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Cornell Tech Welcomes Josh Hartmann as CPO

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NEW YORK – Cornell Tech announced today that Josh Hartmann has joined the campus as its first Chief Practice Officer. In this position, Hartmann will be responsible for leading Cornell Tech academic activities that bridge graduate education and practical implementation. Previously, Hartmann held interdisciplinary leadership positions serving as former Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer at several tech companies including Amplify and Travelocity. He will bring a broad range of industry knowledge in travel, education, and media, to Cornell Tech.

“I’m delighted to welcome Josh to lead Cornell Tech’s mission fusing education and practice,” said Dan Huttenlocher, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost, Cornell Tech. “His experience in spearheading growth at tech-driven companies will allow him to guide Cornell Tech’s hands-on curriculum. Josh is a thoughtful, inquisitive tech leader, who has worked in a variety of industries, and will serve as a valuable asset for Cornell Tech students.”

“I am honored to join the Cornell Tech team in its undertaking to create the next generations of leaders and technologies in New York City,” said Hartmann. “Cornell Tech’s thoughtful integration of practical skills into its curriculum will set graduates up for extraordinary success.”

Hartmann will serve as the primary practitioner faculty member at Cornell Tech dedicated to implementing and designing pragmatic courses and programs that will combine traditional graduate education and digital-age practice. Hartmann will also be leading and teaching in the Cornell Tech Studio—taking over for Greg Pass, former CTO of Twitter who has led the Studio as Chief Entrepreneurial Officer at Cornell Tech since its founding in 2012—an interdisciplinary curriculum which provides opportunities to develop, implement and build new product and business ideas, collaborate with classmates from across the Cornell Tech campus, and interact with innovators and thought leaders among New York City’s thriving technology and startup communities.

About Cornell Tech

Cornell Tech brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary results grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live in the digital age. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute embodies the academic partnership between the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University on the Cornell Tech campus.

From 2012-2017, the campus was temporarily located in Google’s New York City building. In fall 2017, 30 world-class faculty and almost 300 graduate students moved to the first phase of Cornell Tech’s permanent campus on Roosevelt Island, continuing to conduct groundbreaking research, collaborate extensively with tech-oriented companies and organizations and pursue their own startups. When fully completed, the campus will include two million square feet of state-of-the-art buildings, over two acres of open space, and will be home to more than 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff.

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Deborah Estrin, Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech and Professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell, has been named the 2017 IEEE Internet Award Recipient. Sponsored by the Nokia Corporation, the award is given for exceptional contributions to the advancement of Internet technology. Specifically, Estrin was selected for “formative contributions and thought leadership in Internet routing and in mobile sensing techniques and applications, from environmental monitoring to personal and community health.” IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

Estrin is the founder of Health Tech Hub and directs the Small Data Lab at Cornell Tech, which develops new personal data APIs and applications for individuals to harvest the small data traces they generate daily. She is the co-founder of the non-profit startup, Open mHealth.

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by Renee Esses

In June, WiTNY kicked off the first “Summer Conversation” for this year’s interns. Each week the WiTNY interns come together from various work locations for an intimate conversation with a leader in the tech fields. Our first guest was Katy Kasmai. Katy currently works as a senior engineering program manager at Google. She is also the founder of Team Exponent, an organization that aims to solve the world’s largest problems.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that Katy was so inspiring and relatable. One of my favorite things about Katy was her honesty — hearing her say things along the lines of, “when I started taking computer science classes and working in the field, I hated it. There was no valuable interaction, nobody like me.”

That statement truly resonated with me. The idea of studying computer science only to find myself alone in a cubicle somewhere has always been a fear of mine. But I realized during the talk that, just like Katy, that fear is not an accurate portrait of my future. Katy served as a bold reminder that if you’re motivated, there are so many dynamic opportunities in tech — projects that can make a huge impact in the world.

