Ep 35: Visionary Dr. Barbara Ciaramitaro: Be Strategic About Your Future

Diva Tech Talk was thrilled to interview the versatile, and experienced Dr. Barbara Ciaramitaro, Chair of the Decision Science Department, and Director of the newly-expanded Cyber Security Center at Walsh College, in Michigan.  Walsh is a leading non-profit higher education institution offering fifteen business and technology degree programs, on both an undergraduate and Master’s level, as well as three business certificate programs (for credit) and 3 certification prep courses business and technology certifications. Walsh is the third largest graduate business school in Michigan based on total enrollment. Walsh is the first, in 2003, to have received the NSA’s (National Security Administration’s) official designation as an academic center of excellence in information assurance.  The college has also recently received an additional NSA designation as a center of academic excellence in cyber defense.  “A lot of folks are not aware that Walsh has a very long leadership position in the area of cyber defense,” Barbara says.

Fascinated by science as a child, Barbara was born too soon to have computers as part of her early academic experience. “They were not even on the horizon,” she says.   After graduating with her undergraduate degree from Wayne State University, she was thoroughly exposed to the rapidly changing technology landscape, in her early 20’s. She had taken her first job at law firm Dickinson Wright PLLC, and was tapped to be part of the firm’s team to evaluate and introduce new systems.  She remembers her “ah ha” moment.  “I can picture myself walking around downtown, and in my head I said: technology!  This is the world I want to be a part of.”  She moved to another law firm, Plunkett Cooney, after a decade, and while working there, obtained her Master’s Degree in software engineering from Central Michigan University.   At Plunkett, she became Chief Technology Officer, and led the firm in selecting and successfully implementing their first state-of-the-art litigation support and database systems.  From there, she moved to another large firm, Miller Canfield, to help introduce their newest systems too.

“Then General Motors found me,” Barbara laughs. She became the GM executive aligned with the internal legal department, tasked with overseeing the development of a unique legal technology system, eventually awarded three patents and worth approximately $60 million.  She oversaw all the activities undertaken by IS&S (Information Systems and Support) to support this, and was responsible for managing and selecting the external IT vendors.  “It was a very demanding time,” Barbara says.  “But I am so glad I went through it.”

Never idle, Barbara was also teaching part-time, while she worked at GM, to test her aptitude for an educational career.  She decided to go back and get her PhD at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida, as part of her evolving career plan.  “I tell my students that you have to be strategic about your future,” Barbara says. “There are so many opportunities.  You need to prepare yourself for the next one, even if you don’t know what it is right now.”  From her own experience, Barbara counsels everyone to follow their passions, and “the opportunities will open up for you.”

Following her own advice, Barbara move to full-time academia after leaving GM. She says “I was at in 2007; and in 2009, Ferris State University asked me to come and develop courses in information security.  In 20014, Walsh asked me to come back, to redesign both the undergrad and graduate program, and really create some world class programs in technology and cybersecurity.  And I am pretty proud to say that we have some remarkable programs there.”  The greatest majority of Walsh students are working adults. On both an undergraduate and graduate level, the college has three separate courses in cyber security. In the winter of 2016, the college also released a new cyber security concentration for its graduate degree; is also a standalone technology certificate program; and is integrated in all technology courses offered. Walsh is also “the only educational institution that made it a point,” Barbara says, “of mapping our courses to the NSA guidelines, and also to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requirements.”  Barb is very proud that Walsh has alumni at every Fortune 500 company based in Michigan.

Along the way, Barbara has learned many lessons:

• Speak the language of business, and directly to your business audience.  “This is something that my technology students struggle with.”

• Have patience.  “GM taught me patience. Sometimes it took me six months to a year to get us where we wanted to go.”   Through that, she learned to build rapport with her collaborators to drive progress.

• Stay on top of things when it comes to technology innovation, and new developments.  It is essential to your career.

• As a woman, she also counsels that you need to realize that you may have been brought up under “different rules.”  In your career, “you may have to learn new and different ways in terms of thinking about the environment and it may not come naturally for you.  So to achieve leadership you have to spend a lot of time learning from and examining others.”

Throughout her challenging career, Barbara has come to realize some of her own personal strengths:  persistence, the ability to continuously learn and be open to change, giving her own ego a “back seat” and allowing others the chance to shine.  All of these have enabled her to grow as a leader.  “When you are leading people to adopt something new,” she says as an example, “you need to give them time to grieve the loss.  That was something I had never thought about, before.”

