Thank you Mariana Carvalho and Women in Cloud for this Spotlight of my 25 years at Microsoft as part of the 50 year Celebration!
One of the top skills I learned at Microsoft was the importance of inclusion. If I had not focused on including others in my ideas, in the way I planned and executed initiatives, campaigns and programs, that there is no way I would have been successful.
Once we had identified a market opportunity, my focus was how to craft objectives and an agenda that would attract those around me to want to work towards it. How I could identify their WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) and ensure that what I was doing would drive success for those around me. I learned how to engage others, how to share my ideas when they were nascent to bring in other points of view and make those ideas stronger. I learned that nothing at Microsoft got done as a tops down command – everything was organic from the ground up. In the early days of my career when there was so much to be done and so few resources to do it. We all needed each other and we needed to pull together to capture the vast opportunity ahead of us. There was no right or wrong way of getting things done – almost everything was built from the ground up creating a foundation for the future.
As you read this interview, you should know that behind everything I ever accomplished there were hundreds of people both within the company and within the Microsoft Partner community that worked to achieve our objectives. I never did anything alone.
I very often have likened my role as a team leader to that of the first ball in Newton’s Cradle of Balance Balls. I started something, but it was others who kept it moving and helped it become something I could only dream of.
I am grateful for all of the great leaders who empowered me and gave me the opportunity to keep trying through the failure until we found success. And I am especially grateful to my peers, those who worked within their teams, hashtag#mspartners, Women in Cloud, The WIT Network who believed in our many missions and made them a reality.
When you are in the midst of working, you seldom take the time to look back at the progression of your career. I know that the decisions I made to move to new roles at Microsoft were not made by a desire to move up within the organization but through a desire to make a difference. I had a desire to continually learn new skills, to push myself to new experiences, to build more bridges within the company and within the community and to make an impact. I am thrilled that as I look back on my career, that this is precisely what I wanted to achieve.
Thank you Microsoft for giving me the platform and the empowerment to make my dreams come true.
Read the full interview on Medium.