I learned three more key lessons from Katy throughout her talk:

Embrace Teamwork

As a woman in the field, Katy was able to offer a lot of insight into what it’s like working with (and above) teams of mostly men. Throughout her career, Katy has witnessed many times that people will take advantage of you if you let them. Some people will often try to delegate administrative tasks to women simply because they’re women. But women are just as capable and valuable as men, and our ideas matter. Don’t be afraid to say no. Sometimes, you have to stick up for yourself in order to gain respect from your teammates.

Learn Confidence

Of course, a key factor in gaining respect from others is having confidence in yourself. If you portray your ideas with confidence, people will believe you. For many of us, however, this isn’t easy. Katy, a natural introvert, forced herself to attend meet ups in the tech field to connect with others. She had to become comfortable speaking to others, as English is not her first language. She forced herself to get out and learn both the technical skills and the personal skills that she is now passing on to others.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

With Team Exponent, Katy is encouraging others to think exponentially and come up with potential solutions to the greatest problems facing humanity. When asked if you should first try to be “qualified” or trained in the problem you’re trying to solve, Katy responded that sometimes it’s better to just jump right in. You’d be surprised by the solutions that young kids can come up with to problems they barely know anything about. Creativity is often just as important as the background knowledge that you can learn as you go. So don’t be afraid that you don’t know enough. Failing is part of the process.

We all left the conversation feeling empowered, like we as women can belong in this field, and together, we can make a difference. We were honored to have Katy Kasmai come speak with us and answer all our questions, and we look forward to the rest of the summer conversation series.

ABOUT ME
I earned my BS degree in multimedia computing from Macaulay Honors at CUNY Brooklyn College. This Fall I will be pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at Cornell Tech, and I am honored and excited to be receiving a generous WiTNY scholarship. I also now have a WiTNY summer internship doing research at Cornell Tech, providing me not only with work experience, but with the opportunity to meet a community of interns who are female CUNY students just like me.

ABOUT WiTNY
Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in New York (WiTNY) is a new initiative between Cornell Tech and CUNY that is aimed at facilitating, encouraging, and enabling a significant increase in the participation of women in the tech fields in New York.

Some ways WiTNY is going about this is by offering financial scholarships and paid internships, as well as facilitating opportunities for young women in tech to connect with each other. This allows the women involved to create a community with each other, learn from interesting professionals in the tech fields, gain some real world experience working for WiTNY’s partner companies, and expand their education without having to worry about financing it.

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by Diane Levitt, Senior Director of K-12 education at Cornell Tech

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for the honor of being part of this magical day.

Before I start my talk, I’d like to say to the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, guardians, teachers, friends and champions of these graduates: Congratulations. This is HUGE. As a mom, I know how much it took to get here. You are amazing. When we shine the light on these girls, we’re shining a light on you, too.

Several months ago, I was lucky enough to host some of today’s graduates for a visit to Cornell Tech. We talked about what you love about Girls Prep, and what you think you might not miss about Girls Prep (but I bet you will- I won’t give away any secrets, but it’s possible some graduates think a certain chant is “corny.”) You talked about what you’ve learned, what you want to study, and want to do with your future. You have some exciting plans. One of the things I was most moved by is how many of you are thinking about how you can use your big brains and your big hearts to change the world.

You know, when you hear that phrase—“Change the world”—it sounds a little overwhelming. The first thing I want to tell you is, there are lots of ways to change the world. Absolutely we all think about solving big heartbreaking world problems, like disease, hunger, homelessness. And for those of you who find your passion there, you will go for it. But there are smaller, much smaller worlds to change. Many of you told me about teachers here at Girls Prep who changed your world. Sometimes, working for a business, you can create a product, or transform a process, that changes the world for your employer, your coworkers, or your customers (or for your own business). You can do a favor for a friend, or a stranger. You can give money to a cause you care about, or volunteer your time to help others. Each of those small things can change the world for people you may never meet, in ways you may never know.

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But I have something else to say to you about changing the world. You are smart, well- educated young women. Many of you are young women of color. When you graduate from the excellent high schools you’ll be attending and go to college, some of you may find yourselves in the minority in your classes. This is especially true if you go into a STEM field. Science, technology, engineering and math classrooms are still mostly white and male—– although YOU are going to help change that, right?