As woman in the tech field, Barbara says “I was always aware that I was one of the few there, leading the charge. I grew up with the mantra that I had to be better than the men around me in order to be accepted. Know more, learn more, speak better, be better. I think that’s a horrible burden, but that’s what I felt I needed to do.”  Feeling that along the way, she says that bringing more women into the world of technology is one of her passions “because we need that.”  Her advice to emerging women leaders includes some simple but profound admonitions. “Remain curious,” she says.  “Always look for new answers, new ways of doing things, new technologies.  Be courageous since it’s not easy being a woman in the field of technology.  And be true to yourself. Your personal integrity is the only thing you are going to carry with you through your entire life.”

Barb is feeling very fulfilled these days.  “I really love to see people succeed. When I left GM, it was about service.  And it is very satisfying to work with students and see them achieve their dreams.”

Dr. Barbara Ciaramitaro can be reached via email at ciara2@walshcollege.edu.

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Ep 34: Rhonda St. John Hamborsky: Beating the "Urgency Addiction"

Diva Tech Talk was excited to interview Rhonda St. John Hamborsky, Director of Strategy and Innovation at multinational AT&T Inc.  AT&T is the second largest provider of mobile telephones and the largest provider of affixed telephones in the United States; also offers broadband subscription television services; and was named by Fortune Magazine as the most admired worldwide telecomm company in 2015. 

Rhonda’s role is to guide select large global AT&T enterprise customers in terms of technical strategy development. Some of the projects she works on cover complete technology transformation including hybrid WAN with internet offload, security stack development, and unified communications architectures. She also focuses on emerging/evolving technologies such as SDN, IoT, LTE, Cloud Interconnect and Big Data, helping enterprises move from boxes and wires to software and intelligence on a transformational path.

The complexity of Rhonda’s current role was not predictable, as a girl/teenager, since she did not originally see her future in technology.  “I came into it, accidentally,” Rhonda said.  “I remember having some struggles mathematically.  I attribute it to the teaching styles of the time; we were not able to work in groups or collaborate.  So I am so excited for girls, today. I feel like their experience is vastly different, and there is a great opportunity to keep them engaged in math and sciences.”

Growing up in the Midwest, Rhonda moved to Silicon Valley as she was entering her early 20’s.  There she got her first job as an accounting clerk in a large fleet leasing organization.  From that role she migrated to become a general manager in a recruiting firm, where she got her initial exposure to sales/marketing placement in high technology companies.  She developed a great relationship with startup Sytek, where the Vice President of Sales and Marketing recruited her for their operation since they observed: “You don’t appear to be afraid to try anything!”  

After Sytek, Rhonda went to work as a marketing specialist for Ungermann Bass, a well known data networking company located in Santa Clara, California, where she also learned to code (“before it was cool!”).  It was at Ungermann Bass that she found her first mentor, who encouraged her to go back and complete her undergraduate degree.  “I ended up being one of the first two women in outside sales,” Rhonda said, reminiscing about Ungermann.  She moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Los Angeles, and took on a very large quota.  “The first year I was properly humbled,” she laughed. “It was a very difficult job.  I did not make my quota, but it was the only year in my selling career that I did not.  I was determined never to let that happen again!”  The experience also taught Rhonda the strong importance of relationships — both with clients, and inside her own organizations.

Ungermann Bass moved Rhonda to Michigan, after a five year career in California, since she wanted to get closer to her family. She became a District Manager for them, successfully taking over an office that needed to be turned around.  After that success, she took an unpaid year off (having been recently married) to care for her first child. When returning from her leave, she decided to join a company called General Datacomm, focused on the wide area network market segment.  “I stayed there (22 months) until I got pregnant with my second child,” Rhonda laughed. 

Rhonda took another unpaid 8 month leave, and when she returned to the workforce, she said “I was kind of hungry for the challenge of a startup.  I must have been out of my mind! But I liked the challenge.”  Rhonda went to Cascade Communications, pre-IPO (“which is always a lot of fun – to be in on the ground floor of something like that”). She was then recruited away by another pre-IPO startup, a Silicon Valley-based consulting firm called International Network Services (INS) where she worked for five years. “I opened up their Michigan office for them.  It was complete spade work.  No one was here. Open an office.  Go find some customers.  Sell some consulting.”  Rhonda recruited a team, and they were successful.  She moved from sales to engineering.  “My leadership style was what was needed.  After that, I was promoted three times, three years in a row! And I ended up being the Managing Director for the Midwest, covering 12 offices and 270 people on the team.”

