Ep 33: Danielle DeLonge: Building a “Jungle Gym” Tech Career

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Danielle DeLonge, Technology Learning Consultant at Plante Moran, the 14th largest accounting/consulting firm in the United States.For 18 years, Plante Moran has been recognized on FORTUNE magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America. They have also been honored by Human Resources Executive Magazine as one of the top places to work for millennial professionals; and most recently Great Place to Work® named Plante Moran to their lists of “50 Best Workplaces for Recent College Graduates” and “Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services.”  Danielle deliberately targeted Plante Moran, as she was building her career, for the support and quality of life/work that the firm offers its team members.

Describing her career path as a “jungle gym path” vs. a “ladder career path,” Danielle began her technology journey with a breakthrough Michigan-based organization:  Automation Alley, the technology business association and accelerator dedicated to growing the Southeast Michigan economy.  As a recently-minted MBA degree holder, Danielle participated in Leadership Oakland – a cohort of regional leaders delving into issues facing Southeast Michigan.  From there, she became the facilitator for an Automation Alley 8-chapter grant-funded statewide network of technology professionals (ConnecTech).  “I didn’t really know what that was going to entail,” Danielle said. “But my brother worked at IBM, and my father was at Oracle, so I thought – well I have two good backups!  And I just fell in love with the people, and the culture at Automation Alley, and in love with technology, too, for what it made possible.” After the grant ended, Danielle worked at Automation Alley full-time as the intermediary between entrepreneurs who wanted “seed” money, and those who funded them.  

Danielle also obtained her PMP certification and her Salesforce administrator certification as additional proficiency badges.  “Who knew that someone could have a non-traditional path, and end up where I did!”

From her Automation Alley experience, Danielle realized that she wanted to “be in the field, out with clients, making things happen.”  She moved to Davenport University, where she sold a program called ICD10, to fundamentally change the way that healthcare providers were paid.  Then she led the development, as Executive Director, of Davenport’s Lansing campus.  But “education is a different mindset than technology,” Danielle found.  “I knew that I wanted to be back in technology.  I felt that I was really connected to the entrepreneurial spirit when I was with technology folks.”  So her next move was to become project manager for entrepreneurial Xede Consulting Group, working on the implementation of Salesforce.com projects for clients.  “That was so much fun because I got to do the high level change management stuff. How does technology impact the work that you are doing?  It can change the shape of the way you do business!”

Danielle always knew she was interested in Plante Moran. “When I was at ConnecTech, we had someone from Plante Moran come in and do a Salesforce.com and SharePoint implementation for us,” she said.  “I saw what that made possible for my 8 chapters across the state, and I thought ‘boy, I want some of that.’  I want to be around those people.”  When Danielle was returning from maternity leave, having had her first child, she was fortunate enough to land her initial role as an IT consultant with Plante, which morphed into becoming the Technology Learning Consultant she is, today.

In thinking about work/life balance “Technology makes so much possible for our practice staff, and the clients that we work with,” Danielle exclaimed. “We practice what we preach. We absolutely use the tools available to us, Microsoft tools like Skype for business, and SharePoint, to do our work. The technology makes the job possible. It also makes the work that I do so interesting because this stuff is always changing. There is always something new to do.”

Discussing her current work at Plante Moran, Danielle said “I believe that the work I am doing with this technology team is something that other organizations need, as well.  There is a need for a tech transfer strategy. I would like to be able to package some of the work we are doing, and bring some order to the natural chaos that exists in technology departments so that the investment technology organizations are making is leveraged across each organization.”

“It’s funny I never really intended to be in technology,” Danielle said. “What inspired me was looking at my father, who had a flexible role, in sales support at Oracle.  I saw him at home working on presentations, and research.  And then my mother was a project manager, and I saw her in an office.  So I thought wow, technology and project management; there’s got to be something there. That really helped shape who I wanted to be in my career.”    

