Hello, my name is Wendy Nicholson. I am Vice President Technology and Products at Salesforce for mergers and acquisitions. And I'm so happy to be here uh with you today.I'm gonna chat a bit about surviving and what I call thriving as a black female leader in technology who would know that a young 16 year old black girl from a small town in South Carolina would know that she wanted to be a computer programmer. That was me. So my goals in my yearbook were to become a to go to college, to get a degree in computer science, to become a computer programmer, to visually get married, have at least two Children where my third son basically says, why didn't I stop at two? Um and to have a thriving career in technology. Um And I am going to just go forward a little bit in terms of if anybody has any questions that we have a very short time. So a couple of housekeeping items, one is here's a link tree QR code um where you can ask me questions, you can find my linkedin. Um You can find more about how I got their podcast as well as more about um a podcast on M and A science, which is the work that I do uh today. Um how I survived.

I would say that my first thing is being able to execute after getting a degree in computer science, getting my job as a junior programmer. Um I learned that execution was key. So I learned that at an early age growing up in a small town and being able to, to have family and the support around me. So being able to execute, being able to do really good at your job, know what your company does for business, how do they make money? Um How do you make sure you're successful? Those are all things that you need to sort of establish yourself by executing well. Um And also don't forget to continue to learn whether that's credentials, whether that is learning, whether that's reading, whether that is getting certifications, whatever those things are that you want to be known for. And when people are in a room, speaking about you, that they say those things, the brand that you want to project and those are the things that you want to show my. Next is around circles of trust. I will say that, you know, I learned a little bit later in life when I was really more so as a developer, an introvert heads down doing my work, doing good executing well, not realizing that I really needed others to support me.

My first support mechanism was a group of women. Um A bib babe is what we called it as a working mom. And really not moving ahead realizing that I, I could use some other support. And I went to a book club and our first book was Women. Don't Get the corner office. And I learned that I've never negotiated. I learned so many things from these really talented and, and strong and, and smart technology. Women of things that they had already seen um occurred in their careers could give me guidance, could help me.

And I realized that that was one of my first circles of trust along with, of course, my family and friends, my husband has been my number one cheerleader and so is my family. But I will tell you that as a career, some of them don't, my husband doesn't know he knows technology, but others just don't know technology and they don't know the corporate world. And so really establishing friends, I've got a group of friends who I have known for years now, we tended to be in the same career path and establish this bond and they are like my board of directors and we get together whenever we need to. Whenever any one of us are having a challenge. If any of us need anything, we will stop everything and have dinner, go to the spa, whatever it takes to kind of get there. So that's my other circle of, of, of trust. Um I have a group of network friends that I connect with. They're my accountability partners. They're more of my future. They're more of like, what am I looking for as I move ahead along with my board of directors. And then I have mentors. I have mentors bidirectional. I have mentors who don't know they're my mentors and they are maybe younger than, and I'm learning from them as well.

And I have other mentors who've been in the boardroom, who, who've been retired, who can help me maneuver and help me figure out what some of those things are. Next, I would say back to networking, it is really important. I was always an introvert is very important for you to get out of your shell. If you're not an extrovert, if you're not used to just wanting to talk with people or be around people. And we've definitely learned that during COVID that, you know, it's hard to sort of do that. And so what you need to do is build your muscles to be able to figure out how you can start networking. And I did it by figuring out targeting groups that I wanted to network with. Um They were like me, maybe they were women groups, maybe they were black groups, maybe they were moms, maybe they were people who love sports like I do, maybe they're people who cycle like I do. Um But get a network that will help support you, especially when things aren't great, but you also got to do what things are great.

So staying connected with people in your network and staying connected in network groups and professional groups um has super helpful, been helpful for me and I would definitely encourage you to kind of think about it and say practice if you need to practice. Um The next I will say is having grits. I am a little old school and I have sometimes that mental toughness is something that we have to practice. And that is when you're in a room full of, for me say men. Um and you know, maybe my thoughts aren't going to be taken as seriously as the guy who says the same thing that I just said. So for me, it's a little bit of grit, I think Amy Duckworth has a book about that about having grits and, and sometimes we have to do hard things, but sometimes we have to show our toughness. And so we have to figure out the things that might trigger you, the things that might basically cause you to be upset, to crumble, to get emotional, to talk loudly, to find a way to find your calm in those kind of situations. Practice that as well. One of my triggers was being uh I am a tall woman and I have had everything from being called, the secretary to you. Don't look like a manager to how tall are you after you've given a very technical presentation?

And so I had to learn to be cool and calm and not let it affect me and my mental state. And so I've learned to have a little thicker skin in some of those times and be able to respond in a way that will make me feel comfortable or in a way that I've already figured out my strategy of how to react. For example, how tall are you? When I've done something very technical, uh when you're fixated on my appearance is I feel about 6 ft nine today, I'm really stressed at all the work that I'm doing right. So something that will help you maneuver and kind of move along have grits think really hard that mental toughness as a leader is super important. You want to be there, you want to be tough, you wanna be cool, you wanna be calm and you wanna be strategic. So think logically, I know that sometimes it may be hard. Sometimes I've gone to the bathroom and had to like have my own little pity party. But there are times when I'd be able to say, you know what I put on my, my music that's gonna pump me up and nobody's gonna basically corrupt what I'm going to do for the day. My ne so and my next one is self care.

Um that is everything from going to your doctor, going to therapy. I've done therapy like that. There's no shame in that game going to your doctor exercising, um talking with your friends, enjoying life, going on vacation. Don't work, not working on your birthday. That's what I typically like to do, going to the spa um getting a massage. Um The things that you feel that will help take care of you. Um Those are things that have helped me survive and thrive. Um So I, I definitely want to just say that, you know, I'll take questions um in two salesforce culture. One of the things that we always say is thank you for everything that we do. And so I wanna make sure that I wanna say thank you for listening and thank you for being there. And again, here's my QR Code. Um And in that you can find my linkedin, you can find a, a form to answer, ask me any questions and I will respond at a later date. You can look at my podcast about how she got there. Um And then you can also look at more about what I do today from an M and a perspective. All right. So I think I'm almost at the end of my time.

Um So I appreciate um all of you and um thank you for your time today and I hope you learned so much more at other women in tech um sessions today and the next two days. Thank you, Alison. All right. Never work. On your birthday. Absolutely. Take your vacation, learn more. Be your expert and self care. All right. Thank you everybody, Bria. I see your comment. Practice figuring out your strategy and practicing it. Thank you, Sim. Thank you. All.