hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to amy halter vice  family was drifting apart until we found the connection you have the power to change your child's life the boy's town national hotline can help and welcome back thanks so much for joining me today amy thank you so much for having me of course so i guess the first question i'm going to ask is can you tell me a little bit about acting on my abs sure i stand is a global technology firm we have offices in united states canada india singapore malaysia united kingdom the united arab emirates so we are all around the world we employ about seven hundred engineers globally  our focus is on digital transformations with a focus on the emerging technologies so what that means is that we can help our clients with any technology project that they might have we think of ourselves kind of like a general contractor and that we can help them complete their entire technology project or we can just send them that java developer who would be like that individual brick layer to help them achieve their technology goals so you're kind of like a coach behind the scenes trying to get out so literally knology and so what what type of projects have you done or that you do that you specialize in specifically so a lot of technology projects many people don't even realize happen behind the scenes we for example have worked with a company has developed over where of all technology that can help you be more energized or more relaxed we work with cloud hosting companies and managing their databases  we have a local company here in pittsburgh that we're helping to transform their databases on a retail level a lot of the the information was stored in a way that it could only be accessed for very specific needs and your queries had to be very direct in the information that you needed so people are looking for more interactive databases so that they can analyze their information a lot of different ways to determine sales trends and determine the best way to achieve they need and sell to their customers and also to help their clients so how long has it been around x and that is only been around for about seven years so august of sorry february of two thousand and eleven and you know we quickly very very quickly grew and we find that our clients just have this need one of the things that makes us a little bit unique is as a consulting firm we we don't just send the people that they need we really work hand in hand with them and become a partner with our clients to help them recognize what they need to be done we have a chief technology officer his name is ashley chose or he travels all around the world he meets with our clients but he's also developed would we have termed the center and that's a center where we research and we develop we have some of our own technologies but we also learn about what's happening in the technology world so we're constantly on top of what's out there and what's new and coming down the pipeline so we can make those recommendations to our clients so that what they're implementing isn't going to be dated technology updates what every second of the it sure does i can imagine you must have somebody who's just dedicated to just watching it and watching it come in every day and so what are the typical companies you know who would you suggest that was going to look in your company you know what's your primary focus on sure of cloud that's you know it's interesting because technology affects so many things of what we do in our daily lives our work lives we typically work with product firms and i t firms directly so while we might not be putting out the end product where we're putting together the technology that powers that end product i mentioned cloud hosting we're doing a lot in the medical sector right now health care and the way the information is stored and transmitted all needs to change to keep up with with what the people need and so there's a lot happening in retail and health care and word for word kind of in all those behind the scenes company and the cloud has become just integrated in everything from our email to storage for even small businesses that can be an overwhelming task especially with the amount of data that you'll need to nerds so might be nice to have somebody to help you along the way and that's when we find a lot of companies have a vision but they don't know exactly how to execute it and all the pieces that they're going to need to make that puzzle be complete so that's where we come in is we can help to guide them in their user experience in the technical details of the project in the timelines and the financial investments they're going to need to make in order to make their product become a success in the market and what do you see as the future growth of action you know we are continuing to grow locally as well as globally we are expected in the pittsburgh area to hire about ten people or so over the course of this year in this next month we're hiring for already so we have rapid growth happening it's very exciting we had a message go out on our what's app about hey does everybody know are we training on this new technology that's coming out so that continuous learning and growth and continuing to develop our own technologies as well so that we can really help to support our clients and so you have a new location for your headquarters c yet pittsburgh is our world headquarters pittsburgh is we're actually in was founded and what makes that really exciting for me is that i'm a pittsburgher and i left for a little bit and came back but we are so thrilled to be in the pittsburgh region and everything that's happening and the tech world in the pittsburgh area is just so exciting there's from carnegie mellon to pitt and startups that are coming out of the universities the fact that amazon my make this headquarters for them as well so there's so much happening in pittsburgh will continue to be our headquarters but our growth is expected to happen globally as well that's a great i mean pittsburgh has definitely taken a step to left and came back and when i came back i was like wow things that really upgraded around here so i mean technology being a huge huge factor in that so have you found that it's easier to get clients around the area