Ruminating about life balance and nurturing her own child, Danielle said: “I feel like I have been a mentor, I’ve been a role model, for moments — like an hour with somebody over coffee. I’ve never, before, been a role model for somebody every waking moment she’s awake. And that is the biggest thing about being around my daughter. I have to be conscious constantly – because she is emulating me.  I think it’s about being deliberate about the environment you’re creating because you’re not the only one living in that.  Your responsibility is so much greater than yourself.  And that is something worth getting up for.”  She is also very grateful for the efforts of her husband, who has been a strong partner throughout her career progression.

In surveying her own talents, Danielle cites her ability to be adaptive as being essential to her development.  “We moved 5 times when I was growing up,” she said. “In a new situation, I know what I need to do to come in, get established, get my basis, and get off and go running. That is all made possible by this thing that we call ‘agile.’  It is a practice but it is also a way of being.”  She also discussed the pivotal role that her network has played in her success. “My network is huge,” Danielle said. “And my network is something I have to nurture.  It is not something that just happened by itself.  I continue to ensure that my network is alive and vital.”  Additionally Danielle says that one of her personal strengths is the skill to “vacillate between listening and creating. And I come back to jobs that allow me to do that.”

Danielle divides her days into 3 parts:  “The early morning is for me. The remainder of my day is for Plante Moran.  My nights are for my family. I structured my life so that by this time, my school is finished.  And when I come home from work, I am spending the time with my daughter and my husband, until she goes to bed.”

In support of life-long learning, and because “books are for me like cooking is for others” (a joy to share) Danielle recommends a number of books including: LOVE IS THE KILLER APP, THE GIRL’S GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING, REALITY IS BROKEN, and two books which her father gave her:  THE POWER OF NICE and NICE GIRLS DON’T GET THE CORNER OFFICE.

“I really had to learn that I would probably get it wrong the first time,” Danielle said. “I had to learn to build in room for failure.  There is a mantra out there about ‘fail fast.’ I would add to that:  and keep going! Do you know what they call the woman who graduated last in class at Harvard Medical School?  They call her ‘Doctor.’ ”

Danielle’s top four leadership lessons for other tech women include:

• Never underestimate the value of clear communication.  “A lot of what I do is help develop succinct messaging; helping the organization think through what do we want to say about the way this technology is going to impact staff members.”

• Learn how to facilitate productive conversations.

• Know your numbers. “Know where you stand. You have to know your data. You need to have an awareness of your output so you can leverage it so you can go where you want to be.”

• The tech field is growing and evolving, and you are always growing and evolving. There is a way for you to carve out a niche in this community, if you persist.

Enthusing about the ramifications of technology, in general, Danielle shared that “you can still achieve your dreams, working in any particular industry, by being a part of technology. I don’t know very many other spaces where that is possible.”

Danielle DeLonge can be reached at ddelonge1@gmail.com.  Plante Moran’s website is www.plantemoran.com.

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Ep 32: Joanne Moretti: Inspiring One Million Tech Women by 2020

Diva Tech Talk was thrilled to interview technology industry leader and visionary, Joanne Moretti, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales Enablement at Jabil Inc., and General Manager of Jabil’s Blue Sky Center. With a 30-plus year career at tech industry giants like CA Technologies, Hewlett Packard and Dell, Joanne had many personal insights and leadership tips to share.

Beginning her tech career at one of Canada’s largest banks (CIBC), (coding in COBOL, maintaining service levels, etc.)  Joanne said “Not until I was older, did I really understand some of the possibilities around technology and some of the things that it could empower people to do.” For Joanne it was about “meeting people, and networking with them to really understand what was going on in the early 80’s that was causing this spur in technology. I began speaking to women at IBM, and some other big companies (DEC) that were around then. It was intriguing to me; they were working with people and with technology.”  