And when you graduate from that excellent college and enter the world of work, you may find yourself in an even smaller minority. My daughter, for instance, graduated college with a computer science degree and got a job right away working for a wedding website. She’s the only woman on the software development team. And it’s a wedding website!

You might look around you in these classrooms and offices and say, do I belong here? And the answer is, YES!

Some people say that the reason there are so few women and people of color in tech is because, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” What they mean is, it’s hard for young people to imagine a future for themselves when they don’t know or see people who look like them doing the jobs they might want to do. And that might be true. But hard is not the same thing as impossible.

You can’t be what you can’t see, they say.

But if Harriet Tubman couldn’t be what she couldn’t see, there would be no underground railroad, and thousands of slaves would have lost their chance for freedom.

If Hilda Solis couldn’t be what she couldn’t see, she would never have been the first Latina to serve in the California State Senate or the first Latina to serve in a presidential cabinet as President Obama’s Secretary of Labor.

Sandra Day O’Connor would never have become a Supreme Court judge. When she was named to the Supreme Court in 1981, there weren’t even women’s restrooms in the judges’ offices! Twenty nine years later, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice. For sure she’d never seen anyone like her do that.

Hedy Lamarr was a famous actress who appeared in 18 Hollywood movies, but if she couldn’t be what she couldn’t see, she wouldn’t have invented the technology that made cell phones possible fifty years later—yes: a Hollywood actress and a scientist! People said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I guarantee she never saw anyone like her do what she did.

Misty Copeland would never be a principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater.

Oprah Winfrey would never be—well, Oprah Winfrey. Because there’s never been anyone like her before.

And that’s my point. There’s never been anyone like YOU before. And I don’t want you to put your dreams on a shelf because you can’t see people who look like you doing what you want to do. Sometimes to change the world, you can ONLY be what you can’t see. You can only reach into your dreams, your passions, your imagination to create your own reality.

Plenty of people of have done this, famous and not. Every invention, every innovation, EVERY great idea came from someone seeing themselves in the world as it can be, not only as it is.

So here’s your job. Go to high school. Study hard and pay attention to three things: What you love, what you’re good at, and what you care about. I’m going to repeat that: What you love, what you’re good at, and what you care about. Because when you’re done with high school, you’re going to college. And there, you’re going to look for those same three things: What you love, what you’re good at, and what you care about. And when you graduate from college (and you WILL graduate from college), you’re going to head in the direction those three things take you. Not in the direction people tell you to go–even the people who love you in this room today. Not in the direction of people who look like you, or act like you, or dress like you. In the direction of YOU.

Harriet Tubman said, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

So, look inside yourself. You can be exactly what you see there. You go be what I can’t see. Thank you.

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When the latest baby monitor on the market went on sale earlier this month it was a big milestone for the Runway Startup Postdoc program at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. Nanit, a smart baby monitor with potential for wide application, launched on June 15 with $6.6 million in startup funding. Assaf Glazer, a member of the first cohort of Runway Startup Postdocs, used the mentorship and financial support he received while at the Institute to launch Nanit. The monitor uses machine learning to provide sleep insights through first-of-its-kind camera vision. Nanit provides comprehensive sleep reports that actually measure a baby’s behavior throughout the night without requiring any kind of wearable component.

CBS New York:  ‘Nanit’ Baby Monitor Could Improve Sleep Quality For You And Your Baby

As this segment on CBS New York notes, how a baby sleeps affects the entire family. On average, parents lose 44 days of sleep during the first year of their baby’s life and nearly 3 in 10 babies is reported to have problems sleeping at night, according to Glazer. He saw that there was a need for a technology that both better measured infant sleep, but also provided parents with actionable information that would not only improve their child’s sleep, but their sleep as well.

Other media coverage:
Forbes
Parent Herald
Geektime
Digital Trends
FinSMEs
VentureBeat
The Verge
TechCrunch
International Business Times UK
Engadget
Gizmag
Business Insider

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