Michelle Brenner

Unlock Your Engineering Team’s Full Potential

Michelle Brenner helps fellow engineers and business leaders boost collaboration and productivity and grow their careers. Discover why she’s the perfect speaker for your next event.

Michelle Brenner is a Professional Speaker who has presented at more than 30 conferences, from the Dominican Republic to Copenhagen. She helps engineers and teams that lack focus to maximize their ROI.

Michelle is an engineering leader with 13 years of experience who speaks regularly on team collaboration, career, and technical topics. She started in engineering support and now leads large-scale development projects. Her projects have included:

Feature films such as Arthur Christmas, Edge of Tomorrow, and Guardians of the Galaxy
Entertainment technology innovations such as Streamland’s (formally Technicolor’s) Pulse
Integrating online food ordering service ChowNow into Google Maps.
Empowering VFX & Animation artists to work from anywhere with Netflix Workstations (Blog) (Video)

Her focus is “Do More, Work Less” so we can all be efficient while enjoying our lives. You can see a sampling of her technical talks and career talks on YouTube, and discover what audiences and mentees say about their experiences working with her.

Book a call and make her a part of your next event.

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PyCaribbean

RockIt Women

3 habits to become employee of the year

Professional skills are rarely taught in school, even though they are as critical to career success as technical skills. In this talk, I will let you in on the 3 habits that have helped me and hundreds of people I have mentored to become superstar employees and fast-track their growth. Specifically, I will show you how to give meaningful feedback, enhance your brand, and create a thriving network within your industry. The secret is: it’s not just about you. It’s about transforming your team into a powerhouse and sending your ROI soaring.

Transform into an Industry Expert and Supercharge Your Career Growth

When you solve a technical problem by reading a blog post, watching a YouTube video or using an open source tool, it can seem like there are a world of experts who know more than you. In fact, those are all regular people just like you. It’s time to share your expertise. Not only will you be helping other people, you will be establishing your industry brand as an expert in your field. Your brand will help you land the projects, promotions and career growth you are looking for. This talk will help you generate ideas and get writing, filming and coding for your community.

Project management for engineers

Senior technologists are often tasked with “dealing with ambiguity”. It can be daunting to get started with project management when you are used to receiving tickets. This framework will walk through the entire project process, from ideation to presentation. It also includes practical exercises like the Impact Effort Matrix for planning and Success Statements for reporting. Finally, it will cover techniques for delighting stakeholders while keeping your teammates from burning out. Owning your project management means knowing you are doing the right work while having a broad impact.

Recent Audience Feedback

This had lots of tips that I want to share with my direct reports (and use myself!).

Audience Member

"Project Management for Engineers"

This session provides simple steps to be better at managing projects in teams.

Audience Member

"Project Management for Engineers"

Michelle provided me with concrete and actionable advice on how to distinguish myself in a competitive job market. Michelle also has an incredibly down-to-earth and authentic style.

Ari Denary

Software Engineer

Michelle knows how to synthesize and deliver a unique narrative in a concise, impactful, and powerful way. She also has the business savvy and know-how to help you demonstrate your value so you never settle in your career.

Ariana Thacker

Founder, bootup (among other roles)

Michelle is insightful, clever and full of good ideas! I met with Michelle to seek career advice. She offered several concrete steps to take to help achieve my goals. Now, I am moving forward with more confidence and a plan — I even had a recruiter from my dream company reach out to me!

Michelle Dicks

Lawyer

Michelle gave such helpful advice, not just for longer term but also immediate actionable steps.

Charlie Haag

Michelle provided pointers and resources about what to expect at my upcoming technical interview that involved whiteboarding. Michelle is one of those individuals who you can count on to learn a great deal from.

Christine L. Tran

Michelle’s presentation was one of my favorites during the entire conference. She spoke in a super easy to understand way about crafting success statements, and tracking their performance over time. I plan on using her concepts to setup my next salary conversation with confidence.

Jon Johnson

Thank you for organizing today’s session! It was very informative and I will definitely incorporate what I learned to my future interviews.

Arata Tomiyoshi Kagan

Full Stack Web Developer