Welcome. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Wherever you are tuned in from, for this fireside chat, we are going to talk about, um, taking a career path less traveled and we have a great guest with us to share lots of her experience.She's a technical leader, um, across many organizations who's currently Chief Marketing Officer at Teradata. Um, and I'm so pleased to welcome Jacqueline Woods to the stage. Um, Jacqueline, if you'd like to take a minute just to introduce yourself properly, I'm sure I haven't done you justice.

Um, that'd be great.

Uh, thanks. I think you did a great job. I've been in technology for about 25 years, maybe a little bit longer. Um, but I've, uh, led at Oracle at IBM and now at Terra and I'm excited to be here. So, thank you.

Perfect, great stuff. So we have 20 minutes a whistle stop tour of lots of questions and hopefully, um, questions for me and from the audience. So let's get started if we can. So, taking a career path less traveled, how do you think, um, corporate organizations can support their teams and enable their people to not be scared to take the unconventional route in their careers.

Well, first, I think there's a myth that there is this typical path. I think every path is actually a little bit different. And so what I think organizations have to make sure that they do is to ensure that one people know that there is no, um what I would call straight line trajectory to any career. You'll have lots of twists and turns and just make sure that there's ample resources available, um particularly mentoring and ways to better understand the organization and how it works. And there are certain jobs that I, that if you do those jobs that it's easier to find out about an organization. Ok.

Brilliant stuff. And do you think what, what advice would you give to those people who are trying to use that route? They don't want to go the conventional maybe longer trajectory, but they wanna condense their careers. What advice would you give to them?

I think the most important thing is to really kind of look around and see what other people have done and then talk to those people and ask them, how did you do what you do? Especially if you're looking at someone and you're saying one day, I wanna be the chief product officer. If that's a role that you think that you want to have one day or just lead a technical team or lead another function, then go talk to someone who's leading that function to find out how they did it and what they did and most important, ask them what mistakes they made.

Yeah, that's a, that's a good one, right? And be bold in the process, right? You're not gonna get anything unless you're bold and ask the right questions. So thank you for that. So just moving on a little bit slightly into learning in the workplace. So continuous learning is critical to enable individuals and business growth in your opinion. What does company culture have to play? What part does it have to play in building a um a corporate position of learning and development?

I think your culture at your company is the most important thing. Um I think it's the thing that can either be an obstacle to a company's growth and even your own growth or I think it can be an accelerant and cultures that are continuously learning and providing opportunities for their employees to learn probably are the best cultures because they're looking at it introspectively and saying, what should I do better?

And then they're providing lots and lots of resources to their employees to make sure that they have an opportunity to basically do things at their own pace. OK.

OK. All right. Because it's not about necessarily, I think sometimes organizations look at it that if people learn, they develop, then they're gonna move on, right? But it's about looking at it a little bit differently from a corporate perspective and making sure you, you understand that you're building out your team and the growth of your own business.

I, I think that's a great point. First of all, it's wh why wouldn't you want someone to learn and why wouldn't you want them to be the best person that they can be for you at the time that they're working for your company? I think that you can't play scared. I think if you have a great culture, people wanna work there. I read an article yesterday that on Fidelity that said um millennials quite frankly would take a $7600 pay cut for a better culture and for better career development. So it's not the money. And if you do a great job of developing your employees and you do a great job of developing a great culture, they will stay.

Yeah. No, I completely agree. And you touched on a point there that leads us into the next question around the great resignation, right? And millennials and um Gen Zed, they are sort of, well, they're said to be driving the great resignation. So what advice would you give to employees as they traverse that? Um as the recruitment market continues to be so competitive, how do they stand out?

Um Two things. I first, I think it's important for the company to stand out because the most important thing if you're thinking about leaving and going to another place is to understand what you're going to, I've seen lots of people decide that the grass was greener on the other side. And then they got over there and they saw what, you know, was a little patch that was green, but basically the rest of the field was brown. I don't think those are ever good moves to make. Um, I think you really have to know why you're leaving. And are you leaving for the right reasons? I mean, sometimes you're leaving because you just want to grow into another role and you may not have the opportunity at your company to do that and that's fine. It's OK. I think lots of different experiences are a good thing. I may not be a millennial. I pretend to be one, but I've worked at four or five years. Yeah, I, I've worked at four or five different firms. And so maybe by my work history, I'm more millennial than not, but I always, when I moved, it was always, what did I want to do with my career? Why was I moving?

