The 10 Most Influential Women In Technology 2020

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ne of the major challenges that have been regaled over the past decade and centuries, including the present, is addressing ‘Gender Diversity’. While many measures have been taken to mitigate the pre-existing gender biases, there is yet a lot to be accomplished for developing gender diversity, and inclusion amongst organizations.

In the world of technology, where male dominance is prominent, maintaining gender diversity has been one of the major issues that the organizations are grappling with.

While it has been a fact that the people sitting at the steerage of big tech organizations are male, only a few contributions by the women leaders have been accounted for in the history. Ada Lovelace is the first women who discounted the societal norm by stepping into a male-dominated technology industry and gave birth to the notion of Mechanical General –Purpose computer, which are the Precursor of the modern computer. Just like her, Grace Hopper, became the pioneer in computer programming, along with the Radia Perlman, who created the algorithm behind the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). Enormous instances advocate women’s role in the technology revolution. However, the world still fails to acknowledge the position of female leaders in reforming the world using technology. Either less is known about them or they are not been given enough credits for the talent they possess.

While the continuous chatter of empowering women have been heard many times, over the past centuries or decades, a reality which the world needs to be sensitized with is, that women still grapple to survive in a male-dominated work setting. In the sector of technology, a lot of factors points out at gender biases, but a possible solution to address this challenge has not been retained. And this absence of gender diversity is not geographically bounded. Reports suggest that across the globe, women are constantly anxious about gender biases in the tech world. There is no denying that the measures are not taken by organizations. The world has come up with some brilliant strategies to make the working environment more gender- inclusive, but despite this, the involvement of female leaders in revolutionizing technology is hardly appreciated.

That’s why it becomes imperative that we identify those women, who are walking shoulder to shoulder for innovating new ideas with the help of disruptive technology and utilizing the said technology in growing the business, improving customer satisfaction, and has emerged as a transformational leader. Addressing the contribution of these women would also be crucial, for acknowledging, and encouraging the inclination of young women towards technology.

Surveys suggest that as young women are less aware of the women leaders in technology, they become apprehensive and hesitant in regarding technology as a career option. The women-tech professionals are as well, in constant uncertainty about the deliverance of their role towards the organization, which in turn thwarts their possibilities in leadership.

Elucidating the role of women, who are already making progress in the tech world, will thus help in vanquishing many ingrained stereotypes, fears and myths that the women constantly face. That’s why, to acknowledge the Gender Diversity amongst the organization, Analytics Insight presents “Top 10 Influential Women in Technology, Volume 4”, projecting the women who have exemplified in the sector of technology. We aim at acknowledging and appreciating the hard work of the Women leaders by displaying their innovations towards the world.

CREDITS Ashish Sukhadeve Chief Editor

Preetipadma K Content Analyst

Adilin Beatrice Content Analyst

Astha Oriel Content Analyst

Nikita Das Marketing Manager

Shruthi Talla Research Analyst

Anusha Polneni Marketing Analyst

Dharmendar Passi Sales Manager

Ritesh Raj Sukhada Raj Art & Design Director Creative Head Amit Kumar Web Development

Sachin Wasnik Marketing Executive

SEPTEMBER 2020 177 Park Avenue, Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95131, USA Tel: +1-408-380-2566 540/6, 3rd Floor, Geetanjali Towers KPHB, Phase-6, Hyderabad-500072 Telangana, India Tel: +91-40-23055215

Copyright @2020 Analytics Insight.All Rights Reserved.

The content and images used in the publication should

Astha Oriel Content Analyst

not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Analytics Insight.

ONTENTS

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GABRIELLE ‘GABY’ TOLEDANO KEYSTONE STRATEGY

EXECUTIVES OF

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CHELSEA LAWLEY NGDATA

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40

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ELENA SPAGNUOLO BUNKER DB

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Four Slow and Steady Approach to Voluntarily Support Women at Tech

KAREN KRIVAA GIGASPACES

Gender Equality in Tech: Nipping in the Bud to Address Why

USHA CHAUDHARY MITRE

THE MONTH COVER STORY

08 TERESE LAM WIND RIVER

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LISA MCGILL SILVER PEAK

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LESLIE DALTON FORMULUS BLACK

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LESLIE JONES COALFIRE

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SANA REMEKIE CONSCIA

COVER STORY

TERESE LAM CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER WIND RIVER

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Aligning Human Resource Strategies to Thrive in the Digital Economy

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ind River is a global leader in delivering software for the intelligent edge.

For nearly four decades, the company has helped the world’s leading technology enterprises power the safest and the most secure devices in the world.

Wind River continues to lead the way in this new era of autonomy and connectivity. The company’s software runs the “can’t fail” computing systems of the most important modern infrastructure, and is accelerating the evolution from automated to autonomous systems across a diverse range of use cases from collaborative robots to commercial and military drones, connected cars to the connected factory floor as well as the intelligent communication networks that support these applications. As Wind River enters its next phase of growth, its DNA is poised to accelerate the digital transformation of the customers in a data-driven, AI-first world.

A Responsible Leadership Dedicated to Human Resource Terese is the Chief People Officer for Wind River. She is also a member of the Executive Leadership Team, responsible for the company’s global HR function.

Terese considers herself fortunate in her journey to hold various HR leadership roles, including learning and development, talent management, HR business partner at site, country, region and global levels. The diversity in her roles and geographies has enhanced her learning agility and perspective of the world, which is why she is such a strong advocate of career mobility.

Terese was born in Vietnam and migrated to Australia with her family when she was two years old. Terese is the eldest of four and has graduated with a Bachelor of Business degree majoring in HR and a Masters in HR and Training.

She started the first half of her career into human resources in Australia. The second half of her 21 years of professional experience was gained in both large multinational and medium-sized high-growth organizations across the globe.

Terese has lived in Singapore, UK, France, and now has been residing in the Bay Area, US for almost 5 years. Along her career journey, Terese has started a

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few businesses, sold them but has always gravitated back to human resources since she loves the complexity of HR making an impact at both a business and human level.

Leaders who embrace the latest technologies to innovate, make business decisions with data analytics, improve operational efficiencies powered by AI automation and customer experiences that are digital, personalized and contextualized, have shown to be more successful in staying ahead of the game.

Terese Lam

windriver.com

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Driving a Strategic Change with a Reputation for Achieving Results Terese has faced many highs and lows throughout her career journey. These combined experiences, both achievements and failures have shaped the person she is today. Her moral compass has guided her through thick and thin, and Terese truly believes that things happen for a reason, therefore she continuously looks for learnings in every experience and challenge to do better and be better.

Terese did not grow up in a family that had abundances. Her parents worked very hard and made sacrifices to send her to a private all-girl school to enable a bright future. This has certainly made her appreciate opportunities and persevere in challenging times.

Although most of Terese’s career has been in human resources, she has always been interested in how companies operate and businesses are developed. During her 21 year plus professional career, Terese has built several businesses from scratch, enabling her to gain an intimate understanding of the workings of a business, securing customers, and what it means to manage finances. This has truly shaped her as an HR executive to be able to lead from both a business and people perspective.

Terese’s multinational experiences living and working in Australia, Asia, Europe, and now in the US have also been invaluable. Although with an Asian ethnicity, Terese grew up in Australia so her cultural background is a blend of the two, and being abroad for the last 11 years, Terese considers herself as a true global citizen with a great appreciation of every culture and way of life. This has helped her to imbibe diversity and inclusion working for a global company like Wind River.

Relishing Challenges to Drive the Company’s Vision Early in her career, Terese was a practitioner who was relentless on results and getting things done to achieve impact. She learned early on the hard way that transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of a team requires a mindset shift towards developing, empowering, coaching and mentoring others, as opposed to just directing and/or doing everything by self. As a leader, she asserts that it is critical to build and nurture a great team who can share in the same vision, aspirations and purpose. Success is determined by the people one has on their team and the

influence one has on those who are not. This is certainly important in HR where the accountability is shared with other leaders when it comes to people-related topics such as culture, diversity, and engagement.

Another challenge Terese faced early on was starting her career in predominately male industries. Although women account for 50% of the workforce, for most of her career, she has worked in male dominated industries/companies where on an average 20% of women were represented, and even less at the executive levels (5-11%). Terese started her HR career straight out of university and supported/provided advice to mainly male managers from the onset. She quickly learned that she had to stand up for what she believed in and have/ maintain a strong voice when she was the only woman in the room. Terese has worked extra hard to deliver results in order to gain respect and be heard. Throughout her career, she has been very fortunate to have executives who believed in her and supported her growth.

Terese believes that one should seek out mentors and supporters in their career, especially early on.

Embracing a Transformational Leader Mindset Terese believes that ‘driving transformation’ should be part of every leader’s success toolbox. According to McKinsey and Company, 70% of all transformation efforts fail and why is this? Most often, transformations fail not because the solution was not the right one, but because the leaders have not brought the teams along the journey with them.

A vital component of any transformation is that it involves people, which requires winning hearts and minds. This means a leader needs to be able to listen, collaborate and involve others in the transformation journey. There are a number of key attributes that every transformation leader needs to possess to increase the chances of success. It first starts with the leader embracing a growth mindset.

Every transformation is different with their own strategies.

Therefore, approaching every transformation opportunity with curiosity and a thirst for learning and listening to others is paramount. “Communication, communication, communication is imperative during any transformation efforts. Starting with articulating the why and painting a picture of the future vs. where things are today. Regular communication and keeping people updated on progress, even when one does not have all the answers is key to keeping the momentum going”, she adds.

Driving transformative outcomes requires a leader who is great at driving flawless execution as much as they are a

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visionary and an innovator. The ability to zoom in and out and oscillate between the bigger picture and the minutiae is critical. This involves being able to translate broad strategies into clear, specific objectives, plans, as well as postulating between digging into the details and then how it relates to the bigger picture.

Incorporating Innovation Principles Incorporating design thinking principles and agile approaches to drive innovation in products/solutions regardless of whether it is applied to HR programs, business products, or solutions is vital according to Terese. This involves listening to and understanding the customers (both internal and external), their problems and balancing between creating the need and addressing that need in an iterative cycle. At times, the customers don’t know what they don’t know and the leader needs to show them the way. That’s why when it comes to innovation, understanding their challenges and desired outcomes first is imperative.

Towards Faster and Dynamic Technological Advances Addressing the cause of disruptive technological advances, Terese says that ‘as the world is getting smaller, our lives are becoming more and more complex, faster and dynamic with the aid of technological advances. Digital transformation is accelerating this revolution across all industries. We are seeing the rapid rise of new digital-native companies that have disrupted traditional business models and destabilized established players and industry sectors.’ She concludes by saying that according to Forbes and Inc.Digital just 28% of organizations are currently succeeding in their digital transformation journeys.

The advent of advanced technologies such as 5G networks, cloud computing, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning have augmented how company products are being innovated, how operations and the customer experience can be improved. These technologies are being used to create a new generation of AI-infused use cases.

