Our team - Wevise

Meet the team

We’re a team of committed volunteers from diverse backgrounds who are passionate about leveling the playing field in tech (and beyond). We’re excited to continue to bring on skilled and passionate people to help us grow.

Board
Tech
UX/UI
Marketing
Operations
Product & Programs

Jon Leinen

CEO and Interim Board President

Jon Leinen

CEO and Interim Board President

Jon Leinen is CEO of Wevise and currently serves as Interim Board President. He is responsible for organizational strategy, board governance, and the operating model that connects volunteers, mentors, and program participants into a working pathway for people entering technology careers. Jon brings more than thirty years of executive leadership across technology, professional services, and the public sector. He is concurrently President of GOIAST8, a Minneapolis-based firm delivering AI-driven satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence solutions for defense and national security applications. Before founding GOIAST8, he spent thirteen years at Data Recognition Corporation as Vice President and General Manager, leading survey research, secure document, and imaging services businesses, including secure solutions for federal clients. His earlier career includes co-founding a marketing technology startup that was acquired within two years, senior leadership at Western Graphics, and more than a decade at Xerox in senior technical and development roles, including serving on the launch team for the iGen3 digital press. His governance experience spans fourteen years on the advisory board of Iowa State University's Ivy College of Business and fifteen years as committee chair of a Boy Scouts of America troop. He is a graduate of Iowa State University.

Janice Levenhagen

Founder, Board Member, and Acting Board Secretary

Janice Levenhagen

Founder, Board Member, and Acting Board Secretary

Janice Levenhagen founded Wevise and led the organization as Chief Executive Officer from its founding through 2025, building it from concept to a working mentorship platform and its first city-based cohort in Chicago. She now serves on the Board of Directors, where she is Acting Board Secretary. Janice is a computer engineer turned nonprofit leader with fifteen years in the field. Before Wevise, she founded ChickTech, a national nonprofit supporting girls and women in technology, and led it for nearly eight years as it grew from a single Oregon program into an organization serving close to 8,000 people annually across the country, including yearlong high school programs and the multi-city ACT-W conference series for women in tech. Since 2019 she has consulted internationally for NGOs, with engagements spanning a women's code school in Kenya, refugee-serving organizations in Greece, EU-funded programs encouraging young women into STEM careers, and a women's entrepreneurship nonprofit in Paris. She is currently co-founder of Solena Collective, a global network of locally led women's organizing circles. Janice holds an MBA from Willamette University and a master's in International Development from Sciences Po. She is based in Europe.

Stephen Piwnicki

Board Treasurer & CFO

Stephen Piwnicki

Board Treasurer & CFO

Stephen Piwnicki leads finance at Wevise and serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors. He is responsible for financial planning, reporting, capital strategy, and the financial systems supporting the organization's growth. Stephen brings more than two decades in accounting, finance, and operations across public accounting, manufacturing, financial services, and emerging technology. He spent nearly twelve years at Chicago accounting firm Blackman Kallick, rising to Audit Senior Manager in the financial services practice, where he managed financial statement audits and regulatory compliance work for consumer lending and commercial leasing clients. He went on to five years of interim CFO and Controller consulting for companies across sectors, then served as Chief Financial Officer of Sabanto, a Chicago agricultural autonomy company, where he led finance strategy, investor relations, and capital-raising through the company's product launch. Stephen is the founder of Arwyn Stryder, a Chicago consulting practice combining finance and operational strategy with business intelligence and AI implementation. He holds a bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Illinois Chicago.

Megan Mulholland

Board Member

Megan Mulholland

Board Member

Megan is a product and education executive. She has been working in the fields of online education and edtech for more than 10 years as a teacher, instructional designer, and product manager, and most recently as the Chief Product Officer at a career change education school for tech fields. She’s interested in improving educational outcomes and creating equitable experiences for learners from all different backgrounds and believes that helping people move forward in their careers is both incredibly rewarding and important, especially in terms of increasing representation at all levels of organizations.

