Women Engineers at Comcast: Setting a High Bar for Excellence

In a field dominated by males, women engineers at Comcast are helping to lead the future of our business technologies and entertainment products. And the diversity doesn’t just end with gender.

SHERITA T. CEASAR 

A graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Sherita T. Ceasar is the Vice President of National Video Deployment Engineering for Comcast Communications. In this role, she is responsible for the overall vision, direction, and management of all national video deployment engineering projects for core video delivery, On Demand services, and interactive video applications for over 22 million subscribers. Her leadership scope includes management of new video deployments, national hardware and software upgrades, capacity augmentation of infrastructure for growth, and decommissioning end-of-life equipment. She is proud of a team that deploys thousands of video infrastructure components and delivers software to millions of set-top boxes across the Comcast footprint. Sherita has been called a "Wonder Woman," and was named to the "Most Influential Women and Minorities in Cable" lists more than a dozen times. Even after 30 years of shaping and delivering innovative technology in the telecommunications industry, Sherita believes strongly that in order to have a successful career, you have to be a lifelong learner and team player, and never give up, no matter the circumstance.

In her own words …

"High school was probably the first time that I started feeling left out. I was the girl from the projects on the South Side of Chicago, getting the lunch tokens and having to eat because — depending on the day — it might be "the" meal of the day. One day, a school counselor pressed my face against a window and said, ‘anytime you need motivation, you look outside your window.’ That was a turning point for me. Outside my window, I knew I had a choice." 

MYRNA SOTO

Charged with the overall security strategy, development, and coordination of all information and infrastructure security operations and programs for Comcast, Myrna Soto is one of our highest-ranking Latina executives. Since taking her post in 2009, Myrna has consolidated no less than five security and compliance teams into a central organization and also leads several initiatives that have placed the security vertical in a position to be a revenue enabler for the company. 

In her own words …

"I am a product of a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother. I’m also a South Florida native, which is where I first attended community college. Three advanced degrees and 25 years of experience make me proud to be an engineer. But more importantly, I’m proud to support and advocate for more women to pursue STEM careers." 

ANGELA FOELL

Joining the Comcast family in 2010 after working as a software developer on an academic video on demand platform, Angela Foell is one of Comcast’s newest rising-star engineers. She spends her days working on a number of web-based engineering products, including the Cloud TV and Cloud DVR initiatives. These initiatives help enhance the ease of multiple- device access to live television, video on demand, and DVR ecosystems through one central cloud location.

A lover of the outdoors and an avid mountain biker, Angela was a metal arts sculpture major in college before switching to a completely different academic focus, statistics. Years later, Angela doesn’t regret the decision and has found that engineering allows her to mesh logic with creativity.

In her own words ...

"It’s important to have women represented in various roles across the company. When you can see that someone else is doing something, it inspires people to think, ‘I can do this, too.’ I often speak at schools to try to encourage young people, especially young women, to pursue STEM careers. I’m pretty direct about how fun and exciting being an engineer really is — and it doesn’t hurt that you can still wear retro dresses and do engineering!"

LESLIE CHAPMAN

Leslie Chapman grew up in Puerto Rico, but she is not Latina. The biracial daughter of a Caucasian mother and African American father, Leslie is an accomplished software engineer with more than a decade of experience in software engineering. At Comcast, Leslie is instrumental in creating products that millions of customers use every day. At work, Leslie’s expertise spans large systems engineering, embedded controls design, hardware driver development, and cable set-top box development. When she’s not engineering at Comcast, Leslie enjoys riding her scooter, eating vegetarian foods, sewing, or making jewelry.

In her own words …

"I love engineering, and it’s hard to sum up just why. I think the fact that I get to build things and that I can be creative and technical at the same time is really what drew me in."