From 1995 to the present, for most of my career, I have had the privilege of working in information technology in the education technology space with Pearson Education and now with Harvard Business Publishing (creators of the Harvard Business Review). As I moved into leadership positions in these organizations, I had the opportunity to lead multinational and multicultural teams with members from Bolivia, India, Japan, Mexico, Romania, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, and United States. While the challenges of remote leadership were immense, I found that one-on-one conversations that involved more listening than talking usually developed understanding and made relationships work, no matter the distance or time zone.

These organizations have sharpened my knowledge of the intersection of people, technology, and learning. Particularly at HBP, I have gained a sense of the different ways people learn using their corporate intranets, college courseware and sitting at home with a tablet. I often compare and contrast how Toastmasters moved to Pathways with how other organizations have leveraged technology to educate their customers.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve been promoted in these organization because I practice what I learned in the military . . . and Toastmasters. I make it a point to engage with members of my team as well as colleagues in other parts of the organization to generate buy-in to new ideas, bring consensus to the group, and efficiently move the organization ahead. I was selected to participate in a team that will develop the policy, training, and messaging around our organization’s return to the office. The role requires bringing agreement to disparate groups in the organization that are eager to get back to the office or, never want to return to the office again. In addition, I was chosen to speak to outside customers on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (thanks, Toastmasters!) to help other organizations make the best decisions on how to create an environment where all employees thrive. This year I was asked to be a Mental First Aider to highlight the need for mental health awareness at the workplace, an often overlooked by critical part of workplace health.

Professional ROLES HELD

Senior Director of Technology Operations

Director of DevOps and Infrastructure

Director of Global Monitoring

Director of Information Technology

Senior Manager, DevOps

Enterprise Cloud Operations Manager

Network Administrator

Senior Operations Engineer

Systems Engineer