Hilary Baker

Board Member

Hilary Baker

Board Member

Hilary Baker serves on the Wevise Board of Directors. She brings more than twenty years in education, spanning university teaching, academic standards administration, and curriculum leadership at scale. Most recently, Hilary spent over four years at CareerFoundry, a Berlin-based online school preparing career-changers for roles in tech, where she rose from Senior Curriculum Designer to Director of Education. In that role she was responsible for the educational product behind thousands of students making the same transition Wevise exists to support: people entering the technology workforce from somewhere else. Before CareerFoundry, Hilary led academic standards, education policy, and assessment practices at dBs Berlin, a creative production institute operating under UK university partnership requirements. Her earlier career was in higher education, with teaching appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, and Freie Universität Berlin, where she designed and taught courses in music history and digital audio production and founded Penn State Behrend's first audio production laboratory. She currently works as an independent educational consultant.

Maggie Faust

Board Member

Maggie Faust

Board Member

Maggie is a B2B SaaS executive and consultant with 6+ years building and leading pre- and post-sales teams, including partnership teams. She's been in tech for over 15 years across a variety of sectors (healthcare, telco, travel, e-comm, retail, fintech), and has seen firsthand the need for more diversity, so Wevise's mission and approach really connected for her. She's a big advocate for mentorship, and investing in the next generation of talent is one of the things she loves to focus on in her career. When she's not working, Maggie can be found spending time with friends and family, exploring NYC, working out, reading and getting ready for her first child (due July 2024)

Ravi Yenduri

Board Member

Ravi Yenduri

Board Member

Ravi Yenduri serves on the Wevise Board of Directors, where he provides technology oversight and product governance. He joined the board after serving as Wevise's Chief Technology Officer, where he led platform strategy and built the engineering culture supporting the organization's mentorship programs. Few board members know the systems they govern from the inside; Ravi built them. Ravi brings twenty years in software engineering and technology leadership. He spent six and a half years at Sabanto, an agricultural autonomy company in Chicago, rising from early-stage architect to Chief Technology Officer with responsibility for a cross-functional team of twenty engineers, managers, and product leads. Before Sabanto, he held senior engineering roles at The Climate Corporation, where he led teams building digital agriculture products, and earlier spent nearly eight years at PacketVideo developing mobile multimedia systems, including core work on Android's media framework. He is currently Principal, AI Systems at LevelUp Labs, an AI transformation firm.

Oksana Isakov

Chief Technology Officer

Oksana Isakov

Chief Technology Officer

Oksana Isakov leads technology at Wevise, responsible for platform strategy, architecture, security, and the engineering governance behind the organization's mentorship platform. She brings more than fifteen years in software engineering and technology leadership. Oksana spent nearly five years as a Senior Software Engineer at Visa, working on the company's core clearing and settlement systems, where she implemented domestic financial regulations for markets including Argentina and Chile and supported Venezuela's currency redenomination while processing high-volume daily transactions. She went on to serve as Director of Engineering at Studylog Systems, a life-sciences software company, leading a remote engineering team and the technical turnaround of its flagship product. Since 2024, Oksana has worked as a fractional CTO for early-stage startups, leading product development from architecture through launch. She is also the founder of Purpozli, a micro-donations platform, and serves on the board of the Berkeley Haas Alumni Network of Silicon Valley. Her earlier career includes senior engineering roles at Orange and Comverse Technology in Israel. Oksana holds a BA in Computer Science from Sapir College and an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology, with executive education in technology strategy and data science at UC Berkeley Haas and MIT.

Conrad is a people-focused engineering leader with a strong track record of guiding cross-functional teams to deliver impactful, customer-centered solutions. He’s passionate about mentoring technical leaders, aligning engineering with organizational goals, and fostering innovation through collaboration and data-driven strategies. Outside of work, Conrad enjoys family time, sports, riding motorcycles, and exploring the outdoors.

Bret is a full-stack developer who loves building things that make people's lives easier (or at least more interesting!). During his 15+ years in tech, he's worn many hats - from writing code and leading teams to occasionally untangling particularly mysterious bugs. When he's not working on web applications, you might find him tinkering with synthesizers - he creates open-source modules for VCV Rack under the name Voxglitch and has even ventured into building physical synth modules. These days, he's particularly excited about AI and automation, spending perhaps a bit too much time writing scripts to make ChatGPT do entertaining and useful things. He believes in the power of open source, the joy of solving puzzles through code, and the importance of not taking yourself too seriously while doing serious work.