Joanne’s decade-plus at CA Technologies began as “an inspirational, pivotal moment.”  She met a woman from CA who talked about “meeting people, solving problems, understanding what customers were doing, and then mapping solutions to it.  I thought to myself: ‘I want to do that!’ At CA, Joanne became a systems engineer, for 5 years, supporting sales cycles with her technical expertise. Then “I took a quantum leap into sales,” Joanne said. At first “I hesitated.  I thought I was going to lose all my credibility; I was very nervous about that move.”  But her “mentor network” encouraged her to take the challenge.  

After moving into sales, she then quickly evolved into sales management, assuming a territory with a large quota; and then several years later, became the General Manager for CA, Canada where she and her team doubled CA’s Canadian business in 3 years.   After that “Basically my management said ‘do what you did in Canada’, leverage partners to increase your reach; and do the same thing in the Western USA,” which was 13 states. It was “a great evolution from being a technologist, with my sleeves rolled up, to a sales role, then a leading role in the business.  Just a great, great experience,” Joanne exclaimed.  “It was all team.  It was getting the right people on the team.  Making some hard decisions, which aren’t pleasant, but facing some realities that needed to be faced; leveraging partnerships; training the team; and understanding the customers’ needs.”

Joanne was then recruited by Hewlett Packard and applied solutions selling “know-how” to her role as the leader for the HP Sales University, where she and her team developed an award-winning curriculum which encouraged “a much higher level of conversation” between HP sales representatives and their customers. “We created it from scratch at the site of the former HP/EDS famous university in Plano, Texas,” Joanne said. “It was hugely successful. We won the best new corporate university of the year award, within a year… The key proof point was when people sent me emails saying ‘I want to come to university.’  Salespeople don’t get excited about training.  That, to me, was inspiring — that our team could create a program that people wanted to come to.”

After HP, Joanne moved to Dell where she became the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Dell Software, “the smallest division inside Dell,” she said.  “By the time I got there, there were seven software entities acquired; Michael Dell had spent roughly in the neighborhood of $13 billion in acquisitions.  But it all had to be integrated.”  So Joanne took on the initial role of integrating these seven teams from a marketing/brand perspective to “come up with a uniform message to market around how Dell software was going to enable Dell solutions, overall.” 

Several years into that challenge, Joanne said “I got this call from Jabil. And I actually didn’t know who Jabil was!”  There was no marketing team, until she arrived as SVP, at Jabil (an $18 billion company) and yet “It’s a very high tech company; in fact we just won a Gartner award for high tech supply chain innovator.”  What intrigued Joanne was that at Jabil, an engineering-based company, “there is a lot of breadth and depth — solutions that span the entire product lifecycle, from designing a product to taking it to market; and then depth in terms of the type of different capabilities we’ve got and our engineering groups.”  She noted that Jabil specializes in “all the things that go into making wearable devices and IoT- connected devices, and all the storage systems and servers and networking.  We help enable the whole digital ecosystem; the whole IoT ecosystem! This is so exciting for me, because I’m still really close to technology, here.”  

Joanne and her team helped bring The Blue Sky Center to fruition, at Jabil, in Silicon Valley. Joanne called it “our innovation hub for the entire 180,000 person company. “ She explained that “Blue Sky is where we pull it all together. We can literally have someone walk in the door at 8:00 AM; have a design done by noon; and we can have a prototype in their hand by 4 PM in the afternoon. It’s like a ‘Toyland’ of capabilities!”

The customer for Blue Sky is “anyone who builds hardware,” Joanne said. She sees it as a vortex of accelerated innovation; and shared a story about a new healthcare device (a feeding tube equipped with a miniaturized 3D camera, tiny sensors, tiny LED lighting, held together by state-of-the-art adhesives) that the Blue Sky team, and one of their customers, created in record time, as just one example of the excitement that she feels about Blue Sky’s potential to change the world and help humanity.