AI is also fundamentally changing every company, every industry, and every economy, as well as the society. The rapid adoption of AI, along with edge computing with the onset of 5G, has enabled and accelerated exciting new experiences across one’s lives with autonomous vehicles, smart medical devices, drones, robotics, industrial automation systems, augmented reality headsets, intelligent assistants, and human augmentation.

Today’s C-suite is investing in the latest technology, and the

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COVID-19 pandemic is an accelerant that is pushing even the most reluctant businesses into hyper-digital mode. Leaders who embrace the latest digital technologies to innovate, make business decisions with data analytics, improve operational efficiencies powered by AI automation, improve customer experiences that are digital, personalized and contextualized, have shown to be more successful in staying ahead of the game and often experience more than double the revenue growth.

Riding the Future Wave of Digital Transformation Looking ahead, the next wave of digital transformation is forecast to be in the Operational Technology (OT) domain in an AI-first world. In this AI-first world, we will continue to see the rapid rise of new digitally native businesses that are disrupting business models and destabilizing established companies and industry sectors. Traditional companies are understanding that to realize their future of transforming into digital platforms, they need to embrace software, data, and AI as value drivers for their business, transform their products and optimize their operations.

As Wind River enters its next phase of growth, it will be at the center of this AI-first world playing a leadership role with its software for the intelligent edge. With its proven expertise, it will help its customers on their digital transformation journey where AI enables them to solve the world’s hardest problems.

Becoming a Strong Woman Leader There are a few areas of advice Terese would like to share for emerging women leaders. First, machines are becoming smarter and more humanistic; having surpassed humans in terms of learning, speed and power. What differentiates humans from machines remain their people skills, EQ and soft skills. Building both business acumen and honing on the soft skills, people skills, and empathy are essential as these are the superpowers needed today and well into the future.

Secondly, emerging women leaders must approach every challenge and opportunity with a growth mindset for continuous learning and development. Asking for feedback is part of practicing a growth mindset as more is learnt about oneself through others, which helps us to become better and do better.

Lastly, budding women leaders must always believe in themselves while remaining humble and exude confidence, but not arrogance. These approaches will help them to have a voice, stand up for what they believe in, take risks and challenges as a strong woman leader.

Terese Lam

Usha Chaudhary

Chief People Officer, Wind River

Senior VP - Corporate Operations & CTO, MITRE

Terese, the Chief People Officer of Wind River, is also a member of the Executive Leadership Team and responsible for its global HR function. She considers herself fortunate in her journey to hold various HR leadership roles, including learning and development, talent management, HR business partner at site, country, region and global levels.

Usha is responsible for MITRE’s business and digital transformation as well as corporate operations functions, including strategy, finance, information technology and security, contracts, business analytics, and real estate. She oversees a team of nearly 1,000 employees, a revenue base of nearly US$2 billion, and a department budget of US$250 million.

windriver.com

mitre.org

Gabrielle ‘Gaby’ Toledano

Lisa McGill

Chief Operating Officer, Keystone Strategy

Chief Human Resources Officer, Silver Peak

Chelsea Lawley

Elena Spagnuolo

Head of Financial Services Solutions, NGDATA

Chief Business Officer Bunker DB Elena Spagnuolo, Chief Business Office of Bunker DB manages marketing, commercial, communication (inside and outside), customer service and support, product development, and HR with in the organization.

Elena’s journey started 20 years ago while she set out to study Graphic Design.

As the COO at Keystone, Gabrielle builds out the finance, HR, recruiting, IT, labs and office management functions.

Previously, she was a board member of the company for a number of years and had a first-hand view into the brilliant team, and understood the firm’s aggressive growth strategy.

Lisa drives the company’s global talent strategy by people optimization, develops and coaches its executive leaders, and scales its HR operations.

She specializes in taking a vision and transforming it into a reality through teamwork and a sound strategic focus. Previously, she served as the former CHRO of CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Brocade, and Foundry Networks.

Chelsea is responsible to design solutions to enable NGDATA’s current and prospective clients to deepen their relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and drive higher lifetime value.

Having worked at some of the world’s largest banks, Chelsea’s career focus has been on making people’s financial lives easier and more valuable.

keystonestrategy.com

silver-peak.com

ngdata.com

bunkerdb.com

Karen Krivaa

Leslie Dalton

Leslie Jones

Sana Remekie

Chief Human Resources Officer, Coalfire

Co-Founder & CEO, Conscia

Vice President, Marketing, GigaSpaces

Vice President, Sales, Formulus Black

Karen is the VP of Marketing at GigaSpaces. She has worked in the technology space for over 20 years in different marketing roles including product management and marketing, portfolio solutions, and corporate marketing. She has also led product management and marketing teams in different businesses.

Leslie joined the company in April 2019 to lead software sales of FORSA as well as assist with marketing efforts. She has been in sales for 30 years, with 23 years of experience in selling software.

Leslie’s background before joining Formulus Black was in the backup and recovery sector for 16 years.

gigaspaces.com

formulusblack.com

Leslie serves as the CHRO for Coalfire for almost four years. She, along with her HR team, focuses people strategy on attracting, developing, engaging, and retaining talent in the industry’s competitive market. She holds a degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell and a master’s degree in Leadership and Organizations from the University of Denver.

Sana has over 15 years of experience in various technology leadership roles in designing, architecting and selling software solutions at large system integrators and startups. She co-founded Conscia on the premise of creating a zero-code, self-service technology platform that enables business and IT to collaborate in an agile manner towards digital transformation initiatives.

coalfire.com

conscia.ai

Leading Internal Teams to Outsized Growth and Expansion

K

EXECUTIVE OF THE MONTH 14

GABRIELLE ‘GABY’ TOLEDANO COO KEYSTONE STRATEGY

eystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas and uncommon service to global brands on leadingedge challenges related to technology and business model innovation.

Gabrielle ‘Gaby’ Toledano is the COO at Keystone Strategy.

After earning her undergraduate degree in Humanities and then her Master’s in Education from Stanford and spending a year on a Rotary Scholarship in Santiago, Chile, Gabrielle began her career in Human Resources (HR) at Oracle and then at Microsoft. She left Microsoft, after 7 years to lead HR and Facilities at Siebel Systems. Siebel was acquired by Oracle while she was serving the company. From there, Gabrielle spent the next 11 years leading global HR and Facilities at Electronic Arts (EA) which was a unique experience as it was transformed from a traditional packaged-goods company into a digital direct-to-consumer interactive gaming leader.

Gabrielle’s efforts there focused on retooling every aspect of how EA did business, including major shifts in the talent composition of the company.

After EA’s digital transformation and three CEOs during her tenure, Gabrielle joined Tesla as the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) and implemented the HR, Security, Facilities and Environment, Health and Safety team and infrastructure required to scale the business. For the last decade, she has served as an advisor and board member for a variety of public and pre-IPO technology companies.

Today, Gabrielle is at Keystone as its Chief Operating Officer, building out the finance, HR, recruiting, IT, labs and office management functions. Previously, she was a board member at Keystone Strategy for a number of years, and had a firsthand view into the brilliant team, and understood the firm’s aggressive growth strategy. Gabrielle considers it an honor to use her 30 years of industry experience to build out a world-

class operations function based on the principles that she values the most for a service organization: transparency, innovation, simplicity, technology-enabled service, and a phenomenal client experience.

An Exceptional Leader and A Change Agent Gabrielle has learnt that it is important to work hard, focus on the job one has today vs. what’s next. One must do today’s job well, and then they will move up. Gabrielle has learnt that it is important to work hard, focus on the job one has today vs. what’s next. Gabrielle doesn’t have any interest in politics, but she is a change agent and an achiever.

It is important to bring people as one moves along. Gabrielle has hired so many people again and again who have worked for her or with her in the past, those who have demonstrated excellence and strong values day-to-day. Gabrielle believes in making sure that one enjoys the work and those with whom they work. She has worked for some tough bosses and there were difficult moments, but she has always tried to apply empathy and not to be defensive, while also finding her voice.

Lasting and great leaders respect honest, authentic and smart contributors, not unopinionated followers.

Balancing Challenges to Encourage Excellence Gabrielle remembers early on having peers who were so ambitious that they competed with her. She didn’t like that kind of team environment and learned to find others who wanted to work well together and encourage excellence mutually and with support. When she had her children, she found being a great mom, partner to her spouse and employee was hard to balance. She would work and miss time with her kids or husband or she’d choose family time and sometimes not be there 24X7 for the company’s CEO or the team. Gabrielle says, “You can have it all, but there will

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be times when there is an imbalance. Make sure you have a partner who is supportive of your ambitions and interests and trade off the work and home duties depending on where you each are in your professional career. If you decide to leave an organization, do it with dignity, gratitude and respect; don’t burn bridges and remember that you are ready for the next thing because of what you learned at this thing!”

Grit and Determination to Excel Transformational Leadership Gabrielle believes that every innovative and transformational leader should have grit and determination, passion and curiosity, and both humility and courage. A great leader is a brilliant thinker and problem solver but is also a great listener and a people leader, with empathy and intuition to drive as many decisions as does data they collect for the same decisions.

The application of AI and

Leveraging Innovation to Understand Complex Eco-Systems At Keystone Strategy, diverse teams are purpose-built to leverage a triad of skills including business, technology, and economics. This triad sets their work apart and offers the company a unique vantage to analyze and understand the complex ecosystems its clients face as well as provides Keystone Strategy an edge to develop bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact for its clients.

machine learning to every aspect of how companies do their work will continue to have a staggering impact on business and the economy. It is unfortunate, but companies left without a digital strategy will not be able to compete.

Working with Disruptive Technologies with Skilled Capabilities Keystone Strategy has been working with disruptive technologies for nearly two decades. Recently, its chairman co-authored a book entitled Competing in the Age of AI, which draws on the firm’s decades of experience and provides a clear framework for transforming the operating model and business strategy. By reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI, companies can remove traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. Today’s successful leaders must confront silos and fragmented legacy systems, add skilled capabilities, and retool culture to support innovation.

Gabrielle ‘Gaby’ Toledano

keystonestrategy.com

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Blending Expertise for Future Gains Speaking in general terms for the tech industry, the trends are very clear. The application of AI and machine learning to every aspect of how companies do their work will continue to have a staggering impact on business and the economy. It

is unfortunate, but companies left without a digital strategy will not be able to compete. But, for tech firms that build enabling technology, the future is bright. As a long time, HR professional and executive, Gabrielle believes it is an interesting world, where transformational automation is not just sunsetting manufacturing jobs, but white-collar work as well, and it is an incredible time to be associated with Keystone Strategy, a firm deeply involved in leading the thinking around digital transformation and complicated problem-solving.

Keystone Strategy’s consultancy is a unique blend of economics, tech, and legal expertise. The firm works at the intersection of these disciplines, helping companies chart their digital transformation, and enabling clients to navigate complex software and tax-related litigation. Today, Keystone is poised to double in size over the next few years, delivering transformativedeas to some of the world’s most amazing brands. Its brilliant consultants, their passion for the business, and the company’s deep relationships with recognized academic experts gives Gabrielle and her team the intellectual capital needed to help companies solve some of their most complex challenges.