Ben Matare brings 6 years of software engineering experience to Wevise as a Senior Software Engineer volunteer. In this role, he develops new platform features, maintains code quality, and provides technical guidance while mentoring emerging engineers on the team. Ben is passionate about Wevise's mission to democratize career mentorship and applies his technical expertise to help build the infrastructure that makes equitable career guidance accessible to all.

Ashton is a full stack engineer who graduated from Bloom Institute of Technology. He loves to work on anything he can get his hands on, but primarily worked on creating backend API endpoints while working at WeVise. Ashton is committed to improving his skills and learning as much as he can so he can be relied upon in every aspect of a product. Ashton spends most of his free time gaming or working on personal projects.

Jake is a self-taught software developer who broke into tech by leveraging community-driven programs like The Odin Project, 100Devs, and the Dallas Software Developers Group. During this journey, he found that collaboration and mentorship were more than helpful; they were essential. With a background as an Autism specialist and educator, Jake brings a human-centered approach to problem-solving and team dynamics. He’s passionate about making tech more accessible, supporting others on their learning paths, and building tools that make a difference. Outside of tech, Jake enjoys adventuring in the mountains, building custom speakers, and working on house projects.

Sydney Bell

Software Engineer

Sydney Bell

Software Engineer

Sydney Bell is a current master’s student specializing in software engineering, bringing a unique interdisciplinary background that blends technology with global health. With prior international experience working in public health and holding a master’s degree in global health, Sydney is passionate about leveraging technology to improve health outcomes. Although originally trained in a non-technical undergraduate field, Sydney has been working to develop strong programming skills in Java, JavaScript, and Python. Throughout her graduate studies, Sydney has gained solid foundations in software architecture, software quality, and data science. Based in Chicago, Sydney is eager to expand her expertise in the intersection of health and technology, driven by a willingness to learn and adapt. Outside of academics and tech, Sydney enjoys solo travel, playing musical instruments, and samba dancing, embracing diverse experiences both professionally and personally.

DJ Neill

Software Engineer

DJ Neill

Software Engineer

Luke Elerson

Software Engineer

Luke Elerson

Software Engineer

Ladan Abdi

Software Engineer

Ladan Abdi

Software Engineer

Alejandra Villanueva

Software Engineer

Alejandra Villanueva

Software Engineer

Alejandra is an educator and full-stack engineer with a passion for creative, human-centered technology. With 2 years of experience, she has developed educational tools, interactive games, and innovative projects using JavaScript, React, Node, Unity, and more. Her journey began by teaching high school girls to code with Scratch and Twine, and has since evolved into a drive to create experiences that help people and push boundaries. Outside of tech, Alejandra enjoys climbing, running, music, cheese, video games, traveling, and any kind of adventure.

Linh Pham

Software Engineer

Linh Pham

Software Engineer

Linh is full-stack developer with 3 years of industry experience (primarily in financial industry). With a background in Chemical Engineering, Linh looks to leverage the problem solving mindset to solve technology-related problems.

Rui Fan

Jr Software Engineer

Rui Fan

Jr Software Engineer

Julian Sanchez

Jr Software Engineer

Julian Sanchez

Jr Software Engineer

Tanya Rodrigues

Jr Software Engineer

Tanya Rodrigues

Jr Software Engineer

Full Stack Developer wiht 1.5 yrs of web development experience ad a strong foucs in front end development. Currently learning and explroing backend development as weel as working towards salesforce certification. Tech stack is React, Node, Javascript, Typescript, python, php, mysql and postgresql

Poornima SM

Poornima SM

Melynda Phung

UX/UI Designer

Melynda Phung

UX/UI Designer

Nicole Plante

UX/UI Designer

Nicole Plante

UX/UI Designer

Josh Dinsdale

UX/UI Designer

Josh Dinsdale

UX/UI Designer

Josh Dinsdale is a UX Designer at Wevise, bringing over 6 years of experience in user-centered design and inclusive product development. As the founder of Open Access LLC, Josh has led projects across industries with a focus on accessibility, usability, and elegant problem-solving. At Wevise, he hopes to apply his passion for intuitive design to help create tools and experiences that empower communities and foster positive change.

