Beth A. Weeks, BSCS 1985
Inducted in 2014
B.S. in Computer Science, 1985
Before arriving at the University of Kentucky, Beth Weeks had very little exposure to computer science and certainly had never considered it as a viable major or career option. Strong in math, the Horse Cave, Ky., native planned to major in accounting; however, during her freshman year, she added a computer science class to her schedule and was hooked. A new career direction followed.
After graduating magna cum laude in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and minor in mathematics, Mrs. Weeks considered several different specialties within computer science before joining Alabama-based Intergraph as a customer engineer. Mrs. Weeks traveled throughout the United States and trained customers to use Intergraph’s 2D graphics software. The next year she applied her knowledge by taking a position within Intergraph as a software developer. This experience prepared her to become a development manager in 1990, where she built a highly productive team consisting solely of inexperienced college graduates.
Mrs. Weeks’ contributions to Intergraph led to several promotions, culminating in a test manager position in 1996. Mrs. Weeks led a program to improve the testing and quality best practices during software development of Intergraph’s GeoMedia application. She worked with a team of 80 developers, which included an offshore team in India.
Desiring a greater challenge, Mrs. Weeks left Intergraph for Vignette Corporation—a startup company in Austin, Texas. As director of quality assurance, Mrs. Weeks not only established a collaborative quality assurance engineering process that built effective relationships with Vignette’s development team, she did so by leveraging 40 interns from the University of Texas. In two years, her team of quality assurance engineering grew from two to 100.
Mrs. Weeks grew with Vignette through its initial public offering and beyond, eventually becoming senior director of engineering and leading a team of 80 engineers and leveraging rapid development engineering processes to deliver Vignette applications.
In 2004, Mrs. Weeks took a position with a different Austin-based company, Zilliant Corporation, where she is now senior vice president of engineering. Zilliant provides software that helps companies price more profitably and sell more effectively through applications that drive top- and bottom-line growth of five to ten percent or more. During her time at Zilliant, Mrs. Weeks has led a transformation of Zilliant’s solutions and software delivery model and started the patent program to protect Zilliant’s intellectual property. In her current role, Mrs. Weeks is responsible for developing innovative and scalable software products and oversees the delivery operations of the applications in data centers globally.
Mrs. Weeks serves on the board for Austin Free-Net, a non-profit organization focused on bridging the digital divide by providing access and training of basic computer skills to the underserved community. She is a member of the “Women@Austin,” an organization focused on mentoring women entrepreneurs in Austin. She has also served on the Austin UK Alumni Club board since 2009.
Mrs. Weeks lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Jim. They have two children, Lindsay and Jimmy.