A Word of Advice for Emerging Women Leaders For emerging women leader’s, Gabrielle asks them to take a stand and have a point of view, but they must also respect their audience and teachers at all times, as there is always another perspective and way of thinking about a problem or a solution. She further advices, emerging leaders to make sure they focus on hiring a great team to work with them. Gabrielle has always learned from people who have worked for her, as well as learned from peers and leaders above her. She encourages women leaders of tomorrow to not just focus on details and execution day-to-day, but stop and consider the bigger picture, the strategy for their company or organization as they look ahead. They must say yes more than saying no; and they must take a risk.

Moreover, she says, “Don’t become complacent; change it up now and again. I come back to my earlier comment – surround yourself with a team that is not only smart, but driven, open-minded, diverse, and kind. Do not underestimate the importance of assessing the values of those with whom you work. Values such as integrity, teamwork, respect, inclusiveness, community and many others that come to mind, are, if not more, important to assess than experience, skills and capabilities when you are hiring someone.”

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Four Slow and Steady Approach to Voluntarily Support Women at Tech

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he share of women in technology has drastically increased over years. Starting from Ada Lovelace who was known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine to the recent female tech CEOs, the digital world always have a part of women functioning.

Diverse thought is what makes a company long-standing.

The intention enables organizations to create better and safer products that consider everyone, breaking the narrow mind of complementing a single section of society. A report

by McKinsey found that diverse companies perform better, hire better talent, have more engaged employees and retain workers better than companies that do not focus on diversity and inclusion. However, most of the companies are at the start of adapting to all these changes.

Statistics show that women doing IT work face challenges ranging from employment gap to work culture issues and pay the difference. Discrimination and suppression is not just a threat to employees.Another record centres on how women founders in tech suffer at the hands of investors. Around 41% of women founders, both white and women of colour face harassment from potential investors. The #MeToo movement spurred a sign of support to women facing challenges and gave enthusiasm. But the real office life still poses barriers to women who are being upheld at unprecedented levels.

Let’s forget men in the picture for some time. When a woman wants to start a new business in tech, it is unlikely that they chose people who they barely or doesn’t know. Henceforth, the easiest hire is often the ones on their close network.

The real challenge on who they choose starts as they move forward successfully. Women founders and leaders tend to support and understand female employees in the tech industry as they have been through the same kind of traumatic experience. As the organization matures, it is a sign that the impact of different perspectives and experience gets magnified. Here are some tips for companies to empower women employees.

Acknowledging Personal Needs Women employees come with responsibility. It is not just in the tech sector, working women are driven to be multitasking and talented in handling both work and family. The normalization of paid paternity leave is not around the corner. Menstrual holidays are far from reality in a lot of companies. However, women manage to handle them finely so far.

Organisations needn’t provide them with anything. But at the

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same time, they shouldn’t put women employees at a position where they are forced to choose between being a parent and a professional. Tech companies should accept that both the roles are important and goes hand in hand. Tech giants need to know that even a dream job shouldn’t stand in the way of personal goals like being a parent.

Opting for Equal Pay for Equal Work A survey suggests that companies tend to pay women between 4% and 45% less for the same roles as their male counterparts. The gap keeps extending when they choose to stay with the company for a longer period. Already, women face a breakthrough from their career during maternity. It is not granted as an option. If women take a lengthy leave during childbirth, often they are forced to lose promotion and job status. The pay gaps add up to their trouble.

Henceforth, it will be a considerate work if tech companies compensate equally and fairly based on the role’s market value without taking into account if the employee is a male or female.

Willingness to Open Wide Opportunities Confined to a single stream for a long time provides nothing except stableness. A company can’t afford to be jeopardized at the same revenue level without improvement. Progress comes with a cost. However, tech companies should be aware that the expense will yield a further profit if used properly.

They can spend on teams to participate in various workshops and courses that could give them an opportunity and openminded thought towards future inventions. Especially women need to take part in women-in-tech networking events.

Accrediting Female Opinion Companies must believe that women’s voice and opinion is a part of the conversation in team meetings and idea pitching.

However, female employees are often muffled behind male shoulders. A natural sense of pitching opinion comes from women when they realize that they have an equal right. This puts organizations at a position to hire men and women at equal quantity.

Although these measures are already in existence at companies, growing a women’s strength needs much more than the current effort. Even when companies can’t embrace them all together, they should try one technique every week and enlist the improvement it has brought. By doing so, women get what they deserve.

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Leveraging Multi-Disciplinary Experience to Solve Problems for A Safer World

T

he MITRE Corporation or MITRE is a nationally recognized not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government. It works in the public interest to discover new possibilities, create unexpected opportunities, and lead by pioneering together for the public good to bring innovative ideas into existence. Through its federally funded R&D centers and public-private partnerships, MITRE works across government to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of the country. Specifically, MITRE operates in seven federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) which are unique organizations serving as long-term strategic partners to the United States government. They provide objective guidance in an environment free of conflicts of interest in the areas of scientific research and analysis; development and acquisition; and systems engineering and integration. MITRE’s resource strength comprises of 8,500 scientists, engineers, and support specialists. With over 7,000 of its employees working directly on customer programs, MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to fueling innovation and solving problems for a safer world.

EXECUTIVE OF THE MONTH 22

USHA CHAUDHARY SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR CORPORATE OPERATIONS AND CHIEF TRANSFORMATION OFFICER MITRE

Meet the Transformational Leader Usha Chaudhary is the Senior Vice President for Corporate Operations and Chief Transformation Officer at MITRE. In this role, she is responsible for the organization’s business and digital transformation as well as corporate operations functions, including strategy, finance, information technology and security, contracts, knowledge management, business

analytics, and real estate. She oversees a team of nearly 1,000 employees, a revenue base of approximately US$2 billion, and a department budget of US$250 million. In light of the strategic and organizational changes necessitated by COVID-19, Usha has decided to leave MITRE in September, to complete her doctoral program and pursue social entrepreneurship opportunities.

Focusing on Business Growth and Scalability Usha Chaudhary has demonstrated pioneer leadership skills in transforming organizations and establishing best-in-class operations focused on business growth, fiscal discipline, and operational excellence. She has extensive executive experience in strategy, finance, operations, technology, and risk management functions in both public and privately-held companies in multiple sectors including financial services, media, global non-profit, multifamily real estate investment, development and management, and most recently, in technology and engineering. Her many strengths include developing and executing business and technology strategy and financial plans; executing M&A transactions; building innovative product, process, and technology capabilities; identifying and managing enterprise risks; transforming businesses and re-engineering operations to achieve growth, improving organizational efficiency and scalability in order to maximize investor/shareholder value and meet the needs of customers and sponsors.

Prior to MITRE, Usha served as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Kettler, a leading multifamily real estate

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Disruptive technologies have reshaped virtually all industries and the pace of change/disruption is becoming more pronounced.

Undoubtedly, these technologies present significant transformation opportunities for organizations to re-invent themselves in remaining relevant and achieving competitive advantage.

Usha Chaudhary

mitre.org

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developer and manager in the USA, overseeing all aspects of the organization. Previously, she was Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of The Pew Charitable Trusts; Chief Financial Officer at The Washington Post; and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at United Way of America. She has also held several executive positions at Freddie Mac in the areas of finance, strategy, risk management, and corporate operations for its investments and capital markets, multifamily housing, single- family operations, and risk management divisions.

Usha has served on several non-profit and trade association boards over the past 15 years and on a private corporate board over the past 6 years, including as Treasurer, chair of Finance, Audit, and Governance & Nominating Committees, and member of the Executive, Strategy, and Compensation committees. She is currently on the Boards of Nathan Associates, an international economic consulting organization; The George Mason University Honors College; Northern Virginia Technology Council; Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce; Greater Washington Board of Trade, and Tysons Partnership. Usha is a strong advocate for education and is a supporter of a number of charitable organizations geared towards bettering youth through structured enrichment programs. Her philanthropic involvements include serving on the Boards of India International School, a well-established Northern Virginia Indian American education and cultural center and a recent startup called RENEW (Reform Education for a New World).

Usha has received numerous awards and honors over the past decade, including being named finalist in the March of Dimes ‘Heroines of Washington” in 2018; named Washingtonian’s “Most Powerful Women in Washington” in 2017; Bisnow’s “Women of Influence in Commercial Real Estate” in 2017; Washington Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” in 2016; The Women’s Center’s “Leadership Award” nominee in 2016; and was awarded Washington’s “Non-Profit CFO of the Year Award for Innovation” in 2007.

Usha is a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

She has also earned a world executive MBA from the George Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India. She is currently enrolled in Drexel University’s Doctorate of Business Administration program which she is expected to complete by mid-2022.

Usha learned the value of speaking up and being heard very early in her career. She learned that “good things don’t always

happen to those who wait” and therefore, hard work doesn’t often get noticed or automatically rewarded. She also learned the importance of leaning in, taking risks and stepping out of her comfort zone. She challenged herself to take on roles and assignments that she knew little about, going on to quickly mastering it, and then transforming it. Usha’s comfort with the unknown led to her embracing change, which enabled her passion for transformative work. Consequently, she has led and supported business and technology transformation at Freddie Mac, United Way, The Washington Post, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Kettler, and most recently at The MITRE Corporation, which paved the way for strategic shifts and innovation, leading to business growth, scalability, and operational efficiency.

Appreciating Leadership Lessons Usha has faced numerous challenges throughout her career spanning a few decades. Being accepted in male-dominant sectors, (such as mortgage banking, media, real estate investment, and technology) have been a challenge which has made Usha appreciate and embrace a leadership style that is collaborative, inclusive, and empathetic. Usha is truly a transformational leader. She is a demonstrated champion of change, takes bold actions, and has the ability to both reimagine/re-invent the vision and strategy of an organization, and to execute it. She encourages, inspires, and motivates her team to innovate, all the while, leading by example. She practices what Jim Collins describes as level 5 leadership traits of humility, asking others for help when needed, being extremely disciplined, taking responsibility for her actions, and surrounding herself with the right people in the right jobs. She extends level 5 leadership even further by exhibiting servant leadership in placing the greatest emphasis on the needs of the company, its’ customers and employees, and society at large.

Disrupting Forces to Embrace Innovation Usha believes that, innovation begins with not just knowing but also anticipating the needs of the customers. She asserts that making data-driven decisions is critical, based on applicable models and analytics regarding the market, competition, industry and technology trends, emerging disruptive forces, etc., however, the underlying data has to be balanced with intuition. Innovative ideas have to be assessed for feasibility of execution. This then leads to development (internally, off-the-shelf solution, or outsourced), testing and adoption. Though the process may seem laborious and lengthy, speed is of the essence! Usha believes that

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the COVID-19 environment has certainly helped to radically improve our capacity and capability to respond with speed, agility, and decisiveness in developing innovative products and solutions that both address this pandemic and effectively plan for the next one.

