Mallika
Rao
Senior Engineering Manager at Zocdoc(ex-Netflix, Walmart, Twitter)
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
Thu May 14 - 12:20 PM EDT/New York (See in local time)
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05/14/2026 12:20 PM
05/14/2026 12:40 PM
America/New_York
#WTGC2026
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
#WTGC2026
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
https://www.womentech.net/ringcentral
https://www.womentech.net/ringcentral
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
"Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration"
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Session: Seeing the Signals: How Women Can Navigate Reorgs for Career Acceleration
Reorganizations are a constant in tech, yet many talented women experience them as destabilizing rather than opportunistic. While roles and org charts change overnight, the real signals of power, influence, and growth often emerge quietly—through shifts in ownership, funding, decision-making, and executive attention.In this talk, I’ll share a practical framework to help women decode the underlying signals during a reorg and use them to make intentional career moves. Drawing from real-world leadership experience across large-scale tech organizations, we’ll explore how to distinguish surface-level change from structural change—and how to act early rather than react late.
Attendees will learn how to:
Identify where strategic bets, budget, and influence are actually moving
Recognize early indicators of role expansion, visibility, or risk
Position themselves for growth conversations amid ambiguity
Communicate value and intent when expectations are unclear
This session is designed for women engineers, managers, and leaders navigating uncertainty who want to turn organizational change into a career accelerant rather than a setback. Participants will leave with concrete tools to assess reorgs with clarity, confidence, and agency.
Key Takeaways
- Identify where strategic bets, budget, and influence are actually moving
- Recognize early indicators of role expansion, visibility, or risk
- Position themselves for growth conversations amid ambiguity
- Communicate value and intent when expectations are unclear
Bio
Mallika Rao is an engineering leader with deep expertise in designing and operating large-scale distributed systems at companies like Netflix, Walmart, Twitter, including search and recommendation infrastructure. Her work focuses on building AI-forward, production-grade platforms that seamlessly integrate models, embeddings, inference, and evaluation into core system architecture. Mallika brings a systems-thinking approach to solving complex problems, with an emphasis on resilience, transparency, and sustainable velocity. She is passionate about helping teams adopt AI-native engineering practices while maintaining rigorous standards of reliability and operational excellence. Outside of work, she draws inspiration from the structures of mathematics and the improvisation of music, and she mentors early-career engineers and emerging leaders navigating growth in high-performance environments.