OK, good morning folks. We are going to get started here. We've got about 80 participants. So I am uh so excited to be here with you today. My name is Julie Castile and I am the Chief of Strategic Accounts and CMO for Ibex.And um we've got about 20 minutes this morning. So I am going to jump into how to level up your career path and maxim your personal growth opportunities. I just a little bit about me. I have been in the telco and technology sector and industry for my entire career. Started out with sprint selling um technology there, moved over to Ed SS now HP and then moved into the uh BPO industry where I am selling outsourced technology and uh customer experience. So let me get into um about, you know, sort of what sums me up and I'm not going to um give you a presentation fraught with statistics and things that you can go online and read yourself. I'm really gonna speak from the heart today and talk about what it took, you know what I did to um elevate in my career. So um just to get us going, I thought, you know, what really sums me up in my career, um, would be this and I even remember when I interviewed with, uh, with HP, they told me I had to wear a gray or a black suit which, you know, uh d does not fit me at all if you know me.

But nonetheless, um, this kind of sums up who I am and, um, I'm gonna take you on a journey of really how I got where I started. Um And, and how I got to where I am now. So my council is to listen up, right? I had some great folks along the way that helped me go from a sales rep with a postage stamp size territory to the sea level in just a few years. Um I figured out how not to get passed up for the better jobs that I saw men getting. Um e especially in the hallways of HP. And then really how to elevate your personal brand. And my very first mentor I had at Sprint saw, saw my frustration sitting in a cubicle, tapped me on the shoulder one day and said, come with me. And she literally quoted what I've got here on the page. If you can't get it to see the table, then create your own. And I will never forget that. And I'll tell you how I created my own. So this slide is really gonna be where we spend the bulk of our time. And these are the four things that I really um have in part when I'm mentoring someone, when I'm sponsoring someone as I do today. These are the four keys. Um So number one, find a sponsor and I don't mean a mentor while mentors have a place. Um And I've had wonderful mentors. I'm mentors to some young women here at Ibex and outside of Ibex, find a sponsor.

And the difference is a sponsor is somebody that'll kick indoors for you that will recognize your value and help elevate you within an organization. And finding a sponsor takes time. It takes watching to see um other sponsors who have elevated women into positions, other sponsors who have advocated for women in positions. So my number one advice to everyone is find a sponsor who will go to the mat for you and help you navigate an organization that really is key. Number two, build a strong network. And I don't mean collect people on linkedin. I know a lot of people that say I have 2000, you know, connections on linkedin. I have whatever I'm not talking about people collectors. I'm talking about a network of people internal in your company and externally who will vouch for you and vouching for you is key. So people inside your organization that are outside of your um area that you work in, build a sphere of influence inside your company. If you're in finance, go find that in operations. If you're in operations, go find that in sales. If you're in hr go find it in, you know, wherever it, because you've got to build a sphere of influence and a network internally of people who know, you understand your work can validate your work.

Um And so I cannot be, again, you know, that is really a very important one as well. And then go external, you know, you've got to go find the right associations. You've gotta go get on the speaker circuit, you've gotta go um do some things outside of your company that also will start to build that sphere of influence for you. So building a strong network is key. Um The third one is seeking out a high level project and even if one doesn't exist, create one, go back to my early days at sprint where I was frustrated and my mentor pulled me out. And so she said, you've got to go create your own path here. I wanted to be um elevated to a national account manager at the time, it took three years to get there and I wanted to do it in one year. So I went and found a very obscure product that's that sprint was selling, that had very high margins, but very high technical. Um it, it was so technical that not many sales people wanted to take time to learn it. So I said, I'm gonna go learn this product and I'm gonna go sell it and I sold it to some of the biggest clients we had. So I went and found a path and found a way that I could go and create something that didn't exist.

And I'll tell you, I have done that throughout my career at HP. Um at the time HP had acquired a lot of different companies that weren't integrated. Certainly not from an integration, you know, from a technology perspective and not even from a probably client understanding perspective.

I went to my sponsor that I had found um that was about two levels above my boss and my mentor and said, I want to create a team of people that sell only um to existing clients, all those new things that, you know, all the capabilities that we acquired. And I of course, wanted the best salesperson from every business unit. Not possible. I said, I'll take the second best salesperson from every business unit, created that organization and we went in and the return on the investment of creating that team was just off the charts.

But I went and created that myself. I sought out an opportunity and I went to my sponsor and I created that. So that's an opportunity where you need to look at places where you might not, you know, it might, might not be obvious to you. And finally, women. And I'll tell you this is where I think we sometimes can be the weakest is quantifying our value and don't be shy about it. Men come to the table um and generally quantify their work. Uh and their future value much better than a woman does and they quantify it at a higher, you know, rate percent, et cetera. So don't be shy about quantifying your work. Don't be shy about putting a, this is what I've done. Here's the return on investment for that. Here's what I'm going to do because again, I think women tend to, um not do that as, as readily as men do. And I'm saying, you know, you see my note on the side, you know, level up ladies and get serious because this is where this is where you can really make an impact. And these four things have really been the key for me in my career. So what would I do differently? You know, I would find an advocate earlier, I would find that sponsor earlier that would open the bigger doors for me. I waited about five years. I didn't even know what a sponsor was in my early career at sprint.

