I wanted to share some news. I will be speaking at the Women in Tech Global Conference 2026 this May.

My session is called The Messy Middle: Career Longevity in Tech. When I talk about the “messy middle,” I am not talking about age or being at the end of a career. I am talking about the phase many long tech careers reach where the path stops being linear, expectations shift, and the usual markers of progress stop working, even though there is still a lot of road ahead.

We spend a lot of time in tech talking about growth, momentum, and success stories. We spend much less time talking about the stretch in between. The part where layoffs, economic downturns, ageism, health changes, and role compression can stack up. Where your experience keeps growing, but your role or title no longer reflects it. Where it can start to feel personal, even when it is not.

This talk draws on more than 25 years of my own work across software development, SaaS, technical education, nonprofit leadership, and consulting. Not as a highlight reel, but as a long view across different cycles, systems, and roles. As I continue working on the session, the focus is less on tidy answers and more on naming patterns, what tends to break people in this phase, and what helps them stay engaged in tech without burning out or forcing a story that no longer fits.

The conference runs May 12 to 15 and is primarily virtual. I am looking forward to developing this talk further and sharing it as part of that conversation.

You can find the current session details here: Link to my Women in Tech session page (opens in a new tab)