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» Driving Technology to Create an Intelligent Enterprise In the words of Usha, disruptive technologies have reshaped virtually all industries and the pace of change/ disruption is becoming more pronounced. Undoubtedly, these technologies present significant transformation opportunities for organizations to re-invent themselves in remaining relevant and achieving competitive advantage.

For example, this provides opportunities to adopt multicloud service offerings for core business systems; move to the adoption of 5G, zero trust networks, and intelligent content layers to enable digital transformation; the use of mobility, IoT, and collaboration to transform the way we operate and conduct business (this has been a major acceleration point in order to operate in the COVID-19 environment); the increased application of AI, robotics, and machine learning into the information, systems, and processes; and enabling our ability to address the increased demand for technical computing capacity. The resulting speed of decision-making and the ability to house and use knowledge in enabling organizational wisdom ultimately leads to a technologydriven intelligent enterprise.

Adopting Emerging Technologies Relevant to the Industry MITRE corporation is on the path to transforming to an intelligent enterprise that will seamlessly integrate knowledge, processes, human expertise, and data-driven decisions with adaptable and trusted intelligent systems and services to enable the delivery of innovative outcomes and opportunities.

The pace of technological disruption will require organizations to be extremely agile and adopt an ongoing experimentation approach, i.e., establishing a test-bed/lab to experiment with emerging technology in order to remain competitive and relevant in the industry.

Guiding Future Leaders of Tomorrow Usha says that she has lived with a few core values or mantras that have guided her throughout her career. She offers the same advice to the emerging and future women leaders: » The future women leaders should choose a career that makes them truly happy, something that they are

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passionate about and are good at.

They must take risks and be bold in their actions and decisions. They should never settle for mediocrity and should have the highest expectations of themselves and others.

The future women leaders must be open to learning and continue to acquire new skills, continue to re-invent themselves and grow/evolve throughout their career.

Collaboration and teamwork are extremely important values as well. The women leaders of tomorrow must surround themselves with people who they can help/ mentor and who they can learn from. In doing so, the women leaders must embrace diversity and inclusion, not because it sounds good and is politically correct, but because it is the right thing to do - both in the office in order to achieve optimal results, but also in how they live their lives every day.

Last but not least, women leaders should focus on making an impact - personal, professional, and societal. By becoming champions of change and transformation, we are all capable of leading and enabling positive impact in all aspects of life.

Aligning Businesses with Data Analytics and Human Resource Planning

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ilver Peak was started in 2004 by its Founder and current CEO David Hughes. The company has built a successful industry reputation as a global SD-WAN leader delivering on the transformational promise of the cloud. Silver Peak’s enduring focus on building better WANs enables its customers to achieve a multiplier effect from their cloud strategy, manage continuous change and realize the freedom of choice delivering a no-compromise WAN solution. Simply put, more focus means more expertise and a better return on investment.

While Silver Peak has been recognized as a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, its biggest industry endorsement has come from the announcement of the company’s recent acquisition

by HPE. The company will partner with the Aruba Networks division to continue building on their joint success.

EXECUTIVE OF THE MONTH 28

LISA MCGILL CHRO SILVER PEAK

A Visionary Leader Lisa McGill is the CHRO at Silver Peak. Lisa has served as the former CHRO of CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Brocade, and Foundry Networks. She says that the CrowdStrike experience provided her a unique opportunity to evolve as a global business leader. At Silver Peak, Lisa drives and evolves the company’s global talent strategy by people optimization, developing and coaching its executive leaders and scaling its HR operations.

She is a firm believer in the need to align culture and business objectives to achieve the highest levels of customer and employee experience, driving award-winning cultural change.

As a highly respected, authentic and inspirational leader, Lisa specializes in taking a vision and transforming it into a reality through teamwork and a sound strategic focus. She says, “This is achieved by brokering new ways of thinking across the organization and operating to deliver material and measurable business results.”

Lisa discerns that the experience with hyper-growth

organizations has enabled her to intuitively navigate through the complexities of driving results across recruitment, crisis management, HR digital transformation, and advance diversity & inclusion initiatives. She recounts that when Silver Peak was starting to experience significant growth and expansion both via partners and new international markets, her deep credentials in global talent, people, operations and HR Strategy, were being leveraged by the company to help scale and pivot the organization accordingly.

She looks forward to being eventually recruited to a public board for her HR expertise given the multitude of discussions today’s Boards have around compensation, culture, values, succession planning and talent management.

Leveraging Growth Opportunities to Succeed Lisa recalls both her parents were pretty traditional. As the youngest of three and, being the only girl, Lisa wasn’t necessarily encouraged to pursue a professional career.

Lisa took it upon herself to pay for and complete her undergraduate degree in Business Management. A few years later, self-financed she graduated with an MBA from Pepperdine, all while working full-time at Foundry Networks. She adds, “It was in business school I learned to be more declarative in my statements. By doing so, I discovered that it helped neutralize and take the power of judgment away from others.”

Lisa remembers when she explained about her job and why she was doing it, supported by data and facts, most people tended to be supportive or move on regardless of whether they approved or disapproved.

One key lesson Lisa learned is that if one wants something and sees an opportunity, they neither should just wait for it to happen nor should assume that others know what that

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the person wants - just grab it with both hands and run.

Lisa states that this is exactly what she did earlier in her career when her boss had left to join another company. She recounts of throwing her hat in the ring for the role and being promoted at 34 years to the CHRO in a public company.

A few years later, Foundry Networks was acquired by a larger company, Brocade, and Lisa was thrilled to be promoted again as CHRO of the combined companies. Lisa says that through all of these changes, she had an amazingly supportive husband and finds herself to be fortunate for sharing her life with him. Lisa shares that her husband has been and continues to be her biggest fan and advocate.

Advances in AI/machine learning have forever changed how we attract recruit and assess talent.

Organizations need to fundamentally reengineer existing business processes and manage the risks accordingly. In doing so, AI can effectively drive faster productivity growth and provide companies with a competitive advantage.

Lisa McGill

silver-peak.com

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Guidance by Strong Moral Compass and Logical Thinking Lisa recalls that initially in her technology career, there was a scarcity of women particularly in leadership roles, so she was constantly surrounded by men. She says that by growing up with two older brothers, she was accustomed to being the only female and the youngest. She reminisces, “Trying to hold my own on the soccer field, outpace them on the track, outclimb them on the rocks or in the trees, and outmanoeuvre them in other games gave me a certain toughness and satisfaction.”

These experiences drove her to push herself harder and never give up. Yet, she says, in the business world, the dynamics are completely different. Lisa opines that not only was she the youngest and only female, but things were often very political.

She recalls people to be constantly jockeying for position, afraid of standing up for what was right, undermining their peers, or letting their insecurities get the best of them even to the cost of the business or someone else.

Lisa articulates that she was determined not to fall into that same trap and navigated through those challenges by remaining true to herself and her values. She was guided by her strong moral compass and logical thinking. Since her dad was a math major, Lisa excelled in math which gave her a deeper understanding of finances and how businesses operated. Eventually, Lisa recognized that if she wanted to become an executive, be viewed as an equal and have a broader knowledge of business, she needed the right experience and education. As a result, she has become adept at leveraging her MBA and operational background to recognize disruptors in the marketplace, to pivot and lead her team and the organization accordingly.

Innovation by Solving Internal Business Issues

Lisa elucidates as an HR leader, the technologies, products and solutions that her team and she uses must appeal to and satisfy SilverPeak’s target audience who are generally internal customers. She adds that the innovation is derived from the need to solve internal business issues, improve retention, accuracy and efficiencies or enhance organizational capabilities. She says, “I’ve worked with sales teams who struggle with sales ramp time. That’s a serious problem because the longer it takes a new sales employee to hit their quota, the less revenue that’s being generated.”

Lisa states that with the help of an external partner, she has used data-driven AI models built on insights from the existing sales team’s key attributes and performance data, to accurately predict a team member’s expected future performance before even hiring them. By solving real-time business issues, as an HR team, Lisa’s team adds value which is the objective.

Leveraging Disruptive Technology to Run Business Lisa observes that at present companies and leaders have to be adaptable. She says, “We’re extremely fortunate to be able to leverage disruptive technologies to run our business in areas like AI, automation, cloud computing and big data analytics whereas years ago we could not.”

She states that when COVID-19 struck, it was a catalyst which forced adaptability even for companies or leaders who may not have thought they were ready. Lisa believes that people needed the tools and applications to enable them to work remotely and access data securely from anywhere in the world.

She explains that at Silver Peak, the company now automates most of the business processes and workflows. Silver Peak has embraced remote working early and design and engineer technical products or solutions through virtual teams and collaboration tools.

More specific to talent, years ago companies and managers relied solely on hard copy resumes, gut instinct, and references all of which invariably riddled the entire process in unconscious bias. Lisa points out that nowadays, to help assess candidates and streamline the talent selection process in an unbiased disruptive fashion, companies are using sophisticated AI and behavioral science platforms.

Lisa observes that finally businesses are leveraging big data to measure employee productivity, along with customer and employee engagement to ensure that the company is attaining positive business outcomes.

She believes that with data, the company now knows that

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certain employees can be just as productive working from the office or working remotely, dispelling the age-old fear “out of sight, out of mind”.

Lisa thinks that companies and industries must face the reality that the jobs of today won’t be the jobs of tomorrow.

She says that many will require very different skills, and some may be completely automated by machines. She feels that companies which do all they can to help re-educate, re-train and build new capabilities in their workforce will maintain their leadership and growth positions while also attracting new talent.

Transformation Through Self-awareness Lisa views that in today’s fast-paced and complex technologydriven world, leaders must be transformational. She believes that a transformational leader possesses many attributes but, above all else, self-awareness. She quotes, “A self-aware leader is a reflective one with a deep understanding of who they are and what others may need. They never presume to know too much.”

Lisa observes that transformational leaders must also be genuine and authentic, thus showing imperfections or vulnerability, occasionally. She says that a transformational leader should be open and highly collaborative and should regularly welcome and engage other executives or influencers who have insightful perspectives on important corporate direction and decisions.

Lisa cites that ideally, they should have a sense of humility, constantly learning and listening to others, coping and even thriving in this era of rapid change. She says that many people have evolved into their leadership roles with little or no formal training or support. Lisa elucidates that this particular area excites her and leverages her coaching expertise as a certified Executive Coach.

Future to Create Economic Opportunities Only a few weeks after joining Silver Peak, Lisa was told the company was going to be acquired by HPE. Lisa says that it was announced officially on July 13, 2020 however is unable to say much as Silver Peak is currently working through the integration planning which is expected to close soon.

Lisa adds, “The intent is for Silver Peak to be combined with HPE’s Aruba business unit and extend Aruba’s technology leadership in the large and fast-growing SD-WAN space.”