because of all this technology technological growth you know i think that's the interesting thing is actually it is not a company that's advertised that worked a lot and we have found that our main hub of customers has been outside of pittsburgh and that's one thing that we continue to talk to local clients and work to build that that pittsburgh business and let those clients know that we can really help them and we're right here in their backyard so they don't need to go look for other companies that are out of the area because we have experts that we can send them from right here in the u s local touch to it really does and so worldwide how do you kind of is it word of mouth that you're getting out there into all of these different  it's a lot of it is word of mouth i think with any company you do a certain amount of cold calling and reach out as well a lot of it comes from our network and we have people who might be a c t o at one client event move to another client and they want to bring us along with them so we've had tremendous amount of success in that we pride ourselves on excellence being detail oriented and really focusing on being outcome oriented we're we're not there to send some people to tinker around in and just collect money from the customers but we want to build a partnership so we can help them get their product to market and so you know you yourself you're not one of the people behind the scenes with the technology front of them doing coding but you love the technology industry and so what can you tell people who want to get into the technology industry you know what can they do even if maybe they don't want to do coding where they do that that to me like you said it is my my passion i'm very excited about it because i am not a technologist at all i took a computer course when i was at penn state and i think i got  it was not my forte but what i think people in the us need to know is there's so many ways to be involved in the industry even if you're not a techie my first background is hospitality my second is human resources and understanding where the talents going in come from how we're going to keep our people engaged when there's such a lack of jobs and understanding that there is a talent shortage around whether you are a coder or whether your job when we return we will bring out andrea krueger director of people and culture initiatives at the pittsburgh technology coun sometimes it's hard to see where you're going but you have the power to change your problems all it takes is kind of your life your  voice and welcome back andrea thank you so much for coming on today thank you for having me mandy how you work with the pittsburgh technology council what can you tell me about the council itself ok great question the pittsburgh technology council is a nonprofit membership trade association we were founded thirty five years ago at a time when the region was suffering steel was dying people were losing their jobs it was really a sad time in this region history and some local industry leaders got together and said we need to do something about this we need to innovate we need to come together we need to talk about the future and so that's how the organization was founded and the mission today is to support the growth and development of technology companies in the region and that really was the mission back then and it's carried forward to this day there she is we were talking about how technology is growing i'm sure yes council of feeling a very exciting time to be in technology in pittsburgh for sure and so you have something new to him in readership program correct yes well so the council has four main focus areas for our members  first one is business development the second one is talent and culture the third is the government relations and the fourth is visibility of services so these are the areas that we have found that our members come to us for support and my responsibility at the tech council is to be in charge of programs and initiatives that support their people people issues and so we have partnered this is a second year we've partnered with christ from a line leadership to put on a nine month intensive career development leadership development program for women who are looking to there are their career to the next step wow so if it all technology base is that what they're learning is the focus is for women who are in technology now they might not be technical themselves they might work for a technology company and there's actually two opportunities there is a nine month program which i was fortunate enough to go through last year at the program started in january and went through september and it really was life changing it was focused on both personal and professional development and  fact last year when i went through the program i was in a membership role in the organization which was a great job and a lot of fun and i got to meet with our interesting members and and that as a result of the program i ended up getting a promotion a month and a half ago and so i say that i am living proof of this program because it really does you know help you build your your confidence your skills your executive presence your brand and sort of hone in on where you are and where you want to take your career and so your new role what what exactly is your new role within the company so my role is multifaceted but one of the top priorities is to help our companies attract and retain talent and so we have a number of different services and programs to help them ranging from an online career connector where they can post jobs and search resumes and then we have coming up on may ten will stem summit which stem is science technology engineering and math and so this is a pipeline program meaning we bring out students educators k through twelve students and educators to college and university but also we bring out business leaders to talk about career opportunities that are coming up in stem to prepare the students to help them get a better idea of what kinds of opportunities there are in things that they might want to pursue well i think that's expression important now with technology being i have i have a two year old and i one and a half he had a tablet r at their hands they're always using it and it's kind