Nikki Gonzales

I joined Weintek in 2025 after years of hearing controls engineers casually rave about the brand at trade shows, on Reddit, in DMs, and during podcasts. That kind of unsolicited word of mouth in a skeptical industry means something. Now I get why. Weintek has spent 30 years building HMIs that engineers actually trust. Not because of marketing, but because the hardware is reliable, the software is free and capable, and the pricing is transparent. With 425+ built-in communication drivers, Weintek HMIs do a lot more than display screens. They connect machines, bridge protocols, and give OEMs the flexibility to design once and deploy across whatever environment their customers are running. My role is to grow Weintek's presence with OEM machine builders and the executives who support them, particularly in packaging, robotics, and process equipment. If you're speccing HMIs for machines you build repeatedly, or rethinking your panel architecture, I'd genuinely enjoy that conversation.

Automation Ladies is an industrial automation podcast I co-founded in 2022 with Alicia Gilpin. What started as a conversation between two women in the industry has grown into 100+ episodes across seven seasons, a weekly newsletter, live LinkedIn events, and a community that reaches engineers, integrators, executives, and operators across the industry. We cover the full range of industrial automation — PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, IIoT, robotics, machine vision, controls engineering, career paths, and the business of automation. Our guests come from all corners of the industry and all levels of experience. The goal has always been to make the industry feel more accessible and connected, for everyone. Automation Ladies also became the foundation for OT SCADA CON, a grassroots in-person conference we launched in 2024. For sponsorship or partnership opportunities: hello@automationladies.io

OT SCADA CON is a grassroots community conference I co-founded in 2024 with Alicia Gilpin, born directly out of the Automation Ladies community. It was built on a simple premise: the industry needed a low-pressure, vendor-neutral, practitioner-first event where the people actually doing the work could learn from each other, not just from sponsors. Now in its third year, it has grown into a multi-day event in Houston featuring hands-on sessions led by working engineers and technicians, covering operational technology, SCADA, PLCs, HMIs, cybersecurity, IIoT, and more. CEOs sit next to technicians. First-time speakers share the stage with veterans. The usual hierarchy doesn't apply. We take hospitality seriously. Attendees get three hot meals a day featuring local Houston food, endless coffee, energy drinks, and snacks throughout the day. No stale hotel sandwich boxes here. Social events are open to everyone — a full bar happy hour with custom cocktails and local mixologists serving everything from top shelf whiskey to our signature OT SCADA-Rade, a food truck dinner, and a karaoke night that has taken on a life of its own. OT SCADA CON 2026 takes place July 22-24 in Houston, Texas. Sponsors feed attendees and raffle their technology to a room full of engaged automation professionals — it's one of the more memorable ways to get your products in front of the right people. For sponsorship or speaking opportunities visit www.otscada.com

Process & Controls Energy is a CSIA member, woman-owned control systems integration firm founded by Alicia Gilpin, my co-founder at Automation Ladies and OT SCADA CON. PCE specializes in custom automation solutions, panel design, and controls engineering across a range of industrial applications. I serve on the Board of Directors in an advisory capacity, contributing perspective on business development, industry trends, partnerships, and go-to-market strategy. It's one of several ways I stay connected to the practitioner side of the industry while working at the commercial and community level.

I've been speaking at industry events since 2017, covering topics across industrial automation, AI, IIoT, OT/IT convergence, supply chain technology, and community building. Engagements have spanned technical practitioner conferences, major trade shows, media stages, and executive forums. CONFERENCE ENGAGEMENTS ISA Automation Summit & Expo — Speaker & Panel Moderator (2026) EPC Show — Track Chair & Host, Power Generation (2026) Hexagon LIVE — Track Host (2025) Motion Controls Robotics 30th Anniversary Industry Panel — Moderator (2025) Automate — Podcaster & Media Interviewer (2022 - 2025) Google Developer Group, Robotics and Automation — Panelist (2025) Industrial Marketing Summit — Panelist (2024 - 2025) Rockwell Automation Fair — Media Interviewer (2023 - 2024) SICK Virtual Women's Leadership Conference — Speaker (2024) IMTS Creators Lounge — Media Interviewer (2022 - 2024) The ASSEMBLY Show South — Podcaster (2023 - 2024) Nvidia GTC — Interview & Media (2024) IIoT World Manufacturing Days — Panel Moderator (2024) CaPow Energy Webinar — Fireside Chat Moderator (2024) HOU.SEC.CON — Speaker (2022 - 2023) Ignition Community Conference — Speaker (2023) Transform Industry Digital Manufacturing Summit — Panelist (2023) Litmus Do More With Data Summit — Panel Moderator (2023) Marketing to Engineers® — Keynote Speaker (2023) Manufacturing in America — Podcaster (2023) Digital Manufacturing Summit — Panelist (2023) Rapid Robotics It's Time to Get Real About Automation — Panelist (2023) Early career (2017 - 2019): Speaking circuit focused on AI, big data, predictive analytics, and IoT — including the Global Artificial Intelligence Conference, Global Big Data Conference, Einstein AI Summit, IoT Data & AI Summit, Women In Technology International Summit, Hip Hop Leaders Cybersecurity and AI Summit, and Global Predictive Analytics Conference.

