Sarah Wimberley
Principal & Founder, Ulster Technologies
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
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Sarah F. Wimberley is a strategic technology executive with a multidisciplinary background spanning enterprise architecture, technology consulting, AI governance, privacy, and organizational strategy. She has a proven ability to develop enterprise roadmaps, guide executive decision-making, and lead cross-functional transformation initiatives that balance innovation, compliance, and customer trust. Sarah brings a collaborative leadership style, strong business acumen, and extensive experience communicating complex technical concepts to executives, boards, and diverse stakeholder groups.
A graduate of Rosemont College with a Master’s in Strategic Leadership, Sarah is also an active volunteer, serving on various boards and committees, including as President of Village on the Ridge and a Co-Leader and Higher Award Coach for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.
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Strong People Need Strong Systems: Why Transformation Fails When We Compensate
Organizations often respond to change by asking employees to become more resilient, adaptable, collaborative, and innovative. But what if the people are not the problem?
Many challenges labeled as resistance, disengagement, burnout, or poor adoption are symptoms of the systems surrounding employees: unclear decisions, competing priorities, disconnected processes, technology friction, misaligned incentives, and change being done to people rather than with them.
Drawing from enterprise architecture, Lean thinking, and organizational change management, this keynote challenges leaders to stop asking strong people to compensate for weak systems. Attendees will learn to recognize when an apparent people problem is actually a system problem, examine the ripple effects of organizational decisions, and use a practical people-process-technology lens to design change that makes work better rather than simply asking employees to endure more of it.
This session's learning objectives:
1. Distinguish between individual performance or adoption challenges and underlying systemic barriers affecting employees.
2. Apply a people, process, and technology lens to identify organizational dependencies and unintended consequences before implementing change.
3. Use systems thinking and root-cause principles to move beyond symptoms and identify opportunities for sustainable organizational improvement.
4. Identify ways HR and people leaders can influence system design so employees are better positioned to succeed through transformation.
Practical Takweaways:
1. Diagnose system problems before prescribing people solutions. Apply a practical people-process-technology framework to distinguish individual performance or engagement challenges from underlying organizational issues such as unclear accountability, competing priorities, inefficient workflows and technology friction.
2. Map the ripple effects of organizational decisions. Use a simple impact-mapping exercise to identify how a proposed change affects employees, processes, technology, stakeholders, and interconnected teams before implementation.
3. Apply Lean root-cause analysis to recurring workplace challenges. Use techniques such as the Five Whys to move beyond symptoms like burnout, resistance, or poor adoption and identify organizational conditions that leaders can address.
4. Design change with employees rather than for them. Develop a stakeholder engagement approach that incorporates frontline perspectives early, identifies unintended consequences, and establishes measurable indicators of successful adoption.
Bring Your Own Bottleneck: An Agile & Lean Six Sigma Workshop
Agile helps teams adapt and deliver quickly. Lean Six Sigma helps them understand what is slowing them down, identify root causes, reduce waste, and measure whether change actually works. Together, they provide a practical toolkit for improving complex technical delivery systems.
In this interactive workshop, participants will explore how Agile and Lean Six Sigma techniques can complement one another across real-world challenges such as CI/CD bottlenecks, technical debt, software quality, data reliability, security, AI-augmented delivery, and customer experience. Rather than spending the session learning frameworks in isolation, participants will apply practical techniques for defining problems, examining data, identifying root causes, experimenting with improvements, and creating sustainable feedback loops.
Most importantly, participants will bring their own challenges to the table. Working collaboratively, the group will crowdsource ideas, challenge assumptions, and apply Agile and Lean Six Sigma thinking to problems attendees are facing in their own teams and organizations. Participants will leave with new approaches to their own problem, practical techniques they can reuse with their teams, and a better understanding of when to lean into Agile, Lean Six Sigma—or both.
This session is co-presented with Ivan Milanov: https://sessionize.com/ivan-milanov
Key takeaways:
-Diagnose a real technical or delivery challenge by identifying waste, bottlenecks, symptoms, and potential root causes.
