Geeking Out with Adriana Villela

Geeking Out Live: Working Moms in Tech Panel with Rizel Scarlett, Autumn Nash, Cortney Nickerson, and Diana Todea

Episode Summary

We're kicking of 2026 with a special Geeking Out livestream featuring FOUR amazing women in tech who also happen to be moms. Join Adriana Villela and her daughter, Hannah Maxwell, for a candid conversation with Rizel Scarlett, Autumn Nash, Cortney Nickerson, and Diana Todea about juggling motherhood and career.

Episode Notes

Key Takeaways

We all experienced pregnancy differently, and it's okay to not love being pregnant while being in awe of the human being created inside of you
Take some time off before you have your baby, because it just gets busy after that
Maternity leave varies from country. In Canada, you get 12-18 months. In Spain, you get 4 months, and in the US, you get 6 weeks. If you're lucky, you work at a company with good maternity leave benefits.
Many of the mamas in this panel hustled HARD not only during pregnancy, but post-partum
Sleep deprivation as a new mom is REAL, and is a testament to the strength and resilience of being a mom
We're not all lucky enough to have family and/or daycares(affordable or not) near us to help us raise our children
Rizel chose to worked part-time post-partum to stay sharp, yet she still balanced being present for her daughter during her time off
Cortney took her first child to work with her, to balance working and childcare
Being a role model to your children and teaching them to be self-sufficient is important
Encouraging boys and girls to hang out together from an early age, rather than separating them, helps break down gender stereotypes and barriers
For boy moms: it's important to a great role model as a mom of little boys, to teach them to be respectful of women as they grow older

About our guests

Rizel Scarlett

Rizel Scarlett is a Staff Developer Advocate at TBD, Block's newest business unit. With a diverse background spanning GitHub, startups, and non-profit organizations, Rizèl has cultivated a passion for utilizing emerging technologies to champion equity within the tech industry. She moonlights as an Advisor at G{Code} House, an organization aimed at teaching women of color and non-binary people of color to code. Rizèl believes in leveraging vulnerability, honesty, and kindness as means to educate early-career developers.

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Autumn Nash

Autumn Nash is a Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Linux Security previously over four years at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a Software Development Engineer, I currently contribute to the Language and Runtimes team, specializing in the development and release of Amazon Corretto (Java) while actively engaging in the OpenJDK community. Prior to this, Autumn's role as a NoSQL Solutions Architect involved guiding organizations in selecting purpose-built NoSQL databases, utilizing Python and Java to unblock customers and contribute to educational content. In addition to her technical expertise in solutions engineering, back-end web development, and cloud computing, Autumn is proud to be a mom, bringing a unique perspective to the tech industry. She is also an alumni member of Rewriting the Code, further enriching her commitment to effective communication and education. Serving as the Board Chair of Education at MilSpouse Coders and as a Chapter Leader for the Greater Seattle Area, her advocacy for collaborative learning and community development extends beyond technology.

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Cortney Nickerson

Cortney is Head of Community at Nirmata. As a CNCF and Civo Ambassador, she helps co-organize the CNCF Bilbao Community, various Kubernetes Community Day events, and KubeJam. Additionally, she is a recognized voice in the cloud native space. Initially, a non-techie, she turned techie as employee 7 at a startup acquired by DataDog while writing content for the Data on Kubernetes Community. When not talking tech, you can find her talking DEl, sharing about her struggle with imposter syndrome, and trying to wrestle her kids to bed at a normal time.

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Diana Todea

Diana is a Developer Experience Engineer at VictoriaMetrics. She has worked as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer focused on Observability. She is an active member of the OpenTelemetry CNCF open source project, co-organizer of Cloud Native Days Romania, co-lead of neurodiversity working group (part of CNCF initiative merge-forward) and supports underrepresented groups in tech.

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