INS was then bought by Lucent.  Rhonda looked at the market and decided she did not want to compete with Cisco (who had been an INS partner); so she moved to tech consulting firm, Calisma, as it was starting up.  She joined Calisma as the Director of Strategic Alliances and Professional Development. “In a startup, you have the opportunity to wear a lot of hats,” Rhonda said. “I built the engineering training program and the leadership program for our consultants; and then I started working on strategic alliances.”  One of her most important alliances was SBC, who acquired Calisma; and subsequently SBC and AT&T merged — which is what led Rhonda to her current career at AT&T.

Of her 12 years at AT&T, Rhonda said “I am so fortunate.  I have one of the best jobs in the company. I have to build consensus and collaboration because I represent AT&T to some of the biggest companies headquartered in Michigan, including two of the automotives, a large appliance manufacturer, an electric company, a professional services company, and a regional bank.  At a C-suite level, I talk with them about where technology is going; how to ‘future-proof’ their network, infrastructure, environment.  I stay trained on the horizon…trained on what’s ahead. ”

Rhonda intends to spend at least 5 to 7 more years at AT&T but is also planning a worthwhile “encore” career, after her AT&T tenure. She is enrolled in a graduate program focused on gerontology, the study of aging. “It’s vastly different from what I do at AT&T,” she said. “But there are some interesting intersect points when you look at things like gerontechnology ---  how technology will enable aging in place, and keep us safer.”  Rhonda’s interest was sparked by the fact that she is part of the care-giving system for both her widowed father and widowed stepfather.  “I am not going to be sitting in the rocker on the porch,” Rhonda laughed. “That’s just not who I am!  I want to be busy.  I want to be doing something.”

Rhonda characterized herself as a “good planner” but acknowledged that this came with maturity.  Being at several startups caused what she called “the urgency addiction,” earlier in her career. “What that does is it burns you out,” she admitted. “At the end of the day, you say ‘I know I did a lot today.  But did I accomplish anything that’s sustainable?’”  Dr. Stephen Covey’s book:  THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE was a profound influence on Rhonda. “He talks about doing what’s important before you do what is urgent, and about sharpening your saw.”

Rhonda’s top four lessons for women aspiring to become technology leaders are:

• Be an active listener.  “Listen carefully.  The nature of our work, today, and the technology we have at our disposal means that we’re multitasking way too much.  If I set up a conference call with someone, they have my attention — undivided.”

• Be willing to have your argument debated, and be willing to change your mind. “When I work with colleagues, around the globe, who are from a different culture, I need to understand where they’re coming from, and how their perspective on the challenge differs from my own. They may come up with a better solution.”

• Keep learning.  “Study, study, study. And do it on your own time. My perspective as a manager was ‘I’m willing to pay for the schooling; but I want to see your investment in it as well,’ and that’s your time.”

• Take a step back, and remember to remain humble.  “The person you are interacting with is a person – isn’t just a user id on your company’s mailing list.  Keep that in mind, always.”

In her community life, Rhonda is no slouch.  She  is on the Advisory Board for the Michigan Council of Women In Technology and  mentors approximately two young people in any given time period.   Rhonda is also a hospice companion (“you are working with someone who is actively dying; they know it, and you know it. There is so much you can take from that.”). She recounted a particularly satisfying interaction where she was a companion to a “Rosie the Riveter”-like role model from several generations older than Rhonda, who was the essence of persistence!

Since she is a life-long learner, Rhonda recommended a number of books including: The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr. Atul Gawande. 

In discussing how being a woman has affected her career, Rhonda commented: “I’ve learned to listen carefully, but not to hold back from speaking. Be sure and get your voice heard.  You just have to be persistent, I think. Be confident.”

Rhonda’s comforting final words of encouragement to women and girls exploring a technology path were“Don’t let the challenges get you down.  We’re all going to encounter speed bumps along the way.  As women, I think we sometimes tend to internalize those more than our male counterparts.  Shake it off.  Take a lesson learned from it, and get back in the ring!”

Rhonda St. John Hamborsky can be reached through Twitter at @rstjohn and also on LinkedIn (search for Rhonda St. John Hamborsky.)   

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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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