of like well how can they keep going with it beyond you know within their career where i get older right yeah there are so many different opportunities in the jobs of today are not going to be the jobs of tomorrow so it's important to be constantly thinking forward about what types of positions what types of skills are going to be needed and so that's the stem summit and a lot of the work of the tech council in my role in particular is to help uncover and identify and try to project what those needs are going to be and then have a pipeline to fill those and so are the students are you inviting through schools are you inviting through individuals or yes all of the above so we have a lot of schools colleges and universities as well as k through twelve that are members of the technology council and so we've invited them but we partner also with the science center and other local organizations that you know that are interested in stem and so we get the word out however we can something to mention about the tech council in general which i think there's you know there's might be some confusion in the marketplace is that even though we are the pittsburgh technology council it really is a place for all businesses whether you're technical to your product or service is a technical technical one all companies now use technology in their businesses so whether your company is a bank or a law firm or a high tech application development company there is a place for all companies and then also like amy was mentioning you know she started her career in human resources and there's opportunities for individuals within various functional roles within the organization so marketing or government relations or human resources so when we talk about the pittsburgh technology coun oftentimes people think oh well i'm not technical or my company isn't technical and in reality nowadays you know the technology is so pervasive that anyone and everyone is welcome to be involved in our organization and you know we're happy to support them in whatever way yeah i know that every company basically at this point has a website and if they don't they're probably one website and it's with social being fully integrated in so many companies  everybody is using technology on a daily basis of so i can understand that you know they need resources and this is a really good opportunity for them to learn and meet new people right and so how can they how can they get a membership so to get a membership you just need to go on to our web site p g h tech dot org and contact us fill out a form and someone will contact you and give you some information about how to get involved and you also do networking events well yes in fact we do over one hundred events a year in fact in fact last night we had one of our largest events which was our c e o of the year awards where we had somewhere around seven hundred people come out to celebrate the c i s and their teams and a variety of industries and it was a it was a really exciting event and i don't want to forget to mention that we did in conjunction with an organization called red chair pittsburgh which is focused on promoting women in technology we raised fifteen thousand dollars for that organization to offer scholarships to our edge leadership program under the summer experience so that that was pretty exciting and one of the highlights of the  so is there anything else that i haven't touched base on and you obviously know the pittsburgh technology council a lot better than i do but is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience about what you do for the future of  the one thing that i'll just leave you with is a lot of people don't even know that their company is a member of the technology council because maybe they're in i t and their marketing or business development people initiated the membership and so they'll say oh well i'm not a member of the tech council and i'll say yes you are your entire corporate staff as a member so if you're not sure if you're a member or not you might be and you don't even know it then just contact us and we can if you are a member we can get you   thank you andrea for being part of the program we have a fun technologies trivia contest coming up with both andrea and amy watch when we come  back here's something we bet you didn't know nearly half of all cancers can be prevented mostly by making changes in your diet controlling your weight and of course by not smoking does it prevent fifty dot org and get a free thirty day planner filled with tips recipes and more and welcome back this is my favorite part is the trivia part so we have andrea and amy we're going to be asking them a few trivia questions amy and andrea you guys already kind of know each other we sure do know and that's through t been members for years now the support that they give in the advice that they give us has really helped us to kind of shape our business schools and find ways to realize them too so it's it's been such a wonderful relationship and like and andrea said they have entered just amazing wonderful well i won't keep you guys to run here so what we're going to do now is a little trivia i want you to keep the answer in your mind and then i will you know i'll give you four for question one question for answers to choose from and don't don't say it right away because we want to make sure we have both of your answers before i tell you which ones right all right so the first one is for kind of it is static trivia or technology  is a radio a computer a telephone or a beeper timi what do you think i thought they had radios but i don't know the andrea will say beeper ok go ahead amy i'm going to go with me now andrea i think the web it was e mails so yes they actually used it within the military what is the percentage of the world's current or what percentage of the world's currency is digital sixty percent eighty percent fifty percent or ninety percent and yeah you go first this time that's a great question i'll say fifty percent ok i'll go sixty sixty it's actually eighty percent now isn't that not everything switching over i never have cash more so i can believe it ok ready this is really hard disk very difficult what is an x y indicator for display systems a keyboard arrow keys a fax machine or a printer