60 Seconds with WITS Midwest Speaker — Kim Vertucci

Kim Vertucci is the DevOps Manager at BP. Her panel at WITS Midwest is a case study on Modernizing IT — transforming your IT.

• Why is speaking at WITS important to you?

I’m looking forward to speaking at the WITS Midwest event because I think it’s important for women to share their experiences so that we can learn from each other.

• What inspires you?

I participate in WITS, Women in Listed Derivatives (WILD) and Toastmasters as well as a few BP internal groups, including First Level Leaders for Women, Building Beyond, and Aspire. The support and sharing that comes from these groups is outstanding, and gives me the nudge that I need to keep growing.

· Most useful article you’ve read in the last month

I enjoy reading WIRED and recently there was an article on the World Wide Web Turns 30. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, speaks to how the web has created many amazing opportunities, but also raises that we can’t be complacent. We need to remain innovative, whether it’s disruptive or sustaining, but more importantly we need to remember that we have a responsibility to protect human rights.

· When you were a kid what was your dream job?

I’m dating myself here, but when I was 9 years old, my older brother purchased the family our first computer, a Commodore 64. I fell in love with the complexity as it’s not intuitive like devices are today. You had to know how to write programs in order for it to do anything. So I took my first programming class at Richard J. Daley College and since then, I knew I wanted to do something in the IT world.

· Tell us something about your session

BP is applying design thinking and agile development in a way that inspires creativity, change and adoption.

· Anything else you would like to share

I’m really looking forward to the event. There are so many great speakers lined up and I can’t wait to network with all of you!