Did I did I did I, was it to, you know, elevate myself into a different position or was it maybe I just wanted some new experiences that I wasn't gonna get at the company that I was at. And let me give you an example of that when I was at Oracle, I was in the office of the CEO. So I'm like, where do you go from here? I mean, kind of out the window and down right. There's like, you know, and so I said to myself, I don't think like, where am I gonna go from here? I'm kind of in the top. At the same time, we were selling to all the major companies and my next move was actually the gege sells pretty much everything to everybody. But for me, I wanted to be on the other side of, I love technology, but I also wanted to be at another company that helped me understand a diversity of industries. And I think that was experience was invaluable for me. And you know, it's something that I can talk about every interview that I'm ever in. So you wanna look at, why are you leaving? And what skills are you going to get when you leave?

And I was very purposeful about, I wanna go into industry and even though I'm tech and tech is my thing that I wanna take that experience and go to a place that has really a multiplicity of industries that I would not get in the current company I was at. That's

great. That's a great, great answer. So I just want to pause just for a second to ask. Are there any questions in the room? If you do have a question, please just drop it in the chat. Maybe you're looking uh to, to, to move roles yourself. Um Maybe you wanna just understand how you can learn better in your organization. So please just drop any questions that you have as we move on because I wanna make sure that I um I find time for those before we finish today in around 10 minutes. So Jacqueline just moving on then. So what recruitment strategies do you use when hiring great talent, whether in your team or, or previously in other organizations?

But believe it or not, I, I love linkedin. I will go and scout linkedin, like nobody's business. I have gone and just started conversations on linkedin with people and I have personally recruited people that I found on linkedin. And it's so interesting. I even hired a senior vice president that I had been kind of, you know, I don't wanna say stalking but, but, but stalking. Um so I think it's really critical that people have their linkedin profiles up to date. I think it's really critical what you're sharing and engaging on linkedin because people are looking at that, they're not looking at that because, hey, I'm just trying to understand, you know, what you did last week, which some people are posting things like that on linkedin, but they're really trying to understand what types of work experiences have you had.

Are you someone that looks like you could engage in a meaningful way in the organization that someone is already in? And I, I really, I, I think it is one of the best tools, at least for me. Um And I've done even, you know, a lot of executive recruiting with executive search firms and, you know what I think they're good at is kind of distilling down the salient facts of who you're hiring and what you're looking for. So I think they do a great job at doing that. Um, but I would always say linkedin for me is always proven to be better than even that.

Yeah. No, I agree. And coming at it from the other angle, then just a bit of a wild card question. If um if people are looking for roles now and they want to reach out to you or to other leaders, do you promote that really going in person going in hard, maybe on direct message, those kind of strategies or should we be shying away from that?

I don't think it should shy away at all. I have sent people messages that I didn't know because I wanted to learn about different topics and if someone had written a post or they authored a book or an article or a blog or something, and I read that, I literally would say, hey, I wanna learn more about ABC. Do, would you, do you know, would you mind spending 15 minutes with me? I've never had anyone say no yet. And the other thing that I would mention is don't be upset if someone doesn't like respond in, you know, five minutes, everyone's not sitting on, you know, we don't treat linkedin like Instagram. Uh, so I have found that being a little bit patient because, especially if someone's busy, especially if they're an executive, they're gonna probably look at that stuff over the weekend. Um, and so I would make sure that would kind of think about the timing of when you're sending things late at night, early in the morning are always good times because that's when people are looking at those types of sites.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, and that's the first point you made around really focusing in on people's you uniqueness, right? What have people done out there that you can um drive up a conversation on whether it's personal, whether it's professional and just show your interest in what they're doing and how you can learn from them, I think is invaluable, um especially on linkedin. Absolutely. So as we kind of move forward, um I wanted to just talk about your career specifically and how you feel it has gone for you. Um And what the drivers were for your career transition and changes and also your success. That's the first part of the question. And then I wanna just move into, you know, being a black woman in technology and in and in leadership, how that has really played out for you. So, um yeah, two kind of questions there.

