Ep 8: Rising Up with Sue Schade

In this episode, we spotlight “Baby Boomer” Sue Schade, CIO of the University of Michigan Hospitals & Health Centers. We share Sue’s inspiring story focused on a career that spans three decades.

Sue has spent over 30 years in the world of technology management and shared some great tips on leadership. Sue started as a developer but a year later moved into a business analyst position. She then was asked to move into management and lead a newly-formed team, before becoming a regional CIO.

How did Sue make the leap into management? The first thought that came to her when asked to manage was: “I don’t know what these people do!” She quickly realized that was okay, as long as she could ask the right questions and oversee the work. She learned a lot along the way, including the following crucial management tips:

• Be very genuine and authentic as a person

• Be clear about your values

• Lead by example

• Think strategically and execute

For women leaders she says it’s not easy. You have to recognize your own strengths and be true to yourself. She wants women in technology to know they don’t have to manage like men to be effective, but develop their own unique styles.

Sue says she “grew up” in an organization over a 12 year period where she eventually became a regional CIO. During this time she took a number of courses to help develop her skills. In her opinion, you can learn skills, but you have to develop your own personal leadership style.  She now has a large role as CIO of the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health System, frequently named as one of the top 10 healthcare systems in the United States.

More recently, Sue has been very actively speaking out on women in technology. A diverse workforce she believes is vital for competing in a global economy, and the numbers around women in technology and STEM are way behind. But Sue says that it is not just about the numbers, it’s about the applications and innovations that come from diverse people collaborating. Do we have a balanced viewpoint from the perspective of both women and men?

You can learn more about Sue Schade by visiting her Health IT Connect blog at www.sueschade.com.

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Ep 7: Carrie Thorpe: Evolutionary to Revolutionary Image Sizing

At the 2015 Midwest Technology Leaders Conference, the premier regional tech conference, the Diva Tech Talk team met a phenomenal female duo who launched a startup in Detroit called sizzlepig. In this interview, Co-founder Carrie Thorpe shares her story about getting into technology and launching sizzlepig’s new and very effective image sharing tool.

Carrie Thorpe’s very first job was a jump into the (then) brand new world of digital advertising. She was the first digital traffic person at Ogilvy & Mather, a large global ad agency. She saw a lot of growth potential in digital advertising but some pushback from customers.

“We were still getting the reaction that the ‘whole Internet is a fad’ at that point,” she says, describing managing budgets for big brands like Ford.

Carrie had to learn all about the new technologies while working in the ad world. In 2009,  she broke out from the agency world to start her own company. Right away her team started to run into problems with projects. Several of their clients had thousands of images and would keep changing the image specs. The amount of time spent on editing and sending files was pulling their creative team down. They used this first-hand experience to create a solution.

“We thought there had to be a better way to handle this, so it wasn’t so manual,” she said.

There weren’t tools for what Carrie and her team wanted to do, so they created sizzlepig's cloud-based tool that allows you to resize multiple images without batch scripting. Carrie describes batch scripting as working too much like an assembly line. If you don’t like the results you have to go back and manually edit the image, so it’s not always helpful. As a growing creative agency, they had to take a risk to put resources into the new technology which they first called “Bacon.” They delegated a team to start working on it because they felt it was so needed in the industry.

The tool allows users to shape and send images for all different sizes. An agency can sign up for an account, choose their folder, send where images should go, and use their blue print screen to choose the sizes and shapes. There are templates for social media graphics, and the ability to create custom templates.

“As an agency, it’s all about time. Image production is not a well loved task. You can take a look and quickly adjust and output images,” Carrie said. “It saves our clients 90% of their time.”

For that very first project that inspired this new tool, it would have saved their team 20 hours of work, diminishing that time to less than half an hour. Carrie tells us this is not an evolutionary tool, like Adobe Creative Cloud, but a revolutionary tool offering a new approach to image editing and sharing.

For other women technology entrepreneurs, Carrie offers great advice. Launching a new product is challenging, but for Carrie focusing on how much value and help the end users receives motivates her to get through the tough times. She also says having a strong partnership with your founders and team is key to building the company. What makes a strong partnership? Carrie says the best characteristics for her are trust and having a reliable work ethic. Also, she says no one should be brought onto the team that can’t fit into your work culture.

Working at sizzlepig, Carrie says, is more about honesty in what you’re doing.

“We strive to be honest with ourselves and our clients,” she says. Carrie also says that it is essential that you find a personal mentor. This should be someone who can call you out and tell you when you’re overreacting or underreacting.

Learn more about this new tool sizzlepig here at www.SizzlePig.com and the annual Midwest Technology Leaders Conference at http://mtlevent.com/.

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Ep 6: Christina Mathes: Propelling Innovation at Rocket Speed

On this episode we spoke with Christina Mathes, Vice President of Client Experience for Rocket Fiber. Rocket Fiber is Detroit's newest, exciting Gigabit Internet provider serving residents and businesses with 100 times faster Internet speeds.

Christina has a degree in Psychology from the University of Detroit Mercy, but was uncertain what to do with it!  So she started off in a position in mortgage banking at fast-growing Quicken Loans, where her career evolved over the past 15 years. About four years ago she moved to the Mouse Trap team, the “innovation arm” of Quicken Loans. Then she moved this past year to Rocket Fiber.

When Christina first made a move into technology, joining Mouse Trap, she was excited to learn and bring her first-hand business experience to the tech team. She loved being in a setting that supported positive breakthroughs. Mouse Trap helps Quicken Loans with vetting new ideas to propel innovation, in both technology and other aspects of the business. Her team also helped lead “bullet time,” a four hour weekly session on Mondays for technologists to learn new skills or work on new projects.

When one of the co-founders of Rocket Fiber submitted a concept to the idea portal of Mouse Trap to get Google Fiber to Detroit, they explored it. The Mouse Trap team conducted feasibility studies to see if the concept was viable in Detroit. Google wasn’t interested in entering the market, so Rocket Fiber was spun off about a year ago, to make the idea a reality.

Why is Gigabit Internet vital for Detroit? Christina said that it helps both new entrepreneurs and the  growing cadre of second stage companies in Detroit. For her, it is a “no brainer” that faster online connections can significantly help with the city’s growth trajectory! Christina pointed out that everyone has to have Internet these days, and she’s excited to provide a better client service experience for those accessing it. Rocket Fiber plans to use online tools, community events, and more to empower people to use the Internet.

“I’m excited about bringing our customers something they deserve. Folks are pigeon-holed into just a few options, and have poor experiences,” she said.

Bringing 100 times faster speeds will help residents save time, and businesses execute faster. For Christina, she likes to remind others it’s far more about what getting online speedily does for humans, and their endeavors, than just using the technology.

Christina shared some great advice for women entering or staying in technology fields:

• If you want to try something, just try it.

• It can be easy to achieve a good work / life balance if you focus on achieving it.

• Surround yourself with others who share similar interests and challenges.

• Meet everyone you can. Ask others what they’ve done.

• Keep your head up, look around and meet people.

A noteworthy organization that helped Christina was We Build Character --- a program devoted to pairing emerging professionals with top-notch mentors.  WBC helped her meet diverse colleagues, and receive constructive feedback from her mentors and others in the program.

Christina is Vice President of Client Experience at Rocket Fiber :http://www.rocketfiber.com/

Christina mentions and recommends the following technology organizations throughout this episode:

• Quicken Loans: http://www.quickenloans.com/

• We Build Character: http://www.webuildcharacter.org/

• Rocket Fiber: http://www.rocketfiber.com/  

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