Joanne characterized her three major leadership skills simply.  They include adaptability to change, her ability to assess risk, and her penchant to make decisions. “I think that making decisions is one of the most important things you can do if you’re an entrepreneur or an ‘intrapreneur.’ Decision-making is what fuels progress.”  

Joanne has never felt that her gender has had an effect on her career and growth.  “I am so focused on results, I have never felt it,” she said, discussing gender bias.  She thinks that her major challenge in the workplace was learning to slow down, and modulate her speed, to the needs of other colleagues/team members. “One of my challenges was being dead set on something, and not stopping to listen.  In big companies, you really have to learn to collaborate. Learning how to work in a bigger, broader, matrixed environment was a challenge for me.”  But one she has mastered with the help of coaches and mentors. Balancing home life and work life was another challenge, which was aided by “a big decision” that she and her husband, a successful software engineer at Microsoft, made. “We made a decision, together, that he would stay home with the kids, and he did, for 12 years. We worked this partnership like I have never seen.”

Joanne’s two biggest passions, outside of her professional mission, is attracting women to STEM while strengthening other women technology leaders; and working toward the goal of expanded, effective education. For her, it is all about “unlocking the potential of people, and the world.”

“We need a different education system,” she declared citing the statistic of only a 40% graduation rate from colleges/universities. “I think we can enable a new, disruptive learning approach through technology.”  Joanne mentioned that in her new community role, on the Advisory Board for the University of Texas’s Institute for Transformational Learning, she will be pursuing that, supporting the vision of the Chief Information Officer for UT.

Joanne also has an aspirational goal to inspire 1 million women to become STEM leaders by the year 2020. “And I put presentations together, blogs together, speak publicly whenever I am given the opportunity. I give away my top 10 leadership tips away all the time.” In pursuit of her passion to strengthen women’s leadership, Joanne is also the editor of an online newsletter “The Butterfly Effect,” which can be found here at: http://paper.li/JoannMoretti/1398403437

Joanne’s top 3 leadership lessons for aspiring women tech leaders include:

• Speak in the language of business. “We must step away from our qualitative, fuzzy, touchy-feely speech. You need to speak, for instance, in terms of return on investment from capital, earnings per share, shareholder expectations.”

• Connect the dots/plug into your company’s strategy.  “How does what you do connect back to the broader vision, broader KPI’s, and broader initiatives of the business?” For Joanne, this is key to “shattering the glass ceiling.”

• Get along with other women.

And her remaining 7 include:

• Build a personal Board of Directors

• Build your network, and your brand inside it

• Self-reflect, and think about the other person, always

• Create mutual purpose

• Lead (don’t “manage”) – empower, encourage, generate enthusiasm, coach

• Get out of your comfort zone; embrace a new challenge/learning every day

• Strategically accelerate your organization and, by extension, yourself

In support of her first leadership lesson, Joanne recommends one of her favorite book: FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE: a MANAGER’S GUIDE TO KNOWING WHAT THE NUMBERS REALLY MEAN.

Joanne Moretti can be reached on Twitter @joannmoretti and via email at joanne_moretti@jabil.com.

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Ep 31: Jing Zhou: Innovator with Passion for Fashion Tech

Diva Tech Talk was thrilled to interview Fashion Tech trailblazer Jing Zhou, a poster child for entrepreneurship.  Jing was born in The People’s Republic of China, and immigrated to the United States when she was in her early 20’s. “Technology, alone, cannot change the world,” according to Jing. “It is the application of technology that will do that.” Jing runs her own company: elemoon (www.elemoon.com). They invented the first consumer-ready flexible computer. It adds substantial technology and style to the existing wearables and the Internet of Things. The first application is a computer-powered jewelry line. 

Jing’s early experiences have distinctly shaped the innovation in which she is involved today.  Having been born in the early ‘80’s in socialist China, Jing said: “The society was quite limiting in terms of what you could do, and what you could buy. But I would argue that, as a girl, it was the best place to be because the society really focused on gender equality.”  