Quotebeam was an industrial automation startup building a digital procurement marketplace for automation components and electrical parts. I joined as employee #1, working alongside two technical founders to help shape the product, develop go-to-market strategy, and build the partnerships and community needed to bring it to market. We successfully raised a venture-backed seed round with investors including Bowery Capital, FJ Labs, and Plug and Play Ventures. In 2022 I represented Quotebeam in A3's startup competition at Automate, placing in the top 10 and pitching on the main stage — the only woman to do so that year. With no marketing budget to speak of, I had to get creative about building awareness. That constraint pushed me toward content, LinkedIn, podcasting, and showing up at industry events in ways I might not have otherwise. Automation Ladies was born during this period — and those instincts turned out to have legs well beyond Quotebeam. In 2024 the company pivoted toward distributor e-commerce software and I transitioned out at that point.

Started and scaled a real estate investment firm focused on value-added hospitality properties and short-term rentals in the Pacific Northwest. Managed the full lifecycle of investments from deal sourcing, underwriting, and financing through construction, design, and property management. Closed the business to return to Texas and industrial automation.

Algo (formerly Algomus) was an early-stage AI startup building what was among the first natural language and machine learning platforms for supply chain intelligence, helping manufacturers, distributors, and retailers turn massive amounts of operational data into actionable decisions. Clients included Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., and major Walmart suppliers. The company later joined NVIDIA's Inception accelerator and grew into a well-funded, international demand planning platform. I joined as one of the company's earliest employees when the business had roughly $500K in recurring revenue, a one-page website, and no marketing collateral. Over three years I progressed from Director of Business Development to VP of Sales to Chief Evangelist, a title I had long admired since learning about Guy Kawasaki's role at Apple. Each transition reflected both company growth and my own evolution in what I wanted to contribute. What we built was genuinely ahead of its time: a human-in-the-loop AI interface for S&OP planning, ML-based forecasting, and natural language querying of business data, years before conversational AI became mainstream. We partnered with MIT on operations research and worked with academic advisors at the intersection of AI and supply chain optimization. I suggested the name change from Algomus to Algo, taking the name of our core product, the AI business analyst that users actually interacted with every day. When I left, the company was approaching $10M in ARR.

AlgoFace was incubated within Algo Labs by Taleb Alashkar, a PhD AI researcher in computer vision who developed the company's core facial landmark tracking technology during his time there. With support from Algo CEO Amjad Hussain, the technology was spun off and commercialized as AlgoFace, focused on ethical, privacy-first face AI for applications including virtual beauty try-on, automotive safety, and retail. The company has since raised funding from Microsoft for Startups and the National Science Foundation and counts Samsung among its customers. I served as an advisor given my existing relationship with the founding team, contributing perspective on business development, market positioning, go-to-market strategy, and the company's approach to ethical and privacy-respecting AI facial recognition — a stance that was ahead of its time and has only grown more relevant since.

CST (Computer Simulation Technology) was the global leader in electromagnetic simulation software, used by electronics and hardware engineers to design, analyze and optimize antennas, filters, circuit boards, and complex electronic systems before physical prototypes are built. The company was acquired by Dassault Systèmes in 2016. I spent three years in technical sales in the San Francisco Bay Area, starting as an Account Executive before being promoted to Silicon Valley Sales Manager. My accounts included some of the most sophisticated engineering teams in the world — Apple, Cisco, NVIDIA, Amazon Lab126, and Lockheed Martin among them. Selling simulation software to PhD engineers requires genuine technical fluency and the ability to earn credibility in rooms where credentials are everything. I grew the Bay Area territory significantly, in part by doing things that weren't strictly in my job description: launching a recurring pre-sales workshop series, contributing to user group events, and generally investing in the kind of team and community environment that makes customers want to show up. When a new manager came in and asked me to stop all of that and focus only on closing contracts, I realized it was time to move on. That instinct, that the relationship and the community around a product matters as much as the product itself, has shaped everything I've done since.

MIT Sloan + CSAIL Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy Program

Completed my degree in International Business with a Minor in Spanish in three years while working part time.

Study abroad program as part of my BBA degree.