Monday, March 10, 2008

Women to Watch

A successful, winding road for Women to Watch alums Long, Biernacki

By Amber Gay

Being active and on the move defines what it means to be a Women to Watch honoree, but it can also mean those women are tough to track down. For Anne Marie Biernacki and Paula Long, it just requires paying attention to the headlines.

Anne Marie Biernacki was co-founder and chief technology officer of The Digiticians LLC when she received her Women to Watch award in 2005.

In February 2007, Boulder, Colo.-based Peak8 Solutions announced the acquisition of the Waltham-based company. Biernacki said she spent the next six months working to integrate the technology operations of companies. Biernacki remained CTO of the combined company until May 2007, when she moved to Informed Clinical Sciences Corp. and where she is now the executive vice president and CTO. She also is the executive director of the Emergent Intelligence Lab.

"There was a lot of commuting to Colorado, and I did not want to relocate," she said. "As part of the sale, they said they were going to be localizing to Boulder from Waltham. It was part of the plan, and I spent the six months getting the integration done."

For Biernacki, IC Sciences and its business of online health websites has been an interesting change. Her background in health-care information online stems back nearly 14 years, which includes being a founding member of Avicenna/Care InSite, a company that, through acquisition, went on to produce WebMD.

Biernacki said she also enjoys being with a company so driven by its mission, which, for IC Sciences, is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical care while advancing the well-being of people through the use of the Internet and web technology.

"It is exciting to be able to touch patients' lives constantly," she said about working in the e-health environment.

One way Biernacki helps such patients is through the EI Lab. She focuses on the strategic operations of the technology and delivering intelligent information systems. And because she had worked in health-related fields previously, she has brought relevant experience to her job while also relearning things because of the advances in health-care software over the years. "It has been very interesting to bring learning into IC Sciences, but also to learn new things with the organization," Biernacki said.

Biernacki is not one to run from challenges. She sees herself as an enterprise builder. And she sees a ton of potential for IC Sciences in the long run and hopes to continue working on the improvement of health-care delivery.

Billion-dollar baby

When Paula Long was named a Woman to Watch in 2007, she was co-founder and vice president of products and strategy at EqualLogic Inc., a small data-storage company in New Hampshire. Now, less than a year later, she is the vice president of software engineering for Dell Inc.

In November 2007, Dell announced its plans to acquire EqualLogic for $1.4 billion in cash. On Jan. 28, the deal was complete and the company now runs under the banner Dell EqualLogic. The company will focus on making storage area network devices that swap data via the Internet, instead of more expensive Ethernet connections.

"For the past three months, I have been focused on integrating with the new company's focus," Long said.

The transition from EqualLogic to Dell has been interesting, Long said.

"It has been very different, but good," she said. "We went from being this very small company to a large corporation. Right now, I am just trying to figure out how everything works."

Long still has her EqualLogic team by her side.

"I have a new boss, but the same staff, and so far everyone has stayed on," she said.

She is also hoping to help increase the number of women executives in the company. She said Dell does offer women's leadership groups and she is definitely looking to get involved in those groups once everything settles down.

Long, who was also nominated in April for the 2007 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, said it was "pretty cool" that, of all the awards she has ever been nominated for, the Women to Watch award generated the most recognition.