As a first and second grader, Jing remembers reading many stories about Chinese female pioneers (the first female Chinese physicist, the first female Chinese astronaut, the first female Chinese explorer to reach the South Pole etc.), and then having the unique privilege to meet many of them through her father, a journalist who ran a popular magazine in China and featured many accomplished women. 

“That shaped what I believe,” Jing stated. “As a woman, as a girl, you have the total freedom to pursue what you are passionate about, and be the best at it.”  

Jing finds it a shame that many others have not had the unique perspective that her Chinese background, and meeting the extraordinary women interviewed by her father, afforded her. “I think the power of female role models and story-telling, and letting girls see what has already been done, is extremely important.  You get this ‘inner fire’ to be one of them.”

Jing’s university educational focus was originally journalism and business, when she came to Chicago, Illinois at age 22.   “I was born into this media family but I was told that I could not get a job at a mainstream U.S. media outlet. Yet, I like challenges,” she said. “So I became the first Chinese graduate student at Northwestern University’s School of Journalism. Then my first job was at Businessweek magazine, where I wrote a lot about tech, entrepreneurs, startups; and then later on, about larger tech companies and finance.” She was inspired by the inventors and startup founders she met. “They, all, have a really fun, engaging, polished story, and they never tell you how hard it is to run a startup.  So I had this rosy picture!”

In 2010, Jing got the opportunity to start her own business in China. She moved from New York City to Shanghai to found and run one of the country’s first mobile advertising companies. She built that company, and then sold it for $16 million.

Jing had to sell her first company which was a learning experience for her, and did afford some financial freedom for her second business. Running that company provided Jing the realization that “there is a huge gap between technology products and what the consumer wants, especially women and teens, who spend the most money on digital consumer products.”

Founding elemoon in 2013, Jing said: “I wanted my next company to focus on women and teens, and really bridge the gap between technology and the mass market.”  Looking at the digital wearables market, she said “I was surprised that there was still a lot of ‘groupthinking’ around what different brands are doing. Our team did a tour of an Apple shop in New York City, and there is just this whole wall of what I call ‘rubber bands’ and fitness trackers.  The products seem very limiting.  They only focus on the early adopters and the fitness enthusiasts. But we understand what’s possible with the technology, and the market can be so much bigger. We had the idea to make things that are in fashion, and more appealing.”

As a result elemoon’s products (based on principles of IoT – the “Internet of Things”) are created to be “humane” and “convey emotions.”   The first is an elemoon bracelet, a premium product that combines fine jewelry with wearable technology.  It is an elegant band that allows a user to customize its properties, sync it with a smart phone, create a variety of patterns, and change/modify its look and feel daily, or at will.  “I really believe that the future of fashion is highly personalized,” said Jing.  The bracelet has highly practical features, too.  “If you rub it or tap it, your phone will ring,” said Jing – helping people locate their smart phone!  In order to keep the wearer connected to their loved ones, elemoon has also introduced a feature so if an important person calls or texts a bracelet wearer, the bracelet will display a secret pattern so that only the wearer knows who is calling.

Jing’s process to get the elemoon bracelet manufactured was arduous. “These days, high technology is often made in China,” Jing said. Naively she thought that, as a Chinese native speaker, she would be able to easily manage the supply chain process, but she soon realized that Chinese factories were highly specialized.  “Jewelry factories would only make jewelry.  iPhones, iPads, computers are made at focused factories.  We had to identify 17 top manufacturers across southern China, who could make all the components that go into this one hybrid product. Everything had to be custom-made.”  

