Power Women of DC Tech!
Roselle Safran
Uplevel Security
Roselle Safran’s cybersecurity career goes back 12 years, when she started in computer forensics. Before launching Uplevel Security, which uses graph intelligence to help enterprises and government agencies respond to cyber attacks more quickly and accurately, she worked at the Executive Office of the President. As the cybersecurity operations branch chief, she was responsible for protecting and defending the network used by the White House.
In her prior job, she managed the malware and forensics analysis team at DHS’s US-CERT. She soon realized that the process security teams go through to respond to cyber attacks was inefficient and created a bottleneck. So she created her own solution by launching Uplevel.
The idea has become a full-fledged, venture-backed company that’s grown to a team of six, with more to come. The company has been working closely with large enterprises, including Fortune 1000 businesses, while in beta and is now weeks away from launching its product.
Lesson: The team is critical to the success of the company. You have to be able to get along with the people you work with and have an environment where everyone's opinion is heard and respected.
Hometown: Long Island, NY
Current home: Capitol Hill
Free time: Spends it with her daughter.
Bucket list: Write a screen play.
Favorite book: Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Favorite restaurant: Ethiopic on H St.
Drink of choice: Rosé
Family: 18-month-old daughter
Startling fact: She’s a travel addict and has been to over 50 countries, including hiking at the foot of the Himalayas in Nepal.
Emily Rasowsky
Social Driver
Emily Rasowsky has two big roles in DC: marketing director of Social Driver, a digital marketing agency, and founder of All Women in Tech, which organizes virtual events on diversity and inclusion in the tech world and profiles women thriving in the space.
Some of her recent career highlights include leading her first huge pitch. She was the youngest person at the table but she found the nerve-racking experience empowering as she gained respect from seasoned professionals in the field. She also led a social media campaign for DC at SXSW last year.
Social Driver recently launched a new social analytics and strategy reporting service. And All Women in Tech recently held a 100% digital event with African American Women in STEM. Participants included women from the White House, NASA, the Department of Energy and several entrepreneurs.
Lesson: Before you can be there for other people, you need to show up for yourself. Set boundaries and have a clear sense of what you can and cannot do.
Hometown: Las Vegas
Current home: Logan Circle
Free time: Teach yoga and spend time with friends and family
Bucket list: Hike the Himalayas.
Favorite books: Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt and Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Favorite restaurant: Acqua AI 2
Drink of choice: Whisky ginger or red wine
Startling fact: She took trapeze lessons as a kid.
Carolyn Parent
LiveSafe
Carolyn Parent says her tech career started because of serendipity. She majored in liberal arts and loved sales and business development. She talked to a software company at a campus job fair that friends had already joined and ended up also getting hired. Her first job was as a junior sales associate and she was immediately hooked.
Since then she has launched and run Gravy, a marketing analytics firm that tracks consumer interests, and served as GM at Deltek, an enterprise software and information solutions firm, during its rapid growth and IPO. She recently snagged her most senior level position as CEO of LiveSafe, a mobile safety platform for crowdsourcing intelligence that prevents incidents and directly connects people to the help they need.
The company recently generated some buzz when police in Delaware created a video to Drake’s Hotline Bling called Copline Bling to encourage University of Delaware students to use LiveSafe’s crime reporting app. LiveSafe also recently upgraded its platform to allow companies to send emergency messages to employees in a certain geographic area.
Lesson: Nothing lasts forever, good or bad. Work through the challenging times and make sure to savor the good ones.
Hometown: Baltimore
Current home: Leesburg
Free time: Spends it with family, including attending daughter’s equestrian events and going to family beach house in Ocean City, Md.
Bucket list: Climb Machu Picchu
Favorite book: Lincoln on Law, Leadership, and Life by Jonathan White
Favorite restaurant: The Source in Penn Quarter
Drink of choice: Champagne
Family: Married 24 years; two kids (21 and 17); four dogs and one horse.
Most people don’t know: She writes poetry.
Startling fact: Carolyn and her husband were on one of the first TV reality shows. It was about getting married in the '90s.