Lisa says that both the companies expect the combination to create opportunities for significant economic upside through enhanced growth and profitability by providing a

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superior joint value proposition to customers via integrated offerings that address a greater set of customer requirements while accelerating transformation across their broad global customer base.

Balancing Life with Choices As an executive, Lisa is “always-on” so that her work-life balance is challenging, if not next to impossible. She recounts that just at the peak of her career she had twins. She states that the timing wasn’t intentional but just the way it worked out. Lisa advises, “My advice gained through this experience is to be prepared to inevitably make compromises.”

She says that some days those compromises run in favour of the organizations’ brand, company, profession or the individual and some days in favour of the family. Lisa reckons that the choices one makes are theirs, to try to balance those choices as best one can and live with those choices every day.

She advises to beware of people who believe that working mothers aren’t serious or capable as an executive due to their perceived family commitments. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. She observes that high-achieving mothers at the top of their game who have remained in their careers are highly driven to work for supportive companies and leaders with a healthy balance.

So, she advises emerging women leaders to look for a company that offers a rich array of work-life policies and supportive leadership as they are more likely to attract, retain and successfully leverage their professional women than companies that don’t.

Transforming Customer Experience by Leveraging Data and Insights

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GDATA specializes in providing customer centricity at scale. The company has developed an intelligent customer engagement platform that goes beyond a traditional CDP. Creating a unified customer profile is just the first step, NGDATA goes on to provide real-time insights that drive meaningful conversations whenever and wherever customers choose to engage.

CHELSEA LAWLEY HEAD OF FINANCIAL SERVICES SOLUTIONS NGDATA

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A Thoughtful Leader Chelsea Lawley is the Head of Financial Services Solutions, whose role is to design solutions to enable NGDATA’s current and prospective clients to deepen their relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and drive higher lifetime value. Having started her career working for Bank of America in multiple lines of business to being a Managing Director for a journey analytics firm working with some of the world’s largest banks – Chelsea’s career focus has been on making people’s financial lives easier and more valuable.

Chelsea says many people don’t think of their banking relationships often, even though banks are part of the biggest life moments; buying the first home, saving and paying for children’s college, planning for retirement, financing the largest purchases, and helping to invest. She realizes that the complexities of financial products tend to contain more fine print than people want to leisurely peruse and banking product menus don’t quite read like an exciting

new restaurant’s offerings – so being able to curate the best financial advice and services for customers when they need them is imperative for banks to remain in the trusted advisor position.

“The bank on Main St may no longer be a place where people go to ask questions from someone who knows them personally, but it is my goal to help our clients achieve that same level of trust even if their primary conversations with their customers happen when they open a mobile app.”

Learning through Challenges Chelsea tells of thrilling successes when a program she had written was deployed, her first RFP submission won, and a seemingly impossible negotiation turn out incredibly well. She also remembers lows where project mistakes were made and clients turned in a different direction.

“What I have learned through all of the highs and lows is that the next idea and achievement of growth is made possible by the people surrounding me.”

She says the single greatest lesson she has learned is that achievements and ideas are never created in a vacuum.

Driving Innovations through Interaction with Customers Chelsea believes part of innovating in the company’s space is learning to evolve with how people are choosing to engage, learn, and research. She says, “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have

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imagined turning to YouTube for refinancing advice but good content exists everywhere now. “ She observes that staying relevant requires becoming simpler to engage with while taking into account more complexities and data than ever before. Chelsea states that innovating for NGDATA’s audience means listening to customers wherever and whenever they are interacting and developing solutions to meet them there - even if it is at 2 AM in a different country when they are trying to take out currency to pay for food at an up and coming street market.

Leveraging Disruptive Technologies for Scaling Business Chelsea views AI/ML, Deep Learning, and other disruptive technologies are tools which can enable innovation at a pace humans couldn’t have imagined before. She says that if a bank is going to be simple to engage with while their customer is at a food cart at 2 AM – these technologies have to be involved.

“We need to use big data and machine learning to have relative confidence that the person trying to take out cash in Taiwan is our millennial customer who got a last-minute flight deal from Pennsylvania. “ She believes that companies have to be able to automate personalization and communications to ensure that they can serve every customer when and where they want to interact and that companies cannot do that without being able to scale. Chelsea thinks leadership in this space also requires an understanding of how these technologies work, when and where to apply them, and what the risks and benefits are.

She has seen that leaders starting to develop more technical skillsets in addition to the influence, negotiation, and business acumen that has traditionally been demanded.

Companies have to be able to automate personalization and communications to ensure that they can serve every customer when and where they want to interact- they cannot do that without being able to scale.

Chelsea Lawley

ngdata.com

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need to be able to pull the best from their people regardless of location, be open to adapting to different working styles, take risks and go in directions that others haven’t paved before.

Insights into the Future Chelsea says that NGDATA and technologies that allow for real-time personalized interactions are growing in importance rapidly. People are less interested in spending time completing essential tasks. She cites the increased importance and prevalence of grocery delivery, online shopping, and even fully online mortgage brokerages as examples.

Chelsea observes that even as people move to completely digital experiences for things that were once only accomplished in person – people still want the kind of service they used to experience when they were live. She observes that while grocery delivery services are still working through how to pick out the best produce for their customers and logical substitutions when things are out of stock, retailers are working through virtual fittings and seamless returns/ exchanges, and banks are still figuring out how to offer the best tailored advice online - the demand for these new digital experiences continues to rise. She believes that people still want the care and trust they established with the banker on Main St, even if they no longer want to travel to meet them.

Advise to Young Leaders On her advice to emerging leaders, she says to “surround yourself with people and ideas that are smarter than your own. Always be open to learning new skills and digging into the weeds on occasion.” She says to think through their own experiences – positive and negative - and look for ways to improve upon them.

Transformation through New Ideas Chelsea states that transformation brings risk – to achieve something new, companies have to be open to new ideas, flexible in how they work, and have an appetite for some failed attempts.

“The factory style of management that was top-down centric and focused on ensuring no mistakes doesn’t lend itself to the kind of creativity and expansion needed to innovate.”

She states that in this space leaders must foster a willingness to brainstorm and be wrong – while also instilling a culture of execution that brings things across the finish line. Chelsea asserts that the balance between innovation and execution is difficult to find and made even trickier with workers shifting to more flexible arrangements. She observes that leaders

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Guiding towards the Future of Data to Accelerate Digital Transformation

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ELENA SPAGNUOLO CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER BUNKER DB

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unker DB is a tech company specialised in helping marketing departments be more efficient and productive by processing and analyzing data using artificial intelligence.

The company believes data is the heart of any strategy, which is why it has spent the last five years developing one of the most influential and user-friendly technology platforms in the world.

Bunker DB’s technology allows brands to process and centralize in one place an unlimited number of information from multiple data sources and displays it in a friendly and intuitive way. It exponentially improves brand performance considering all digital touchpoints, also combined with offline efforts.

In short, it helps brands turn their data into knowledge so they can connect with their consumers in a more relevant and efficient way. The company views itself as an intentionally simple platform, but at the same time, sophisticated against the backdrop of today’s times.

Embarking a Mission Towards Excellence Elena Spagnuolo’s journey starts 20 years ago while she set out to study Graphic Design. At that moment, web design wasn’t part of the degree, but her college offered a workshop on building a website. This was enough to spark an interest in her and got her excited to be part of the “digital world.” This further drove Elena to specialize more in this field while taking some freelance jobs.

Elena considers herself a hands-on type of person, i.e., if she needs something, she tries to learn how to do it; if the computer broke, she studies how to fix it, and that is how and when she got her first “real” job. She applied for a design job position, and the interviewers saw that she had studied computer repair and couldn’t believe that a woman could perform such a task. They asked Elena if she could build a computer during the interview, so she did it. They hired her as a computer repairwoman while she also helped develop their website. She also began to get involved with commercial related issues, pricing, budgeting, customer service, and

business negotiations.

Elena was involved in many positions in different companies, but all of them were related to design especially web design.

She was so in love with the design and paying attention to details that she was in touch with developers all the time, trying to know how the website was doing, giving instructions, sharing ideas about the project, and so on. It was then when her managerial skills started to show up. Elena became a Project Leader in a very natural way, and she kept getting better at it.

Life and work drove her to different paths, and designing was no longer a part of her everyday life. She started to lead technical and marketing projects until she was responsible for a Project Management department.

“Of course, that managing was an essential part of my role, and my feeling was that I needed to learn more about it, I needed to share experiences with other managers,” she says.

The natural path to take was to keep studying and learning, so she and her husband decided to start an MBA. It sure was a lot of work to do, keeping a balance between work, studying, and social life, but it was all worth it for Elena.

And then the opportunity showed up. Avedis Boudakian (CEO & Founder) invited her to work at Bunker DB with him, a startup company that needed to be developed in every possible way.

From marketing, commercial, communication (inside and outside), customer service and support, product development to organizational culture, and HR. Developing all the areas with Avedis was the key for her, fulfilling her current role as Chief Business Officer. She can talk face to face with all areas and departments because she was a part of them. From there, she continued to build up a team, a trusty, focused, and reliable team.

Also, Elena felt she was learning so much that she wished to share her knowledge and experience; she wasn’t sure if it would be able to be of any help. Nevertheless, she started teaching at university, college degree, and an MBA in Uruguay and Paraguay. Now, Elena recalls it as a great experience to

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pass all her knowledge and deem herself grateful to have learned from her students.

Mitigating Challenges Since Elena had a graduation in graphic design, it was challenging her not to have hard skills in finance, management, and HR. However, she didn’t let herself feel undermined. Elena thinks there’s always time to learn, and even though one’s academic knowledge may not define oneself or what he does, it will give him a broader picture, and in the end, it will always help.

Elena says, “We have to do what we have to do, play the role needed, whether it is marketing, finance, HR, or just being there to listen to the people. But the real deal is to move fast, not be afraid, trust your team, trust in yourself, listen to your guts, and do your best, and of course, your team has to do their best.”

Portfolio of an Exemplary Leader Elena keenly believes that human values should be at the core of any transformational process. She mentions that we work with people who have their skills, interest, attitudes, culture, etc. The company must share its vision, and the people should be aligned to it. In this process, leaders need to challenge their team, make them part of the process. While their work necessitates being tangible, it is essential to remember to take care of them, listen to them, no matter how busy you are, and let them make mistakes, so they grow stronger.

Information is overwhelming; now more than ever, it is essential to turn data into knowledge. This is why companies must start to adopt technology as part of their culture; it is a process that needs to begin, that must be planned and executed, and as always, baby steps are to be followed.

Elena Spagnuolo

bunkerdb.com

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Providing Tailored Services to the Clients Customer feedback is essential. Elena cannot emphasize enough how important it is for a company to be close to its customers, listen to them, understand their needs, and transform those needs in solutions. She points out that market and industry trends will always exist, but a company has the potential to generate a trend by merely listening to its customers’ needs.

