Seeking Joy and Meaning

Your experience is pretty unique among women leaders. You earn degrees in both computer science and business. Senior leadership in tech is still, as you know, primarily made up of men. So, I would imagine there were many times when you were the only woman in the room. What made you want to be a Chief Information officer?

Well, I don’t know that I started off my career with the CIO role as the goal. After graduation, I got into consulting, more so with the mindset of, I’m going to live a jet setting lifestyle, travel the world, and work on interesting problems with various clients.
The jet setting lifestyle didn’t quite pan out to be what I thought it would be. But what I did get out of that was the opportunity to work with several clients, solving interesting problems and challenges, working with many stakeholders and organizations within a company, and thinking about sort of technology solutions that they can leverage to really deliver solid business outcomes and results.
And that part really excited me, energized me, something that I enjoyed doing. And when I first got into sort of the IT organization of a company, I found that there was a lot of parallels between that, what I did in consulting i.e. understanding various stakeholder groups, what are their priorities, opportunities, and challenges, and how can you better leverage technology to do your work better, achieve bigger goals, deliver bigger impact and results?
And I love that space. I continue to stay in that space, grow in that space. And over time, I think as I moved into more leadership roles, the CIO path became the one that I landed on, to be honest. But it came from a notion of just loving the work, loving the space that it’s in, and growing in that.

And the joy that you give us as you talk about this and the smile on your face, it really shows that you love what you do. Is there a higher purpose that drives you in your career decisions? If so, what is it? And how did you arrive at that, at defining what your higher purpose is?

I don’t know if I’d frame it as a higher purpose, but I do focus on sort of what energizes me, what gives me that motivation to sort of chug along. Not all days are easy. Not all days are fun. But for me, the things that really make a difference are working with people I enjoy, working with people that I learn a lot from, solving interesting problems, taking advantage of opportunities that we may not have thought of before.
I would say being in an industry that you have a level of passion and excitement for is also important. And then I would say the opportunity to have my skills and strengths leveraged. You want to be in an environment where that’s actually appreciated and valued and where, like I said, you continue to learn and grow. That’s very important.
Those are some of the things that I would say I tend to focus on or look for. Not sure I would frame that as a higher purpose, but that’s how I see it.