Clarise Z. Doval Santos (she/her)

Clarise worked as a program manager for the Analytics Center of Excellence at Kaiser Permamente until an aneurysm ruptured in her brain at the end of 2010. Prior to this role, she served in leadership roles at various professional services organizations. She also worked as an oft-awarded support person for Oracle Philippines, the go-to person at Online Advanced Systems (HP) to tune the servers to win TPC database benchmarks, a robotics programmer at Industrial Control Systems/Singapore for Motorola, part of the team writing the first CASE tool for the early Apple Macintosh, AnaTool at PAC Group, and, at Software Brewers as part of the team creating a 4G language generator, 4GSA. Clarise was born and raised in the Philippines, migrated to Silicon Valley in 1996, and became a US citizen in 2006.

“In 2010, I was visiting with family in San Diego when an aneurysm ruptured in my brain. According to the doctors, I died and was resuscitated three times during the first of 18 extreme medical interventions. I was in a coma for 40 days and in February, upon awakening, my first words were “Merry Christmas”, as I wasn’t aware of how much time had passed. After four months of rehabilitation, I returned to the SF Bay Area for more physical, speech and occupational therapy. Though I am now permanently disabled, I work every day on my physical and cognitive rehabilitation. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”. My determination to not be defeated gets me through, despite the ongoing pain and frustration.”