For two years, after moving back temporarily to China, Jing worked consistently “hovering” at as many of the 17 factories as she could (each more than 100 miles from each other) to deal with what she terms “necessary micro-management.”  In order to correctly get her product developed and manufactured, the elemoon team created a unique computer, and unique testing machine.  “If you don’t show up, and go to the factory floor, nothing will get done,” she said. “It was usual that I would be the only woman on the factory floor.  And the men didn’t know how to talk to me.”  She found that the fastest way to get things done was to work through factory owners’ wives, and she shared that “Girl Power” experience.  The elemoon team experienced inordinate delays, and challenges managing the wide range of factories and components, but through perseverance long hours, hard work, and determination, Jing overcame all the obstacles.

Jing is now catapulting elemoon, and its next generation of products, by working at the New York Fashion Tech Lab, a New York City-funded accelerator program, in Manhattan.  elemoon is one of 8 future companies that are “at the intersection of technology and fashion,” Jing said.  “A lot of the major retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s and Kate Spade are the sponsors of the program. The program opens up the fashion network for us.”

Check out the New York Fashion Tech Lab Program: www.nyftlab.com

“I always see the beauty and poetry in technology,” Jing declared. “I cannot show people what is in my mind unless I make products for them. I am at this really interesting time where I can produce things that are both exciting for me, and the market.”  She mentioned two major fashion icons: Diana von Furstenberg and Rebecca Minkoff as being current inspirations for her.  “There are fashion industry veterans trying to do something new, and stay curious and playful.  And it’s just a beautiful thing.”

Jing recommends her favorite book: DELIVERING HAPPINESS: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh, which discusses how to achieve sustainable happiness through pursuing your higher purpose in life.  “I have found my higher purpose,” Jing said.  “It is changing women, and how they view technology, which can empower women, especially young girls.”  To strengthen that, elemoon is partnering with the United Nations to launch a teen’s line of products, including a kit where teenagers can assemble their own line of computers and wearable tech accessories.

“We are at the starting point of what we are trying to do to inspire women to change their view about technology, and especially empower young women with technology,” Jing simply said.

Jing’s advice for aspiring women tech leaders is:

• Don’t assume you have to be an engineer. “People who don’t have a tech background can add huge value. The trend is going to be extremely interdisciplinary.”

• Solve problems.

• Tap your common sense and intuition.

Jing Zhou can be reached at jing@elemoon.com.

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Ep 30: Michelle Billingsley: Hands On Techie Turned CIO

Diva Tech Talk was honored to chat with Michelle Billingsley, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for nonprofit Blue Care Network. In her role, Michelle manages a team of 105 full-time IT professionals, supplemented by 150 consultants/contractors, and directs information technology operations and solution delivery to meet the dynamic business needs of Michigan’s largest HMO, serving over 800,000 members.

Michelle fell in love with technology early in life.  A high school science project in programming led her to “the love of solving problems and the love of programming.”  While obtaining her undergraduate degree at Western Michigan University in computer science, with a minor in math and business, she worked in the computer lab and taught computer classes.  “I find it fun and energizing,” she said.  “The people you get to meet and work with are funny, quirky, different and so intelligent.”

Post-college, Michelle began her career at National Tech Team, a large IT supplier and training company, where she delivered training in UNIX and C programming for automotive engineers and programmers. Then she went to Wayne State University in Detroit as a systems analyst, and obtained her Masters Degree in Education, Instructional Technology while working full-time, for 8 years, on university IT initiatives (and also “met my telecommunications administrator husband.”)  From there, eager to apply her skills to the business world, she went to a small healthcare company. “Healthcare, for years, has lagged behind in technology,” said Michelle.

She saw that gap as an opportunity, and worked for a small supplier of Medicaid programs.  “It was the best learning ever for the field because I did everything from write code for reporting to being a leader for the claims team to doing cabling for the networks to installing software.  It helped me to learn about a broad spectrum of the healthcare business. ”  

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) was taking hold then, and Michelle saw her next opportunity to become a consultant, “to help people be prepared to meet the HIPAA mandates.”  She went to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan as a contractor, and was then offered a job.