-Select and apply Agile and Lean Six Sigma techniques appropriate to the problem rather than defaulting to a single methodology.
-Use data and measurable outcomes to evaluate proposed improvements, instead of relying primarily on assumptions or activity metrics.
-Crowdsource solutions with other practitioners, using different technical and organizational perspectives to challenge assumptions and uncover alternatives.
-Leave with an actionable experiment that can be tested with their team or organization and measured for impact.
Facing the Future: Three Ways to Proactively Manage Change
People, process, and technology – it’s that simple. A structured, proactive approach to change management can make all the difference when it comes to enabling and empowering AI adoption, responding in times of crisis and navigating organizational and personal change.
In this session we’ll discuss, through real use cases, how the understanding and balance of people, process, and technology is what keeps us sane, makes high-performing teams tick, and organizations succeed.
This session qualifies for CEUs.
Learning objectives:
1. Identify potential change impacts, dependencies, and risks before implementation begins.
2. Apply a people, process, and technology lens to evaluate organizational change more holistically.
3. Use stakeholder engagement and active listening to uncover current-state challenges and barriers to adoption.
4. Translate strategic objectives into measurable outcomes and actionable implementation priorities.
5. Develop feedback loops and success measures that support adoption, continuous improvement, and sustainable change.
Three Lessons from a Woman in Enterprise Architecture
Women remain significantly underrepresented in enterprise architecture and technical leadership roles, yet organizations increasingly need leaders who can bridge people, process, technology, and strategy—especially in the age of AI transformation. But, this is not just a talk about enterprise architecture—it is a conversation about courage, purpose, leadership, and creating space for more people to thrive in technology.
In this candid and engaging session, I'll share my unconventional journey from art school and creative work into enterprise architecture leadership. Attendees will explore three powerful lessons that apply far beyond IT: be curious, be authentic, and be flawed.
This session challenges traditional assumptions about who belongs in architecture and leadership roles while highlighting why organizations benefit from hiring individuals with diverse backgrounds, nonlinear career paths, and varied lived experiences. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for building confidence, navigating change, fostering trust, supporting psychological safety, and transforming perceived weaknesses into professional strengths.
Session guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DDizcpLph2v0sdG9oliwmPpYSH9oWyExzwXwn4RZDrU/edit?usp=sharing
Attendees will learn:
-Why curiosity is a competitive advantage in technology and leadership
-How authenticity strengthens influence, trust, and collaboration
-Why embracing imperfection improves innovation and resilience
-How hiring managers can better support and retain diverse talent
-Practical ways to pursue ambitious goals despite fear and uncertainty
Watch the session from the 2026 NDC Conference in Toronto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlHW5aoO0fw
Watch the session from 2026 MacAdmins Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VU5UMljRbc&list=PLGUPbEf2-7aE&index=15
From Vision to Value: Translating Strategic Objectives into Delivery
Organizations often launch transformation initiatives with strong intentions but struggle to translate strategic objectives into sustainable execution. This session explores a practical seven-step framework for bridging the gap between business strategy and technical delivery through proactive change management. Attendees will learn how balancing people, process, and technology—combined with Lean Six Sigma principles, cross-functional collaboration, and active listening—creates stronger alignment between leadership vision and implementation teams.
Real-world examples will demonstrate how organizations can reduce misunderstandings, minimize scope creep, improve adoption, and strengthen project outcomes by creating transparency and trust across operational, technical, and executive stakeholders.
This session is ideal for organizations navigating digital transformation, operational modernization, compliance initiatives, or enterprise change efforts where strategic objectives require coordinated execution across multiple teams. Attendees will leave with actionable techniques to proactively manage change, align stakeholders, and turn strategy into measurable results rather than isolated technology projects.
