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The work of Women in Technology has an incredible impact.
Since 1992, Women in Technology has had a mission dedicated to promoting the advancement of women in Georgia’s technology community. Through the WIT COMMUNITY, WIT Also educates and encourages girls and young women to pursue careers in STEM.
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Julie Haley / CEO Edge Solutions
Julie Haley is the CEO and majority owner of Edge Solutions. She is ultimately responsible for all operations and financial aspects of the business, including managing the company’s P & L and overseeing the budget. With a law degree from the University of South Carolina and years of prior experience as a business and commercial litigator, Haley also acts as the company’s legal counsel and she negotiates, drafts and reviews contracts and legal agreements with vendors and customers.
While starting this business, Haley has continually stretched and expanded her capabilities as a leader of a technology solution company, and has adopted many roles. From the start, Haley has refused venture capital funding in order to build and retain the company’s unique culture of inclusion, support and diversity. Accordingly, managing growth has been a significant challenge. Edge Solutions started with one manufacturing (HP) partner and has since become certified to sell all the major technology company’s products, including Hitachi Data Systems, Dell, Citrix, NetApp, Cisco, VMWare, as well as newer, cutting-edge technologies like Veeam, Swiftstack, and cloud offerings. With each new offering, Haley has to weigh the cost of adding qualified engineers and technical training to meet necessary qualifications. Also, Edge’s growth from zero to $24 million in sales has necessitated Haley’s constant search for capitol and credit lines from many different sources. Accordingly, with each new initiative, and Haley successfully evaluated the benefit of each new technology offering versus issues of cash flow and the availability of human resources to support going to market with the new solution.
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Sandy Welfare is the Executive Director of Women In Technology (WIT). Prior to that, she was the Executive Director of Cool Girls Inc, an award-winning early intervention after-school program dedicated to the empowerment of girls (2009-2015).
Sandy’s career began in 1989 in Greenwich, Connecticut where she joined Rand Insurance as the Controller. Six years later, she accepted a position with Lucent Technologies, an international telecommunications leader, holding a number of positions including serving as Accounting and Treasury Manager in Singapore (1999-2000) and then as Senior Manager in Australia and New Zealand (2000-2002). Sandy returned to Atlanta in 2002 as Senior Manager of Global Financial Services.
In 2003, Sandy accepted a position as Director of Operations for Xchanging, a business processing outsourcing company. In 2006, her career took her to London, England as Managing Director for professional services, where she managed global business processing services for bank financial transactions, insurance and retail.
Sandy received her undergraduate degree from St. John’s University in New York, and a Master of Business Administration from Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. She serves on the board of several non-profits, including Kiwanis Club of Atlanta. Sandy resides in Marietta, Georgia with her husband, Cliff and son, Soloman.
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