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Chief Product & Programs Officer

Chief Product & Programs Officer

Tonya Young

Head of Product

Tonya Young

Head of Product

Tonya Young leads product at Wevise, responsible for the mentorship platform's roadmap, requirements, and user experience. Her path into technology mirrors the one Wevise builds for others. Starting from a political science degree, she built her technical foundation through Hackbright Academy and community college coursework while constructing a career in legal technology and data operations — nearly seven years as an eDiscovery data operations analyst at litigation firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, followed by a senior analyst role at Covington & Burling and privacy program management engagements at Twitch and Crunchyroll. Along the way she completed an MBA at Mills College. That career gives her a decade of experience in the unglamorous core of product work: gathering requirements from demanding stakeholders, mapping and managing data, implementing technology under regulatory constraint, and building processes teams actually follow. She also serves as Treasurer and Technology Chair on the executive board of Thornhill PFC.

Ritapa Sarkar

Head of Programs

Ritapa Sarkar

Head of Programs

Ritapa Sarkar leads programs at Wevise, responsible for cohort design and delivery, mentor and mentee experience, and the program operations behind the organization's city-based initiatives. She brings thirteen years in technology, spanning software engineering and global support leadership. Ritapa spent nearly a decade at Cognizant, advancing from senior developer to onsite technical lead, before moving into support and customer experience leadership roles at Adobe, Udacity, and Western Union, where she managed technical support teams serving global customer bases. Her time at Udacity, leading customer experience for an online education platform focused on technology careers, sits directly on the problem Wevise works on: what it takes to support people through a structured program into a tech career. Her operating background is in building support frameworks that scale — distributed team leadership, incident and escalation management, and translating program metrics into decisions. She holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology and is based in the Dallas–Fort Worth area.

Ceyhun (Jay) Gocenoglu

Program Manager - Tech Path Alliance

Ceyhun (Jay) Gocenoglu

Program Manager - Tech Path Alliance

Jay Gocenoglu manages partner development for Wevise's Chicago cohorts, responsible for building the coalition of organizations that refer participants, provide mentors, and support cohort delivery. He brings nearly twenty years of program leadership at the intersection of corporate strategy, workforce development, and public-private partnership. Jay spent nine years leading IBM's corporate social responsibility and communications agenda in Turkey, where he co-orchestrated a nationwide partnership with the Ministry of Education that integrated IBM's technology curricula into national vocational education, reaching more than 500,000 students, and led the national launch of SkillsBuild, IBM's workforce-development platform. He also directed three cohorts of IBM's Corporate Service Corps pro bono consulting program. Most recently, Jay spent nearly four years as Strategic Programs Group Manager at Avanade in Chicago, building enterprise client engagement and sustainability programs. His earlier career includes corporate affairs roles at Türk Telekom and Vodafone Turkey and program management at the British Council. Jay holds a PhD in Public Relations from Marmara University, an MSc in Corporate Governance and Business Ethics from Birkbeck, University of London, and a BA in International Relations from Istanbul University. He was a Chevening Scholar of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Meagan Trudeau

Learning & Development Manager

Meagan Trudeau

Learning & Development Manager

Jay Gocenoglu manages partner development for Wevise's Chicago cohorts, responsible for building the coalition of organizations that refer participants, provide mentors, and support cohort delivery. He brings nearly twenty years of program leadership at the intersection of corporate strategy, workforce development, and public-private partnership. Jay spent nine years leading IBM's corporate social responsibility and communications agenda in Turkey, where he co-orchestrated a nationwide partnership with the Ministry of Education that integrated IBM's technology curricula into national vocational education, reaching more than 500,000 students, and led the national launch of SkillsBuild, IBM's workforce-development platform. He also directed three cohorts of IBM's Corporate Service Corps pro bono consulting program. Most recently, Jay spent nearly four years as Strategic Programs Group Manager at Avanade in Chicago, building enterprise client engagement and sustainability programs. His earlier career includes corporate affairs roles at Türk Telekom and Vodafone Turkey and program management at the British Council. Jay holds a PhD in Public Relations from Marmara University, an MSc in Corporate Governance and Business Ethics from Birkbeck, University of London, and a BA in International Relations from Istanbul University. He was a Chevening Scholar of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.