Meeting Industry Demands with Disruptive Technologies Information is overwhelming; now more than ever, it is essential to turn data into knowledge. This is why Elena asserts that companies must start to adopt technology as part of their culture; it is a process that needs to begin, that must be planned and executed, and as always, baby steps are to be followed.

The pandemic situation that the world is living has helped to accelerate this process. Companies are finally coming to

understand the importance of being more efficient in using data. Since budgets are not the same, the need to maximize revenue and minimize expenditures is louder than ever. Hence companies need to leverage technology and data in the present climate.

Aspiring for Future Expansion Elena points out that today, we live in a world where the amount of data increases exponentially, and the time intended for its analysis decreases. This is why placing technology at the core of the business will enable companies to make a difference. Otherwise, they will be left behind, without the power to react neither in time nor form.

She conveys her belief that it is essential to democratize data access for better understanding. Her priority is on changing the misbelief that platforms such as Bunker DB are only for a few or hard to use. Though it is a challenge, it will shift to a much broader approach, where data can be easily accessed to make decisions by everyone within a company. So Bunker DB’s focus is on its customers, offering them better solutions and making things easier.

A few years ago, the company developed a Lab & Data Science department, which continues to develop fascinating automated solutions for the customers. Bunker DB’s goal is to find hidden efficiencies in data to simplify work by optimizing campaigns and marketing efforts.

That’s why the company acts as people changers rather than company changes. To do this, Bunker DB solve as many difficulties as possible in the shortest period and as inexpensive as it can be.

Elena is convinced that Bunker DB is redefining the way Marketing and Communications work and will continue to do so.

Advice to Next Generation Leaders Elena says that change will always be a part of our lives. The good news is, we do not need to be afraid. Instead, we ought to take advantage of the opportunities at all times, drive our own career. Elena conveys the proverbial that the work as a leader never ends. She also asks to remember that hard work is essential, but it’s not enough; commitment, mentoring, continuous learning, honesty, and moving fast are also essential to achieve one’s goals.

Data analytics is becoming a powerful asset for companies, and the recent pandemic situation has shown its importance in decision making. The key is to be aware that technology and data should run in the DNA of everyone within an organization.

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A Technology Leader Propelling New Frontier of Digital Transformation

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igaSpaces is a pioneer of in-memory computing technologies. For over a decade, the company has been delivering enterprise software platforms to hundreds of Tier-1 and Fortune 500 organizations across the globe to power their digital transformation initiatives.

Customers from industries, including financial services, insurance, transportation, healthcare, retail, and more, leverage GigaSpaces’ InsightEdge platform for low-latency transactional and analytical processing at scale. The software powers mission-critical and time-sensitive applications across on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments to optimize business operations, adhere to regulatory compliance and enhance the customer experience. GigaSpaces technology is also embedded in leading products and service platforms through OEM agreements.

The move to digital and online real-time services is becoming an even higher priority as competition grows and more complex regulations require greater agility from enterprises. This trend is challenging enterprises with multiple, siloed data stores, and who are not able to process and analyze data at the necessary speed to provide expected response times to their external and internal consumers. To that extent, GigaSpaces simplifies businesses’ digital transformation initiatives with its AI-driven, high performance, and elastic scaling data fabric. The software platform connects to disparate data stores with one click and the data can be accessed for real-time operational analytics and digital applications.

KAREN KRIVAA VP MARKETING GIGASPACES

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An Ingenious Leader Karen Krivaa is the VP of Marketing at GigaSpaces. She has worked in the technology space for over 20 years in different marketing roles including product management and marketing, portfolio solutions, and corporate marketing.

Understanding the business environment and customer challenges and then translating these into impactful messaging to convey the value of innovation, is her passion.

Karen is motivated by the concept building cohesive

teams and stresses the importance of working closely, knowing that each team member can rely on the others at all times, understanding failures and learning from them, and celebrating the successes together. Prior to joining GigaSpaces, Karen worked at RADVISION, a pioneer in video over IP, where she led the product management and marketing teams. She also headed the marketing for private wireless networks across many industries at Alvarion, as well as managed the solution marketing team for customer engagement and experience software at NICE Systems.

Powering Digital Transformation Strategies GigaSpaces’ products are powering digital transformation initiatives. Its innovations are geared to fill gaps that its enterprise and OEM customers convey, in a differentiated and simple manner, that can bring them measurable value.

Customer first is the most important aspect of successful innovation, and GigaSpaces prides itself on combining a customer centric roadmap with future-proof technology innovations. The company’s customers are striving to retain their competitiveness but, in many cases, their existing infrastructure is struggling to support the growing data loads and performance requirements for modern digital applications, thus not meeting the SLA and expectations of their customers, especially when there are unplanned peaks and at high concurrency. GigaSpaces’ in-memory technology is unique, in that it provides a distributed, low-latency data fabric that leverages AI-driven policies to connect to the existing data stores, deploy new services, and scale elastically across all environments; all while accelerating applications by an order of magnitude. This enables customers to deliver exceptional customer experience while reducing time-tomarket and TCO. GigaSpaces true cloud native platform supports on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments, which is extremely valuable as large enterprises transition to the cloud in a continuous low-risk manner, and do not want to rip and replace their existing mission-critical infrastructure.

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Enterprises will begin to optimally leverage their operational data to deliver highly accurate real-time actionable analytics, AI and predictive insights for critical business processes and applications. The need for more speed and scale is clear, and only the organizations that successfully modernize their infrastructure and deploy innovative services will retain their competitive edge.

Integrating Technology to Drive Digital Innovation Karen asserts that AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning are fuelling innovation from all angles. Leveraging these technologies within an enterprise can result in delivering autonomous capabilities that save on resource-intensive and error-prone processes. Insights gleaned from AI power more accurate data-driven decisions and actions at every level – from development, manufacturing and sales, to marketing and modern customer-facing digital services. Cloud is also similarly impacting organizations. It benefits a business by providing agility, scale and data management, and will also affect an organization’s existing processes. For smaller companies, the cloud provides an engine that can accelerate innovation and scale. For larger organizations, the move to the cloud needs to be managed very carefully to avoid risk and ensure success.

Moreover, Karen believes that leaders must take advantage of these technology innovations to remain competitive while understanding the impact on the culture of their organizations. Digital transformation is not just about technology, rather it also includes a comprehensive crosscompany vision, strategy and adoption plan.

Exemplary Leadership Attributes According to Karen, having a vision is a vital attribute for transformational leaders. To continue to always move down the same path will never lead to exceptional results. In this regard, she feels that the vision alone is not sufficient. It must be augmented with a conducive environment that nurtures transparency, creativity and passion which results in a sense of purpose to achieve success. Karen says, there is a great metaphor that compares a company to a conglomerate – a rock composed of many pieces. If all the pieces do not move in the same direction together, that rock will not move. This means they must drive the vision together. For example, when aligning a shift in a company’s strategy, one of the main roadblocks can be from teams or key players that fail to embrace change, which hinders the entire process and lowers the chances to succeed.

Karen Krivaa

gigaspaces.com

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Turning Challenges into Opportunities In the technology space, it is always challenging to maintain a healthy family and work balance. At the beginning of Karen’s journey, she didn’t have a strong mentor, who could nurture and guide her. This can slow a person’s growth as a professional and a leader.

In addition to this, Karen feels that women today have fewer

opportunities when compared to men, especially in high tech. The unconscious bias remains a global challenge which is backed by the low number of women in leadership and board member positions. Women need to continue to invest in their careers and, be dedicated tenacious and passionate to succeed. Karen has learned along the way that women must stand up for what they believe in and persevere. They don’t need to be afraid of change or move out of their comfort zone and dare to fail, because that is how everyone can grow wiser and turn that knowledge into greater success as they move forward.

Envisaging the Future of Computing The big data market is growing rapidly, and in parallel in-memory-computing technology platforms are expected to grow with a CAGR of over 20%. The need for real-time data and analytics processing is also fuelling GigaSpaces’ rapid growth. The company’s core in-memory computing technology is helping its customers deliver on the promise of big data, with a modern data and analytics platform that is powered by AI-driven policies, ensuring the required speed, scale and availability at the optimal TCO. COVID has increased demand for GigaSpaces solutions, as digital service usage is skyrocketing, market trading volume continues to be volatile, stricter regulations are in place and analytics and BI on rapidly changing data are required. In this crisis time, enterprises are also rushing to the cloud and seeking solutions that can help them migrate in the best manner with hybrid and multi-cloud support. GigaSpaces is perfectly positioned to address these challenges. In June, the company announced an additional $12 million round of funding that is helping it drive innovation, scale global expansion and further develop collaboration with partners.

Advising to Budding Women Leaders Imparting leadership advice to emerging women leaders, Karen says that women can achieve anything they want if they focus on and invest the necessary effort in that. They need not be afraid to be strong and to push their ideas and beliefs. “Sadly, in many organizations, strong women can be described by others as aggressive. But if you are a professional and passionate about your ideas, you will be able to move the needle and drive adoption within your company,” she added.

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Unlocking the Performance of Memory Channels with Unmatchable Skillset

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LESLIE DALTON ENTERPRISE SALES EXECUTIVE FORMULUS BLACK

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ormulus Black provides an innovative technology which is first to market for organizations that require the fastest application performance available. The company claims that its software solution, FORSA, should be considered when the bottom line is directly impacted by the performance speed of an organization’s applications. Formulus Black’s technology enables companies to bring storage from the current best-inclass NVME / SSD into the memory channel – a positive move from Tier 1 or 2 (slower storage) to Tier 0. Moving storage into the memory channel reduces the latency (distance to the data), so processing can happen significantly faster than what is possible today.

Up to this time, organizations haven’t had this type of technology available. Most IT leaders understand the opportunity presented by the move to the memory channel; however, there are many obstacles. One of the key challenges is the ability to protect data in DRAM. Using DRAM had always meant that if there was a power outage, the data would be lost forever. This was the main hurdle for IT leaders in moving storage to the memory channel.

When the first vendors to market provided ‘in memory’ databases, this represented a huge jump in technology.

Challenges still existed, which relegated the new technology to the largest companies that could afford the expense. These solutions were for specific databases and not able to run other applications, which limited the products to a narrow niche of companies. Formulus Black takes running ‘in memory’ one step further. It brings storage into memory by providing all of the resiliency expected from traditional enterprise storage solutions, and enables any application or database, regardless of the version, to run storage in the memory channel for faster performance.

As one watches the overall market, ‘memory’ is coming down in price and growing in size, making it more accessible and usable. Additionally, other persistent memory solutions have been introduced, such as Intel Optane PMem. FORSA (by Formulus Black) is application-agnostic, enabling customers to plug into any application/database where they truly

require performance gains, and is flexible, able to work with either DRAM or Intel PMem depending on the organization’s preference. FORSA brings storage, performance, and resilience to memory, and does not require any modifications to applications in order to leverage it as a solution.

Formulus Black has also developed a cloud automation solution called FC2 that works with servers installed with FORSA. FC2 enables companies to quickly deploy an internal private cloud where end users can provision Linux-based virtual machines that use DRAM/PMEM as a fast-local instance storage device.