And you know what, it's not a sponsor that could open doors for you. It's, that would, and I would say I would do that differently and I would do that sooner. So pull that forward wherever you are in your career right now, go find a sponsor, make that your next, you know, quarter objective. Um I would have done that earlier. Um And even though I had really, you know, amazing success in those early days, I still would have done that. Um, earlier, I would have gotten out of my comfort zone earlier as well. Um We know that's when we learn. And again, women elevating in the tech space. If you want to go learn, you know, go learn about the technology, go figure out what it is. Um Your company does put a different spin on it, find a way to understand it differently, find a way to articulate it um differently, but get out of your comfort zone because that's where I think I did some of my best growing was and when I was willing to get, um, you know, out of my comfort zone, um and I leaned on that internal network, I leaned on my sponsor, I leaned in those areas so that I didn't feel quite as, you know, out of left field.

But those are the things I did in terms of, you know, getting out of my comfort zone. And then finally, it focus on what really resonated with me. You know, I was kind of robotic in my early stages where I felt like I don't know if I was really, you know, uh uh the, the, the product I was selling didn't necessarily light me up. It was fairly commoditized from a technology perspective. And then when I went and learned that kind of slip of something that was very unique, um, at sprint, I carried that in over, in my days at HP, I carried that in, um, over into my, um, you know, days in the, where I am now, currently Seal and Ibex. And that really, um, you know, that things that you do that you resonate with you, that you enjoy doing that you enjoy doing. Um, you know, that's what I would do differently as well and I'll tell you that you have got to also along the way. And I and I, I, you know, I don't have all that much time here. So I might have missed this one is, is focus on your brand, focus on your personal brand. So how do you do that? Right? Um You do that by doing a couple of things. One is, so, for example, I started the Women of Ibex here. Um Previously I started a client advisory board at Cel. Um those are things at HP.

I had um different areas of uh a women in technology in a particular area of practice that I started put your name on those things. Go find an opportunity to brand yourself, go find an opportunity to go into that network, internal, external, go into your sponsor, go into those areas where you can actually put your fingerprint on something and work on your brand because that's also gonna elevate you in a very different way.

I, you know, so over the years, my mentors started to be more and more and more senior, my sponsors were started out being seniors and I had a conversation with my last official mentor a few years ago and she said to me, you know, a funny thing happened on the way to my career.

I nailed it and it wasn't perfect. But you know what, she was exiting this career and going and starting something completely different and said, look, you know, I can look back on my career and say, hey, I did some really interesting things I pulled on some great people. I met some, you know, I I had some amazing opportunities. And so for all of you listening there today, I want you to have those great experiences as well. So um that kind of wraps up my uh conversation here because I've got to leave some room for um chat questions. So here is a question. Any tips of quantifying your value when you have imposter syndrome? Oh That is a question. You know what I think you just go and quantify the value um in the way that you think is best representative um for you and the culture of your company. There's an interesting thing about culture, right? And I could go into culture forever. There are, there is a macro culture of your company and there are subcultures, right? And sometimes you need to go address the subcultures first, right? So if you feel like you don't know how to quantify your value, start quantifying it in subcultures where you know what you're doing um has a lot of meaning to that group of people and then you can kind of work up to the whole macro culture.

But I think you've got to just find a way to quantify what you do as it relates to the company's overall goals. Um and strategy and you can do that by um you know, if you're a public company, the stated goals are public, you can go find that through a sponsor. But I think that you really need to find a way to learn how to quantify your work. Um because that is gonna come in handy for you down the line, whether it comes to time for reviews, time for, um you know, leveling up on your um pay, um leveling up for your next career move, um figure out a way to find, you know, figure out a way to um quantify that and that kind of helps you get into the, that, that kind of goes hand in hand with branding yourself.

It goes hand in hand with creating that network of people who know what you do, who have a um an appreciation for what you do can you know, validate what you do all of that, all of that comes into play. Um How do you find a sponsor? I'll tell you what I found a sponsor by sitting in meetings and I found an executive who I saw that was, you know, had a real interest in our division and saw that. Um he was also kind of elevating other women. And I thought, you know what, um wonderful mentor, wonderful sponsor had five daughters of his own. So had a real passion for helping women, elevate women. Um And so I found and watched, you need to watch, watch, learn, watch for where sponsor you're seeing other people elevate.

Um And then go watch and see the source of that, right? Sometimes a sponsor may have helped them. Um But I would say go find somebody that has shown a keen interest in the either the area that you work in, um maybe a keen interest in a project that you have put your name on, so your branding. Um and there's a, there's multiple ways of going and finding a sponsor. Um and just eyes and ears open. You know, that's the best way to do that is to keep your eyes open, watch, pay attention, um study your organization. You may find a mentor through, uh you may find a sponsor through a mentor. So that's another uh route to do that. Well, I am getting the Academy Award music. So thank you all. I loved uh speaking with you all today. I hope you got some good uh good tips out of this. So, um hope you all go and uh have a great day. I'm just looking at all the Thank yous on the screen. Thank you all.