Ideal Audience Attendees
-Business strategists
-Healthcare leaders and administrators
-Operations leaders
-Project and program managers
-Change management professionals
-IT and digital transformation leaders
-Business analysts and process improvement teams
-Compliance and quality improvement professionals
-Executive leadership stakeholders
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
-Identify the seven critical steps for translating strategic objectives into successful operational and technical delivery.
-Apply proactive change management principles that balance people, process, and technology.
-Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to uncover risks, dependencies, and operational impacts early in delivery planning.
-Develop measurable business outcomes and traceability between strategic goals, functional requirements, and technical implementation.
-Use Lean Six Sigma concepts and stakeholder prioritization techniques to improve adoption, reduce scope creep, and support sustainable change.
Shaping the Future of AI: Ethics in a World of Constant Change
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the center of nearly every conversation about innovation today from promise and opportunity, to the acceleration and organizational transformation. With every step forward on the path, we must also consider the paths not travelled as well as those above, beyond, and alongside us.
As the use of AI continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace in every facet of society, we have to balance the drive for innovation with the need to maintain trust, transparency, and accountability.
We discuss four key questions: Is AI fair? Who is in control? What does AI know about you? What's at stake? Through a deeper analysis and discussion of modern day cases studies, we can reflect on the pitfalls and wins of AI as such advanced technology permeates our everyday lives.
This session is co-presented with Ivan Milanov: https://sessionize.com/ivan-milanov
Learning objectives:
-Identify the key ethical risks associated with AI, including algorithmic bias, privacy, human autonomy, and broader societal impacts.
-Apply four practical ethical decision-making frameworks to evaluate AI systems and their real-world outcomes.
-Analyze real-world AI case studies to distinguish between responsible AI practices and situations where inadequate governance resulted in harmful outcomes.
-Evaluate the importance of transparency, human oversight, explainability, and accountability when AI influences high-stakes decisions.
-Identify practical actions that individuals and organizations can take to promote ethical, transparent, and trustworthy AI use.
CodeMash Great Lakes 2027 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Live! 360 Tech Con: AI Enterprise Architecture Live! Upcoming
From Spider-Sense to Systems Sense: Navigating Ethical AI & Panel Discussion: From Pilots to Platforms - The Architecture Decisions That Make AI Work
Michigan Technology Conference 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
AI Community Conference - New Jersey 2026 Sessionize Event
National Virtual Village Gathering
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Prairie Dev Con 2026 Sessionize Event
The AI-Native Workplace Summit 2026 Sessionize Event
ASCENT 2026 Annual Education Conference Sessionize Event
KCDC 2026 Sessionize Event
Girls Who Print
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Nebraska.Code() 2026 Sessionize Event
2026 MacAdmins Conference Sessionize Event
The Joy of Leadership: Turning Vision into Action
Facing the Future: Three Ways to Proactively Manage Change
ASCENT Webinar Series
Strategic SWOT Mission
DynamicsCon 2026 Sessionize Event
Renal Healthcare Association
Facing the Future: Three Ways to Proactively Manage Change
NDC Toronto 2026 Sessionize Event
SOAHR 2026 - SHRM-Atlanta's Annual Conference Sessionize Event
2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference
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M365 Dublin User Group User group Sessionize Event
Power Up! Conference 2026
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Cloud Lunch and Learn Weekly Sessions 26 User group Sessionize Event
Mautic World Conference (HYBRID), UK 2025 Sessionize Event
Cloud Lunch and Learn Weekly Sessions 25 User group Sessionize Event
Philanos Tech Talk
Developing an AI Policy for Your Non-profit Organization
National Virtual Village Conference
Session: Strategic SWOT Mission
ASCENT 2025 Annual Education Conference Sessionize Event
DynamicsCon 2025 Sessionize Event
Michigan Technology Conference 2025 Sessionize Event
Microsoft Zero To Hero Community - 2025 User group Sessionize Event
Microsoft Fabric Cafe User group Sessionize Event
Sarah Wimberley
Principal & Founder, Ulster Technologies
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
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