Accounts of Sophisticated Leadership Leslie Dalton, Vice President of Sales at Formulus Black, has been in sales for 30 years, with 23 years of experience in selling software. Her background before joining Formulus Black was in the backup and recovery sector for 16 years. She joined Formulus Black in April 2019 to lead software sales of FORSA as well as assist with marketing efforts. She states that being at a start-up lends itself to wearing many hats. “I usually focus on anything that touches the customer,” says Leslie. “Sales is my primary focus, but following that is marketing, partnerships, POCs, case studies, and technical support. If it touches the customer, I am involved.”

Leslie shares that Formulus Black’s technology has been around for several years. According to her, the company has invested heavily in the development, engineering, and QA required to continuously improve FORSA. Leslie’s role is to sell FORSA to companies all around the world. She explains that this involves selling directly to clients as well as working closely with the sales teams from Intel, AMD, and Lenovo. Leslie notes that having a product that can change the use of memory forever is the best part of her job. She also acknowledges that her strong technical team instills her with confidence in the solution and assures her faith in its potential and what it will provide to the company’s clients.

Focusing on Customers with Improved Communication Leslie recalls her first leadership role in 1994 as a sales manager for a five million dollar (and then 10 million dollar) district of

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As AI grows, Big Data expands, and analytics need to be accessed ever more quickly, moving data to the memory channel brings faster results. Analytics drive decisions, and if you need to move faster than your competition, you’ll need faster results.

Formulus Black sees where the industry is headed and their FORSA technology will enable companies to get there faster.

Leslie Dalton

formulusblack.com

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a large, publicly traded US manufacturer. She says that she was inexperienced, and managing people 25 years older than her was a huge challenge. Leslie states her colleagues had doubted her ability to lead the team, owing to her minimal years of experience.

She remembers that she had to learn everything quickly and says that the best advice she received at the time was from another manager who said that when one manages people one should manage them differently based on each person.

Leslie opines that some require extensive management, some need help here and there, and others may simply require support. She views that in the end, the best lesson she learned was when the customer is the focus, everything else will fall into place, and it certainly did.

Leslie recounts that in moving to a start-up back in 1997, she got more profound insights into how customer focus is critical, and taking rapid action is paramount. She says, “I find since I work with companies all over the world and have co-workers based across the globe, using Slack, Skype, email, and online meetings for effective communication becomes even more important.”

Leslie reiterates that the key to success is to put oneself in the client’s shoes, and then everything else will fall into place. She says that in a start-up where everything is moving so fast, having a straightforward process has proven to be extremely important.

Innovation Through Enhanced Performance In speaking about innovation, Leslie asserts that Formulus Black’s solution is a new release to the market mix that has been around for several years. She believes the new launch to be more innovative, making it easier for clients to deploy the product in their environments. Leslie says, “we have had to do a lot of education and have now reached the prime time, where our clients are buying our solution to increase performance for their key applications.”

Formulus Black’s engineering team is focused on working towards the next release, adding enhancements and new builds. Leslie says that it is client feedback that drives FORSA’s enhancements. The company’s mission is to develop a product that plugs into a client’s existing environment, is open to working with any application that needs a performance boost, and is flexible enough to work with both DRAM or Intel PMem. She adds that FORSA can significantly reduce costs, and mentions that Formulus Black makes it simple to test FORSA, so that clients can either try the product on their own servers, or test their system on the company’s hosted FORSA servers to experience the performance improvement before buying.

Executing Technology with Agility Leslie is aware that the industry has to keep pace with technology advancements, and she thus needs to stay abreast of technology and direction. For Leslie, the sense of urgency, speed, and focus are imperative. She says that these factors are fundamental for Formulus Black, which has developed a team approach where members rely on each other to do their very best. Apart from that, Leslie believes that the difference between today and years ago is that an executive from a large firm would once be highly regarded and considered the best, smartest, and brightest, and based on that would be elevated above the fray. Nowadays, however, if leaders are not willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work (especially in a start-up), then there is no room for them. Leslie finds nimble leaders that listen, understand, and can execute a must for successful companies.

The Future Ahead Leslie says that this is just the beginning, and she is excited to be at the forefront of how Formulus Black can use memory. She believes that it is not only exciting for the FORSA technology, but for the industry overall. There will be more vendors entering the market as the product line matures and defines its place.

Customers know that memory is a key focus, and they need to utilize it in order to have the fastest performance and to stay relevant. Leslie asserts that memory is the new tier 0 storage.

She points out that young minds are proliferating. They need instant gratification, and it is only going to get worse, which might be favorable for the Formulus Black! Their team is committed and nimble, values its customers, and will continue to develop technologies to fit demand.

Advice to Young Entrepreneurs Leslie advises young entrepreneurs to understand their strengths, which will develop from what they enjoy. She deems this important, as once an individual realizes his abilities, he can determine which roles suit him the best.

She advises people not to consider their work as their everything, and to ignore the rest.

Leslie’s philosophy is that when caught up in a disagreement with a co-worker, one must try and understand why that person thinks the way they do, as that will enable a person to empathize without getting angry and communicate more effectively.

Leslie believes one must always listen in order to learn. She states that in today’s day and age, and especially in technology, one cannot master everything, and once a person thinks they can, then they are probably on their way out. Further, she encourages everyone to trust their gut and intuition.

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Gender Equality in Tech: Nipping in the Bud to Address Why

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ender equality isn’t a new fad. People have fought decades to get the right to education, vote, equality, and representation for women in the past centuries.

However, we are far from actually achieving it. Even and especially in tech, women and their participation and contribution have been denied or overlooked. Every year we speak about bringing measures, opening discussion forums, and signing petitions, yet we are left wondering if it was all for deaf ears at the end of the day. By nature, technology is perceived as progressive, which unfortunately does not mirror when it comes to women’s voices in tech. Indeed we have more coding programs, STEM career options in the educational sector, still the statistics are appalling. The pressure and momentum for change are louder than ever; however, books do not see beyond white male domination in the tech sector, from Bill Gates to Edison. So, where are we failing?

Why it matters?

Technology is the most powerful tool in the world. It shapes how we live our lives and enables us to create new businesses and solve problems at unparalleled speed. Unfortunately, this would not lead to the rounded development of a society. This is because

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of a lack of diverse leadership and voices.

Most of the ‘experts’ will purport to issues like differences in labor market expectations, family/work balance, lack of ambition, interests, self-esteem, and self-confidence as the reasons behind broadening the gender gap. In reality, it is the stereotypes and how we continue to project a woman’s success. For instance, when husband-wife duo Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo won Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019 for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty (along with Michael Kremer), Indian dailies reported the news as ‘Abhijit Banerjee and his wife won the Nobel for Economics.’ This may not seem like a huge deal, but this is exactly how we start dismissing women of their contributions, including in tech.

Biases Now, coming to biases that emanate either consciously or unconsciously about a gender’s talent, skills, and ability having irreversible effects on the society. From signing up at extra math summer camp classes to choosing AI as a career, from recruitment to performance evaluation and pay, the biases end up acting as a wrecking ball. What is even worse is when the biases that perpetuate in real life find their way to the software algorithm, hence having a terrifying power to jeopardize careers before they see the light. One cannot emphasize how gravely things can escalate once biases find a way to everyday technology. The Gender Social Norms Index report from the UN Development

Program (UNDP) shows that about 99.81% of Pakistan’s people have at least one sexist bias against women. Qatar and Nigeria follow Pakistan with 99.73%. These figures loosely portray why we do not see many women tech experts or scientists from these nations.

Are enrollments enough?

Yes, we are encouraging more female students to take part in STEM, but if you look deep, this is not enough. A 2015 study

by PWC in the UK highlights that females aren’t considering technology careers as they aren’t given enough information on what working in the sector involves and because no one is putting it forward as an option to them. Meanwhile, in many nations, females don’t have access to reliable internet connection or lab resources, or merely primary education, not due to poverty but patriarchy unwilling to invest in a girl child’s future. Additionally, it’s not enough for young women to gain competitive technical and soft skills. We also need to provide them with the support system, mentorship, and networks that will allow them to truly accelerate their careers—E.g. Women in Technology International (WITI).

Time to Invest Then we have investors, as our bottleneck towards ensuring gender equality in tech. Morgan Stanley’s Sustainability and Global Quantitative Research teams had advised in their 2017 research paper that lack of women in technology companies isn’t just a question for academic research and industry debate; it should also be of interest to investors. This issue stems from the various beliefs like women may not be serious in Tech career later, merely because women are viewed as a submissive and non-leader figure in science and technology.

Ironically, it has been observed that having a diverse tech

team can better riskadjusted performance, increased productivity, more incredible innovation, higher employee retention. All of these are critical factors for improving a tech company’s odds of staying competitive. A McKinsey report states that tech companies that respect diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

Plus, tech companies’ recent public struggles on gender-related issues have demonstrated real, immediate costs resulting from a lack of

inclusion and diversity. These comprise up of the lost stock value, lower market share, HR costs, and public relations costs, among others.

Wrapping Up So, to surmise, the tech pipeline may be leaky when it comes to gender equality; now is the time to look beyond the basics.

Find out the leak spots, broken parts, and loose fittings and take action of fixing them. We can no longer afford to take a back seat in the drive toward equality. Lastly, it is time; we treat our feminine peers are equals, and not just “Women in Tech.” Technology has no gender orientation, nor science, why should people who strive to bring a change not get equal opportunities.

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Transformational Leader Driving Dynamic Talent Management with Innovation

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oalfire is a cybersecurity advisor that helps private and public sector organizations avert threats, close gaps, and effectively manage risk. By providing independent, tailored advice, and services that span the cybersecurity lifecycle (Cyber Risk Services, Compliance Services, and Coalfire Labs), the company helps its clients develop scalable programs that improve their security posture, achieve their business objectives, and fuel their continued success.

LESLIE JONES CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER COALFIRE

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An Accomplished HR Leader Leslie Jones is the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) at Coalfire. After graduating from Cornell with a degree in Industrial and Labor Relations, she went straight into her first HR role. Later on, she completed her master’s degree in Leadership and Organizations from the University of Denver.

Her HR career has been focused on technology companies.

She has been in her current role as the Chief Human Resources Officer for Coalfire for almost four years. Leslie, along with her HR team, focus their people strategy on attracting, developing, engaging, and retaining talent in the industry’s competitive market. Everything the company does aligns with its focus on driving culture and engaging its employees.

Leslie faced one of her biggest career milestones and also one of her biggest challenges as an HR leader for a previous organization. At the time, she had to build an HR team from the ground up. As she brought people onto the team for

this high-growth, pre-IPO company, she also had to build collaborative relationships. Leslie knew that bringing in talented leaders would create the strength needed to move the company forward in an environment that required a fast, dynamic pace.

Today, she has leaders who are experts in their field and enjoys collaborating with them and learning from them every day. Leslie often says she wouldn’t be as successful without her team, and she really means that. They make her a better leader. She attributes the success of the company’s people strategy and operations to those on her team.

