Strategic Panel Member

 Manager, IT Pro Evangelist team, Developer & Platform Group, Microsoft UK

Eileen Brown moved into IT after spending 10 years as a navigating officer in the Merchant Navy. She moved into IT at a containership company, migrating the company from their Mainframe email system to MSMail.

She joined Microsoft in 2001 in the Mission Critical Windows team. She now works in the Developer and Platform Evangelism group, managing the team of Technical Evangelists. She is technically responsible for Unified Communications technologies and maintains a successful blog.

As the only technical woman in her group she is keen to promote the advancement of women in IT and to this end has started the "Connecting women in Technology initiative" collaborating with eight IT companies which compete in areas of business, but work together to celebrate the advancement of women in the enterprise, provide inspirational role models and mentors to women who wish to further their careers.

However, her life isn't spent entirely at her laptop. Away from work, she makes jam and chutney in awesome quantities, tends her flock of chickens, and grows organic vegetables and fruit and races around the countryside in her home-built 6.6 litre cobra replica car. As much as possible, whenever she encounters warmer waters, she scuba dives as much as possible to get away from the phone...