Women in Tech

Lisa manages the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Transition and Internal Project Teams along with Project Managing EBS transition/migration projects and significant internal projects. Lisa is a Mechanical Engineer and worked in Aerospace for several years, specifically at the Kennedy Space Center in support of the NASA space shuttle, Grumman Aerospace, and Invacare Healthcare. Lisa is a certified high school Math teacher and holds an EIT for Mechanical Engineering. She’s had the opportunity to sit in the crew compartments of the Space Shuttle and several Naval and Airforce Aircrafts. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, practicing yoga and loves to travel and read.

Blanca is the SAP Basis Manager SAP for BAT B at Syntax and has over 10 years of experience in SAP Basis topics including installation, administration, and technical support for SAP solutions. She is a Solution Manager expert running SAP implementation for E2E, job monitoring, business process monitoring, system monitoring and more. She holds an Administration Master Degree and Electronic and Communications Engineering Degree. She is an SAP Certified Technology Associate and has completed extensive SAP on AWS training. In her free time, Blanca enjoys watching the NFL, playing video games and reading books.

As a member of the Business Intelligence team at Syntax, Jennifer assists clients in leveraging their Oracle investment through her focus on the Oracle Hyperion Managed Services practice, which includes offerings such as Managed Services/Projects, Heath Check/Wellness Assessments, Upgrades/Patching, and Training. Having worked with Oracle’s Hyperion products for 20+ years, Jennifer is an Oracle Hyperion Certified Professional and Certified Instructor (123OLAP). Prior to joining EmeraldCube in 2019 (acquired by Syntax), she ran a successful independent practice for 19 years where she was also an instructor and content contributor for Oracle based training. She is an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner with a focus on AWS QuickSight and AWS Forecast. Jennifer played college basketball at Troy University and enjoys coaching youth travel basketball.

Lorraine is the Vice President of Innovation and Continuous Improvement at Illumiti, a Syntax company. She is responsible for evaluating any new technologies and solutions released by SAP and is very intricately involved in determining how clients can effectively and affordably benefit from SAP innovations. Before joining the SAP family in 1997, Lorraine was a secondary school math and science teacher, and thereafter was awarded a Doctorate in Nuclear Physics and lectured Physics at the University of South Africa for seven years. As an independent in the SAP world, she was a project manager on many key accounts before joining Illumiti in 2008 to lead the consulting finance team, before moving into business intelligence and subsequently her current innovation role. Lorraine has two sons, two beautiful grandchildren, and an incredible golden retriever named Simba. Outside of work she loves jogging and has participated in many marathons (40+) and ultra-distance runs, as well as dabbling in neuroscience and mindfulness.

Shoshana is PmP Certified and has ownership of Illumiti’s Continuous Improvement Program. The goal of the program is to help clients maximize the return on their SAP investment. Through the program her and the team execute Client Health Checks, Value Assessments and our Power of Next offering which helps clients plan and build a business case for their move to S/4HANA. She previously worked at Omni Logic Systems Group, PwC Consulting, and IBM. She is a mother of 2 boys and a goldendoodle and is an extreme tennis fan.

As a Regional Sales Director at Syntax, Cynthia is responsible to market and sell Syntax’s solutions to Oracle customers within her territory. She works closely with inside sales and marketing with an objective to grow the customer base by identifying new target customers and opportunities and cross selling the Syntax solution portfolio to existing customers. Previously, Cynthia held Account Manager and Business Analyst roles in various technology companies, and she holds several AWS certifications in the areas of cloud economics and technology.

In her free time, she loves traveling and has visited 30 countries to date.

Esmirna has been a Syntax team member for nearly 5 years and as HR Director, is responsible for managing the entire employee experience for Syntax Mexico. Her goal is to provide employees with the best opportunity for professional and personal growth. With experience in recruitment, training, payroll, compensation & benefits, organizational development, communication, and healthy and safety, Esmirna has vast knowledge to lead her team. She holds a Master’s Degree in Human Resources, a Foreign Trade Bachelor Degree and is ITIL, v3 certified. In her free time, Esmirna enjoys American football, tennis, bike riding and dance. She is also a passionate philanthropist and volunteers with different organizations who support the homeless, education and children.

Despite holding a Bachelor of Arts – English degree, Sarah has over 16 years of JD Edwards technical and management experience. During a recent M&A, she combined two similar technical teams from two merging organizations into a single team of more than 50 JD Edwards Managed Services resources at Syntax, spanning technical, database, development, and application support. Sarah subscribes to four guiding principles for her team – curiosity, transparency, simplicity, and humility – and she strives to live out those requirements in her own professional life. She has been very active with Quest, the JD Edwards customer user group, as a board member for both the HCM (Human Capital Management) SIG and Training SIG (special interest group). In January 2021, Sarah was awarded the Syntax Founder’s Award for her dedication to the success of Syntax and Syntax’s customers and the development and growth of her team and all the teams at Syntax.

Mahvish began her career with Syntax in 2011 as a Budget Analyst before she was promoted to Controller and then Global FP&A. In her current role as Senior Manager FP&A for Americas, she is responsible for the Americas region’s internal financial reporting, forecasting, and planning. She provides the Executive team with key analysis and information, including company performance, economic trends and potential risks. Mahvish is a member of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and has been a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) since 2012. If Mahvish were not a finance professional, she would be a musician or an artist. She believes finance is not just about numbers, but is a rhythm of art and sciences combined to find a story behind the numbers.

Karina is a member of the FP&A Team and manages everything related to sales and revenue for the region. She is involved with the sales team as tracks bookings, pipeline, new revenue, churn and commissions. Prior to working at Syntax, she worked in audit at Ernst & Young for 3 years. Since joining Syntax in 2017, she has held various roles in the Finance organization from Financial Analyst to Controller to FP&A and is a certified CPA Auditor. Karina is perfectly bilingual as she grew up speaking English at home with her parents and family but went to French school from Pre-K to University.

Brenda is a lead for the Virtualization Team in Puebla, Mexico, which is responsible for Private Cloud Infrastructure services that include management of VMware environment for Syntax customers with vCenter, ESXi hosts, virtual machines, and all dependent components. They also execute Disaster Recovery exercises including Zerto migrations. In her role she is responsible for supervising and assigning daily operational and project tasks to each member of the team. Brenda has been a Windows Server Administrator for more than 7 years and was previously on the Windows OS Team at Syntax and worked as Delivery Order Manager. She holds certifications in MCP, MCSA and ITIL Foundation, as well as extensive training accomplishments with Azure, AWS, McAfee and PMI. In her free time, she loves traveling, meeting new people, learning other languages and dancing.

Kristina’s role includes opportunity identification, art of the possible, facilitated design, development handover and delivery support. She previously worked for 20 years at SAP as a Lead Solution Architect, mostly in Reliability & Maintenance. She is SAP Pre-Sales Certified and MSHA Certified. Her husband and her are currently in the process of building Airbnb cabins in West Virginia.