Adapting to Challenges for New Learnings As an HR leader at a software company acquiring a smaller competitor, Leslie faced another big challenge when she was tasked with ensuring an effective cultural integration. She knew that the company needed to show the new employees how much everyone cared about them and were excited to have them on board. She also needed to coach the existing leaders to be open and collaborative as the company integrated— in a way that would be engaging for both of them and the new leaders. She kept an open mind and adopted some of their cultural aspects into the broader organization. It was a great learning experience for Leslie to have influenced the integration and opportunity for the larger acquiring company to expand their culture.

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Throughout Leslie’s career, she has realized that every new situation is different, and while one can draw from past experience to help guide, they also have to be open to new possibilities and ways of doing things. She believes every challenge is a chance to learn and be innovative.

Driving the Goals of Transformational Leadership Leslie says, “Transformational leaders create space for their team to grow and be successful. It starts with being a good role model. Am I demonstrating the behaviors I want to see in my team? You then work together to envision success in what you do and inspire them to achieve more than they thought was possible. Each person brings different strengths to a team. It is up to the leader to identify and cultivate those strengths, which in turn will build their motivation to succeed. The end goal is to create an autonomous team who looks to the leader for guidance–not all the answers. When leaders create the vision in isolation, they can limit creativity and innovation.” She believes that a leader’s job should be to motivate their team to think outside the box and do their best work.

We are proud that our people have strong technical experience as well as exceptional people

Developing Innovative and Tailored Services Discussing Coalfire’s innovation strategy, Leslie shares that the company drives innovation by providing independent, tailored advice and services that span the cybersecurity lifecycle. The company helps its clients develop scalable programs that improve their security posture, achieve their business objectives, and fuel their continued success.

Coalfire’s solutions and services are built to minimize an organization’s need for their technical staff while spending a fraction of the amount they need on security processes.

Coalfire puts a heavy emphasis on helping their clients not only to understand risk but also empowers them to manage it effectively. By looking at all aspects of their client’s environments, Coalfire provides a complete picture of all possible vulnerabilities and threats so that they can make informed decisions and take appropriate steps to reduce their cyber risk.

skills that provide our customers with the value they will continue to expect as the cybersecurity landscape evolves.

cyber risk. She adds that security leaders need to work with technology companies to improve the security of their current and future products. If one service provider experiences a cyberattack, it creates a domino effect that has an impact on their customers, their customers’ customers, and so on down the line. There is a major need for leadership to demonstrate a full commitment to security in order to protect their organization’s reputation, revenue, and trustworthiness.

Coalfire is in a great position in the industry. Leslie is thrilled to be a leader in a company that continues to grow and thrives on innovation. She remarks, “We’re not content to rest on the successes we’ve had. We know that we need to be forward-thinking and always be one step ahead, and we’ve worked hard to create a culture that fosters idea-sharing and collaboration. We must listen carefully to our clients to understand their needs today to be better positioned to solve their toughest challenges in the future. I’m grateful to be a part of this exciting journey with people who are great to work with.”

Advice to Leaders: Build Strong Working Relationships When asked about her advice for emerging women leaders, she shares that for any leader to succeed, they must be collaborative, build strong working relationships, and create trust. In her role, Leslie has practiced these skills herself and she also helps other leaders to develop their own leadership competencies. Leslie works with leaders to help open their minds to acknowledge all sides of any situation. It is important to form one’s own opinions and ideas as well as leverage one’s expertise. It is also equally as important to consider other perspectives. In the end, the outcome will be inclusive and will produce the best result.

Leslie Jones

coalfire.com

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Creating Solutions for the Future Leslie believes technology companies are on the leading edge of innovation, creating solutions that will change consumer behavior and the way businesses operate. Developments like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality are creating networks of dependencies that can subject individuals and companies to

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Guiding towards the Future of Data to Accelerate Digital Transformation

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ost of the organizations grapple with an ever-increasing number of marketing technologies and applications in their technology stacks. There is also a need for companies to adopt a best-of-breed approach. Conscia was co-founded by Sana Remekie, on the premise of creating a zero-code, self-service technology platform that enables business and IT to collaborate in an agile manner towards digital transformation initiatives, thereby cutting down implementation and integration timelines to a fraction of traditional vendors. The company frees organizations from being locked into inflexible and costly monolithic technology solutions that require expensive and time-consuming implementation and migration initiatives. It acts as connective tissue for organizations’ marketing ecosystems, which serves to coordinate and orchestrate experiences across multiple data sources, applications and touchpoints.

Sana, who is also the CEO of Conscia, graduated from University of Waterloo, Ontario with a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in System Design Engineering in 2006. She has a tenure of over 15 years in various technology leadership roles in designing, architecting and selling software solutions at large system integrators and startups. Conscia has recently been named one of the most promising Canadian tech startups by the Lazaridis Institute and one of the trend-setting technologies of 2019 by KMWorld.

SANA REMEKIE CO-FOUNDER & CEO CONSCIA

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Shaping Career Oriented Qualities from Real Life According to Sana, her journey as a successful female leader was shaped by the people in her life. She reminisces that her father always believed in her ability to reach incredible heights, but his wish was to see her as a doctor one day. So initially she spent her first year in the university in a pre-medical program to grant him that wish. Unfortunately, things took a turn when her father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour.

After finding out that he only had six months to live, he told Sana that he wanted her to follow her passion and advised her to excel in whatever career she chose for herself. After that, Sana decided to become a System Design Engineer as she was passionate about solving multi-faceted problems. Her father was thrilled to learn that his daughter was on her way to reach

the heights; he had hoped for her.

Sana shares that her sister, Sarwat Ismail and her best friend, Sukhwinder (Rimpy) Sidhu, whom she had first met in middle school (Grade 8) after she moved from Pakistan to Canada with her family in 1995 have had a massive impact on her life.

They helped her keep one foot firmly planted on the ground as she ventured out to build her career. They were there to listen and support her through every significant event in her grown-up years from personal dilemmas to career challenges.

Whenever Sana doubted herself during tested times, they reminded her of the tenacious teenage girl who wouldn’t take no for an answer and had unwavering confidence in her ability to accomplish just about anything.

Finally, her husband and Conscia’s co-founder, Dwayne Remekie, helped her turn every weakness in her into her strength. He supported her through all the ups and downs of her career and life. He made sure that traditional roles of a husband and wife don’t get in the way of achieving her dreams and when the demands of her career challenged those roles, he stepped up and did what was necessary. Sana informs that people sometimes used to wonder how she could work with her husband at which she laughs and points out that she and Dwayne are like two peas in a pod. As per Sana, if she and her husband had led separate careers, they may not have been able to accomplish anything for Conscia today. She is happy and feels blessed that her family, life and career are intertwined in perfect harmony.

Influencing Traditionalist Mindset to Change Sana realized that establishing credibility as a woman could be challenging in a male-dominated technology field. During her stint as a technology architect who would essentially be talking to a room full of men, explaining how the technology solutions would work, was something they weren’t used to. In her early years, she had to deal with people who would disregard and undermine her role. However, as her career flourished, she got better at asserting herself, gained confidence and became an effective communicator. It was then she discovered that people started to pay attention, and she was successful in changing minds and influence decisions.

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Encouraging Peers by Inclining to Humanistic Values Sana keenly believes that the success of transformative leadership is rooted in their ability to rally a large number of people to achieve a common purpose. This requires three key attributes.

Communication Skills: The leader must be able to clearly articulate his/her ideas because, without this skill, one can’t even begin on the journey towards transformation.

Empathy: One must be able to stand in other people’s shoes to understand their world view to align the desirable objectives with those of every member of the team. He/ she ought to have the ability to make the team feel that the direction he/she is taking them to, is worth following and create shared meaning and purpose.

Pragmatism – One has to be able to assess the current situation and change direction quickly when necessary, make adjustments and concessions to one’s original plan when required, prioritize the efforts in relation to their importance in achieving the final goals and not get bogged down in detailed planning when faced with high levels of uncertainty.

If we are to create connected experiences for our customers across all channels, we must eliminate data and application

Prioritizing Customer First Approach According to Sana, Conscia spends a significant share of time and energy in understanding its customers’ needs and pain points and brainstorming the best way to solve those problems before the team proceeds with any software development. Conscia’s team also makes sure that every feature and capability added to the software aligns with the company goals and resolves the overarching problem it is trying to counter. The team also ensures that the new features are built will serve as a generic solution that can help multiple clients rather than create custom code for specific clients.

silos, and connect the dots within our technology ecosystems.

The pace of integration will determine the pace of innovation going forward.

Sana Remekie

conscia.ai

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Intelligent Innovations for Market Innovation in the areas of AI, Automation, Cloud Computing and Big Data have proliferated over the last couple of decades, and this is not likely to change going forward.

According to the MarTech landscape founder, Scott Brinker, there are over 8000 Marketing Technology vendors today, up from 1000 in 2015 and 150 in 2011.

Sana is convinced of Conscia building best-of-breed technology stacks. According to her if one has an idea to build something new, chances are, someone has already made it, and put millions of dollars and hours into it. So, first and foremost, one must stay on top of the latest trends and innovations in the technology landscape and leverage what is already out there before jumping in headfirst to build

something new.

Secondly, one has to make various technology applications talk to each other. Data and system silos is one of the biggest challenges resulting from the proliferation of technologies (this is the problem that Sana and her team built Conscia to solve). Without a coherent integration strategy to connect the dots between the various applications and systems, company leaders can end up with redundant effort, stifling complexity and it is impossible to create a connected experience for the customers.

Lastly, companies are ultimately responsible for the ethical use of customer data. In 2020 alone, there have been several instances of data breaches involving companies such as Twitter, Zoom and Marriott. It is no surprise that organizations are very nervous about collecting and using customer data, even for the legitimate objective of personalizing their experiences. Technology leaders must make security and privacy a central part of their data strategy if they are to maintain customer trust and avoid reputational damage.

Outlining Future Plans There is no doubt about how the proliferation of applications, the growing need for agile integration and concerns around data security will continue to be the overarching trends in the industry. Some organizations will deal with the confusion, complexity and risks associated with these trends by sticking to ‘safe’ incumbent software vendors. However, success will come to those who face these challenges head-on and build best-of-breed stacks that give one the freedom to innovate without being locked into a single vendor that threatens stifling innovation. Keeping these in mind, Sana is affirmative that Conscia will establish itself as the leader in data and experience orchestration by maximizing the value of the existing technology investments and connecting new innovative solutions into the organization’s technology stack.

Advice for Next Class of Emerging Leaders Sana assures, “Although there are obstacles in the way, it is also important to remember that it is our job to advocate for ourselves and stand up to fight for our success. Very often, we give up too early, before we have even given something a proper chance”. She explains that this attitude creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as people turn their perception of the likely outcome into reality. She further advises to look to strong females in life as role models for support, advice and inspiration and likewise, pave the way for others.

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