these industry sectors to help them create innovative solutions using Microsoft products. This sees her undertaking both architectural design and scoping, as well as hands on coding - AND she is one of few super-talented Microsoft Masters on the planet!

Elaine also works at the cutting edge of a range of new and exciting emerging technologies including bots, cognitive services and machine learning, and as a senior engineer, has a huge amount of experience working solo with hands-on technical jobs through to managing big teams on broader projects.

But throughout her career, Elaine has always looked for ways to continue her learning, and in the process has completed 3 formal degrees! Plus, she’s super passionate about helping people use leading edge technology to solve business problems, and enjoys sharing this passion at local meetups and at domestic and international technical conferences.

Elaine also does incredible work as a 2020 Superstar of STEM and an investor and Activator at SheEO. 

”Superstars of STEM is an amazing program around lifting the visibility of female scientists and technologies in Australia. We’re just trying to get some role models out there, so that different people can be seen in the media,” she says.

”SheEO is really about trying to use radical generosity to change the model for start-ups. So many female-founded start-ups are really not getting funded and with SheEO, we put in a bunch of money and that gets given to key start-ups that we vote for which are all female led, which gives them a loan to get started.”

THE BEST THING ABOUT WORKING AT MICROSOFT

Apart from a wide range of experience in developing and architecting solutions involving emerging Microsoft technologies, Elaine says she is always excited about new technology areas and how they can be used to solve specific business problems.

In a recent interview she said: “The best thing about working for Microsoft is that we are trying to make a difference in the world. It really is about trying to push things forward and drive conversations around AI, ethics, those kind of things. It's not just about the technology.”

On learning and the power of mentoring, Elaine says: “ OpenHacks are my favourite style of learning. They're basically these challenge-based hacks we put together. We have a team of people that sit on a table and we give them a problem to solve, and as a mentor, our job is to not give them the answers but to kind of stop them from falling off the cliff, so they learn!”

Thanks to Elaine for being a role model to so many, including our girledworld team!

Girledworld is spotlighting awesome women in STEM as part of our Virtual Workplace Mentoring & Employability Skills 2020 online mentoring program and our upcoming Gippsland Digital STEM Summit, an online career education initiative in partnership with the Victorian State Government, to connect Victorian students with leading industry mentors and provide real-world information about skills needed in tomorrow’s workforce. Learn more.