“In my earlier days at Blue Cross, I used to say ‘oh, I’m only going to stay for a little while’…and here I am 14 years later!  Because there’s so much that goes on, I didn’t really need to go to another company to have different projects to work on.”

Michelle enthusiastically discussed the growing audience being served by BCN after passage of the Affordable Care Act.  “There have been changes in our business model.  We used to have more group business.  Now we have had a huge insurgence from the federally-funded marketplace of individuals. Serving them vs. serving our group customers has really changed our business, and our focus.  We are balancing both; serving our group customers and new individual customers, who are used to a more ‘retail’ environment…trying to continue to provide products that engage those members, that help them stay healthy, and help them think about their care, and control their cost of care.”

Michelle is excited about her career future in healthcare working with “disruptive” technologies.  She mentioned the impact of wearable devices, BIG data, telemedicine, cognitive predictive analytics and pharmaceuticals on the business. “All of those things are really starting to disrupt healthcare.  I would love to be a part of developing and leading projects, using disruptive technology, that helps in bringing the cost of U.S. healthcare way, way down to make it sustainable. The future is knowing how to keep you out of the ER or out of the doctor.”

Michelle’s personal leadership strengths include a strong goal orientation (“I like to see outcomes”); her ability to communicate her team’s impact and their accountability to them; and a strong, empathetic focus on “servant leadership.”   “I’m not here to tell everybody ‘we have to get this done,’ said Michelle.  “I’m here to facilitate and remove roadblocks for them.  I always made a rule, throughout my career, to never ask somebody to do something I wouldn’t personally do myself.”  She also cites balance and courageousness as a personal hallmark.  “As a woman, I was pregnant during one of my projects.  I powered through it. Balancing my career with being a mom, balancing my job responsibilities with my husband’s military career and deployments,” are all exemplary of that, to Michelle, since she continuously focused on her career simultaneously with her personal life.  “When you’ve worked on projects around-the-clock, when you’re pregnant and your husband is in Iraq,” she exclaims, “there is nothing scary. People say ‘this project’ is really hard’.  (I say) Bring it!”

Michelle’s advice for aspiring women technology leaders is:

• Make your communications “relatable.” (“Remember how they hear you.  Forget acronyms; use analogies.”)

• Be courageous, but recognize that part of courageousness is being vulnerable. (“You have to be able to accept help.”)

• Have goals for yourself and for your family. (“Then you know what you are working for.”)

• Build a broad network of people inside and outside your organization. (“You need it so that you have people you can reach out to as resources; you need a subset of it for feedback.”)

• Get a mentor. (“My mentors have been invaluable for me.”)

• Take risk with your career, it stretches you. (“Take on things that are really hard.  It’s sometimes scary, but it’s like riding a bike.  You get used to it.”)

Michelle Billingsley can be reached on Twitter @mebillingsley.   

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Ep 29: Karla Thomas: Leading Her Way in a Global Career

Diva Tech Talk chatted with Karla Thomas, Director of IT, Global Cyber Security and Audit at Tower International.  Tower is a Tier 1 leading global manufacturer of engineered automotive structural metal components and assemblies primarily serving original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs").  Tower’s products are manufactured at 27 facilities, strategically located in North America, Europe, Brazil, China and recently Mexico; and they have manufacturing operations through seven engineering and sales locations around the world.  The issues surrounding global cyber security and audit are manifold, so Karla is an extremely busy woman.

Karla had not originally intended to enter the tech field. Her first career goal was to become a math teacher and she did end up teaching. However, her very first class she taught was for a large company who was switching all their computers from Microsoft DOS to Microsoft Windows operating systems.  Her students asked “why Windows?” Karla’s empathetic response was “I don’t know,” but now she “cannot imagine going back to those early days!”  After teaching for several years, she was recruited by the President of now defunct Simplex, when he was one of her students, and she made the switch into corporate life as a PC Analyst/Trainer which was a tough decision.