I, you know, it's, it's interesting because I'm in the process of writing a book and part of that book is about my, my story and, and I talk about like, you know, how do you move from place to place and what should you do? And what are you thinking about as you're moving through your career? And I don't think, II I actually, um at one point say, I don't even think I knew what a chief marketing officer was. So I never started off in the beginning of my career saying I wanted to be an officer at a company. I, I never had that thought actually at all, what I always wanted to do was be doing things that I thought were meaningful that I was getting recognition from. And I'm a person who's driven by recognition. So it's kind of, you know, a little bit coin operated, not so salesy, right? But, but being driven by, oh, she did a great job. She did a great project as you move through your career, you recognize that just doing a good job isn't enough. Um, particularly the more senior you get, it's very much related to, um the types of relationships you're building and navigating an organization and understanding the ethos or the pathology of the organization is really, really important.

And so over time I've done a better job at learning how to do that. And so at some point I, I was like, oh my God, I wanna be an executive and, oh my God, I feel like I can be a chief marketing officer and once I set my side on that, I just uh in honestly, like, navigated the hell out of, I need to do ABC DE and I just was very mission oriented.

I knew that I couldn't stay, I, as, for as much as I loved Oracle, I knew I couldn't stay there. I needed to get some other experiences if I was gonna get to the place that I am today.

And I think those strategic moves, I think people sometimes shy away from them, especially not understanding how it's gonna reflect on their CV S sometimes, especially if it's a short um tenure. But I think like you say, if you've got your eyes and your sight on something, then you have to be strategic in terms of how you approach that. Um So don't be afraid to move if it's the right move for you and for the organization that you're

going to. Absolutely. Yeah.

So as a woman of color then, um and I'm in a similar spot, not, not as senior as you, but um I've been in technology and leadership for quite a while now. What, what kind of challenges have you had to face and how would you advise others in those situations?

I, I think, you know, just full disclosure, I think it's been hard. Um It hasn't been easy because you don't see a lot of people of color and technology partic particularly and so that unto itself is like you're now going into a territory, a territory where you don't say I've seen 100 examples of you so I can trust that you're gonna be what I need you to be.

And so I feel that you're always kind of breaking down barriers and kind of forging a path that's that you're kind of, you know, having the machete to go through the bamboo and that's not always easy. And I think the, the thing for me that I've, that I've just kind of always leaned on and, and thought about is two things. First of all, my father always told me that God's vision for me was always greater than the vision that I have for myself. And I just think that just has grounded me to always believe that I can do more than I think that I can do. So that's number one, if you believe that you can do more than you think you can, you will always do it. And the second piece of advice, just for me personally, when I talk to myself, which I talk to myself often is, is, is to really understand that you have to keep moving forward. Um As a woman, I have had setbacks, there is no doubt that I've had setbacks. As a black woman, I have had setbacks, I have had setbacks because I am a black woman and I know that and while that can be very painful and you're kind of back on your heels or feel like you're kind of even on your back, sometimes the most important thing is to get up. Yeah.

Yeah, because at the end of the day we, our careers are in our control no matter what, no matter what happens on the other side of the door or what, you know, elsewhere in the organization we are in control of our own destiny. I know sometimes it hard and it doesn't always feel that way, but we have to make those decisions to move us forward, to have the conversations

and make choices for yourself, right? So when you get, when you have a setback and things happen, make, make the choice for you, make the choice that you have a choice to either take something or not take it. And you know, you, you, you, you are in control of that for as hard as that is because it's much easier said than done.

Yeah, because once you know, you're in the con in control, you're the star of your own movie, you've gotta make the decisions,

right? You gotta make the decisions, you gotta make things happen. Yeah,

definitely. Thank you, Jacqueline. Thank you. So I'm just gonna pause just before we've, we've got a few minutes left. If there are any questions in the chat, I'd like to take those um any questions at all. Um Sharnie says amazing advice. Um She agreed with um the topics we covered today. Any questions Shanie from anyone really? Any questions? OK. Nothing at the moment. Jacqueline, any parting words from you in terms of advising the audience and those who are gonna see this um on the replay.

Yeah, the, the a couple of things. First of all, I love women in technology because for me, um it's always been a very exciting field and we need more of us. So I want to encourage you to stay in it and, and most importantly, shoot your shot. You have the ability to take chances. You're, you're gonna make some mistakes. We all do. Just get up and try again. If, if there's nothing that I can tell you, it's just keep going. Keep forging ahead and believe in yourself,

put itself put itself, it looks as if you're gonna be having some requests coming your way very soon. But thank you Jack. I look forward to it.

Mandy.

Thanks all for joining and we will speak to you soon. Thanks Jack. Good to

you. You too.

Bye bye.