Aruna Inalsingh

Chief Marketing Officer

Aruna Inalsingh

Chief Marketing Officer

Rowell is the Digital Marketing Manager at WeVise. He is an experienced full stack marketer with proficiency in several disciplines including social media, email, SEO, PPC, and WordPress sites. He has also applied these skills in a number of industries including hospitality, fitness, nonprofit, entertainment, and legal. In his free time, Rowell enjoys basketball (go Lakers), reading (always up for suggestions), hiking, and theme parks (down the street from Disney and Knott's)

Denise Nathan

Social Media

Denise Nathan

Social Media

Denise is a volunteer Social Media Specialist from Fountain, Colorado. She has her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration/Business Administration from Grand Canyon University in 2007. She received her Master of Arts degree in Sports and Exercise Psychology from The Chicago School in 2012. She earned her Certified Digital Marketing Professional (CDMP) certificate from the University of St. Thomas Executive Education in Minneapolis, MN. She recently graduated from Colorado State University-Global (CSU-Global) with an Undergraduate Certificate in Digital Marketing where she proudly maintained a 4.0 GPA for the entire program. Along with her educational background, she currently holds several social media/digital marketing certifications. She currently has a certification from HubSpot Academy as a Digital Marketing professional. She also earned two levels of certification from HubSpot Academy as a Social Media Marketing professional. She is currently working on her 1st of two SEO certifications with HubSpot Academy and hopes to have them completed by the end of January 2025. She has a diverse professional background in Social Media marketing. In her previous role at Thomson Reuters/Oxford Solutions, she worked as a Project Manager working on legal marketing projects ranging from social media graphic content to website production. She also worked for a small business where she assisted them with their organic social media post on Google+ and Twitter (X). She also worked as a Freelance Blogger with the Chicago Now blog community, which was a part of the Chicago Tribune news group before it suddenly shut down in late 2021 by new organizational management. When she is not volunteering, she also has a marketing psychology blog that she writes as a side project. She started this blog in the last few months as she completed her coursework at CSU-Global.

Rowell Tiongco

Digital Marketing Manager

Rowell Tiongco

Digital Marketing Manager

David Webber

Content Writer

David Webber

Content Writer

David has more than a decade of expertise in content creation, editing, and strategic thinking, He is deeply committed to producing compelling, pertinent, and influential content that resonates with a wide array of audiences and industries. As a Content Strategist at iQuanti, he harnessed his proficiency in SEO and content curation to aid clients in the financial services and wellness sectors, empowering them to attain their digital marketing objectives and enhance their online visibility.

Ross Harrison

Chief Operating Officer

Ross Harrison

Chief Operating Officer

Ross Harrison leads operations at Wevise, where he is responsible for the systems, processes, and team infrastructure that ensure consistent delivery of the organization's mentorship programs. He brings more than twelve years of operations leadership in hospitality, a sector where execution is measured daily, and service failures are visible immediately. Ross spent nearly nine years with Island Hospitality Management, including six as Vice President of Operations, during which he was accountable for performance across the managed hotel properties. Before that, he ran hotels as General Manager for Island Hospitality and White Lodging Services, operating Marriott- and Hilton-branded properties with full P&L responsibility, owner reporting, and teams spanning every operating department. That background shapes how he runs Wevise: clear standards, measurable performance, and teams trained to deliver without the founder in the room. He is a graduate of St. John's University and is based in New Jersey.

Rich Roses

Operations Manager

Rich Roses

Operations Manager

I’m an operations leader with a strong foundation in technology. I am current doing my Online MBA from Pepperdine University, California, where I am emphasising on Digital inovation and information system. I’ve built my career on streamlining processes, optimizing team performance, and leveraging tech solutions to drive efficiency. Outside of work, I’m an unapologetic tomato soup enthusiast, finding comfort and creativity in the simplest of flavors.

Fatima Dahri

Recruiter

Fatima Dahri

Recruiter

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