Karla marveled at the experiences that her career has brought her, taking her leadership and experience around the world.  At her first company, she was sent to California to do some work (“My first business travel within the IT world!”) and now she has worked in Asia, Europe and South America, as well as throughout North America.  

Karla is now on the information technology leadership team at Tower and has been there for 12 years.  

“I was brought in as a help desk manager,” she shared.  “During my first two months, I spend half of that time in China, which was an amazing adventure.”  From Help Desk Manager at Tower, Karla progressed to an Infrastructure Manager, then to an Infrastructure Director.

“All along, one of the things key to what I do is the ability to communicate with non-technical people, bridging that gap between IT and the business,” she said.  This has been a very positive thing for Karla’s career up to today, where she has frequent meetings with Tower’s Audit Committee, including board members.  Very occasionally, the skill has also been a detriment, since it has sometimes tarnished her image within the IT organization.  

Fifteen years ago, Karla shared a memory of having to take a network administrator behind closed doors to say: “Maybe I don’t talk the way you do.  That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the technology.”  In dealing with bias like that, Karla said “Basically, you just have to be upfront and explain that you have a different way of approaching things; being very confident, yourself, is difficult, sometimes.”  For Karla it comes down to “being firm and explaining that you can’t do the job that you do, without understanding the technology” but expressing it in a non-technical way.

What excites Karla about her work at Tower International is that it is constantly changing. Five months into her tenure, Tower declared bankruptcy and information technology was very important in the restructuring.  Two years after that, Tower emerged from bankruptcy, and was acquired by a financial investment group.  Now, it is flourishing and has recently declared an IPO, and returned to being its own growing corporate entity.

“Through all those business changes, you have to understand how much the technology is relied upon,” Karla said. “And how much the technology changes, and the needs change.  It made every day, every year, every month a very different experience.”  

On top of her other current responsibilities, Karla is excited to project manage infrastructure standardization in Mexico, where Tower has recently expanded.  This is a first for her, since a number of her IT colleagues are not English-speaking.  She found Google translation tools imperative in successfully delivering on the team’s commitments.  She discussed her global role, terming it exciting, but not without some personal compromises.  She noted that it “takes more energy” to carefully discuss key tasks/topics with speakers, for whom English is not their primary language.  She also discussed the need to enforce U.S. policies and procedures in other cultures as being a challenge.  

“You have to get colleagues to accept doing things ‘our way’ and to understand why,” she said.

Karla cited flexibility as being key “to advance, and just be able to survive in a challenging role.” She recommended that professionals not “pigeonhole” themselves into “just understanding what you do. If you want to be successful, you have to have your ears open, understand and listen to what the business is doing not just what IT is doing.”

Karla does not think that her gender has had a negative effect on her career. “I was the third daughter to a father, born in 1902, who raised me to say ‘there’s nothing you can’t do’. He was a contractor, and he started out by putting a hammer in my hand, and teaching me that the role was ok. If I wanted to be the first woman to fly in space, that’s (also) ok!” However, in technology, Karla commented: “You do have those people who discount women. But it’s the success that so many of us have had that has proven that women certainly can be leaders in the field.”

Karen recommends community groups to help build networks.  Personally, she has been involved with MCWT (The Michigan Council of Women in Technology), SIM (the Society for Information Management), and the CIO organization supporting Midwest Technology Leaders.  She also noted that SANS, a cooperative research and education organization reaching more than 165,000 security professionals around the world, has a “Women in Technology” arm. She recommends that colleagues reach out through national and regional events, outside of their specialty.

Karla’s advice for aspiring leaders is:

• Develop a strong, firm, consistent, authentic personality “that you aren’t going to change.” (“As women, we are different in the way that we converse with people, inspire people, motivate people. Lead your way.”)

• Be willing to do what you ask your people to do.

• Ensure that you thank and recognize people.

• Be a conscious role model.

Karla Thomas can be reached at kft2358@gmail.com.  

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