Bringing people together around technology, enabling startups.

Yulia Ovchinnikova, PhD is a growth & business development professional, tech entrepreneur and strategist, a thought leader, educator, consultant, and a community manager, primarily working with the technology and Internet industry. Yulia helps to build the Hudson Valley tech community by participating with and contributing to many local organizations including, the HVTM (3,000+ members), the Google Developer Group HV (900+), running HV Startups meetup and business workshops (500+) and founding local Coding Club (800+), enabling #HudsonValleyCanCode initiative since 2016. She is a key-connector for Hudson Valley tech entrepreneurs and a recognized tech community leader.

Yulia was the first woman elected to the Top Level Country Internet Domain .RU Council and the first woman elected as president of the Russian Foundation of Open Source Software. She starts as web-developer in 1995, and she was leading web-development teams across all her following jobs, including publishing platform (IKS-Media), consulting (KPMG), few startups (Rosa Lab, iTrend, OpenHub), As a team lead she won a Google Hackathon’s audience award in 2015.

That led her to implementing the idea of matching similar minded people in tech together for personal and professional growth. She became the key driving force for the professional tech and startups network in Hudson Valley. Utilizing her experience, her skills and knowledge she founded OpenHub Corp, a technology think tank and training center in the Hudson Valley.

She organizes the annual Hudson Valley Tech Festival and Hackathon - HVTechFest / DevFest - HVTechFest.com

She holds a PhD in Economics from Russian Academy of Science and a MA in Applied Mathematics & Computer Science from Moscow State Technical University of Electronics & Mathematics.

Theatre artist turned software engineer, Julianna is currently the Director of Engineering at 2U/EdX leading a team of engineers focused on building software for capturing prospective student data. She spends her free time cooking and devising low-waste recipes, teaching or practicing yoga, and training for her next marathon. Before changing careers into tech, she taught Media Arts throughout New York City public schools. She holds an MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College, an MS in Computer Science from Syracuse University and is contemplating one more graduate degree. Julianna believes anyone has the ability to learn any subject if it is broken down into digestible parts.