UT Dallas > Computer Science > Event > Grace Series Continues to Inspire with Lymari Ames of Cisco Systems

Grace Series Continues to Inspire with Lymari Ames of Cisco Systems

The Fall 2016 Grace Series continued with its second guest speaker, Lymari Ames of Cisco Systems. Ms. Ames is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with Cisco Systems, Inc. Advanced Services. She is responsible for managing $77 million in profits and losses while focusing on enabling and driving global delivery excellence, transformation, and consistency across Cisco’s top Enterprise and Service Provider accounts. She has spent the majority of her engineering career in the wireless space verifying features such as text messaging, radio handoffs, Wi-Fi hotspots and has worked closely with other companies such as Apple, Nokia, Intel, British Telecom to standardize Wi-Fi protocols. Ms. Ames is also a graduate of the University of Texas Dallas. On October 11th, she spoke to a room full of motivated students who were eager to her speak about her journey. Ms. Ames is the eighth woman to speak at the Grace Series since its inception in spring of 2015.

The Grace Series Talks feature a wide range of speakers including UT Dallas Computer Science and Software Engineering alumni, UT Dallas CS/SE professors, and other distinguished female technologists in the field. Drs. Pushpa Kumar, Janell Straach, and Linda Morales conceived the idea of the UT Dallas Grace Series as a result of attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) Conference a few years ago. The conference, fittingly named after the woman who helped pioneer computer programming, Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, involves a series of presentations designed to bring research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Every year, GHC brings together the community of women technologists, highlighting the best minds in computing and spotlighting the contributions of women to computing. The UT Dallas Computer Science Grace Series lectures are fashioned after the GHC Conference format.

Before handing the floor over to Ms. Ames, UT Dallas CS faculty members, Drs. Gopal Gupta and Linda Morales individually delivered their opening remarks. Following the opening remarks, Ms. Ames warmly welcomed students to her talk titled, “It Matters Where You Finish!” Unlike other talks in the series, Ms. Ames spoke from her heart about her journey without the support of a formal slide-show presentation. She recounted her journey to where she is today without skipping through her difficult times, noting that these difficult times were what made her a stronger person.

Throughout her talk, she provided the students who were attending her talk with thoughts to live by and tidbits to remember as they work towards their goal of obtaining a degree and looking for work. She advised students to “Promote yourself, think hard. When you are looking for work, don’t just look for the dollar signs.” She continued on saying, “Look for something that you are passionate about so that work doesn’t just feel like work. Find something you truly enjoy and are passionate about and the dollar signs will follow.”

During the question and answer part of her talk, one student asked a question on how she dealt with past failures that have happened through her journey. Ms. Ames advised the students saying, “I use to be terrified of failing and it is still something I am fearful of everyday.” She continued, “But now I look at it differently, I am failing forward. So, I want you all to look at failure as a failure FORWARD, as you learn something from it. Just trust the process, I promise you that you will get there.”

As a strong Hispanic female Electrical Engineer, Lymari’s passion is around promoting young ladies to pursue STEM careers. She is an active board member of the Tech Titans and Wylie ISD Education Foundation focusing on the partnerships between STEM education and industry. She has been the President of the Richardson Cisco Connected Women for 3 years, on the Civic Counsel for 10 years, and currently leads many Inclusion and Collaboration initiatives such as the “Global STEM High School Program” and “Meet Your Executive.”

In addition to being a certified Project Management Professional within Cisco Systems, Inc., Ms. Lymari holds a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Master’s Degree in Management & Administrative Sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas with over 20 years in the industry, of which over 10 years has been at Cisco. Ms. Lymari is well regarded as a leader and problem solver with excellent collaboration skills and strong focus on outstanding business results and outcomes. Ms. Lymari lives in the surrounding Dallas, Texas area, and is married to Scott Ames and they have two boys Emilio (17) and Patrick (15). In her spare time, she enjoys watching her boys in their various sports activities, reading, and serving the community.

Dr. Linda Morales (left) with Ms. Lymari Ames (right).

The Grace Series will continue on November 29th with Dr. Rym Zalila- Wenkstern, a UT Dallas Computer Science professor and the founding director of the Executive Masters of Software Engineering (EMSE) Program at UT Dallas.

View additional photos from the Grace Series talk featuring Ms. Lymari Ames.

View photos from past UT Dallas CS related events.


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The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 2,100 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,000 MS master’s students, 150 PhD students, and 86 faculty members, as of Fall 2016. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.