#Catalyst: Push The Envelope Fireside Chat & Lunch
March 11 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm MDT
FreePlease join The WICT Network, SCTE Rocky Mountain Chapter and Media Tech+Collective for a Fireside Chat & Lunch
#Catalyst: Push The Envelope
Event Highlights:
- 🍕 Lunch (on March 11, 2025 from 11:15 – 11:55 am MT): Lunch provided
- 🔥 Fireside Chat (on March 11, 2025 from 12 – 1 pm MT): Join us for an intimate discussion with Holly Hinze, Shashi Shamarao, Giovanni De Choudens, and Elena Ritchie.
This is a unique opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals, share experiences and celebrate the remarkable contributions of women and BIPOC professionals in our communities.
Holly Hinze
Vice President, Voice Product Management, Charter Communications
Holly is a dynamic telecommunications executive with 19 years in the cable industry, with diverse experience spanning the Residential, SMB, and Enterprise product portfolios. She is currently serving as Vice President of Voice Product Management for Spectrum, the number one Voice provider in the country. Holly has been instrumental leading the company’s product strategy and development initiatives including the launch of an innovative Unified Communications platform, and industry leadership with the FCC on combatting illegal robocalls. Early in her career Holly gained experience in Marketing and Recruiting leadership, and she is proud to have started her telecommunications journey as a sales representative for business products at Bright House Networks. This customer facing experience taught her invaluable understanding and respect for customer first principles, because she knows first-hand that products must be valuable and easy to use not only for our customers, but for our internal customer facing teams as well. Throughout her career, Holly has launched many new products, programs, and teams, and along the way has built a reputation for leading and promoting growth culture, trusted teamwork, customer first practices, and innovation. Holly leads innovation by example, and
she is a patented inventor for two patents at Spectrum; one in Wi-Fi and one in Voice, and she is excited to be working on a third. But most of all, Holly is immensely proud of the work she does with her team, mentors, mentees, and colleagues; learning and growing together in professional development and career growth. Helping employees grow has been both invaluable and personally rewarding for Holly for she genuinely believes as people grow, so does the business.
Elena Ritchie
SVP, Video, Charter Communications
As SVP, Video, Elena Ritchie leads the Design, Product, Programming Operations and Technology organizations responsible for Spectrum TV including the Xumo and Seamless Entertainment programs. Before taking this role in 2024, Ritchie led the Video Experience team (also at Charter) starting in 2017. Prior to joining Charter, she was VP TV Product Development and Strategy for NBCUniversal Content Distribution. Ritchie holds an MBA from the MIT-Sloan School of Management and a BA from Brown University.
Shashi Shamarao
Vice President of IP Video Operations, Charter Communications
Shashi Shamarao is an IT professional with over two decades of experience in various fields, including software development, architecture, testing, and operations management. She is currently the Vice President of IP Video Operations, where she oversees customer support, the buildout of production platforms on both public and private clouds, deployments, and the day-to-day maintenance of the Spectrum TV application. Before taking on her current role in operations, she led system integration testing, release management, and environment management within the Technology group at Charter. Prior to joining Charter, Shashi served as an advisory solutions architect at EMC Consulting, where she assisted financial clients in building public and hybrid cloud solutions. Shashi holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Telecommunications from Bangalore University, India.
Giovanni De Choudens
Group Vice President of Mobile Devices, Charter Communications
Giovanni De Choudens serves as Group Vice President of Mobile Devices responsible for Charter’s mobile device strategy, mobile device roadmap, lifecycle management, and OEM alliances partnerships. Additionally, Gio is responsible for simplifying and enhancing the experience for Spectrum Mobile customers by understanding competitive products and consumer trends to incorporate these insights into the product roadmap, ensuring alignment between the business strategy, business requirements and technical solutions. Gio joined Charter in 2018 as Vice President Alliance Management to lead, manage and drive alignment with the largest and most complex tech companies in the world. Shortly thereafter he increased the scope of Alliances with the addition of additional leading technology companies and peers in the industry such as Comcast and Cox leading a comprehensive strategic analysis of opportunities. Gio has over 25 years of sales, product and OEM management experience across sectors including consumer products, entertainment and telecommunications. He’s held leadership roles with Procter & Gamble, Clorox, Electronic Arts, Samsung and LeEco throughout his career. Gio holds a bachelors of business arts in marketing from the University of Puerto Rico.