SACOT Summit
On November 21st, 2019, SACOT presented the SACOT Summit, featuring a panel, but with a twist! The first half of the event featured a traditional panel of industry professionals, legislators, and policy makers answering questions from an audience of STEM students. The twist comes in from the latter half of the panel, when a select number of students switched with the professional panel to answer the questions of curious adults. This gave the industry professionals the opportunity to glean information from the younger generation and the people that they are impacting.
Our panel consisted of these people pictured above. Read below for a further description of who spoke at this event!
Panelists
Vikki Goodwin
Texas House District 47
Vikki Goodwin represents Texas House District 47 in western and far south Travis County. As a member of the state House in the 86th Legislative Session, she was successful in passing a number of bills that serve her district and the state. She was a co-author of landmark school finance reform (HB 3), as well as the law boosting retired teacher pay (SB 12). In addition, she authored and sponsored five bills directly affecting HD47 that became law. In the upcoming session, Vikki will continue to advocate for the people of her district, the environment, a strong economy, and a sound budget through her work in the Texas House. After graduating from the University of Texas with a BBA—and the LBJ School of Public Affairs with a master’s degree—Vikki remained in Austin and raised her children. A long-time resident of Shady Hollow, Vikki has been very active in her community, serving on HOA Boards, civic club boards, ABOR committees, on an AISD task force and more.
Caroline Joiner
Public Policy, Amazon
Caroline Joiner has more than two decades of experience in government affairs, political consulting, grassroots organizing and strategic communications. From 2014 to 2018, Caroline served as Executive Director for TechNet, the national, bi-partisan association of technology companies. In this role, she oversaw TechNet’s state advocacy and political activities in Texas and the southeast, and managed issue advocacy, government affairs, events, policy analysis, media affairs, political fundraising, membership relations and coalition building. She raised the organization’s profile by securing significant legislative victories on education and workforce, privacy, cybersecurity and procurement. She currently works for Public Policy at Amazon.
Dan Mantz
CEO, Robotics Education & Competition Foundation
Dan Mantz is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board for the Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation, and has more than 25 years of engineering experience. The REC Foundation is one of the world’s leading science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) nonprofit organization whose mission is to spark student interest and involvement by engaging students through hands-on, affordable, and sustainable curriculum-based robotics and workforce development programs. This includes classroom integration and thousands of yearly robotics competitions—including the world's largest robotics competition, the VEX Robotics World Championship. Prior to joining the REC Foundation in 2017, Dan was President of Rack Solutions, a leading developer and manufacturer of data center and IT products. He previously spent 19 years in the industrial robotics industry at FANUC Robotics, first as an engineer and later as Director of Product Development.
Susan Ashmore
FIRST in Texas
Since attending UT Austin and earning a BBA in Accounting from UTSA, Ashmore has built a reputation as a leader committed to excellence. She has served as Procurement and Contract Specialist, Contract Manager, Director of Procurement, Technology, and Facilities, Program Director, and Deputy Director (of a large entity with $77 million in annual revenues) for a variety of non-profit and quasi-governmental organizations. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, and the State of Texas named her a subject-matter expert for a half-billion-dollar program. Still, her most significant accomplishments are highlighted in the programs she has implemented. “Our STEM Career Awareness Days targeted juniors and seniors at area high schools…. The feedback and tweets from the youth were amazing,” Ashmore says. They provided scholarships to various school districts to cover the cost of transportation, as they invited students from a 13-county area. Not only that, “We had a program called Externships for Teachers that has won at least one award each year we have operated the program” from organizations like the Texas Economic Development Council, the International Economic Development Council, and the Texas Workforce Commission.
